2019

Doing Face in Forensic Identification and Generous Methods for Studying Race

Prof. Dr. Amade Aouatef M’charek (University of Amsterdam)

The face deserves more attention. In everyday life the face is ubiquitous. Yet in social theory the face is rather absent. In this paper I want to move beyond the representational model and attend to the work that a face can do, and to what the face is capable of. I introduce the concept of the tentacular to analyze how the face draws certain publics together and how it feeds on that public to assume content and contours. My examples come for the field of forensic genetics, where DNA-phenotyping is used to produce a ‘composite face’ of the unknown individual. I will show that this novel technology is not so much aimed at the individual suspect but at a suspect population, clusters of individuals. I argue that this population is racialized through the biologization of the phenotype.

This process prompts the question: what is race? To answer this, I suggest that we need to ‘care’ for race, i.e., to invent methods that are open-ended and allow us to follow race around and examine how it shifts and changes in practice. I propose the concept of generous methods to show that the slipperiness of race is not simply a matter of ‘multiplicity’ (Mol 2002); race is not only an ‘object multiple’. As a word and a practice, race refers to different kind of things. Different realities. I will argue that the slipperiness of race can be grasped if we consider race to be an object, a method as well as a theory. Three different yet connected realities.

• 14-16h, salle Alfred Sauvy, INED: 133, boulevard Davout, 75020 Paris

Discutante : Joëlle Vailly (Iris, CNRS, coordinatrice du projet ANR "Fitege")

Racialization in an Era of Mass Migration: Black Immigrants in Europe and the United States

Nancy Foner (Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York)

Comparing Afro-Caribbean and African migrants and their children on the two sides of the Atlantic highlights how social, political, and demographic contexts and historical developments influence the nature and impact of racial boundaries and barriers --- and raises some intriguing questions. Why and in what ways are the racial barriers facing black migrants more severe in the United States than in Britain, France, and the Netherlands? At the same time, how has the history and presence of the large African American population provided black migrants and their descendants with certain advantages that they lack in Europe? Why do identity struggles of the second generation take different forms in the United States and Europe?

• 14-16h, salle Alfred Sauvy, INED: 133, boulevard Davout, 75020 Paris

“Everyone is equal”: Colour-blind attitudes in welfare practices with migrants

Carolin Schütze: PhD candidate at Lund University

In this presentation I will present a paper that explores the relationship between colour-blind attitudes and self-reported perceptions of encounters between majority and immigrant populations in Sweden. I build on existing studies showing that colour-blindness often functions as a strategy to appear unbiased while holding prejudicial attitudes. Using original survey data of welfare workers in two Swedish welfare organisations, I assess the relationship between colour-blindness and the perception of difficulty working with migrants among the welfare workers in these organisations. Results from structural equation models show that those with greater levels of colour-blindness are simultaneously more likely to report negative attitudes toward immigrants and less likely to report difficulty in working with migrants. I propose that self-reported colour-blindness among welfare workers is part of an effort to appear unbiased and in line with the normative principles of the state to perform non-racism, but this does not mean that those who are colour-blind do not hold anti-immigration attitudes.

Discutante : Haley McAvay (INED)

• 16-18h, salle 111, INED: 133, boulevard Davout, 75020 Paris.

Définir la judéité dans les enquêtes statistiques sur les populations juives après la Shoah (États-Unis, Royaume-Uni, France)

Béatrice de Gasquet (Université Paris Diderot, en délégation à l’INED)

La Shoah marque une rupture majeure dans les entreprises de recensement des populations juives, avec la disqualification de tout usage d’un référentiel racial pour définir la judéité, et le soupçon face à l’implication des États dans des enquêtes sur les populations juives. Mais en dehors de la statistique publique, dans le contexte plus général de l’essor du recours aux sondages, la période de l’après Seconde guerre mondiale voit aussi le développement des usages d’enquêtes par questionnaire pour dénombrer et connaitre les populations juives, notamment à l’initiative d’organisations juives.

Cette communication s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux enquêtes statistiques conduites sur des échantillons à visée représentative des personnes définies comme juives aux Etats-Unis, en France et au Royaume-Uni depuis les années 1960. Ces enquêtes constituent un cas relativement singulier où les statistiques sur une population minoritaire sont conduites par des organisations visant à représenter les personnes concernées. On s’intéressera ici aux modes de définition de la population visée dans ces enquêtes, qui prennent généralement pour acquis la complexité de cette entreprise de définition et combinent souvent plusieurs critères (religion, autodéfinition, filiation, éducation…). Les choix opérés dans ces enquêtes s’inscrivent en effet à la fois dans des débats intellectuels et politiques larges sur les identités, et dans des débats internes, et transnationaux, au sein des mondes juifs contemporains sur « qui est juif ». 

Discutant : Paul Schor (Université Paris Diderot)

• 14-16h, salle Alfred Sauvy, INED: 133, boulevard Davout, 75020 Paris