This project addresses the issue of social separatism and its consequences on the dynamics of inequality. This fundamental research is mostly related to Axis 3 “Spaces and Inequality Places” of the ANR program “Métamorphoses des sociétés: Inégalités-Inégalité”. It also addresses a number of issues of the thematical Axes 2, 4 and 5. We tackle these issues from an economic analysis perspective and develop a theoretical as well as an empirical analysis. Precisely, the research program is organized in 5 tasks, Tasks 1 and 2 being mainly theoretical and Tasks 3, 4, 5 corresponding to the empirical analysis. Task 1 opens the black box of social interactions by considering that the influence of group membership is mediated through social norms and networks. Task 2 tackles the issue of the impact of fiscal policy on social stratification. Task 3 is dedicated to the empirical study of the determinants of economic choices made by some segments of the population affected by segregation. We will use the survey Trajectoires et Origines (TeO) carried out jointly by INED and INSEE. Task 4 deals with the issue of student assignment mechanisms and their consequences on social mixing at school. It will proceed by simulating the effect of particular student assignment mechanisms on social mixing using data from Parisian primary schools. In Task 5, we plan to conduct laboratory experiments in order to identify some discrimination mechanisms and their consequences on social stratification. All these tasks will involve joint works. The team consists of 11 researchers. Finally, the team has not benefited from any external funding to develop this research.

The worldwide epidemic of COVID-19 has had considerable impact on the place and role of data in scientific and technical democracy. Essential to the governmental emergency communication that was invented in most countries of the world, data also found itself at the center of scientific mediation initiatives which were reinvented in a few weeks in a context of radical uncertainty which saw the sources but also the formats of data multiply and transform at a frantic pace. In this landscape, new initiatives have also emerged, which have focused on data visualization, but have also directly participated in the production of new data sets. In France, this scientific mediation specialized in data has been very successful and has become a trusted third party in the eyes of public authorities in a context of great mistrust of political and scientific institutions. Bolstered by their visibility, the people behind these initiatives have also played a driving role in the demand for the opening of many data sets, and have initiated new forms of collaboration with the public administration. This project focuses on the French experience. It aims to structure and disseminate the lessons that can be learned from this period in order to provide tools for future mediation efforts, to guide the production and opening of data within the public administration, and to facilitate collaborations between the two. Designed around a partnership between the Centre de sociologie de l'innovation (Mines ParisTech, i3 - UMR 9217) and the Datactivist cooperative society, it has the official support of the Café des sciences and the Direction Interministérielle de la Transformation Publique.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a highly polysemic and ever-evolving field, encompassing a diverse set of actors with heterogeneous positions and principles. This includes researchers from various fields, be it exact sciences or social sciences, regulatory bodies, companies involved in developing or utilizing AI models, media outlets, and associations critical of AI implementation in various social contexts, among others. It is indeed a construct with both social and technical dimensions that should be studied as such. Institutions such as the European Union Council, in its working document on the AI Act, emphasizes the importance of clarifying the roles of actors who can contribute to the development of AI systems. We aim to understand how knowledge about AI is constructed and evolves. We propose to map this social landscape by examining the relationships between these actors, illustrating how the analysis of these relationships and their representation through enriched graphs (dynamic, multi-layered, etc.) allows for encoding the heterogeneity and dynamics of this social world. We will investigate how these graphs, by enabling the modeling of the semantic structure of texts addressing AI, can shed light on definitional and normative issues within the field. Lastly, we will qualitatively study the dynamics of collaboration and competition in relation to AI, especially by tracing the trajectories of researchers involved in AI and how these experts position themselves concerning media, scientific, and institutional discourses. Thus, the questions surrounding graph modeling should help establish both the boundaries of the social world and its "topography", questioning the definitional boundaries of AI and how the trajectories of actors are influenced by, and in turn influence, this social world.

This project is at the crossroad of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), ergonomics and programmable soft materials, with a connection to interactive arts. Its objective is to enrich user experience with the sense of touch through new tactile shape-changing interfaces, both for enabling new interactions and supporting emotional communication. The project relies on the “SecondSkin” concept, which is the idea that users and objects can wear a skin-like input/output device. This SecondSkin will be made by augmenting a new kind of bio-inspired shape-morphing materials called "Baromorphs" that were recently introduced by one of the partners. We will work on improving these materials and combining them with other technologies to develop novel adaptive/adaptable user interfaces and touch devices for supporting emotional communication. A demonstrator will illustrate these novel interaction capabilities and an artistic production will further investigate SecondSkin potentialities.

Since abstention has been a growing phenomenon for many decades, the ambition of this project is to study the institutional determinants of citizens’ implication in local public decision-making. First of all, we want to explore the impact of decentralisation on electoral participation and more precisely using quasi-experimental approach assess how the different forms of decentralisation and the different modalities of local governance could bring citizens and elected officials closer together at the local level. We also want to determine which electoral systems favour or infringe the perception of closeness between citizens and the administration or elected authorities, or which design of the deliberative process may improve citizens empowerment. The research team of CITIZENS will combine different approaches – quasi-experimental method, axiomatic and computational approaches, and experimental economics – to contribute to this rapidly evolving field of research on voters’ behaviour.