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AbstractThis article describes the state of the French language in Haïti. Following a review of the historical aspect of diglossia in Haïti, the author delineates the objectives of the last educational reform which included an increase in the level of basic schooling and the use of créole in the classroom. A study of the data from the Minister of National Education, Youth, and Sports shows no increase in the level of education in the last 10 years. While the reform did not attain this objective, due to lack of support, the author notes that it did contribute to maintaining the normal schooling sequence. For young people, the value of the créole is not strong even though the language has acquired more status in the political sphere.

AbstractTeaching medical translation has traditionally been performed in classrooms with limited use of technical advances. We report our experiences in the teaching of this translation specialty via the use of the Internet within the context of a university-based translation and interpretation program. The teaching model and course structure are presented along with our suggestions for the role of distance learning in the educational process for modern translators.

AbstractThe aim of this article is to explore the extent to which spatial representations influence individual involvement at the urban scale. The relations between spatial representations and individual involvement have received little attention in political science and geography. However, a relationship exists between individual involvement and spatial representations, making it possible to formulate the hypothesis that spatial representations co-determine individual involvement at the local and urban scale. Based on interviews with two samples of 26 persons involved in a different fashion on the local public scene, it is demonstrated that taking into account the importance of the territory in citizens' lives could lead to a finer comprehension of individual public implication.

AbstractWhile the Francophonie was not a French idea, it became the horizon of a country that contributed to the construction of a democratie Europe only by defending its identity. The latter makes sense only in a dialogue that embraces and cultivates linguistic diversity. Thanks to history and geography, the destiny of the French language can be found today among the great issues and debates of civilisation.

AbstractIs global civil society a useful concept to help us understand the political dimension of globalization ? Studying the normative evolutions in the field of freshwater resources at the global level, we had been confronted to a serious difficulty in the interpretation of theses evolutions with conceptual tools which had been conceived to understand political communities institutionally well structured. The unclear delimitation of political realm at the global level, as well as the ambiguity of the limits between economic/market realm and civil society realm, make theses categories quite useless to understand actors' contribution to these normative evolution. For these reasons, we propose to focus the analysis on actions rather then on actor's classification. We also suggest giving more attention to the ways in which we are considering and defining the economic realm, to get a clearer picture of the limits between that realm and actors we consider as part of global civil society.

AbstractThe containment of illegal migration from the Caribbean and Central America to the United States has long been part of the United States policy. More recently, however, it has become an integral part of the new White House National Security Strategy that promotes the links between free trade and security, and that imposes an unprecedented degree of collaboration with departure and transit countries as regards such policies. Although the new security rules reinforce the US hegemonic position on the American continent, they do not attain the goals initially planned : dissuasive migration policies are unable to regulate illegal migration. It is important to recognise that there are no simple solutions to the complex problem of migration. What is more, a complete politics of migration, to be effective, implies a good analysis of real situations, a constant cooperation with the countries that are the cause of departure, and, lastly, requires placing the human being's interest and dignity at the heart of all migratory measures.

AbstractThis article is an introduction to this special issue on new institutionalism. It is divided into three sections. The first section contextualizes the emergence of new institutionalism in the developmental trajectory of political science, particularly American political science. In this context, it discusses the three branches of new institutionalism (historical, rational choice and sociological). The second section assesses the consequences of the theoretical, ontological and methodological diversity of the new institutionalism. It suggests that this diversity should not be viewed as a weakness and that a synthesis of the three branches is not feasible and probably not desirable. The third section introduces the contributions to the special issue.

ABSTRACTThe theory of the optimum currency areas—OCA—has been, for forty years, an unavoidable framework regarding the choice of the exchange's mode. Of Keynesian inspiration, it initially supplements the friedmanian plea in favor of the generalized floating exchange rate mode. Improved, then deeply renewed by taking into account time inconsistency and the theory of credibility—the new theory of the optimal currency areas—, Mundell's construction is still robust and topical. The OCA theory maintains all its relevance at a time of rising regional unions, it is currently being used to help Canada determine the optimal mode of exchange vis-a-vis the currency of the United States—float, dollarization, monetary union—, or to help the Asian countries tempted by the peg and by regional solutions.

AbstractThis study presents an analysis of housing conditions of immigrant households in Montréal. Using the 2001 census data, its aim is to show the potential effects or consequences of urban factors on housing conditions. Theoretically, interpretation of housing conditions for immigrant households is provided by an historical analysis of metropolis dynamics and a neo-Weberian or institutional framework (Rex and Moore, 1967). This interpretation breaks off with dominant explanations in Canadian urban research, which see in cultural differences the cause of the gap observed between ethnic groups in terms of housing conditions. Empirically, access to homeownership and housing affordability are estimated by means of multilevel models combining individual and contextual factors in the same analysis. Results corroborate the merit of this methodological choice and open the way to other investigations on the effects of metropolitan dynamics on individual outcomes.

AbstractNeighbourhoods are socially constructed spaces for people who have multiple identities and trajectories. This multiplicity is often neglected when neighbourhoods are described by one-dimension attributes that do not reflect the different realities of the social actors (residents, community workers, officials, shopkeepers). This paper deals with the question of plural perceptions and practices of neighbourhoods by examining the evolution of a multiethnic neighbourhood in Montreal through the prism of the concept of “integration neighbourhood”. First an area dominated by the Greek community and later a transitional space for populations with very diverse cultural backgrounds, Parc Extension is now facing demographic, urbanistic and socio-political changes that are transforming it into an integration neighbourhood for South-Asian groups. In the end, I suggest, the understanding of local dynamics should be framed in a more global analysis of the interactions between the territories as “practiced” by different social actors.

Keywords: quartier d'intégration, Montréal, quartier Parc Extension, communautés sud-asiatiques, marquage ethnique, diversité ethnoculturelle en milieu urbain, integration neighbourhoods, Montréal, Parc Extension, South-Asian Communities, ethnocultural diversity in the city