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International audience

International human rights law and practice reveal an ambivalent approach to the personal scope of human rights: human rights are often less equal or general than they claim and are claimed to be. The inequalities of human rights are of two kinds: some vulnerable individuals are also protected by special rights, thus drawing an internal boundary within the scope of human rights-holders, while others have limited or no human rights at all, thus delineating an external boundary around the scope of human rights-holders. This chapter presents an argument that fits and justifies the core of the practice of international human rights law regarding the scope of human rights-holders, while criticizing it at the same time for some of its contradictions. More specifically, it argues for an egalitarian reading of human rights, before accounting on that basis for the humanity-based, capacity-related, and individualistic boundaries of human rights, on the one hand, and defending it against the tendency to expand the scope of special rights beyond what it refers to as justified “non-discriminatory rights” and “developing rights,” on the other.

In anni recenti, l’idea che gli stati nazionali debbano scegliere attivamente le persone a cui concedere accesso legale al proprio territorio e mercato di lavoro ha indotto i governi di vari paesi europei ad adottare dei nuovi meccanismi selettivi basati su sistemi a punti. Ispirati a modelli nordamericani, questi dispositivi sono stati implementati – o sono attualmente in discussione – nel contesto di dibattiti di portata più generale: dibattiti che, a loro volta, sono permeati da argomenti utilitaristici e caratterizzati da una contrapposizione discorsiva tra migranti “utili”, portatori di livelli alti di capitale umano, e migranti poveri, percepiti come “peso” economico. Immagini dicotomiche di questo tipo hanno una lunga tradizione in Europa, com’è dimostrato da un ampio spettro di esempi storici, dalle ordinanze bassomedievali contro i “vagabondi” alle politiche mercantiliste volte ad attrarre artigiani specializzati. In contempo, tuttavia, tali esempi mettono in luce che il presupposto centrale di tale approccio – l’idea che attraverso un sistema di privilegi legali sia possibile giungere ad una regolazione dei flussi migratori favorevole alla crescita economica – si è per lo più rivelato illusorio, nella misura in cui non tiene conto dell’agency autonoma dei soggetti migranti. Lungi dal rappresentare una soluzione, gli impianti giuridici che contemplano diritti differenziati – variabili a seconda del supposto “valore” che determinati soggetti incorporerebbero per la “nazione” – tendono a degradare i migranti al rango di “mezzi” e dunque ad innescare una progressiva erosione del concetto di uguaglianza. In recent years, the idea that national states should actively chose the persons to whom they confer legal access to their territories and labour markets has lead various European governments to adopt new point-based selection systems, inspired by older North-American models. These policies have been implemented – or are currently discussed – in the context of broader contemporary debates on migration which are strongly informed by utilitarian arguments and by a discursive contraposition of allegedly “useful” migrants, characterised by high levels of human capital, to poor migrants, who tend to be seen as economically “burdensome”. Such dichotomous images have a long tradition in Europe, as is shown by a vast array of historical examples, stretching from late-medieval anti-vagrant laws to mercantilist policies aiming at attracting skilled craftsmen. However, these examples equally highlight that the central assumption of these policies – that is the belief that is possible to obtain a growth-enhancing regulation of migratory flows through a system of legal privileges – has mostly proven illusory, as it does not take into account the autonomous agency of migrant actors. Finally, the essay argues that granting different rights to migrants according to the perceived “usefulness” of the latter for the “nation” tends to degrade persons to means and to fuel a gradual erosion of the concept of equality.

Le slogan d’inspiration néolibérale « Plus de liberté, moins d’Etat » utilisé par le Parti radical-démocratique (PRD) lors de la campagne pour les élections fédérales de 1979 est resté dans les mémoires comme l’un des slogans politiques les plus célèbres de la politique suisse de l’après-guerre. Depuis quelques années, il suscite un regain d’intérêt dans le débat public, à l’heure du bilan de trois décennies marquées par un affaiblissement de l’actuel Parti libéral-radical (PLR) et la contestation de son héritage idéologique par la « nouvelle » UDC. Alors qu’on a longtemps centré l’explication de cette évolution autour de l’apparition d’un nouveau clivage autour des questions migratoires et européennes, des personnalités politiques comme l’ancien Conseiller fédéral Pascal Couchepin ou l’ancien président du PS Helmut Hubacher citent maintenant ce slogan comme point de départ d’un tournant « antiétatiste » qui aurait fini par nuire au parti historique de l’Etat fédéral, vite dépassé sur sa droite par l’UDC. Le livre des journalistes Alan Cassidy et Philipp Loser sur le « cas » PRD part également de ce slogan pour narrer les trente dernières années de ce parti sous la forme d’une longue agonie auto-imposée : le parti aurait lui-même saboté sa position hégémonique ainsi que sa large base sociale en s’éloignant de l’Etat et de l’engagement pour l’intérêt général. Pourtant, la recherche historique portant sur ces trente dernières années s’accorde généralement à relativiser l’impact politique immédiat de ce slogan. Si des travaux citent le slogan comme symptomatique d’un « tournant à droite » dans certains domaines politiques dès les années 1980, de nombreux auteurs, avec des perspectives divergentes, se rejoignent sur le constat d’une relative continuité politique après la crise économique des années 1970. La mitigation des effets de la crise en Suisse par la restriction de la politique migratoire aurait ainsi rendu un « tournant » néolibéral moins incontournable qu’ailleurs. 1979 verwendete die Freisinnig-demokratische Partei (FDP) in ihrer Kampagne für die Nationalratswahlen das neoliberale Schlagwort «Mehr Freiheit, weniger Staat», das in der Schweiz als einer der bekanntesten politischen Wahlslogans der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts in Erinnerung geblieben ist. Nach drei Jahrzehnten, in denen die FDP an Bedeutung verlor und ihr die «neue» SVP den Rang abgelaufen hatte, ist vor einigen Jahren in der öffentlichen Diskussion das Interesse an ihm wieder aufgekeimt. Während man zur Deutung der politischen Entwicklungen seit 1979 lange Zeit die Entstehung neuer Fronten im Zusammenhang mit der Migration und der Europafrage fokussierte, erblicken Politiker wie alt Bundesrat Pascal Couchepin oder der ehemalige SP-Parteipräsident Helmut Hubacher im Slogan neuerdings den Anfang einer «antietatistischen» Wende, die der FDP letztlich geschadet habe. Auch die Journalisten Alan Cassidy und Philipp Loser gehen in ihrem Buch zum «Fall FDP» von diesem Slogan aus und stellen die vergangenen dreissig Jahre Parteigeschichte als lange, sich selbst zugefügte Agonie dar: Die Partei habe ihre hegemoniale Position und breite gesellschaftliche Basis verloren, weil sie sich vom Staat und der Gemeinwohlorientierung entfernte. Allerdings relativiert die historische Forschung zu diesen drei Jahrzehnten die unmittelbare Wirkung des Slogans. Zwar deuten ihn einige Arbeiten als symptomatischen Ausdruck einer «Rechtswende» in gewissen Politikbereichen ab den 1980er Jahren. Doch konstatiert eine Mehrheit der Autor_innen nach der Wirtschaftskrise der 1970er Jahre eher Kontinuitäten. Die restriktive Migrationspolitik, so wird argumentiert, habe die Folgen der Krise in der Schweiz abgeschwächt und eine neoliberale «Wende» sich deshalb weniger stark aufgedrängt als anderswo.

Catalogue de l’exposition présentée au musée de Lyon Fourvière, juin-décembre 2019; International audience

International audience; Global sensitivity analysis is now established as a powerful approach for determining the key random input parameters that drive the uncertainty of model output predictions. Yet the classical computation of the so-called Sobol’ indices is based on Monte Carlo simulation, which is not af- fordable when computationally expensive models are used, as it is the case in most applications in engineering and applied sciences. In this respect metamodels such as polynomial chaos expansions (PCE) and Gaussian processes (GP) have received tremendous attention in the last few years, as they allow one to replace the original, taxing model by a surrogate which is built from an experimental design of limited size. Then the surrogate can be used to compute the sensitivity indices in negligible time. In this chapter an introduction to each technique is given, with an emphasis on their strengths and limitations in the context of global sensitivity analysis. In particular, Sobol’ (resp. total Sobol’) indices can be computed analytically from the PCE coefficients. In contrast, confidence intervals on sensitivity indices can be derived straightforwardly from the properties of GPs. The performance of the two techniques is finally compared on three well-known analytical benchmarks (Ishigami, G-Sobol and Morris functions) as well as on a realistic engineering application (deflection of a truss structure).

International audience

International audience

International audience