Lorenzo Barrault-Stella

The Making of Target Publics for Welfare Policies. From Targeting Practices to Resistances of Governed People

This opening chapter provides a general sociological framework for the contributions collected about the targeting practices in the institutional framework of the welfare State and the making of the “right” publics for social policies. The paper builds on the diversity of existing international research, before sketching out complementary lines of investigation in which this collective work is grounded. More specifically, we suggest the use of a comparative and multilevel approach, anchored in empirical research and mindful of the effective practices of targeting, as well as of the way in which the diverse groups within the potential publics react. Connecting in-depth case studies thus allows the observation of transformations occurring in modes of government at the international level. Finally, the text suggests a few ways in which the welfare State’s targeting practices can be reformulated, without obscuring the social relations and the various forms of inequalities (of class, race, gender) to which targeting participates.

Perspectives on Target Publics and Welfare State Transformations. A Few Proposals from Political Sociology

This chapter aims at furthering the debates raised by the previous contributions. Three main proposals for studying welfare policies’ target publics are introduced. Firstly, this chapter calls for breaking from a study of the welfare State carried out only by social policy specialists. It sheds light on the heuristic gain to be made from the import of political sociology’s traditional questioning in this field of research. Secondly, it underlines the need to consider in which way social policies participate to the contemporary reconfiguration of governmentality. Thirdly, it opens new perspectives of research on policy-feedback, by thinking together the social and political effects of welfare State transformations.

Sur quelques techniques enseignantes du maintien de l'ordre. Ethnographie du travail de conformation au sein d'un collège populaire

A partir d’une enquete ethnographique, le travail institutionnel de conformation des eleves difficiles mis en œuvre par les enseignants dans un college populaire urbain en France est analyse. Le recours a la sociologie politique des institutions vise a saisir les techniques par lesquelles les enseignants tentent de (r)etablir de l’ordre et de rendre les eleves conformes aux attentes de l’institution, notamment ceux des milieux populaires regulierement consideres comme les plus deviants. Il permet aussi d’observer comment les professionnels de l’ecole et leurs publics ajustent chacun leur role en situation et negocient leur autonomie dans un environnement fortement marque et norme par le politique, eclairant au passage quelques mecanismes etatiques d’encadrement des classes populaires dans l’institution scolaire.