Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The number of African origin immigrants is increasing rapidly, and studies show that most of them are not doing as well as African Americans. One reason may be the choice of benchmark. Since there are penalties for both race and ethnicity, comparing black immigrants to African Americans may be simplistic. Blacks whose mother tongue is not English probably suffer deficits both because of their color and because of their culture. We test this idea by comparing the earnings of Cape Verdean immigrants to those of several benchmark groups: non-Hispanic whites, African Americans, native born Cape Verdeans and Portuguese immigrants. Cape Verdeans are an understudied, “mulatto” group who speak a dialect of Portuguese. By measuring the earnings gap across these many benchmarks, we hope to obtain a better understanding of how race and ethnicity depress the economic well-being of black immigrants.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper is essentially documentary, and the objective is a comparative analysis of the penal system of penal responsibility in adolescents, and the normal penal system, referring to the adult penal system that is presently applied in the country. Certain criteria of judicial and social relevance are emphasized with attention placed on the laws that regulate them, such as the organic law for the protection of children and adolescents, an the organic penal process code which takes into consideration the judgment systems in which the antecedents related to birth, evolution and perfeccioning are evaluated. In the same manner, the analytical process related to modalities that occur in the application of coercive penal measures, judicial privation of liberty, and the substitution of cautionary measures related to privation in both legal and procedural texts are studied, as well. The formulas that guarantee the desired end results involved in penal process in both cases, explaining the procedural requirements and the consequent effect of their application, are included.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The increase of complaints motivated by small disputes shows the progressive "judicialization" of society, cultural heritage of a liberal political and economic model stemming from the 19th century which is characterized by conflict aggravated by a spirit of competition, opposition of rights and claims. Since the 1980’s and 1990’s, the French penal system has resorted to alternative measures of resolution of conflicts which are less repressive, particularly with regard to penal mediation (1993). This shows itself within the framework of a return to a more liberal but secure State trying to favour a) "debureaucratization" which frees the justice system from an overload of small cases and b) the integration of a more participative political and legal culture which tends to the deverticalization of the State, the proceduralization and integration in the legal and political devices of moral requirements which are more sensitive to the social and cultural heterogeneousness of French society. The current communication analyzes how the prospects of parties are shown through mediation together with the justice system in cases handled by the Association of Penal Mediation of Montpelier. The methodology followed is the fieldwork, which belongs to the discipline of Social Anthropology. The results show that the mediation: 1) serves for framing the part of the plaintiffs until then ignored in French society by the penal justice system, 2) it allows to convey the moral justice of the parties (the lived of the justice), 3) it involves the social devices of the justice, but also 4) it reproduces the traditional judicial system.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In recent years, researchers have connected the current criminal justice regime in the United States to neoliberal economics. While I accept this contention, few researchers have commented on the orientation toward democracy that both regimes share. While many have noted the complimentary functions of the neoliberal state and the penal state, we may have overlooked the ideological similarities and their similar orientation toward democracy.
I argue that both regimes rest on underlying and currently uncontested (in the public realm) ideologies which shield these regimes from democratic contestation. These regimes are supported by ideologies that deny their positive and creative functions. They set up an epistemic regime that is resistant to change because both the economic functions of each system and the ideological assumptions underlying public support are backgrounded. Public debate takes place within a limited framework that leaves underlying assumptions uncontested.
This paper is very much a work in progress but I believe the orientation toward democracy that the ideologies, which support these regimes, have is an essential for sociologists to explore. Especially because, as I show, these ideologies are hostile to the very nature of sociology as they deny the role of structure in our society.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: As medical strategies for regulating people with leprosy in the 1940s and 1950s were replaced in the 1960 by the movement to deinstitutionalize leprosy patients, new regimes of authenticity and preservation are constituted in the governing practices of patient associations. This paper examines the dynamic and unstable mixing of legal codes, legal practices, and legal spaces that operate within local contests and local rules. It is argued that through the actions and stories of people whose very lives are testimony to the power of particular legal cultures, such as penality and privacy, patients govern and are governed by the cultural politics of quarantine.