SPATIAL MOBILITY AND RETURNS TO EDUCATION: SOME EVIDENCE FROM A SAMPLE OF FRENCH YOUTH*

ABSTRACT This study re‐evaluates the returns to geographic mobility and to the level of education taking into account the interaction between these two variables, and using the distance covered as a proxy for migration costs. We have at our disposal an original French database that permits precise calculation of the distance between the place of education and the location of first employment. For men, we find decreasing returns to spatial mobility as the distance covered rises and increasing returns to mobility with higher levels of education. The marginal returns to spatial mobility for women are lower across the board.     

‘Taken captive by the mystery of the Great River’: towards an historical geography of British geography and Atlantic slavery

By examining the case of James MacQueen (1778–1870), this paper initiates a research agenda that contributes to what David N. Livingstone has argued remains the most pressing task for historians of geography: to write ‘the historical geography of geography’. Born in Scotland in 1778, MacQueen was one of the many ‘arm-chair’ geographers whose efforts at synthesising contemporary and historical sources were a significant feature of the encounter between Europe and the rest of the world. Indeed, although he never visited Africa, his speculations about the course and termination of the River Niger turned out to be broadly correct. What makes MacQueen a particularly significant figure was the original source of his theory: enslaved Africans in a Caribbean plantation-colony. In this light, a remark that MacQueen's imagination was ‘taken captive by the mystery of the Great River’ carries a dark double-meaning, because ‘captive’ knowledge was the very source of MacQueen's interest in African geography. Beginning with MacQueen's time in Grenada, the paper explores a series of personal relations, textual traces and West African ethno-histories to reveal how his geographical knowledge and expertise were bound up with Atlantic slavery. This shows not only how the colonial economy, centred on the Caribbean, underwrote the production of geographical knowledge about Africa, but also how British geographical discourse and practice might be probed for traces of Atlantic slavery and enslaved African lives. More generally, the case of James MacQueen illuminates a broader field of relationships between Atlantic slavery, West African exploration, and the development of modern British geography in the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Examining these relationships is key to writing a ‘historical geography of British geography and Atlantic slavery’ and contributes to postcolonial histories of the discipline by revealing the tangled relationships that bound geography and slavery, knowledge and subjugation, that which ‘captivates’ and those held ‘captive’.     

L'actualité de l'édit de Nantes

Sans résumé Nous remercions Hubert Bost pour l'aide qu'il nous a accordée dans la préparation de cette bibliographie.     

Guy Beaujouan et L’Histoire des Sciences Au Moyen Âge

Sans résumé Nicolas Weill-Parot, membre de l’IUF, est ma?tre de conférences en histoire médiévale à l’université de Paris 8. Ses recherches portent sur les relations entre la science et la magie, sur l’occulte et la physique au Moyen ?ge. Il a notamment publié Les ?images astrologiques ? au Moyen age et à la Renaissance. Spéculations intellectuelles et pratiques magiques (xii ^e–xv ^e siècle), Paris, Honoré Champion, 2002 et une édition présentée et annotée de Jér?me Torrella (Hieronymus Torrella), Opus praeclarum de imaginibus astrologicis, Florence, Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2008.     

Relire un Essai Wébérien Méconnu Motifs et obstacles

Sans résumé Philippe Despoix enseigne la littérature comparée à l’université de Montréal où il dirige le Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes. Ses recherches portent sur la fonction des médias techniques dans les processus mémoriels et de transferts interculturels. Il a notamment publié éthiques du désenchantement (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1995) et Le Monde mesuré (Genève, Droz, 2005). Nicolas Donin est chercheur en musicologie à l’Ircam, où il dirige l’équipe ? Analyse des pratiques musicales ?. Ses travaux portent sur les œuvres, les pratiques et esthétiques musicales savantes. Il a notamment codirigé, avec Bernard Stiegler, Révolutions industrielles de la musique, numéro spécial des Cahiers de médiologie (n^o 18, 2004). L’Analyse musicale, une pratique et son histoire, ouvrage réalisé en collaboration avec Rémy Campos, est à para?tre (Genève, Conservatoire de Genève/Droz).     

The Role of Cultural Clustering in Attracting New Immigrants

Abstract This paper argues that new immigrants cluster in culturally homogeneous groups in the host country because of imperfect information. However, a pulling effect exists provided that the cultural communities are not too large. With a panel of migration flows to the major O.E.C.D. countries from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, it is shown that the existence of similar cultural communities attracts new immigrants. However, the effect is not homogeneous for all types of source and destination countries. Furthermore, the pulling effect is shown to fall to zero for cultural communities above a certain threshold size.     

Diversité des réactions réformées à la révocation

Starting from the analysis of the reactions of the Protestant groups to the Fontainebleau edict, this paper examines the development of two main concepts that are at the origin of political modernity, i.e. the distinction between religious and political domains on the one hand, and the popular sovereignty on the other. These two concepts emerged separately as a result of crossed and apparently paradoxal thoughts, whose coherence is to be sought in the anthropological positions underlying them. Therefore the study of the theological debates in the XVII^th century is a way by which the modern political concepts arose.