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France’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was initially conciliatory. However, the current French President’ statements, Macron, gradually changed, suggesting a potential shift in France's stance. The French president recently suggested troops could be sent to Ukraine to fight the Russians, a move that could significantly impact the course of the war. Our paper aims to address this possibility. How feasible would this be from a military perspective? Second, are there any other relevant political actors that will support it? Third, why has Paris changed its position to such a radical stance? We start from the theoretical design of realist constructivism. Postcolonial theories and the concept of locked-in path dependence supported this research. The methods follow the path of historical synthesis, discourse analysis of key political actors, and text analysis of defense white papers. Quantitative military variables are used to understand France’s and the EU’s military-industrial complex capabilities and assess its potential. The collapse of France’s neocolonial empire in Africa and Russia’s growing influence in the region partially explains Macron’s discourse change. This is correlated with the need to follow a more independent European security policy and the worsening military situation in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In France, the fosterage of children arriving from war zones is rather marginal and does require the consideration of two major issues: emotions and commitment, both at stake among the foster carers. These issues can be apprehended through the way in which professionals conceive their work, their relationship with the child, but also the singular and specific nature of these children's situation. We, therefore, conducted a qualitative study in the field of Educational Sciences using semi‐structured interviews to gather the experience of 11 foster carers preparing to welcome French children coming from war zones. The analysis of their discourses shows that this exceptional situation reinforces their involvement and their emotional bond. The time devoted to the preparation of the child's reception is precious as it gives meaning to the work, arouses ambivalent emotions and builds an imaginary child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the issue and practice of surrogacy in France. Surrogacy contracts are void under French law, and intermediaries, medical personnel, and in some cases, parents can be penalized if they partake in this method of ART. Consequently, the vast majority of French children born of surrogacy result from cross-border practices that their parents undertake. Divided into three parts, this chapter will first explore the French legal framework of surrogacy, then explore the cross-border practices at play and the difficulties they raise for ensuing parents and children once back on French soil, and finally examines diverse social movements and discourse either for or against the legalization of surrogacy in France. It concludes by arguing that before establishing a regulatory framework for surrogacy, the most pressing issue is to protect children born of French parents abroad via surrogacy once the family returns to the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populism has become a defining feature of European and world politics. During the last decade, major drastic changes in the political landscape have occurred, with France appearing as a singular example: none of the two candidates who made it to the second round of the presidential elections were from the traditionally dominant center-left and center-right parties. This paper analyzes the presence of populism in the political narratives by the main political contenders in the French presidential elections held in 2017. It does so through a discourse analysis of some of their most widely seen political speeches around the campaign, providing an overview of the different framing techniques used by each candidate and their degree and type of populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a discourse analysis of French and Swedish legislative debates from 1968 to 2017, this article examines how actors challenge and reinforce dominant ideas about the link between nationality and political rights. We argue that the broader political culture influences which discursive strategies – or 'frames' – are more likely to structure parliamentary debates in different national contexts. However, our analysis also shows that legislators sometimes develop new discursive frames in which they reinterpret dominant norms to make them consistent with their views. Through this incremental process of reinterpretation and reformulation of dominant ideas, debates over non-citizen voting rights have chipped away at the link between nationality and political rights. Our findings suggest that initiatives to enfranchise non-citizens trigger lower levels of conflict when they can be framed as a policy tool for immigrant integration rather than as a matter of popular sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comes within the compass of a research program (entitled CorAge. Bodily Experiences and AgePassages among 9 – 13 year-olds (ANR-09-ENFT-017) conducted between 2009 and 2013 about the emergence of a “new” age in life -“preadolescence”- as instanced in France (Alsace, Lorraine) and Italy (Venetia). The impressive amount of references to “early puberty” and “precocious puberty”, in a context of feeling of a premature end of childhood, led us to make an in-depth study of this issue: first, through an analysis of international and French and Italian medical journals; second, through interviews with health professionals. Following the thesis of Foucault, we assume that the discourses on puberty timing participate of classifications of the child body drenched with moral representations of childhood, especially on gender and age issue. Our results: the question of whether a secular trend in puberty timing even exists continues to be debated between American and European scientists. Second, the terms “puberty”, “precocious puberty”, “early puberty” have been used to indicate a variety of puberty markers, increasing confusion. A controversy has focused on early breast development in girls, because this attribute is questioning the order of ages and gender. Moreover, psychosocial factors presented as accelerating early puberty, do not demonstrate the relation between earliness and risk behavior. The literature, as it is moved by the female precocity, creates a medical category to objectify the complex and flexible process of puberty and invent female child precocity. These differences between American and European scholars and the interviews with French and Italian health professional show a gap between the international literature and practitioners, clinicians and nurses who regularly work with children: they neither find pubertal advancement, nor increase of “true precocious puberty”, although they share concerns about premature feminization of girls (France) or environmental toxicity (Italy) on children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

November 2005 saw a significant flashpoint in the long-running history of tensions between minority groups and those in power in France: two teenagers, allegedly while hiding from the police, were electrocuted in a Parisian electrical sub-station, which was the catalyst for the unprecedented spread of violent riots across banlieues, or urban districts, in French cities lasting for a number of weeks. Mindful of the printed news media as important sites of ideology production, this study contributes to a growing body of work on newspaper representation of the banlieues, with a focus on the particularly traumatic events of November 2005. This article examines French newspaper representations of urban violence in 2005 using a critical discourse analytical approach, focusing on how the scenes of violent rioting prompted media discussions pertaining to French national identity. It argues that national identity and expressions of nationalism are defined in an exclusionary way, and that a discourse of sameness constructs symbolic boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The research suggests that in its reaction to the challenging events of November 2005, the printed news media adopts strategies which ‘other’ immigrant minorities and those living in the banlieues. Inhabitants of the banlieues are depicted as being outside the borders of the homogenously constructed French society in order to explain the violent scenes and ultimately uphold relations of discrimination and social dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the construction of Turkey's possible membership of the European Union (EU) in French political discourse, after the Helsinki European Council of 1999. The primary objective of the article is to investigate which discursive strategies and which linguistic structures have been instrumental in this construction. Five analytical categories were investigated in this study; namely, the argumentation strategies, referential/nomination strategies, predication strategies, as well as perspectivation and mitigation strategies. In each of these discursive strategies special attention is paid to linguistic tools, lexicalizations and rhetorical devices. The analysis shows that the core semantic strategy in the French political discourse on Turkey's possible EU membership is the construction of in- and outgroups, which is accomplished through a highly rhetorical language. Through these constructions French speakers are involved in an ongoing process of identity formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One lesson of the failed Constitutional Treaty was that the European Union is unlikely to be an exception to a general rule that attempts to constitutionalize polities according to liberal democratic values provoke disagreement about the relative weight that should be given to the empowerment or the constraint of institutions. Just how that cleavage developed in practice is illustrated using a discourse analysis of attempts by the British and French governments to justify the Constitutional Treaty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]