Biography

Education and academic career

Nicolas Duvoux studied in classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles (preparation for a national competitive exam) at the Lycée La Bruyère in Versailles, and at Henri IV in Paris, before writing a Master thesis in philosophy titled « Spinoza et Rouseau : la norme et l’existant » (Spinoza and Rouseau: the norm and the existing) under the supervision of Etienne Balibar (2002) at the University of Paris Nanterre. He then completed a Master degree in political studies at the EHESS (2003); his thesis, under the supervision of Pierre Rosanvallon, focused on “The concept of contract in social law” (« la notion de contrat dans le droit social »). His PhD, also conducted at the EHESS (2008), and titled “The injunction to autonomy. A sociology of integration policies” (« L’injonction à l’autonomie. Sociologie des politiques d’insertion »), was written under the supervision of Serge Paugam, with whom he co-wrote a book comprised of dialogues, La régulation des pauvres (“Regulating the poor”).

In 2009 he became a lecturer in sociology at the University Paris Descartes, and a member of the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur les Liens Sociaux. He later collaborated with the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire d’Evaluation des Politiques Publiques at Sciences Po. From 2015 on, he became a tenured professor of sociology at the University Paris 8, and a member of the CRESPPA within the LabTop team. [1]

Research

His dissertation focused on the accountability mechanisms involved in social policies from 2000 onward. It showed how the life stories of individuals are invested by social rationales and institutional devices —a theme also studied in a book he co-edited with Isabelle Astier. This approach combined the tools of the sociology of public action and of social norms, with those of the sociology of social stratification and inequalities. He wrote a first series of books and articles focusing on the way social inclusion policies are met—these books either highlight social differentiation, or the dynamics of public action and of social relations.

On the latter aspect, he developed a reflection on the place of solidarity policies in the social protection system. At the time of the reform of the French RMI (minimum income benefit) and of the creation of the RSA (income of active solitarity), he coordinated a “coalition for a critical scientific cause” [2] of the turn towards the activation of social protection [3]. This is how he came to collaborate with Robert Castel, co-editing with him the first book published in the Vie des idées.fr / Presses Universitaires de France collection, organizing several events, namely a seminar at the LIEPP on the income of active solitarity and the employment allowance, and regularly publishing articles in LaViedesIdées.fr. He also wrote a plea, in which he advised that the RSA should be funded at a national-level, in order to avoid territorial inequalities, and to allow those under 25 to benefit from this type of measure. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, he summarized these directives in a note for the Terra Nova think tank [5].

A visiting Scholar at the Sociology Department of Harvard University in 2012-2013, he wrote his Habilitation à diriger des recherches (thesis that allows to supervise research) under the responsibility of Olivier Schwartz. It was based on an ethnographic study of several charities and philanthropic foundations in Boston. After teaching a master’s course on “The representations of poverty and exclusion in the English-speaking world” (« les représentations de la pauvreté et de l’exclusion dans le monde anglo-saxon ») in sociology at the EHESS (2007-2013), he became interested in the issues related to the importance of culture in the social science[C4] [MOU5] s, social issues and the study of poverty in the United States but also in France [6]. Presented in the book Les oubliés du rêve américain (The Forgotten Ones of the American Dream), the ethnographic research conducted in Boston is also developed in several articles focusing on the topic of gender, of emotions in ethnographic research and issues related to an international, comparative perspective on public action.

He gradually specialized in the study of philanthropy, and conducted several field studies in France. He coordinated a series of works which renewed the understanding and the chronology of the relationships between public authorities and private players in France. He organized a study day, « Une philanthropie à la française » (philanthropy the French way) at the Sorbonne in 2014 as well as a research seminar at the LabTop (2015-2016) on the subject. He conducted field surveys within various foundations and in 2019, he creates the Philanthropy and Social Sciences Program in partnership with the Fondation de France, the Fondation Caritas France, the Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso and the Philab in Québec.

Alongside these works, after publishing a book on social inequalities at the Presses Universitaires de France, in the Que-sais-je? collection, he developed a quantitative approach to stratification and inequalities. He worked in collaboration with Adrien Papuchon, drawing upon Bourdieu’s early publications such as « Avenir de classe et causalité du probable » (The Future of a Class and Causality of the Probable)[8] in order to bring a new light on the social structure. In these works, they see subjective variables as synthetic indicators of social position, these variables being considered to be in close relation with the objective position, from the perspective of economic and social resources. The ability to project oneself into the future is an empirical anchor point, which allows to enrich the data analysis in a cross-sectional way. The article « Qui se sent pauvre en France ? Pauvreté subjective et insécurité sociale » (Who feels poor in France? Subjective poverty and social insecurity) published in 2018 in the Revue Française de Sociologie was also debated in the same journal in 2020[9]. After this, his analysis seeked to renew the sociology of inequality by including the question of temporality; he did this by taking into account the role of property in the structure of social class. He complemented this approach by coordinating a series of longitudinal analyses within the Ministère des Solidarités et de la Santé (French Ministry of Health and Solidarity) starting in 2019.

Publishing and scientific leadership

Nicolas Duvoux is editor-in-chief of La Vie des idées.fr since 2007. He is the director of the collection of books La vie des idées / Presses Universitaires de France since 2017. He is also editor at the Presses Universitaires de France, where he publishes research in sociology and political science.

Since 2019, he is the director of the Philanthropy and Social Sciences Program [10], created within the CRESPPA, a program which aims to federate multidisciplinary research in the human and social sciences on philanthropy, in close collaboration with actors in the sector. The program involves a series of lectures and publications, in the form of Working Papers.

Evaluation of public policies

Since he has first started working on integration policies, Nicolas Duvoux has also been involved in public policy evaluation activities at various levels. A member of the national evaluation committee of the RSA (2009-2011), he was appointed “personalité qualifiée” (eminent personality) as a member of the University College of the Observatoire National de la Pauvreté et de l’Exclusion Sociale (the National Observatory of Poverty and for Combating Social Exclusion, 2014-2020). Following the institution’s merger with the Conseil National de Lutte contre l’Exclusion (National Council for the Fight against Exclusion), he joined the latter organization in 2020.

In 2016-2017, he was in the steering committee of the partnership seminar « L’investissement social, quelle stratégie pour la France ? » (Social investment: what strategy for France?). In 2018, he was the Chairman of the Comité d’évaluation du Fonds d’Appui aux Politiques d’Insertion (Evaluation Committee of the Integration Policies Support Fund). Within the ONPES, he conducted the seminar “Trajectoires et parcours des personnes en situation de pauvreté et d’exclusion sociale” (Trajectories and careers of people enduring poverty and social exclusion) [12] and coordinated the organization's scientific program on the issue of trajectories and careers. Since 2019, he is also a member of the Comité d’évaluation de la stratégie de prévention et de lutte contre la pauvreté à France Stratégie (Evaluation Committee for the Strategies for Fighting and Preventing Poverty at France Stratégie) and of the RSA Evaluation Committee of the Court of Accounts (since 2020). In January 2021, he was appointed chairman of the CNLE scientific committee, an entity attached to the Prime Minister's services.

Awards

Nicolas Duvoux’s work has been awarded several research prizes. His PhD dissertation was awarded the first research prize of the Caritas France Foundation at the Institut de France (2010). He also received the first senior research prize from the Red Cross Foundation at the Institut de France (2015).

[1] http://www.cresppa.cnrs.fr/labtop/

[2] Clara Deville, « Les chemins du droit. Décentralisation du RSA et distance à l’Etat des classes populaires rurales », thèse pour le doctorat de sociologie, 2019, p.205.

[3] https://laviedesidees.fr/Reformer-les-minima-sociaux-1495.html

[4] http://www.sciencespo.fr/liepp/sites/sciencespo.fr.liepp/files/Compte%20rendu%20LIEPP%20RSA-PPE.pdf

[5] http://tnova.fr/notes/les-priorites-sociales-apres-la-crise-sanitaire

[6] https://laviedesidees.fr/La-culture-de-la-pauvrete.html

[7] https://www.sciencespo.fr/liepp/fr/content/une-philanthropie-la-francaise

[8] Pierre Bourdieu, « Avenir de classe et causalité du probable », Revue française de sociologie, 1974, p.3-42.

[9] Nicolas Duvoux, Adrien Papuchon, « Qui se sent pauvre en France ? Pauvreté subjective et insécurité sociale », Revue Française de Sociologie, 2018/4, p.607-647.

[10] http://pssp-lab.org/

[11] https://onpes.gouv.fr/rapport-de-l-onpes-premiere.html

[12] https://onpes.gouv.fr/seminaire-drees-onpes-2019-2020.html