Population, Famille et Societe - Population, Family, and Society – serie

In recent labour market history, one of the most striking features has been the increase in part-time employment. In Switzerland, one person out of three works part-time. 57% of women work part-time compared to only 13% of men. This disparity between women and men is one of the highest worldwide. At the same time, differences in the level of education between genders are disappearing. Given the magnitude of this phenomenon, new questions and challenges need to be addressed.By presenting several econometrical models and taking into account historical and social gender focused behaviors, the author analyzes the impact of part-time employment on earning disparities, labour market segmentation and the probability of being promoted to a higher level of responsibility. While introducing ways to improve the situation for part-timers, the author examines innovative models of work organization such as job-sharing, top-sharing, functional flexibility and project team rotations. Beyond demonstrating the need for changes within public and private companies, the book also reveals concrete instruments on policy which could facilitate the implementation of such innovative models.

Les fratries ont-elles une histoire ? Longtemps oubliées par l’historiographie, elles suscitent aujourd’hui un intérêt grandissant chez les historiens, dont témoigne cet ouvrage collectif riche d’une trentaine de contributions issues de deux colloques internationaux. Mal connus, frères et sœurs tiennent pourtant une place centrale au sein des relations familiales. En privilégiant la longue durée et un vaste ensemble géographique, de l’Amérique du Nord à l’Europe, les éditeurs du volume ont voulu saisir leur histoire en confrontant des systèmes de parenté différents et en perpétuelle transformation. Définir et mesurer les fratries, les analyser comme une ressource en associant stratégies collectives et trajectoires individuelles, vivre et représenter la fraternité enfin : autant de pistes suivies par les auteurs attentifs à ne pas oublier les sœurs. Grâce à la variété des études rassemblées ici, écrire l’histoire du lien fraternel offre l’opportunité de renouveler l’approche de l’évolution des systèmes de parenté en même temps que celle des relations familiales.Do brotherhood and sisterhood have a history? They have long been forgotten by historiography but now are benefitting from a growing interest from historians. This collective work, with thirty contributions from historians from different countries, testifies to this new interest. Although badly known, brothers and sisters occupy a central place in family relations. By emphasizing the long term and a large geographical area, from North America to Europe, the editors of this volume wish to seize their history by confronting different systems of kinship that are constantly evolving. To define and measure sibling relationships, to analyze them as a resource through the association of collective strategies and individual trajectories, to live and represent brother and sisterhood: these are the paths followed by the authors who have been careful not to forget sisters. Thanks to the variety of the studies assembled here, writing the history of fraternal relations offers the opportunity to renew approaches to the evolution of both kinship and family relations.

Over the past few years, the cross-disciplinary field of research devoted to family and kinship history in Europe has seen the emergence of an important stream of studies developing wide-ranging comparative perspectives on great spaces and long periods. Their hypotheses and interpretative models differ somewhat with regard of the factors taken into account, and of the underlying logic identified for these processes. The first part of this volume presents a broad discussion of these recent developments. The chapters in the second part have an alpine focus and are dealing more or less directly with the theoretical framework proposed by Dionigi Albera’s book, Au fil des generations. The contributions to the third part of the book are further opening up the field. They leave the alpine terrain and are dedicated to some European contexts, with approaches that are generally influenced by the experience of Albera’s analysis of Alpine Europe.

The study deals predominantly with basic questions of Historical Demography that have so far not yet been tackled, as no adequate sources seemed to exist, or the effort for digging into these problems seemed outrageous. Many major gaps are filled in this study, based on two types of sources: 14 census-like nominal population listings for 126 parishes of the Zurich countryside, complemented by 52 parishes of adjacent areas, and four reconstituted communities with very early parish books. This allowed coming up with detailed population structures by year of age, sex and marital status for the year 1634, with regional variations. Full, detailed mortality tables by sex and for all ages could be calculated for the period 1634–37, by far the earliest mortality tables worldwide. Mortality during plague epidemics was analysed in detail, too, resulting in the first and only plague mortality table. Model life tables are presented as well, showing a pattern that differs strongly from what has been assumed so far. New insights could also be gained about premarital sex and the importance of remarriages.

Families are actors and drivers in migration and refugee crises. However, the current protection frameworks privilege the individual over the family unit. Consequently, the stories of families in migration have remained under-researched and their challenges under-addressed. This volume explores the interplay between family, separation, and migration in the Middle East, West Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and in the context of the 2015 global refugee crisis. Guiding it are two questions: How do family, migration, and separation play out across geographical, political, and historical contexts? And what are the gaps in the protection of migrants and their families? Thirteen authors – academics and practitioners – discuss the international protection for refugees, migration governance, child mobility, disability and immigration, human trafficking, and dilemmas in refugee reporting.The book proposes a paradigm shift in the way we cater to the needs and aspirations of families on the move. Its authors offer evidence-based solutions that cut across polarized discussions on migration and refugees. As such, the volume is aimed at researchers, students, policymakers, and experts working in international relations, migration, human rights, and refugee protection.

Only in France is demography essentially the population science: it is taught at school, newspapers feature the evolution of fertility rates in their headlines and the subject sparks ideological debates in the media. How did demography become a national identity issue?The French exception is attributable to a political history that reached fulcrums during the Second World War under the racist Vichy regime and then after the Liberation, with the development of population policies and the creation of the French National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED). The book is the first to retrace its controversial genesis and analyze its ramifications for the following decades. It shows how theories, institutions and demographic policies developed simultaneously in France. Its reflection on the links between ideologies, science and the state offers a model that could be applied to the history of many other scientific disciplines.Paul-André Rosental’s indispensable study examines the emergence of demography as an autonomous discipline and its association with the state in mid-twentieth-century France. Demography’s success in the immediate post-war years came in part from its dual concern with both "science" and "action," which allowed policy makers to claim both knowledge and expertise in addressing social problems. Rosental’s measured tone hides a provocative argument that should serve as both a model and a foil for others working in the history of the human sciences.Joshua Cole, University of Michigan.

War Hecatomb. International Effects on Public Health, Demography and Mentalities in the 20th Century, offers new insights on the impact of wars (namely, but not exclusively, World War I), by underlining its social and psychological consequences, particularly in public health, demography, and mentalities in different countries. Therefore, it is not just another book on World Wars, since it does not focus primarily on political, diplomatic, military or economic aspects. Instead, the work offers a brand new approach on these wars’ consequences, and especially on the civilizational significance of the Great War of 1914-1918. This original view over societies coping with the aftermath of the two world wars reveals how states and different agents were compelled to act and to face the new post-war reality, bringing to light an innovative social agenda while simultaneously trying to cope with the overwhelming phenomenon of physically and mentally scarred multitudes of veterans and their families. The book focuses on the consequences of conflicts in different perspectives and geographic locations. In twelve chapters, several aspects and effects of wars are analysed through different lens.

This book reconstructs fundamental aspects of family organization across historical Poland-Lithuania, one of the largest political entities in early modern Europe. Using a plethora of quantitative measurements and demographic microsimulation, the author captures and elucidates the complex patterns of leaving home and life-cycle service, marriage and household formation, along with domestic group structures and living arrangements among different subpopulations of Poland-Lithuania, highlighting a variety of ways in which these patterns were nested in their respective local and regional contexts. By showing that at the end of the 18th century at least three distinct family systems existed in the Polish-Lithuanian territories, Szoltysek challenges a number of orthodoxies in the ‘master narratives’ on the European geography of family forms of F. Le Play, J. Hajnal, P. Laslett, and their followers. Volume two of the book contains an extensive bibliography along with a thorough archival documentation of the census-like microdata used in the book, and provides detailed information on their quality and further technicalities pertaining to data analysis.

This book reconstructs fundamental aspects of family organization across historical Poland-Lithuania, one of the largest political entities in early modern Europe. Using a plethora of quantitative measurements and demographic microsimulation, the author captures and elucidates the complex patterns of leaving home and life-cycle service, marriage and household formation, along with domestic group structures and living arrangements among different subpopulations of Poland-Lithuania, highlighting a variety of ways in which these patterns were nested in their respective local and regional contexts. By showing that at the end of the 18th century at least three distinct family systems existed in the Polish-Lithuanian territories, Szoltysek challenges a number of orthodoxies in the ‘master narratives’ on the European geography of family forms of F. Le Play, J. Hajnal, P. Laslett, and their followers. Volume two of the book contains an extensive bibliography along with a thorough archival documentation of the census-like microdata used in the book, and provides detailed information on their quality and further technicalities pertaining to data analysis.

Age is a complex cross-cutting notion for at least two reasons: the intricate interweaving of its biological and socio-cultural meanings and its dual significance as both a benchmark in an individual’s life course and a foundation for social structure.This book offers new perspectives on age and ageing by combining achievements in the biological sciences and their different applications and interpretations in demography, anthropology, psychology and other pertinent disciplines. Thirty contributors from these various fields revisit the measures and the biological models of ageing, the borderline between normal and pathological ageing, the pertinence of chronological age as a benchmark along the life course, its interrelations with psychological development, with reproductive phases and other life events, the «normalizing» role ascribed by age classes and the risk of falling into ageism, the cross-cultural diversity and temporal changes of its meanings, the gender divide (real and perceived), as well as the rights that should be enjoyed at each age.

The first demographic transition changed the face of the western world as thoroughly as did the Industrial Revolution. As couples began to have fewer children, women were released from the heavy burden of endless pregnancies and extended periods of child care. Even though this profound process of change has been extensively researched, women were rarely pictured as decision-makers concerning fertility and family. Moreover, men and women were mostly not perceived as having potentially differing interests in sexuality and child-bearing. This volume contains papers delivered at the conference Were Women Present at the Demographic Transition? which was held at the Radboud University Nijmegen, 20-21 May 2005. The contributions throw light on the active role women played in the fertility decline as well as on the complex process of decision-making between husbands and wives.

The importance of significant family contexts that are not easily circumscribed with reference to a household or a limited set of family roles has been underlined throughout the last two decades by researchers. A strong interest for family relationships beyond the nuclear family has emerged in the social sciences. The various contributions to this book develop a configurational approach to families, which emphasizes interdependencies existing among large numbers of family members, and reconsiders some of the central issues of family life in this light: fertility projects, childcare and socialization, monetary transfers across generations and support for the elderly, relationships with grandparents, uncles, aunts and in-laws, gender inequalities, divorce and other family disruptions, and the importance of friends and acquaintances for families. Beyond very real changes affecting the structures of family life since the sixties, the book reveals that basic forms of togetherness still underlie much of what is going on in family configurations.

Comme l’ensemble des sciences sociales, la démographie historique a eu au cœur de ses études un féminin pourtant invisible, car caché derrière le couple, la famille ou le statut social (masculin). A l’origine de cet ouvrage se situe l’affirmation qu’il est possible et indispensable de s’intéresser aux itinéraires féminins. Il ne faut bien sûr pas les isoler artificiellement des parcours des hommes. C’est la démarche comparative et la prise en compte des interactions, de la construction des rôles genrés, qui permettent de s’interroger sur les spécificités des trajectoires, sur ce qui est propre à l’un ou l’autre genre. Existe-t-il des comportements, des risques, mais aussi des opportunités spécifiques pesant sur les parcours de vie féminins ? Les 13 contributions rassemblées dans ce livre répondent à cette interrogation en se centrant d’une part sur la mobilité, les migrations, d’autre part sur la maternité. Elles couvrent une période allant du 17e au 20e siècle, en Europe et en Amérique du Nord, avec une large place accordée au Québec.Historical demography, like all the other social sciences, had women in the very core of its research agenda. Females were however hidden behind the couple, the family, or the (male) social status. This book claims that it is possible and necessary to investigate female trajectories. Of course, they cannot be artificially isolated from the male life courses. It is the comparative approach, the analysis of interactions of the construction of gender roles that highlight the specificities of biographies from a gender perspective. Do behaviors, risks but also opportunities exist that specifically affected women’s life courses? The 13 contributions of this book provide several answers. They are centered on two main issues, mobility and migration on the one hand, maternity on the other hand. A period from the 17th to the 20th century is covered, in Europe and North America, with a large focus on Québec.

Is the Asian stem family different from its European counterpart? This question is a central issue in this collection of essays assembled by two historians of the family in Eurasian perspective. The stem family is characterized by the residential rule that only one married child remains with the parents. This rule has a direct effect upon household structure. In short, the stem family is a domestic unit of production and reproduction that persists over generations, handing down the patrimony through non-egalitarian inheritance. In spite of its ambiguous status in current family typology as something lurking in the valley between the nuclear family and the joint family, the stem family was an important family form in pre-industrial Western Europe and has been a focus of the European family history since Frédéric Le Play and more recently Peter Laslett. However, the encounter with Asian family history has revealed that many areas in Asia also had and still have a considerable proportion of households with a stem-family structure. The stem family debate has entered a new stage. In this book, some studies that benefited from recently created large databases present micro-level analyses of dynamic aspects of family systems, while others discuss more broadly the rise and fall of family systems, past and present. A main concern of this book is whether the family type in a society is ethno-culturally determined and resistant to changes or created by socio-economic conditions. Such a comparison that includes Asian countries activates a new phase of the discussion on the stem family and family systems in a global perspective.