Measuring Appearance-Based Discrimination: An Analysis of Identity Checks in Paris
Fabien Jobard, René Lévy, John Lamberth, Sophie Névanen
This article sets out the main results of a survey conducted by the Centre for Sociological Research on Law and Criminal Justice Institutions (CESDIP; CI Survey) and the Open Society Institute (OSI) to establish whether the identity checks made by Parisian law enforcement officers reflect ethnic (or racial) profiling and, if so, to provide quantified estimates. The survey was conducted at five different locations in the French capital between October 2007 and May 2008. After noting the characteristics of the population available to be stopped, the people singled out for identity checks by the police were discreetly observed in order to measure any discrepancies between the two. We analysed six descriptive variables (sex, age, apparent origin, clothing, presence/absence of a bag, and location) and the interactions between them. The results revealed a situation in which direct appearance-based discrimination was coupled with indirect discrimination based on a set of characteristics which, while not intrinsically ethnic or racial, are distributed in such a way that their use in deciding which individuals to stop nonetheless leads to disparities between the two populations.
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From Sexual Debut to First Union. Where do Young People in France Meet their First Partners?
Michel Bozon, Wilfried Rault
Twenty-five years after the survey on couple formation (Formation des couples, INED, 1984), in a context of mass educational enrollment, new modes of communication and lengthening periods of preconjugal sexuality, this article analyses changes in the settings where individuals meet their first sexual partners and first life partners. The findings are based on data from a survey on the context of sexuality in France (Contexte de la sexualité en France, CSF) conducted by INSERM and INED on a sample of 12,364 persons in 2005-2006. One new feature of contemporary sexuality is the fact that the first sexual partner is less and less frequently the first life partner. To study the specific characteristics of these two types of encounter, the authors study the places where respondents meet their first sexual partner and their first life partner, i.e. the person with whom he/she enters a first union. While the distribution of settings where respondents met their first sexual partner varies by sex (more often at school or university for men than for women), this is not the case for the meeting place of the first life partner. The article then examines the trajectories from the first to the second meeting place and shows that it varies by individuals’ social characteristics and by sex. The trajectories suggest that among women and among the most highly educated respondents of both sexes, certain elements of strategy may be used in the choice of meeting place.
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A Retrospective Analysis of the Life Courses of Île-de-France Residents Born between 1930 and 1950
Valérie Golaz, Éva Lelièvre
The Biographies et entourage (Event histories and contact circle) survey carried out in 2000-2001 on residents of the Paris region born between 1930 and 1950, provides a means to reconstruct the composition of respondents’ contact circles over their lifetimes. It also records their subjective assessments of the different parts of their life course. In this article, we analyse how these subjective data - reconstructed ex post - and the factual situations that characterize periods of the respondents’ childhood and adolescence are interlinked. Periods characterized by the size and composition of the close family circle were studied using complementary approaches ranging from textual analysis to inferential analyses (logistic and multilevel regression). The results show in detail how the close family circle shapes the respondents’ subjective judgements. Textual analysis shows that the contact circle features strongly in descriptions of periods of childhood and adolescence. Even though other factors are involved, periods of relative isolation are perceived more negatively than other periods. Despite gendered differences, which come to light in adolescence, the contact circle has a significant influence on the tone of the period for both boys and girls, and this is revealed particularly through the presence or absence of parents or parent figures.
Measuring International Migration through Sample Surveys: Some Lessons from the Spanish Case
Mónica Martí, Carmen Ródenas
Using sampling techniques to obtain demographic and social information on the immigrant population requires a specifically designed survey. To guarantee the reliability of results, the sample design should not be limited to commonly used demographic variables, but should also consider the immigrants’ year of arrival. If this variable is not included in the initial design or subsequent adjustments of the survey, there is a high risk that its estimate will be biased, thereby affecting the estimates of all variables correlated with the year of arrival.
The paper analyses the Spanish case for two reasons. Firstly, because Spain has an administrative source - the Municipal Population Register - which records migrants irrespective of their legal situation, so the figures it provides may be a good reference for comparing the estimates generated from the surveys. Secondly, in addition to the migration information provided by the Spanish Labour Force Survey, data from a new specific survey of the immigration population - the National Immigrants Survey-2007 - were also available to us. The existence of these three separate sources makes Spain the best testing ground in Europe for evaluating the reliability of sampling techniques to measure migration flows. Although the analysis is carried out essentially with Spanish statistical information, it will be shown that the problems are also common to other European countries.
Dispensation from Banns: A Data Source for Historical Demography and Social History
Rosa Congost, Josep Portell, Enric Saguer, Albert Serramontmany
In certain regions of Spain, it was customary among the Catholic population to request a dispensation from banns. A study of this practice since the seventeenth century in Catalonia sheds new light on marriages in the region. This short paper focuses on the archives of the diocese of Girona, with a study of the content, characteristics and continuity of this data source and an assessment of its representativeness. It also examines the motives behind the requests by most of the population for a dispensation from banns before marriage. Thanks to their serial nature, to the abundant information contained in the files associated with each request for dispensation, and the opportunities they provide to work at the diocesan level, i.e. over a relatively wide area comprising a large number of parishes, dispensations from banns provide an exceptional data source for historical demography and social history.
