S’engager fait toujours sens, peut-têtre même plus encore qu’avant, dans notre « société d’individus ». Cet essai solidement étayé le montre, apportant un utile démenti aux discours convenus de dénonciation de la « montée des égoïsmes » et aux exhortations rhétoriques au « sursaut de citoyenneté ». Les individus sont en effet plus nombreux, notamment parmi les jeunes et surtout les femmes, à s’associer, à se mobiliser, à intervenir dans l’espace public. Mais ils le font selon de nouvelles modalités, qui s’écartent notablement des schémas du militantisme d’antan. Plus autonomes par rapport à leurs milieux d’appartenance, plus soucieux de faire entendre leur parole propre, plus réflexifs, délivrés de toute révérence obligée envers les puissants et les experts, ces nouveaux militants déroutent parfois... Le fonctionnement de la vie associative, les pratiques protestataires et la citoyenneté s’en trouvent modifiés. Appuyé sur des travaux d’enquête et une analyse très fine des engagements politiques et associatifs, cet ouvrage saisit un rapport au politique complexe et diffus, moins focalisé sur les élections et le mythe du grand soir. Jacques Ion, sociologue, directeur de recherches au CNRS, a écrit de nombreux ouvrages sur le militantisme contemporain.

This article deals with the literature on the French nonprofit sector (NPS). A preliminary part is devoted to presenting and discussing the characteristics that shape the approaches to this sector in France. We stress the strong influence of legal categories on the sector’s definition and, in this context, the importance of the status inherited from the 1901 Act on contracts of association. This raises a problem for a more analytical approach to the sector, because the diversity of the nonprofit organizations (NPOs) regulated under this Act risks being overshadowed. In this first part, we also underline the primacy accorded in France to the concept of the social economy, which has today become the social and solidarity economy (SSE), over that of the nonprofit sector. In the second part, the article outlines some landmarks in the history of the French NPS. French NPOs were for many years objects of suspicion, arbitrariness and repression on the part of the public authorities and this persisted until the 1901 legislation on contracts of association was enacted. However, this hostile context did not prevent the sector from having a richer existence than is sometimes admitted. This literature review also focuses on empirical studies of the sector, placing a particular emphasis on the more recent ones. These French studies basically adopt two types of approach. The first is concerned essentially with the NPOs and focuses its attention on their economic importance, whether measured in terms of financial resources, employment, or, less frequently, added value. The second approach investigates the kinds of individual participation the sector engenders by examining the various forms it takes, such as membership of NPOs or voluntary work. This review ends with the analysis of the challenges that NPS faces in a context characterized by the increasing constraints on public funding, changes in the nature of such funding with a substitution of contracts for subsidies, an increased competition among NPOs as well as between NPOs and for-profit enterprises. The article concludes that, despite the advances in research on the French NPS, some aspects—like formal volunteering and the role of voluntary associations—are still understudied, while others—like informal groups and informal volunteering—are almost totally ignored.

This volume presents evidence-based research on citizens’ experiences and reactions to the Great Recession in Europe. How did European citizen experience and react to the crisis? How are the experiences of crisis and political responses socially differentiated? Are some social classes and more deprived groups particularly hard hit? How did the crisis impact on political choices? What types of political action did citizens engage in and why? What were the drivers of populist attitudes and protest participation? This country-based book explores these important dynamics as expressed in diverse national contexts, namely France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and UK. Each chapter focuses on one of these countries and employs data from the same survey fielded in 2015. This volume is of particular relevance for scholars, students, and practitioners interested in political sociology, comparative politics and European politics.

The region is back in town. Galloping urbanization has pushed beyond historical notions of metropolitanism. City-regions have experienced, in Edward Soja’s terms, “an epochal shift in the nature of the city and the urbanization process, marking the beginning of the end of the modern metropolis as we knew it.” Governing Cities Through Regions broadens and deepens our understanding of metropolitan governance through an innovative comparative project that engages with Anglo-American, French, and German literatures on the subject of regional governance. It expands the comparative angle from issues of economic competiveness and social cohesion to topical and relevant fields such as housing and transportation, and it expands comparative work on municipal governance to the regional scale. With contributions from established and emerging international scholars of urban and regional governance, the volume covers conceptual topics and case studies that contrast the experience of a range of Canadian metropolitan regions with a strong selection of European regions. It starts from assumptions of limited conversion among regions across the Atlantic but is keenly aware of the remarkable differences in urban regions’ path dependencies in which the larger processes of globalization and neo-liberalization are situated and materialized.

Young people are very often the driving forces of political participation that aims to change societies and political systems. Rather than being depoliticized, young people in different national contexts are giving rise to alternative politics. Drawing on original survey data collected in 2018, this edited volume provides a detailed analysis of youth participation in nine European countries by focusing on socialization processes, different modes of participation and the mobilization of youth politics. "This volume is an indispensable guide to understanding young European’s experience and engagement of politics, the inequalities that shape young people’s political engagement and are sometimes replicated through them, and young people’s commitment to saving the environment and spreading democratic ideals. Based on compelling and extensive research across nine nations, this volume makes important advances in key debates on youth politics and provides critical empirical insights into which young people engage, influences on young people’s politics, how young people engage, why some young people don’t engage, and trends across nations. The volume succeeds in the herculean task of focusing on specific national contexts while also rendering a comprehensive picture of youth politics and inequality in Europe today." —Jennifer Earl, Professor of Sociology, University of Arizona, USA "Forecasts by social scientists of young people’s increasingly apathetic stance towards political participation appear to have been misplaced. This text, drawing data and analysis across and between nine European countries, captures the changing nature of political ‘activism’ by young people. It indicates how this is strongly nuanced by factors such as social class and gender identity. It also highlights important distinctions between young people’s approaches towards more traditional (electoral) and more contemporary (non-institutional) forms of participation. Critically, it illuminates the many ways in which youth political participation has evolved and transformed in recent years. Wider social circumstances and experiences are identified as highly significant in preparing young people for, and influencing their levels of participation in, both protest-oriented action and electoral politics." —Howard Williamson, Professor of European Youth Policy, University of South Wales, UK "This book is an incredible guide to understanding the role and sources of inequalities on young people’s political involvement. Country specific chapters allow the authors to integrate a large number of the key and most pressing issues regarding young people’s relationship to politics in a single volume. Topics range from social mobility and the influence of socioeconomic (parental) resources and class; young people’s practice in the social sphere; the intersection of gender with other sources of inequalities; online participation and its relationship with social inequalities; the impact of harsh economic conditions; the mobilization potential of the environmental cause; to the role of political organizations. Integrating all these pressing dimensions in a common framework and accompanying it with extensive novel empirical evidence is a great achievement and the result is a must read piece for researchers and practitioners aiming to understand the challenges young people face in developing their relationship to politics." —Gema García-Albacete, Associate Professor of Political Science, University Carlos III Madrid, Spain

Through different legal and criminological angles and perspectives, this book addresses the controversial question of whether prisoners should have the right to vote, as well as the optimal modalities for such a vote. By adopting a comparative approach to explore the legal systems of very different jurisdictions, such as the former Eastern Bloc, England, Ireland, the USA and France, the book reveals a recent trend in opening up the right to vote. It also looks at the recommendations of international and European institutions which, while relatively cautious, nevertheless support such progress. Examining the issue from a criminological viewpoint, the book investigates the role that prisoners’ votes could play in the social integration of these individuals into the community through political inclusion as citizens. Offering legal, theoretical and empirical bases, it blends a variety of perspectives to help readers establish an understanding of how prisoners' voting could contribute to improving their attachment to society and its values. Concise and direct, Prisoners' Vote will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of law, criminology, sociology, criminal justice, and political science. It should also appeal to practitioners working in the criminal justice system and policy makers reflecting on whether and how, to open the right to vote to prisoners.