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The growing number of new immigrants settling in suburban communities has caused researchers and policy-makers to shift their focus from large cities to the communities that surround them, thereby side-swiping several stereotypes commonly associated with 'white' and 'wealthy' suburban cities in North America. My article responds to this recent interest by proposing an analysis of the public policies that apply to immigrants and ethno-cultural minorities in Laval, north of Montreal. The article establishes that Laval has had a policy in place since the early 1990s, with a specific institutional configuration that changes over time. I discerned two institutional configurations shaping two distinct sequences for this policy. The first sequence (1990-2003) involved an institutional configuration that shut down the channels for the representation of the interests of immigrants and ethno-cultural minorities on the municipal level, and the second sequence (2003-2009) was marked by the regionalization of the shutdown of the mediation channels for the representation of these interests. In each sequence, the shutdown of the mediation channels is illustrated in three areas of this public policy: intergovernmental agreements, the recognition of associations, and affirmative action in the municipal public service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparison between the two ways of managing immigration and diversity existing in Canada: multiculturalism (Canada-wide) and interculturalism (Quebec). While some authors (see Juteau, McAndrew and Pietrantonio 1998) argue that the two policies are more similar than different, others, like Gérard Bouchard (2011), argue that interculturalism is a rather unique model of managing diversity in Quebec. In this paper we aim to make a contribution to the debate by providing an analysis of the way both models understand immigrants' participation in their new society. Indeed, both models seem to consider participation as having a central role in the process of integrating newcomers. However, we will show that the reasons put forward by inter-culturalism and by multiculturalism to explain their interest in participation are very different. On the one hand, multiculturalism recognizes the importance of participation as a way of protecting individual identities, in line with the spirit of liberalism. On the other hand, for interculturalism, the issue of participation seems to be more fundamental: not only is participation one of the founding pillars of the policy, but it is also consistent with the political, legal and historical characteristics of the province of Quebec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how the present system for the integration of asylum seekers in Canada, as seen in policies and in actual practice, either facilitates or impedes the integration of asylum seekers right from the moment of their arrival in Quebec. The authors examine how advocates from community organizations perceive the obstacles inherent to the temporary status of asylum seekers. The article further analyses the political dynamics that are entangled in social activities where asylum seekers and members of the host community interact. The study is based on data and results from a literature review and interviews conducted with advocacy groups and representatives of the various levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the sixties, the French government did not show any interest in promoting sports in the French West Indies. In fact, sports were firstly promoted by a small native group. Who are they? Which qualities do they look for and find in sports? Which benefits—whether social or symbolic—do they draw from them? This paper presents the relation between the belief in the virtues of sport and the search for identity. Thus, our goal is to examine the importance of the "sporting spirit" in the assimilation process, in relation to the metropolis. The desire to be recognized, the wish to prove an equality, the need to belong to a community—even if it is far away, from a geographic and cultural point of view—are at the heart of a quest, evident in first part of the XX century in Guadeloupe and Martinique. This work is mainly based on the analysis of sports magazines and newspapers articles, as well as biographic approach, in order to outline the sportsman's profile. The ambition in drawing some common characteristics of sport development in the French West Indies, is also to allow a comparative study with other Caribbean countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussions on the need to integrate minority groups, and particularly the debates on recognizing special rights, are often tinged with ideological and philosophical considerations that discredit some demands to recognize specific group rights. That attitude is not simply a denial of difference: it actually causes major and dangerous theoretical confusion that distinguishes or opposes cosmopolitan multiculturalism and pluralist multiculturalism. We are developing the idea that this debate reveals a fundamental problem with the main political undercurrents which seem unable to look at political and social integration from a perspective other than that of homogeneity (cultural, ethnic, linguistic, etc.). Another perspective, fur example, may proceed from an intersubjective view of sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If we consider identity, relations to space and religion as well as the connections between these three things, it is clear that a stable centre serving as a trusted point of reference for everyone has disappeared. This realization is supported by the reiterations of this centre that are brought about precisely by its inability to inspire trust. The problem is no longer to draw maps in space of some lower-level sets organized around a central point of reference, which appears to be absolute, as an arrangement that would be likely to lend substance to their insular character. In these subsets, reference to centrality and construction of homogeneity used to be joined together in order to mark the boundaries where territoriality and identity coincided. Although identity still partially overlaps with territory, it is no longer subsumed by it and is therefore no longer exhausted in the fiction of a coincidence. This is the perspective from which the author explores three hypotheses about religion as space, resource and language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dealing with the difficult issues of racism, discrimination, and tensions between ethnic communities in France, this article examines the conflictual connection between public education and immigration-based communities. Drawing from a vast scientific literature, the author studies the issue of academic failure and school segregation in an institutional framework adverse to social and cultural change, one which uses the principles of socialization and integration in a differential way. The author questions the teachers' perception schemes ("they are hopeless"). Free from dualism, she analyses their defensive attitudes as much as those of the youth, "those who have had nothing but the experience of violence." A teaching method based on differentiation and a demeaning process would thus govern social relations; yet some initiatives, though isolated, demonstrate that when it is taken into account, another institutional experience can be transformed into a teaching tool, and above all prove to be very fulfilling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Delivering full information and obtaining enlightened assent is an unavoidable stage before each operation. This paper presents the different “rules” that defines this information duty in France. The assimilation of these different elements: sources, contents and the weight of the information can help the surgeon to carry out the consultation before breast augmentation with more efficiency and objectivity. This preoperative consultation can be divided into 10 steps. Each step is submitted to specific directives, which will depend on the scientific, the law, and the jurisprudence evolution. Therefore, in addition to this article, one can find the new information card concerning implant breast augmentation of the French society of plastic reconstructive and aesthetic surgery. This card is the first update of the previous information cards published in 2002. This card guarantees clear, simple and complete information being a base for information duty. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A variational data assimilation method is applied to a simplified marine ecosystem model of NPZ (Nutrient Phytoplankton Zooplankton) type, which implies five parameters. The method allows us to optimise these parameters by an iterative process of minimisation of a cost function which quantifies the quadratic discrepancy between observations and simulation results. The first part of this note describes how to obtain the adjoint model of the NPZ model allowing us to compute the gradient of the cost function relative to the parameters. Two experiments of artificial data assimilation then show the efficiency of this method, but also its limitations because of non-linearities and sensitivity problems of the model relative to the parameters. To cite this article: Y. Leredde et al., C. R. Geoscience 337 (2005). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

On the eve of the Lebanese civil war, the dominant tendency among analysts was to underestimate the importance of the specificities of religious communities of this country. During the last decade an orientation quite the opposite has developed, considering the depth of rootedness and the irreductible character of their singularisms. The Author of this article estimates that what separates the various Lebanese communities does not justify assimilating them into distinct ethnic groups and that their diversity is less a function of the distance separating them than of the interacting through which they are intermingled. It is the exact content of this interaction which constitutes the object of their coming together or spreading apart. And in the present state of things, this exact content is the distribution of political power in Lebanon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reprint of the article "Engagement républicain contre les discriminations" by Jean-François Amadieu, Patrick Weil, Dominique Sopo, Samuel Thomas, and Mouloud Aounit that appeared in the February 23, 2007 issue of "Libération." The authors discuss the progress of the fight against discrimination in France.