Based on the case of luxury hotel concierges, this paper addresses the question of how to make night work an object for the sociology of professional groups without producing an essentialist or relativist categorization of what “night time” is. To make this argument, I assemble different temporalities observed at different scales of analysis. Firstly, the micro-sociological scale of day-to-day tasks is analyzed with the tools of the sociology of work. Secondly, the scale of career paths is seen from the perspective of the sociology of employment. Finally, the broader scale of the professional group is looked at from the viewpoint of the sociology of collective mobilizations. These three scales of observation all show that the marginality of night concierges actually outlines the hidden face of the entire group. Their inclusion in the analysis, which obliges the sociologist to widen his scope of inquiry and to acquire somewhat of a night vision, is therefore vital.
This article seeks to grasp the evolution of French border management policies over a half century (1953-2004) from the vantage point of one specific activity performed by border police (PAF): the collection and use of information from border checks. This form of knowledge production represents a privileged object of analysis by which to observe the professional developments of this police department. The PAF was first an intelligence police department and then a police service dedicated to immigration control in the 1970s, before finally becoming a department in charge of the fight against migration-related crime from the 1990s. Since the 2000s, the PAF now cooperates with the European agency Frontex. In turn, the definition of administrative categories and analytical tools used by the PAF have equally followed such institutional transformations towards the criminalization of immigration and the Europeanisation of border control.
Venues for new music styles, some clubs and DJ bars in St.-Petersburg take form as places for gathering for certain milieus. To secure and retain the loyalty of regular patrons, and by extension to ensure the sustainability of the establishment, clubs tenders implement different mechanisms of social homogenization to keep out random or unwelcome visitors. Common techniques include face control, being in hidden locations, the limited diffusion of information, the specificity of music and ambiance, and carelessness for universal standards of service and welcoming. Though they don’t fully constitute exclusive communities, these venues explicitly value an extended social grouping and a sense of secure domesticity which facilitates spontaneous and informal interactions between strangers. From a relative anonymity to a familiarity between “close relations,” a whole range of intermediary situations become possible, thus enabling the emergence of rather new forms of sociability in a post-soviet metropolis.
Drawing on a long ethnographic study in Dakar among young women who regularly frequent bars and nightclubs, this article argues for the need to consider the urban night as a time-space that can give rise to a feeling that “anything is possible”. The city at night can then be seen primarily as a place for social reconfigurations and cultural experiments. On this empirical basis, a more theoretical issue is addressed: what could be the heuristic nature of the concept of “potential space” (D. W. Winnicott) for the study of urban night? To advance these hypotheses, the question of creativity is regarded as a key issue both in Winnicott’s conceptualization of the “potential space” and concerning the way the young women I met engage with “Dakar by night”.
In the 1970s, French immigration policy was reoriented with the tightening of entry and residency conditions. During that same decade, parallel to actions led by activists of the Movement of Arab Workers (Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes), Algerian authorities regularly politicized assaults against their citizens on French territory. At a time when the number of Algerian migrants authorized to enter French territory was a subject of sustained debate, finger-pointing racism was used to exert pressure on the French government. This article highlights the discursive practices and operations through which French officials of the Ministry of the Interior tried to demonstrate that such acts of violence were not due to racism. Contrarily, French officials argued that attacks were the result of cohabitation difficulties provoked by the moral traditions and lifestyles of the supposed “North African” culture.
Topic:
Crime, Migration, Race, History, Border Control, and Violence
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Berlin police precincts, this article focuses on the so-called “intercultural prevention” policy implemented in Berlin since the early 2000s. The author analyzes how police work is informed by a culturalist framework, particularly regarding Muslim communities. The article shows how the link between prevention strategies and the culturalist approach to the treatment of minorities has broadened the police mandate, making police work closer to social work. Yet, this culturalist framework has ambivalent effects: on the one hand, it limits the effects of individual stereotyping during police interventions; on the other hand, it produces forms of reification of groups labeled as “cultural minorities.”
In the early 1980s Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico had commer- cial banking sectors that were dominated by local banks. The largest countries in Latin America were subjected to common international economic pressures during both the neoliberal 1980s and 1990s – includ- ing the expansion of capital markets in the periphery and integration into the regional trade agreements NAFTA and Mercosur – and the post- 1998 financial turmoil. By 2015, however, the three countries had con- solidated alternative commercial banking systems: domestic private group dominated (Brazil), mixed (i.e., ownership more evenly divided among public, private domestic, and foreign banks (Argentina), and foreign bank dominated (Mexico). The article traces these alternative outcomes to the power of prereform private financial groups, the viru- lence of “twin crises” in the transition from fixed to floating exchange rates, and the (contingent) role played by government ideology.
Topic:
Regional Cooperation, Finance, Trade, and Banking
Political Geography:
Brazil, Argentina, South America, Latin America, North America, and Mexico
This article examines the issue of democratic deterioration by
revisiting the Venezuelan case (1974–1998). Using sequence elaboration
and alternative case-focused theories, it tests and confirms the hypothesis that presidential partyarchy was the main contextual explanatory factor behind the crisis that led to Venezuela’s democratic deterioration.
Building on elite conflict theory, it also aims to integrate previous studies’ insights and better explain the timing of factors to illustrate how
economic presidentialism (the highly autonomous executive control of a
state-controlled economy) was the main mechanism leading to democratic deterioration.
Topic:
Economics, Authoritarianism, Democracy, and State-Owned Enterprises
Between 2005 and 2015, organized criminal groups murdered
209 politicians in Mexico. This paper explains why. It argues that the two
interwoven trends of political and criminal pluralization in Mexico fostered the conditions for a new type of criminal violence against politicians. Mexican politicians are now targeted for accepting illicit money as
well as for standing up to criminals. Moreover, this violence is evidence
of an alarming and persistent pattern in Mexico of politicians enlisting
criminal organizations to eliminate their political competition. Using a
zero-inflated negative binomial model, this paper shows there is a strong
statistical relationship between the increase in assassinations and the
increases in political pluralization and criminal fragmentation. The article concludes that the failure to protect local public officials creates greater opportunities for the emergence of subnational authoritarian enclaves and threatens democratic consolidation.
Topic:
Crime, Authoritarianism, Democracy, Assassination, and Organized Crime
What is the effect of political competition on subnational
social spending? Using descriptive statistics and regression models for
original budget panel data for the 24 Argentine provinces between 1993
and 2009, the study finds that social spending increases the more electorally secure governors are and the longer they have been in office. It
also finds that other arguments in the literature are relevant in explaining
variations on types of spending, such as partisan fragmentation in the
districts. The article discusses these findings for the Argentine provinces
and explores their implications with regard to the debates on the effects
of electoral competition and the design of social policies, especially in
developing countries and federal democracies.
Topic:
Developing World, Elections, Democracy, Local, and Social Spending