The purpose of this research project is to understand how the policy innovation process is initiated in situations of major uncertainty and confusion. To this end, this research will focus on an empirical analysis of how the Ministry of Economics and Finance and more broadly, all the actors involved in the making of economic policy, grasped and responded to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 and to the crises that followed. Based on a survey of the policy proposal trajectory within the politico-administrative arena, the research will attempt to grasp how, when faced with situations for which they have neither explanatory statements nor policy solutions, key policymakers establish new solutions and garner the widest possible agreement around them to enable their adoption.

The purpose of this IN-ELAP research project is to further our understanding of the living conditions and the transition from care of young people aged 17-21 leaving the French child protection system. It follows on from other monographs on "adult outcomes", i.e. the long-term outcomes of young care leavers, especially during the period of transition from living in care to becoming an independent adult. While teams in the United Kingdom and North America have been investigating this crucial topic since the 1990s, there is practically no research on the transition from care in France. Moreover, French studies of "adult outcomes" have shown that this transition is perceived as very brutal experience of "institutional abandonment". In the general population, by contrast, the transition to adulthood has been widely studied by sociologists of youth and by demographers. Their studies show that the events characterizing this transition – access to independent housing, access to employment, entry into union and/or parenthood – are in fact gradual processes that may involve both forward and backward moves. This is a phase in the life cycle where social policies and support mechanisms are particularly lacking in France, and where family solidarity is obliged to fill the breach. In other words, the transition to adulthood is a family affair, even among the most disadvantaged populations with few or no educational qualifications. Unemployed young people rely on their family to provide a roof over their head. Young care leavers, often with few qualifications and a limited or non-existent family network, are forced to make this transition as a matter of urgency and at an early age, while much less well-equipped to do so than their peers. Both for the survey design and the analysis of results, the IN-ELAP project, whose methods are founded on quantitative sociology and demography, is built around a multidisciplinary team of researchers specialized in child protection and populations in difficulty. It aims to bridge a knowledge gap on young people living in care in France. Looking beyond the representations linked to monographic studies on the outcomes of children in care, it will seek to capture the full diversity of care histories and types of placement experienced by young people before they leave the care system. Particular attention will be paid to the consequences of geographical inequalities linked to the decentralized organization of welfare provision and policies targeting young people. Two survey waves covering a sample of 1500 young people will be conducted, associated with a passive follow-up until the end of the placement trajectory and a qualitative follow-up of 100-150 individuals.

This project addresses public policy issues and social innovation in relation to the demographic challenges that face France and Québec. Its main goal is to investigate the role of the State and that of other social actors in policy design and implementation in the area of homecare for the elderly,in order to seize how political and administrative mechanisms actually operate in this area and to assess capacities to substantiate the idea of a general interest. Population in France and in Québec is aging at a rapid pace, and this demographic challenge raises crucial issues in terms of providing adequate homecare services in the future. Our project thus addresses questions of policy design and implementation, costs and accessibility of homecare; responses to these questions will affect the quality of life of seniors in the long run and ultimately their choice of staying home or moving to nursing homes. Our research aims at investigating : 1) to what extent public policy is being « co-constructed » by government and actors from private and nonprofit sectors as part of a larger policy process, and can such process generate innovative forms of social actions and more freedom of action for policy implementation ; 2) what repercussions such new repertoire of actions may have on social groups engaging in homecare policy, taking into account their different statuses, resources and responsibilities in the delivery of homecare as well as external constraints associated with the contingencies of daily life and the special needs of seniors living at home; 3) finally, which means can senior citizens rely on, individually or as a social group, in order to partake in such political dynamics and organisational settings and voice their opinions and needs about homecare delivered at local levels. We will approach our research questions by focusing on the strategies put forward by social actors concerned by issues and challenges of homecare, and the means by which their respective participation as part of a large scope of stakeholders can take place in the ‘co-construction’ and decision-making of public policy in this area. Data will be collected so as to provide the tools for an appraisal of the impacts on professional development, quality of service delivery and responses to the needs of the elderly. Experimental field research methodology based on jointly led French-Québec missions (‘binômes ’) in 4 different regions should provide original comparative material.

While France benefits from abundant and cheap food, and purchasing power is steadily increasing according to public statistics, food poverty has been increasing in this country as well as in other European countries for the last 10 years. To elucidate this paradox, this project implements research on food poverty in France. First, it develops an original statistical survey in general population, in partnership with Crédoc, in order to characterize and measure food poverty. In addition to this survey, ethnographic surveys are conducted at a territorial level, linking household budget adjustment strategies, material and temporal supply practices, solidarity and social protection issues. This project aims at renewing the view on the poor and their living conditions in rich countries by identifying the conditions for a transition to healthy and sustainable diets. By proposing a sociology of poverty based on living conditions, it contributes to the current debates on social solidarity, particularly around the establishment of a social security of food.

Our project focuses - with a sociological perspective - on the processes of gendered socialization of children between ages 0 to 3. In a national and international context, where gender inequalities are a subject of disagreement and argument, documenting how gendered socialization is objectively built, at a very early age, appears crucial. Our study thus proposes to expose the processes of transmission of gendered norms and practices within the family circle, through the analysis of child-parent relationships. Indeed, child-parent relationships raise several issues: which received gendered norms and dispositions do parents (mothers and fathers) hand down to their daughters and sons? How is the parental work of gender socialization deployed on very young children? How do parents cope, in practice, with the more or less explicit injunction to treat girls and boys equally, but also to differentiate between individuals? What are the social variations of such gendered educational practices depending on cultural and/or economic capital and to the parents' social background and trajectory? Our project aims to examine two main dimensions of gendered socialization: the shaping of the body and the gendered division of parental labor. The first dimension considers the body as a medium for the inscription of gender norms. This dimension will lead us to describe the preferences and everyday childcare practices of parents in matters of body care, care of bodily appearance, education in motor skills and physical autonomy. The second dimension examines parenting arrangements that expose very young children to a gendered - or non-gendered - organization of family and social roles. With this dimension, it is the division of parental labor that is considered as a key matrix in the socialization of children to gender. Both dimensions will be considered according to family configurations and the social positions and trajectories of the parents. The point is to confront an analysis of gender relations, the position occupied in the family (father, mother, daughter, son, birth rank) and that occupied in the social space. Our approach is thus both contextual and temporal: it aims to detail social variations by following the development of gendered socialization throughout early childhood. Our research matter is sourced from the French longitudinal study on childhood (ELFE) tracking 18,000 families with a child born in 2011. Our analysis will rely more particularly on four stages of this survey: the answers provided by each parent when the child was 2 months, 1 year, 2 years and 3.5 years old. The project is further grounded in a longitudinal qualitative survey on parental educational models and family organization, also initiated in 2011. The qualitative survey concerned couples, interviewed in a family context on several occasions, while their child was between ages 0-3 (80 interviews). This research project will provide the missing sociological knowledge concerning the socialization of preschool children in France by their families. It will shed light on how differences between girls and boys - and subsequent inequalities - are built during the very first years of life through social mechanisms. Levers to fight against the early construction of gender inequalities will therefore be identified.