Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: During the 1990s, homelessness increased considerably in Montreal, particularly amongst youths. Such change was met with a similar rise in penal repression of the homeless population. This study focuses on how the penal system became a key mechanism in managing homelessness in Montreal. Between 1993 and 2003, 23 000 tickets and fines were given to people who used social resources for the homeless. An analyses of these fines and the penal process that followed reveals the extensive social, economic, and judicial burden that confront not only homeless people, but also the wider society.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The World Health Organization describes tobacco use as a global ?epidemic? (WHO, 2003). In response, the World Health Organization exercised leadership in designing and developing its first international health treaty, the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC), which entered into force in February 2005. The FCTC is a relatively new mechanism for addressing the transboundary nature and effects of tobacco trade, consumption, and regulation, and little is known or projected at this point about the effectiveness of this instrument in controlling the global tobacco epidemic. The FCTC was modeled on the successful Montreal Protocol (1989), which was created in response to growing public and scientific awareness and concern over the destruction of the ozone layer, and the implications for human health and the environment. This paper proposes the question of why the Montreal Protocol was effective in fulfilling its objectives. What factors were critical to the effectiveness of the Montreal Protocol and ozone regime? Further, what comparisons can be drawn to predict the effectiveness of the new Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)? What are the barriers to the effective implementation of the FCTC? This paper argues that problem structure, substitutability, structural leadership, differential treatment of developing countries, and capacity building factors proved integral to the problem-solving, goal-attainment, and legal and behavioural effectiveness of the Protocol. Subsequently, this paper analyzes and compares these factors to the emergent Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and argues that these factors are weak or absent in the current Framework, which undermines its potential problem-solving, goal-attainment, legal, and behavioural effectiveness. This paper will contribute to the literature on the effectiveness of international regimes and regime effectiveness by: 1) demonstrating how international regimes can be effective in transforming state behaviour and addressing global problems such as tobacco control, 2) identifying factors that threaten to undermine the effectiveness of the FCTC, and 3) providing policy and research recommendations to investigate, manage and address these factors to enhance the effectiveness of the tobacco control regime.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Montreal, September 1968, a special Unesco round table is held on mass media and culture. It took three years before Unesco decide to release the document entitled Essais sur les mass media et la culture. The round table was held a year before the well-known Montreal “Meeting of Experts” and since 1969, it literally disappeared from the literature in international communication research. As a matter of fact, this author has not been able to find any reference to the Essais, in French or in English. Still, some of the participants were then celebrities: Edgar Morin, Stuart Hall, Pierre Schaeffer. Schaeffer was even named, in 1971, the president of the research commission of the important International Council of Cinema and Television, an NGO in the Unesco network. This paper goes back to this event that happened forty years ago, explores what was said in the Essais, and tries to reconstruct its context.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The context of globalization facilitates the construction of social relations that transcend national boundaries. Based on the argument that diaspora provides a framework for understanding immigration processes within the dynamics of globalization, this paper explores the ways diaspora extends our understanding of immigrant communities. As a type of community, diaspora communities illustrate three-way relationships that include the homeland or country of origin, the host society or country of residence, and the larger diaspora community that extends over a number of nation-states. In this paper, I take the Lebanese diaspora in New York, Montreal, and Paris to illustrate that diaspora illuminates the understanding of global social networks and ties that are related to immigrant groups. Following a brief theoretical discussion of diaspora, this paper focuses on the analysis of Lebanese immigrant forms of attachment. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observation in three cities, this paper illustrates the forms of solidarity shared by Lebanese immigrants. First, the multiple forms of belonging that Lebanese immigrants have – to their homeland, host society, and larger diaspora – emphasize that immigrants share “vertical connections” that exist simultaneously. The paper follows to illustrate the forms of global solidarity that members of the Lebanese immigrant community seek and maintain. Given their experience with migration, Lebanese immigrants believe that they are more capable of bridging the particular interests that are based on national or ethnic attachments and the universal ones that are not tied to a territory or a nation-state. That is, as immigrants consciously discard traditional forms of attachments to the homeland, they are propelled to advance universal legal and civil causes.