Résultat de la recherche
Understanding women in mobility and their adjustment using a dialogical approach
This research project aims to understand the adjustment mechanisms mobilised by women in a new sociocultural environment and the extent to which employment plays a role in affecting their process of transitioning. It does so by examining the experiences, perceptions, and negotiations of women in mobility, in essence, by considering individual aspects to broaden the scope beyond just studying the connection between employment and mobility. This study employs a visual method to qualitative research. Using a qualitative approach to dialogical analysis, this study examines the diverse voices captured within individuals' narratives through interviews and diary data, allowing for a comprehensive analysis of their experiences and perspectives to understand adjustment.
Ruptures and transitions in work paths: uses of normative fields in the life course
Between continuity and change: a psychosocial perspective of families in repeated international mobility
Dans un contexte où les pratiques d’emploi sont transnationales et reliées, un nombre croissant de professionnels sont conduits à des déménagements répétés dans différents pays avec leur famille, vivant plus ou moins de manière permanente en déplacement. Comment ces personnes parviennent-elles à trouver de la stabilité en dépit de changements incessants ? En adoptant une perspective socioculturelle en psychologie, cette thèse examine comment les familles vivent les changements constants engendrés par une mobilité internationale répétée et la manière dont l’environnement socioculturel crée les conditions cadres pour mener une vie mobile. Cette étude est basée sur des entretiens avec des experts de la mobilité mondiale, des entretiens approfondis conduits entre 2015 et 2018 avec des familles mobiles vivant en Suisse, ainsi que sur l’analyse statistique d’une enquête à large échelle. Les résultats remettent en question les idées préconçues associées à une mobilité internationale répétée, courantes dans le discours public en Suisse. Premièrement, les analyses basées sur les données d’une enquête à large échelle révèlent que les familles mobiles font face à des pressions distinctes, différentes de celles vécues par les migrants de longue durée, allant du peu de soutien institutionnel et social à la gestion de nouveaux besoins psychologiques. Deuxièmement, les entretiens avec les experts montrent que cette demande émergeante s’est accompagnée d’une prolifération d’experts réinstallation et d’organismes fournissant des services pour aider la réinstallation internationale des familles. Enfin, des entretiens approfondis avec des familles démontrent que malgré un contexte de changements constants, les familles recréent les mêmes sphères d’expérience partout, transforment leurs relations en objets et construisent un continuum de relations sociales en élargissant leur réseau social tout en resserrant les relations au sein de la famille nucléaire. Les analyses révèlent une nouvelle modalité d’établissement d’un sentiment de continuité malgré de fréquents changements. En réunissant les études de psychologie avec celles dédiées à la migration et à la mobilité, cette thèse contribue par conséquent à redéfinir le défi central de la mobilité internationale, et fournit des pistes théoriques pour l’étude de la vie familiale dans des conditions d’instabilité migratoire globale croissante. En comprenant les implications d’une mobilité internationale répétée, la société pourrait être capable de relever le défi de cultiver un système de valeurs et de pratiques qui saisit la nouvelle place centrale que la mobilité a aujourd’hui et aura à l’avenir. Abstract In the context of connected transnational employment practices, an increasing number of professionals engage in repeated moves across countries with their families, living more or less permanently on the move. How are those people able to find stability despite constant changes? Adopting a sociocultural perspective in psychology, this thesis investigates how families experience constant changes triggered by repeated international mobility, and the ways in which the sociocultural environment creates the guiding conditions for leading a mobile life. This study is based on interviews with global mobility experts, in-depth interviews with mobile families living in Switzerland conducted between 2015 and 2018, as well as statistical analysis of a large-scale survey. The findings challenge preconceptions associated with repeated international mobility common in the public discourse in Switzerland. First, analysis based on data from the large-scale survey reveals that mobile families face some distinctive pressures, different from those of long-term migrants, ranging from a lack of institutional and social support to the management of new psychological needs. Second, interviews with experts show that this emerging demand has been accompanied by a proliferation of relocation experts and agencies providing services to support the international relocation of families. Finally, in-depth interviews with families show that against the backdrop of constant changes, families recreate the same spheres of experience everywhere, transform their relations to objects, and build a continuum of social relationships by enlarging their social networks while tightening-up the relationships within the nuclear family. These analyses reveal a new modality for establishing a sense of continuity despite frequent changes. By bringing together studies on psychology with those on migration and mobility, this thesis thus contributes to redefining the central challenge of international mobility, and provides theoretical directions for the study of family life under conditions of increasing global migratory instabilities. By understanding the implications of repeated international mobility, society may be able to rise to the challenge of cultivating a system of values and practices that grasps the new centrality that mobility has today and will have in the future.
Imagination and social movements
Whether explicitly mentioned or not, imagination plays a key role in social movements. People’s dissatisfaction with what is, their imagining of how things once were better, or of how things may become, often supports social movements. Social movements can, in turn, bring about new imaginations for people. After defining the notion of imagination and social movements, drawing on recent research, we review the literature along three main axes: the role of temporality in the relation between social movements and imagination; the relation between collective identities, social movement and imagination; and the resources that support imagination and social movements. We conclude by highlighting further dimensions to analyse the dynamics of imagination, which may open new ways to analyse the trajectories of social movements.
Work and geographical mobility: the case of the male accompanying spouses
Beyond collective memory: a sociocultural perspective on historical representations
Le sens commun dicte que nous, individus et collectifs, devrions apprendre du passé pour éviter de répéter les erreurs que nous avons pu commettre. Malheureusement, les recherches sur le sujet ont plutôt démontré le contraire : notre mémoire collective, c’est-à-dire nos représentations de l’histoire, a tendance à présenter une version de l’histoire à la fois biaisée, glorifiante, et unilatérale qui reflète nos intérêts nationaux et sociaux. Cette thèse a pour but de dépasser cette conception de la mémoire collective et d’explorer comment exactement les gens construisent, mobilisent, transforment et questionnent les représentations de l’histoire. Pour ce faire, une perspective socioculturelle est adoptée, qui considère que personnes et cultures sont interdépendantes, que le soi et l’autre sont co-constitués et que la personne est un agent qui se développe tout au long de la vie. A partir de cette approche, quatre études sont construites – trois études empiriques et une étude transversale. La première porte sur la construction de la mémoire collective dans les interactions, à travers l’analyse de débats parlementaires sur l’immigration. Dans la deuxième étude, les trajectoires de vie d’intellectuels et d’artistes qui ont remis en question des représentations historiques dominantes sont reconstituées, pour explorer comment la mémoire collective se développe au cours de la vie. Dans la troisième recherche, une expérience dialogique est utilisée, où les participants sont confrontés à divers discours sur un évènement récent (le conflit en Ukraine qui a débuté en 2015), pour analyser comment ils raisonnent sur l’histoire. Enfin, la dernière étude, transversale, analyse comment la mémoire collective est mobilisée pour imaginer le futur et représenter le monde. A partir de ces quatre études, il est conclu que les représentations historiques sont des ressources symboliques dynamiques, construites dans les interactions et tout au long de la vie, à travers l’utilisation de ressources sociales et culturelles et d’une multitude de processus psychologiques, dans le but de donner du sens au monde. Et donc que la question n’est pas tellement ce que nous apprenons du passé, mais comment nous l’apprenons. It is common wisdom that we, both as individuals and as members of societies, should learn from the past in order to avoid repeating the mistakes both us and others have made. Unfortunately, research on the topic has shown that we do quite the contrary: our collective memory, or our lay representation of the past, tends to present a rather biased, glorifying, and unilateral version of history and to reflect our national or social interests over the ones of others. The aim of this thesis is to go beyond this conception of collective memory, and to explore how exactly people construct, mobilise, transform, and challenge representations of history. To do this, I propose to adopt a sociocultural perspective, that considers culture and minds as interdependent, self and other as co-constituted, and the person as agentic and developing throughout the life-course. Based on this approach, four studies are proposed – three empirical and one transversal. In the first study, I look at how collective memory is constructed in interactions by analysing the transcripts of parliamentary debates on immigration. In the second study, I reconstruct the trajectories of intellectuals and artists who came to question hegemonic historical representations, to explore how collective memory develops over the life course. In the third study, I analyse how people reason about a recent event – the Ukrainian conflict that started in 2015 – and history through a dialogical experiment where people were confronted to diverse representations of history. Finally, in a last transversal study, I look at how collective memory is mobilised to imagine the future and represent the world. This leads me to conclude that historical representations are dynamic symbolic resources, constructed in interactions and developed throughout the life-course, through the use of social and cultural resources as well as a wide range of psychological processes, in order to give meaning to the world. And thus that the question is not what we learn from history, but how we learn from it.
A sociocultural psychology of repeated mobility: dialogical challenges
In this paper, we propose a sociocultural psychology of the lifecourse to examine the extreme case of families living in repeated international mobility. In this case, mobility is motivated by work, which leads to repeated relocation of housing and occupational arrangements across countries. Based on fieldwork, we highlight three challenges of repeated mobility and discuss their implications within sociocultural psychology., En este artículo proponemos una psicología sociocultural del curso de la vida para analizar el caso extremo de familias que viven en movilidad internacional repetida. En este caso, la movilidad está motivada por el trabajo, lo que da lugar a una relocalización reiterada de vivienda y acuerdos ocupacionales a través de distintos países. Basándonos en un trabajo de campo, destacamos tres desafíos que presenta la movilidad repetida y abordamos sus implicaciones en el campo de la psicología sociocultural.
A Sociocultural Approach to Mobile Families: A Case Study
This paper proposes a sociocultural perspective of mobility, of which migration is only one case, with a focus on mobile families. Consistent with mobility studies, sociocultural psychology of the lifecourse proposes to study both the sociocultural conditions of mobility, and the perspective of mobile people. In addition, in this article, we consider interrelated lives in mobility. We discuss the specific case of one family documented as part of a larger research project on repeated geographical mobility, and highlight the specificities of the context, the experiences of each family member, and some of their overlapping spheres of experiences. We thus hope to document the life of such families, but also to provide theoretical directions for the psychological study of mobility.
Handbook of Imagination and Culture
Imagination allows individuals and groups to think beyond the here-and-now, to envisage alternatives, to create parallel worlds, and to mentally travel through time. Imagination is both extremely personal (for example, people imagine unique futures for themselves) and deeply social, as our imagination is fed with media and other shared representations. As a result, imagination occupies a central position within the life of mind and society. Expanding the boundaries of disciplinary approaches, the Handbook of Imagination and Culture expertly illustrates this core role of imagination in the development of children, adolescents, adults, and older persons today. Bringing together leading scholars in sociocultural psychology and neighboring disciplines from around the world, this edited volume guides readers towards a much deeper understanding of the conditions of imagining, its resources, its constraints, and the consequences it has on different groups of people in different domains of society. Summarily, this Handbook places imagination at the center, and offers readers new ways to examine old questions regarding the possibility of change, development, and innovation in modern society.