In Asia, national policies are increasingly using tourism as a tool to integrate remote spaces and marginal social groups, often inhabiting peripheral highlands. Reducing poverty, stopping ecological degradation, and limiting autonomist movements, are all adding up as a triple concern which compels governments to link marginal areas to national centres through tourist development. In countries dominated by urban tourism, rural-tourism sites are emerging, often based on the valorisation of ethnic minorities and cultural heritage, a valorisation of people that have long been discriminated against. Ironically, their cultural and geographical specificities now constitute assets and advantages in tourist development. The disparity is obvious: supporting local cultures and maintaining landscapes considered “typical” may, on the one hand, reinforce group identities as states appear to compensate for decades of exclusion and indifference; on the other hand, state policies potentially contribute to the museumification and commodification of folk practices, while simultaneously maintaining policies of political assimilation and cultural homogenisation. The central goal of this project is to focus on rural and agricultural landscapes as the primary sites for the study of these processes, setting aside objects that have been very much studied in terms of folklore and habitats. By focusing on ordinary landscapes, which also attract tourist interest, rather than the exceptional landscapes or cultural landscapes as defined by the UNESCO, we link these landscape mutations. Our project examines cultural representations, landscape discourses and practices of local societies, nation-states, and local actor such as tour-guide operators; in brief, we analyse power relations at play through what we term “landscape grabbing”, to assess how tourism is fostered and how heritage building is articulated. We seek to understand how these approaches indicate i) an increasing awareness of the multi-functionality of rural areas, and ii) a political reconfiguration of these spaces, from a utilitarian view of landscape to the recognition of its heritage value, a recognition which prioritizes living environment and their environmental functions. Five mountainous areas represent our case studies: Kumaon (India), Guizhou (China), Louang Namtha (Lao PDR), Lam Dong (Vietnam), north of Western region (Nepal). These areas will serve to demonstrate national and regional differences, establish a gradient of the varying importance of ethnic tourism, and indicate the impacts of domestic tourism, which is more or less developed according to the countries studied. Our analysis of these various trajectories using a hypothetical Western model of rural management and patrimonialisation, a model concerned about the loss of local identities and biodiversity, will serve to grasp the reasons behind these differentiations in diversified socioeconomic, cultural and landscape structures. To whom do the landscapes of Asia belong (T-LAB)? For each fieldwork location, the analysis will be multiscalar, interdisciplinary (geography, ethnology, agroeconomy), and multi-focused along three axes of inquiry: landscapes (material and dynamic structures vs practices and representations of actors); transformation processes (tourism and patrimonialisation, rural dynamics, territorial governances); structuring principles between socioeconomic dynamics and the reconfiguration of identities (integration/marginalisation, sense of belonging, ethnicity). The proposed comparative reach of this project depends not only on the research schematics common to the five case studies, but also on the research team’s intersecting fieldwork which will result in co-authored publications.

For a few years, the ecological transition processes called in the various socio-economic sectors of our society are generating institutional as well as spatial transformations and contributing to the creation of new landscapes’ materialities and representations. With a team of researcher colleagues from the geography, political sciences and ecology fields and with practioners partners, the ANR JC ANBioT project aims to question these ecological transitions in view of the hypothesis of a strong convergence between “natural” and “agricultural” projects in public action. Biodiversity’s concept is becoming a central issue in discourses on nature and agriculture, and the territorial interventions they legitimize. The occurrence of socio-ecological transitions, which has been conceptualized by the society and by the environmental sciences fields, would transform the operation of the regime that dominates the relations between a society and its environment. These transformations can be radical (deterioration or brutal resource shortage) or marginal, descending (laws, regulations, etc.) or ascending (local initiatives), they can be isolated, or they can combine. In order to analyze the birth of an ecological transition, as such or as the State aspires it, the ANBioT project is hence based on the analysis of the weak signals, which represent a potential threat on the hegemony of the regime that manages these relations. The project is thus based on the identification and categorization of these weak signals through the permeabilization of the “nature” and “agriculture” categories, on the clarification of crossed expertise (institutions’ and civil society’s) on these categories, and on the material translations of this expertise and the transformations they cause on the territories. Given the diversity of the territories involved in ecological transition involving nature and agriculture, we choose to develop these hypotheses through the prism of urban and rural contexts and with institutional, socio-economic and civil society stakeholders. We identify three intercommunalities that are a priori emblematic. We do not envisage comparing term-by-terms of the results obtained on each field but a cross-sectional analysis of these three territories. Strasbourg Eurométropole, the pioneering French city in terms of urban agriculture and ecology, has been the French capital of biodiversity in 2015 and is maintaining an ancient tradition of intra-urban food production, either recreational of with nourishing purposes. Furthermore, we are going to work with the Luberon Regional Natural Park. Having been experimenting fields for 50 years, in 2017, PNR committed to “a new humanism of Nature” (PNR Federation, 2017) in order to implement “unprecedented transitions to favor healthy and natural life”. Combining the diversity of rural territories and urban polarities, the Luberon PNR will be analyzed in view to start a reflection dedicated to these mixed spaces, and within which nature and agriculture categories have been intertwining, almost since their creation. Finally, the ANBioT project is interested in more ordinary territories such as « le Pays du Mans ». This intercommunality, a composite space from a geographical and institutional point of view, is also responsible for the SCOT that applies to it and carries a territorial project based on "complementarity City-Countryside". The goal of this additional field is to analyze the potential resonance of the results of the other studiedand the national policy on ecological transition on the scale of more ordinary inter-municipalities. The results of this research program will thus reveal strategic keys in the political accompaniment of integrated approaches to ecological transition, at a time when transition is emerging as a national issue.

Citizen alternatives have emerged in the Middle East over the last decade in situations of overt or latent conflict, of crisis characterized by various forms of violence. In such circumstance states are either absent or contested because they are viewed as failing, corrupt or too authoritarian. IMAGIN-E hypothesizes that these contexts generate engagements that are more radical political, economic, and ecological grassroot social innovations – partially recalling solidarity economy, degrowth and social ecology perspectives. These initiatives show how political, economic and environmental necessities are closely linked. Hence, these situations are particularly heuristic for our understanding of alternative engagements and prefigurative practices, that have been mainly analyzed in Europe and in North and South America. Citizens are not addressing their demands primarily to the institutional political arena, in contrast to mobilizations and social movements that have been studied so far in the Middle East. They mobilize in a pragmatic way, through productive and entrepreneurial practices, often seeking autonomy. They focus on the restoration of localized forms of sovereignty and on the development of horizontal, peer-to-peer solidarity and citizen networks, here and now. Following a multi-sited ethnography methodology, IMAGIN-E offers an original approach to develop common perspectives on alternative mobilizations that are quietly, though radically, transforming the paradigm of protest in the region. They are inventing other citizenships. Strongly rooted in the history of places, these citizen initiatives combine inventions and reinventions of traditions, historical models and modes of production, innovative glocal inspirations and translocal practices, between memory, social creativity and utopias. Firstly, IMAGIN-E will trace their mixed genealogies and analyze the life cycles of such alternative projects. It will focus on the circulation of people (refugees, activists, citizens), ideas, models and know-how, products and seeds within the Middle Eastern and the Mediterranean area. It aims to delineate the contours of a hybrid, yet emic, babel of alter-citizenships and alter-resistances in the Middle East. Secondly, the team will study their interactions with state policies and institutional actors. We will deal with the effects of these initiatives on the organization of power, the transformations or reproductions of dominant spaces and relations, of social and gender inequalities and racialization processes. Lastly, IMAGIN-E will focus on the trajectories of the actors: it will highlight biographical bifurcations, moments of individual and collective ruptures and the sensitive experiences that are shaping these new political subjectivities. These alternative engagements do have a sensitive, memorial and existential dimension, and deep ecological concern. Elaborating on the notions of belonging and sensitive citizenship, we will reflect on their reclaims, and on their counter-hegemonic values and practices. Hence, IMAGIN-E considers these emerging alter-citizenships in their holistic dimension, as much in their materiality as in their affects and imaginaries. In line with its approach, IMAGIN-E offers an original methodology combining several social science disciplines with sensitive and participatory means of production and dissemination of knowledge.

The proportion of individuals in the French population aged 60 years and above increased from 17% in 1980 to almost 27% in 2020. This population is today highly diverse and individual characteristics vary considerably on account of the coexistence of several generations of older people together with heterogeneous life course patterns within generations. Our project aims to identify and characterise the formation and dimensions of inequalities during the time of the passage to retirement, to analyse their evolution during old age and to understand how social and family resources are mobilised to reduce them. In addition to the traditional resources taken into account in the analysis of inequalities (income, housing, heritage, health), one of the originalities of this project is to consider both the regional dimension and digital technologies as resources in their own right. Whereas statistical publications tend to conceal the heterogeneity of older people, particularly those related to social background, the project specifically deploys an analysis of these inequalities according to the life course and social positions. These inequalities will be studied in the context of gender, social class, as well as professional, family, residential and migratory trajectories. The cohorts selected for analysis are those born between 1920 and 1959. Comparing them intra- and intergenerationally will make it possible to understand the effects of economic, legal and social changes on inequalities among older people. We hypothesise that major changes to social inequalities are taking place within older populations. These changes result from inadequate resources at the moment of the transition to retirement and they can be identified in the context of diversification and the increasing complexity of life course trajectories between the generations, differentiated capacities to redeploy these resources during retirement to cope with advancing age, and the reproduction of forms of inequality that occur in both public and private solidarities. The project will use administrative data from different agencies and data from large scale panel surveys. One of its strong points is the unique access to data from the French National Pension Fund (Cnav, Caisse nationale d’assurance vieillesse) with rich data on professional career trajectories. At the same time the project will undertake an analysis of 150 qualitative interviews based on life course histories in five regions administrated by local branches of the Cnav (Carsats, Caisse d'Assurance Retraite et de la Santé au Travail). The research will thus employ several methodologies from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives in a mixed method approach, drawing on the expertise of a multidisciplinary team of sociologists, economists, demographers and geographers belonging to various organisations (Cnav, Ined, universities). The project thus provides an opportunity to assess the use of data from public bodies for research purposes and to combine them with major surveys and qualitative interviews. This project responds to the need for knowledge on the processes that give rise to highly contrasting situations in terms of resources, housing, health and access to equipment and services at the moment of retirement and within retirement. The results of the research will inform policy makers as well as being relevant to professionals in their implementation of innovative actions designed to prevent and respond to a loss of autonomy. The proximity of the project contributors to the Carsat network and the Cnav's National Directorate of Social Action will enhance the organisation of interactive workshops on the needs identified in terms of housing and regional planning together with new preventative policies that respond to the consequences of advancing age.

The research aims at analysing the social effects of anti-poverty policies on Romanian Roma migrants in around twenty cities in France, Italy and Spain. We will focus on migrants’ residential mobility, survival practices, economic integration, socialization patterns and territorialisation. Looking at modes of living, our goal is to find new methods of analysis and evaluation of policies against poverty. Indeed, today's prevalent micro-economic approach does not allow to contextualise, and to grasp the interactions between policies and recipients’ practices. However, these interactions play a major role in the inclusion and "empowerment" of people living in precarious situations. Comparison will be mobilised to identify similarities and differences in the observed phenomena with emphasis on contextual effects. For data collection, our choice is to privilege ethnographic fieldwork. In order to implement the comparative approach, we will realize 200 interviews too, on modes of living and life stories. These data will be aggregated in a database (the Marg-In Dataset). Biographical analysis will be preferred but we will also mobilize techniques of personal network analysis, and of mobility mapping. Our research faces two main challenges: access to the field, because of poor living conditions and marginality of Roma migrants, and the impossibility of a representative sampling, due to the absence of census information. This is why our research team is composed by researchers having already done fieldwork with Roma migrants for several years, with a deep understanding of people and situations. This will help having an easier access to the field, and improve the quality information. Concerning the sample, we aim representativeness less than exemplarity. The sample selection will be based on the main types of observed residential situations - ordinary housing, shanty houses and slums, accommodation in shelter and other social services, forced mobility, eviction and forced return to Romania - while taking into account other variables too: gender, the migration experience and the involvement in special local welfare housing service. Sample will be refined on the basis of information provided by respondents (Respondent Driven Sampling). Besides the specialists of Roma minorities, our team (31 researchers) includes experts of housing careers, social and economic integration, and public policy analysis. Almost all the researchers have already worked together, and are part of the URBA-ROM network. This research represents a new stage, quite innovative compared to what has been studied so far in Europe. The first two years of the research are devoted to fieldwork and data analysis, and the third one to writing, mainstreaming and presentations in scientific international conference. We expect important findings: studying the effects of policies in promoting integration or, conversely, marginalization will allow to learn how to design and implement public policies for the future. MARG-IN findings will be a major contribution to the fight against prejudice and discriminations, as in the last years, in Europe, Roma are the target of many racist and xenophobic discourses.