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Presentation of the Biographies et entourage Survey

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Family Beyond Household and Kin

Part of the book series: INED Population Studies ((INPS))

Abstract

Families extend well beyond the walls of the home, and interpersonal relations are constructed throughout the life course, and in all the settings where they play out. This approach requires new instruments of observation and new concepts to take into account family realities and their dynamics across time and space. Indeed, 20 years after the Triple biographie (Triple biography) survey and 10 years after the Proches et parents (Local family circle) survey we needed to update our knowledge of residential mobility and kinship. This chapter recounts the historical background of the Biographies et entourage survey (Event histories and contact circle survey) and presents the different INED surveys conducted from the 1960s which inspired and preceded it. By combining the relational and life course approaches, the Biographies et entourage survey was designed to obtain appropriate data for describing and analysing family networks and their role throughout an individual’s lifetime. To do that, it was necessary to move away from the usual concepts such as the household or main residence, and suggest others such as the entourage (contact circle) and the residential system.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Biographies et entourage survey has benefited from the contributions made by other studies with no links to INED; its international heritage is extensively retraced in the recently republished work by GRAB (Groupe de réflexion sur lapproche biographique) titled Biographies denquêtes (GRAB 2009). Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that only large institutions such as INED and INSEE (the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies) have the necessary resources to conduct long-term studies. In France, Françoise Cribier’s work (1990, 1992) on mobility among several generations of Parisians remains an exception.

  2. 2.

    This section on INED’s series of “mobility” surveys is based on the review of urban research produced by INED since its creation in 1945, edited by Catherine Bonvalet, titled Logement, mobilité et populations urbaines (Paris, CNRS Éditions, “Cahiers du PIR Villes” collection, 1994).

  3. 3.

    In particular the survey by Alain Girard and Jean Stoetzel on the desires of the French with regard to housing and their place of residence (1945), the survey on the housing of young households in the former Seine département (which covered Paris and its inner suburbs) (Girard and Bastide 1952), and the survey on lodging houses (hôtels meublés) in Paris (Michel 1955).

  4. 4.

    We shall return to this significant result in the section on the series of surveys on the family, as it was reported at a time marked by the theories of Talcott Parsons (1955), who suggested that the nuclear family, defined as parents and children only, and thus highly mobile (as it is free from any other attachments), was the only form of family suited to industrial society.

  5. 5.

    It was therefore possible to compare the results of the Peuplement et dépeuplement de Paris survey with those of Enquête 3B (Bonvalet 1987).

  6. 6.

    Translator’s note: the city of Paris is just one of the eight départements (administrative divisions roughly equivalent to English counties or Italian provinces) that make up the Paris region (Île-de-France). In 2011, the city of Paris represented around 19 % of the population of Île-de-France, and 0.9 % of the total area of the region.

  7. 7.

    Cited by Cicchelli-Pugeault and Cicchelli 1998, p. 42.

  8. 8.

    La famille après le mariage des enfants. Étude des relations entre générations survey was conducted in 1974 by INED.

  9. 9.

    At this time, Agnès Pitrou was also undertaking innovative research on family solidarity; she made a distinction between two types of support within the family: “subsistence” support and “promotional” support.

  10. 10.

    These interviews were conducted and analysed as part of a research programme coordinated by the SRAI (Statuts résidentiels : approche intergénérationnelle [Residential statuses: intergenerational approach]) working group (Bonvalet et al. 2007).

  11. 11.

    For Claudine Attias-Donfut, Nicole Lapierre and Martine Segalen, kinship and individualism are not incompatible, but rather are complementary, even compensatory.

  12. 12.

    Peter Willmott wrote in 2000: “I was disappointed when I visited Paris in the late 1960s seeking collaborators for a comparative cross-national study of the extended family. In contrast to their British counterparts, who have been studying kinship from the mid-1950s on, French social researchers then showed little interest in the family apart from its nuclear form. After the mid-1970s, however, a number of studies were undertaken by French researchers, including some at INED. The research on which this book is based comes from the same stable. It shows that the British have now been overtaken” (preface to Family Kinship and Place in France, London, Southern Universities Press/INED 2007).

  13. 13.

    The descriptions of the different tests and their outcomes and contributions are detailed in Reports 1, 2 and 3, reproduced on the CD-ROM which is available in De la famille à lentourage, Bonvalet and Lelièvre (2012).

  14. 14.

    The city of Paris is divided into 20 administrative districts called arrondissements.

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Correspondence to Catherine Bonvalet or Éva Lelièvre .

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Appendix

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2.1.1 English Translation of the Biographies et entourage Survey Questionnaire

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Bonvalet, C., Lelièvre, É. (2016). Presentation of the Biographies et entourage Survey. In: Bonvalet, C., Lelièvre, E. (eds) Family Beyond Household and Kin. INED Population Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24684-0_2

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