Author Archives: B Merritt

Race in Vichy France

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This post was contributed by Dr Ludivine Broch, an Early Career Research Fellow at the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism.

Life as a Research Fellow

‘Research Fellowships’ have a wonderful allure from afar: a distant, fertile land where one can hole up in the British Library and read for hours on end before visiting various archives where, once more, one is completely unburdened by daily work-related commitments.

Of course, this is not how things work out. Research Fellowships can just as quickly become swamped with admin, organising workshops, starting up academic blogs, participating in conferences, meeting publication deadlines, doing odd bits of teaching here and there… and that’s even before your own life-management issues (plumbing crisis, medical appointments, moving house, etc.) which interfere with the rêverie that is ‘endless hours at the British Library/archives’.

Often, in these times when you are trying to wrap up your doctoral projects but feel drowned in ‘commitments’, there is only one thing that keeps you going: the dream of the next big research project! And this is exactly where I am. I have three years of Research Fellowship (two at the Pears Institute at Birkbeck, and one at the European University Institute in Florence) lined up, and I’m in my fifth month. Already, the conference papers, article deadlines and general admin of organising conferences and workshops have piled up so high… but, I am not losing faith.  Because I have a fascinating project to keep pushing for.

My doctoral studies focussed on the history of railway workers in Vichy France. My thesis challenged the myths of cheminot (orgnanised by the railway workers) resistance and collaboration. The book (coming out with CUP in 2014) looks beyond this: at theft, at Franco-German cohabitation, at professional strikes, at the language of class struggle.

Although this topic continues to interest me, and I am deeply involved in finishing my book, it feels like a much-loved outfit that is starting to age slightly. I am ready for something new. I began thinking about my new research topic in 2011, when I spotted a gap in Vichy historiography. And slowly it has developed into something tangible and manageable.

A history of black people in Vichy France

Whilst the history of Jews in Vichy France had been told and re-told, the history of black people – an otherwise hot topic in modern history – had been largely untouched. Of course there have been plenty of studies of race in France – but they almost always skip over the 1939-45 period – a period reserved for the study of antisemitism. And while some studies of blacks in the French military and French colonies have been taken on, nothing has been done in depth on black people in metropolitan France during the period of 1939-45.

The question of race sits uncomfortably on the sidelines of Vichy history: although blacks were not targeted as visibly and vehemently as the Jews, they were still victims of racial prejudice and sometimes discrimination. Laws targeting Jews to ride in the last carriage of the metro, to stay within the limits of the demarcation line, and to give up their professions in the arts, were also applied to ‘negroes’. The black minister Henry Lémery was dismissed from the Laval government in September 1940 on the basis of his skin colour. Colonial propaganda dispatched throughout France embraced traditional images of the black savage: an exotic, harmless beast whose simple attire was matched by an even simpler mind. Colonial troops who had helped both the French army in May-June 1940, and the Free French in 1940-44, were sidelined from the Liberation ceremonies in 1944-45, and from the general army as a whole. What do these stories say about race in Vichy France?

This is an extremely large topic. However, by dividing my project into manageable chunks, I will examine the many facets – cultural, socio-political, intellectual – of this question of race under Vichy. And after sneaking away to Paris a few days last term, I am increasingly convinced that a micro-history of blacks in Parisian arrondissements will begin to tell us something about race in daily life.

Ultimately, by challenging traditional assumptions of racial persecution under Vichy, I am hoping to shift the historiographical discussion from one where the history of Jews under Vichy is examined seperately from the history of racial minorities, to one where they intersect. Indeed, Marrus and Paxton were clearly correct when, in their remarkable work Vichy France and the Jews (1981), they placed Vichy’s attitudes towards Jews within a longer history of antisemitism. Yet recent works suggest is that this history also intersects with another history: a history of blacks, of the colonies, of difference. How does a history of race interact with the history of Jews? How do they illuminate one another? These are the questions which inspire me through my Research Fellowhsip.

What is the point of banning discrimination on grounds of sex in insurance?

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This post was contributed by Professor Deborah Mabbett, from Birbeck’s Department of Politics.

On 21 December 2012, a ban on the use of sex as a criterion in pricing insurance came into force throughout the European Union. In a forthcoming article in the journal Regulation and Governance (pre-publication version available now), I have examined how the ban came about and what its significance is.  The ban was originally proposed by the European Commission in 2003, but the Commission was persuaded to drop the proposal. Instead, insurers were required to publish the statistical basis for discriminating between men and women, to show that differences in premiums were justified by differences in risk. This compromise was successfully challenged in the Court of Justice of the EU by the Belgian consumer association, Test-Achats.

At the root of the debate about sex discrimination in insurance was the question of whether discrimination was necessary for the market to function efficiently. Insurers do not use every relevant piece of information when pricing their products. Some information is too expensive to acquire, some is already subject to legal prohibitions (such as information about ethnicity or religion) and some is subject to voluntary restraint (such as genetic information). Furthermore, long-established practices of risk classification become entrenched in insurance. Long use yields long data series that enable insurers to check that their assessment of risk is robust, and consumers get accustomed to conventional discriminatory practices.

What drew the European institutions to disrupt the convention that sex is used in pricing some forms of insurance? One answer is that the Commission was concerned about the rise of defined contribution pensions, where individuals buy an annuity with their accumulated pension savings. Women get smaller annuities than men because they live longer, on average. However, on a straightforward cost-benefit analysis, this did not make a strong case for banning discrimination, as women are likely to pay more now for car insurance. Furthermore, insurers can find other indicators for long life expectancy (such as occupation and family history), and they will find new ways of identifying safer drivers too.

A stronger answer is that discrimination was already prohibited in some states of the EU, so different countries had different rules despite the supposed existence of a single market in insurance. The Court of Justice held that there should be a common rule across Europe. Since non-discrimination is a fundamental right, it held that this should be the basis for regulating the single market.

While insurers resisted this strongly, arguing that it would disrupt the market, their reaction now that the matter is decided is rather muted. On the Today programme on 21 December 2012, the spokeswoman for the Association of British Insurers emphasised that the effects on premiums were unpredictable, that the market remains highly competitive, and that consumers should shop around. The fact is that insurers do not want an extended public debate about discrimination. They prefer the legitimation provided by market competition, which leaves insurers autonomy in determining their pricing strategies, subject to regulatory constraints. Public scrutiny is uncomfortable because it is prone to reveal that insurers’ practices have a weaker technical basis than they like to imply. During the debate on sex discrimination, statistical studies were done which suggested that premium differentials were not always explained by underlying differences in risk, and that some potential alternative predictors were ignored. This should not really surprise us. While insurers have competitive incentives to search for good predictors, they also have marketing reasons to set prices to the advantage or disadvantage of particular groups.

It is tempting to see the ban on sex discrimination as a step towards a more ‘social’ Europe, going beyond the creation of a free trade area and regulating market transactions for social purposes. However, it is not clear what the social purpose really is: the Court of Justice has upheld a principle rather than pursuing a goal. The case highlights that markets are based on conventions which come under scrutiny when they are exposed to cross-national comparison. The ban reconstitutes the European insurance market and adjusts the ‘playing field’ for competition, rather than addressing a social policy problem or promoting equality of outcomes.

(Woman next to car image via Shutterstock.)

Silent Witnesses: Children’s Experiences of Community Violence

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This post was contributed by Edward D. Barker, PhD and Natasha Z. Kirkham, PhD from Birkbeck’s Department of Psychological Sciences.

High poverty neighbourhoods are rife with high rates of violence and crime. Scientific research shows that, in certain neighbourhoods, there exists a “subculture of violence”, where a person’s reputation is based on his or her ability to use aggression to solve disagreements with others. Against this backdrop, children have increased potential to behave aggressively, as these children not only experience violence in the community and schools, but also often do not have adults with whom they can discuss victimization experiences. Importantly, within high poverty neighbourhoods, children (on average) receive less supervision from parents, and hence are more exposed to violence and behave more violently. Informing parents of the role they can play in supervising children is a critical first step in raising community awareness of children’s safety and wellbeing. Yet, to our knowledge, little research exists in which children’s experiences of violence, in schools and communities, are recorded via interviews with children – and importantly, the roles that adult care-givers have played in protecting children against such experiences

In the project named, “Silent Witnesses”, a collaboration between Birkbeck, the Theatre Centre, and Actorshop Limited, we will interview a group of high poverty inner city primary school children accross the UK. The children will discuss their community violence experiences. These discussions will be used to create a bespoke theatrical production, which will be shown to parents, teachers and children at targeted primary schools.  The parents will receive pre-play and post-play evaluations of their attitudes towards aggression with respect to children. A documentary will track the full duration of the project – from the child interviews, the final production, and the responses of the teachers, parents, and children.

Updates about this project will be published on this blog.

Why researchers can’t afford to ignore Open Access any more

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Paul Rigg, Senior Assistant Librarian for Repositories and Digital Media explains the forthcoming changes to Open Access.

An increasing number of academic authors will recognise the term Open Access, or OA, but given the busy life of the modern academic, many have not had the time to actively pursue a deeper understanding of just what it means, and the benefits it can deliver.  This situation needs to change; researchers who fail to keep up with impending upheavals to the academic landscape risk being left behind.  Allow this blog post to function as your cheat-sheet.

A (brief) history of OA

Although the roots of Open Access stretch further back, the Budapest Open Access Initiative of February 2002 has traditionally been regarded as a watershed, defining OA for the first time as:

“Immediate, permanent, free online access to the full text of all refereed research journal articles.” 

The principle being that if public funds pay for research, the public should be able to read the research output without paying again through journal subscriptions or pay-walls. 

The status quo

Open Access currently exists in two distinct but occasionally intertwining forms.

Green OA:  Authors archive their newly accepted work in a repository (usually institutional or subject-based, like our own BIROn or the Physics repository Arxiv).  Which version of the work is allowed depends on the publisher’s OA policy.

Gold OA:  Authors, institutions or funders pay the publisher an Article Processing Charge to make the final version openly available on their web site.  Pure Gold journals subsist on APCs alone, whilst Hybrid journals are a mix of APCs and traditional subscription models.

The future

Open Access in the UK is about to undergo rapid change.  In July, Dame Janet Finch submitted her working group’s report on expanding access to public research findings.  The Government accepted most of the recommendations with minor ammendments.  Shortly afterwards, RCUK and its affiliated bodies announced that from 1st April 2013, it would closely align its own policies with Finch’s recommendations.

Changes in a nutshell

RCUK will no longer provide funding on a per-project basis for Gold OA.  Instead, institutions will be allocated a block-budget from which Article Processing Charges must be paid.  RCUK will closely monitor compliance with their requirements by both authors and publishers.  To publish RCUK-funded research, journals must either provide a Gold Open Access option, or allow authors to archive their own drafts in repositories, with minimal embargoes.  Where journals allow both options, the author and their institution should decide whether Gold or Green is more suitable.

Non-RCUK funding

RCUK accounts for around 45% of the College’s externally-funded research.  If your funding comes from RCUK, it’s important to keep up to speed with how these changes will affect you.  If your research isn’t funded by RCUK, their policies won’t apply, though whether other funders will follow suit in aligning with Finch is not yet clear.

Where BIROn fits in

The basic framework upon which the college’s Open Access policy is laid remains the mandate to deposit, a Green OA initiative which encourages staff to deposit publications in BIROn immediately, but enables delayed access to the full-text in order to comply with publisher’s copyright requirements.  BIROn will continue to host records and full-text (where copyright allows) of staff publications.  From April 1st 2013, Gold articles paid for by RCUK will be reusable under a Creative Commons licence.  This means that for the first time, BIROn will be able to host final drafts of newly published work by Birkbeck authors.

Learn more

To mark Open Access week, Birkbeck, together with LSE, SOAS, LSHTM and City University, will host a free event aimed at dispelling the confusion around the past, present and future of Open Access. 

Entitled Opening Research and Data, it will feature talks on the state of the movement, issues for researchers, open data, and funder policies.

The event will take place on October 22nd, 1.00-5.00pm, in room B01 of Birkbeck’s Bloomsbury campus Clore Building.  The original ticket allocation has been extended due to popular demand.

Enquiries about Open Access at Birkbeck can be directed to Paul Rigg, Senior Assistant Librarian for Repositories and Digital Media.