The moral economy of contemporary working‐class adolescence: managing symbolic capital in a French public ‘Adolescent Centre’

Working‐class adolescents of French urban peripheries are key figures in a new social debate that reactivates the nineteenth century spectre of ‘dangerous’ classes to be controlled. Since the 1990s, French social counselling has privileged two modalities of response: taking account of suffering and government by listening and speech. We hypothesize that the contemporary moral economy allows for social interactions that go beyond social control and institutional domination. This is partly because professionals engaged in this moral undertaking may keep a critical distance, and partly because the concerned populations aren't necessarily devoid of resources to advance their interests or incapable of resistance. The concept of moral economy, coupled with the ethnographic method, is heuristic for fully comprehending the complexity of these issues and their stakes. Our fieldwork was centred on a French Adolescent Centre in an impoverished commune in Paris's periphery, from January 2010 through March 2011. These institutions were established in the early 2000s to respond to adolescent ‘suffering’ by crossing social work and psychiatry. Adolescents, parents, and other institutions (especially schools) solicit the professionally diverse staff for assistance, which in turn may take on cases and/or make referrals to other support institutions. By paying attention to all the scenes upon which the story of a counselled adolescent evolves, and bearing more general social evolutions in mind by applying the concept of moral economy, we can consider the multiplicity of seemingly contradictory processes as a whole. We see the destabilization of parents and their loss of symbolic capital, partly due to the norms of contemporary parenthood and partly due to the stigmatization of working‐class adolescence. But we also discern possibilities for expressing sentiments of injustice and humiliation, for increasing symbolic capital, and in some cases a reappropriation of the system, particularly in trajectories marked by a will for social ascension.     

The role of sexual behavior in the identification process of gay and bisexual males

This study examined the role of same‐sex sexual behavior in the identification and coming‐out process among three cohorts of gay and bisexual males. The sequence through which the males identified their same‐sex attractions was coded as either sex‐centered (labeling of sexual identity after first same‐sex sexual encounter) or identity‐centered (labeling of sexual identity before engaging in sex with males). The project tested whether developmental sequence was a significant predictor of later adjustment to sexual identity and relationship involvement. Findings demonstrate that the proportion of sex‐centered males decreased as a function of age cohort. Moreover, sex‐centered males reported higher levels of homophobia toward other males, more lifetime sexual partners, and more heterosexual sexual and romantic relationships. Thus, the route males take to identify and label their sexual identity is a good predictor of future adjustment and relationship involvement.     

The Influence of the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation Normative Content in Measuring the Level of Service

Human Rights to Water and Sanitation (HRWS) have been consolidated as relevant frameworks to measure different levels of services. It is essential to move forward with specific initiatives that interpret the content of these human rights and operationalize them through specific metrics. However, some critical issues emerge in attempting this. Different approaches are proposed in this article to tackle this challenge: (1) utilizing a participatory technique to discuss the relative importance of the normative criteria to define water and sanitation services, (2) defining a short list of key indicators to measure the different dimensions of HRWS, and (3) assessing the impact of different weighting systems in the constructing an aggregated index, which has been proposed as a useful tool to monitor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) from a rights perspective. Two municipalities (in Mozambique and Nicaragua) were selected as initial case studies. The results suggest that there is a common understanding among the experts about prioritization of the HRWS criteria. Differences in the relative importance given to the HRWS criteria can be explained due to the particularities of the local context. Further, the research suggests that expert opinions may be partially conditioned by targets and indicators proposed at the international level. Although the influence of weighting techniques on aggregated measures and their utilization in the decision-making process are limited, this methodology has a great potential for adapting specific WASH metrics to different regional, national, and/or local contexts taking into account the HRWS normative content.     

Employment Quality: Are There Differences by Types of Contract?

Measuring welfare state generosity in developing and transitional welfare states is often challenged not only by lack of comparative quantitative data, but also by issues of conceptual stretching. This paper demonstrates and discusses the use of one of the key measures of welfare entitlement generosity developed in the comparative welfare state research in the context of post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). With the new time series data provided by the Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset CWED2, comparative approaches including the CEE countries have become feasible. This paper first discusses quantitative measures of welfare entitlement generosity in the tradition of the social rights of citizenship approach and how they can be applied for cross-country comparisons. It then demonstrates empirically how the emerging CEE welfare states’ generosity compares to mature “old” OECD welfare states. Finally, the paper shows the potential and the pitfalls of quantitative measures of welfare state generosity by discussing, to what extent do indicators of social security scheme generosity measure the same in established and emerging welfare states, which functional equivalents may be relevant in the context of emerging welfare states and how far can we stretch our theoretical concepts.     

Socioeconomic Classification of the Working-Age Brazilian Population: A Joint Latent Class Analysis Using Social Class and Asset-Based Perspectives

This paper presents and applies a methodology of socioeconomic classification that integrates asset- and social class approaches. We employ data from the 2013 Brazilian National Household Survey and use latent class analysis to identify clusters and classify the working population. With regard to social class the Brazilian occupations are classified based on the European Socioeconomic Classification (ESeC) schema and an indicator of employment status. As for household wealth, we use the items related to household condition, ownership of durable goods and access to public services with the highest discriminatory power. We also make use of variables that account for the Brazilian spatial and socio-demographic heterogeneity. We found four clusters which we term latent socioeconomic stratum (LSeS). When compared we found an ordered pattern from the best-off LSeS (1) to the worst-off (4) with respect to household wealth and ESeC classes. Nevertheless, although the class composition of each LSeS reveals a distinct concentration of specific ESeC classes, all classes are present in each LSeS. Controlling for social class, differences in household wealth are more marked between LSeS than between social classes within the same LSeS. Hence, the methodology unveils the latent socioeconomic strata, reveals a class schema for each stratum and points out potential stratum fractions within them. The results were validated using variables external to the model, namely household food security status and years of schooling. The external validation revealed the same ordered pattern and the presence of stratum fractions.     

The Features of Development in the Pacific Countries of the African,Caribbean and Pacific Group

In this article we present a new proposal for the measurement of development, applied to the Pacific Countries of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP), conditional on their insularity, and with privileged relations with the European Union. Our index has been constructed attending to the criteria defined in the Goals of the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose we will use the P₂ distance method for the year 2007, the last year for which data are available. This index integrates socio-economic variables that permit a territorial ordering of the Pacific ACPs, in terms of those partial indicators.     

A reply to W. H. James

The objection of W. H. James to my computation on p. 330, for the sample of Créteil, is valid. For reasons that are developed elsewhere in my paper, the current pregnancy of any woman was omitted in the elaboration of Table 6. Therefore, in order to derive continuation rates, we must re-include this pregnancy in each individual pregnancy history. Since women whose previous pregnancies ended in induced abortions had been excluded, we must do the same for women whose current pregnancy was interrupted by an induced abortion.