NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
À la croisée des genres : trajectoires et identités "trans" au Québec

This master thesis treats of the trans identities and trajectories in Québec. It leans mainly on the life narrative of 11 people who identify as trans in Québec in order to better understand the influences of social and gender norms on their life journey, and the way they are manifested in the context of daily interactions. Based on both trans men and trans women’s life stories, this research thus has as a goal to measure the impact of a system of norms based on the binarity of genders. This crossed reading of genders allows some light to be shed on the principal convergences and differences between the experiences of trans men and trans women. Firstly, the research demonstrates that the gender identity trajectory takes place for one and all as soon as during childhood, period during which the gender identity question is present, but at a “dormant” stage. Then, the adolescence period is the equivalent of an awakening process to the stigmas that brought them to internalize their difference. Adulthood -the present- is the exteriorization of identity phase, which is transcribed through a series of transitional experiences. Secondly, this study will report of the social inequalities of gender as well as the transidentitary inequalities, and how those two forms of inequality interact, namely in a public space as well as social interaction context. The main results show that the trans women in the study experience a majority of social inequality regarding their gender and its non-conformity. Conversely, the trans men in the study also go through these inequalities, but in a parallel fashion, also acquire certain social privileges.

Keyphrases: Trans, Adolescence, Genre(s), Identity, Trajectory, Life journey, Childhood, Adulthood, Interactionism, Norms, Gender(s), Daily, Social inequalities, Public spaces
Représentations du suicide chez des intervenants œuvrant dans des centres de crise communautaires

Societies throughout time have evolved in the ways in which they conceive and deal with suicide partly because of changes in collective norms, values, ideologies and attitudes. Nowadays, despite the appearance of a consensus in the field of suicide prevention, perspectives on suicide continue to vary among its agents and contexts. In particular, researchers suggest that intervention workers’ perspectives regarding suicide influence their practices with suicidal individuals.  The present qualitative research is about representations of suicide. I conducted ten interviews with crisis intervention workers in community crisis centres located in the Greater Montreal region. This master’s thesis aims to shed light on the main facets of crisis intervention workers’ representations of suicidal individuals and their professional practices, as well as to suggest preliminary thoughts on these representations and their effects on professional practices.  The research results suggest that crisis intervention workers’ perspectives on suicide, which inform their practices, mostly correspond to the current social representation most widespread in the field of suicide prevention. Despite this finding, crisis intervention workers also adhere to alternative representations of suicide, although to a lesser extent. These differences can be better understood by considering the varied subjective experiences of the workers and organizational frameworks of the crisis intervention centres in which they evolve. This research also highlights the intervention workers’ will to demonstrate autonomy and reflection.

Keyphrases: suicide, social representation, intervention worker, crisis, community organization
L’application des connaissances issues de la recherche en lien avec le concept «traumatisme complexe» : le point de vue des professionnels de la protection de la jeunesse

For the past years, the concept of trauma is used more frequently to help understand the consequences for children victims of abuse. More precisely, the concept of complex trauma developed during the past thirty years brings a new light in the clinical understanding of many children followed through the Québec youth protection act. Using the concept of complex trauma, one can hypothesize that for certain children the risk to develop trauma is very present. Many authors became interested to the theoretical concept of complex trauma and practices to promote amongst children, their family and as well the adults assuming responsibility on a daily basis. The Expertise Centre on Child Abuse CCSMTL has developed a complete tool kit in response to trauma involving clinical tools to support professionals that are intervening with children, their family and the adults whose responsibility id to care for the children.  The objective of this essay is to take a look on the knowledge application issued from research by child protection professionals in relation to complex trauma.  With the deployment of this tool kit, we aim to respond to the needs of professionals sensitive to trauma. In order to better identify the process to privilege, we have looked at concepts related to the implementation of knowledge and a theoretical model for the implementation of knowledge to social sciences, humanities and arts and science. Therefore this project focuses on the implementation of knowledge derived from research to the concept of complex trauma and its application with clinical practitioners in youth protection. The results demonstrate that professionals hold certain knowledge on trauma and are able to establish links between the presentation of a new concept and their practice. The means offered to set up a more sensitive practice to trauma revolve around dissemination activities, problem solving and interaction. Despite their interest for the development of new practices, the professionals mention the need professional for the process linked to the implementation of the new practice must be recognised in their work load.

Keyphrases: Trauma complexe, Practice in youth protection, Trauma, Complex trauma, Knowledge application, Knowledge transfer
L’influence des organismes communautaires à titre d’acteurs intermédiaires de prestation de biens et de services sur la confiance institutionnelle des personnes s’y impliquant : le cas québécois

Institutional trust is the key to every healthy legislative entity. Two groups of factor are the source of emanation of people’s institutional trust : factors about representativeness and about expertise. The state is the main recipient of institutional trust from these two groups. However, he is not the only actor who can claim it, particularly in a context of multiplication of new socio-economic actors in the distribution of goods and services traditionally made by the public sector and progressive withdrawal of state intervention. Community-based organizations are one of those new actors whose presence and social importance are sharply increasing. However, they can be, on the same level than the state, the recipients of people’s trust. In the context of a decline of institutional trust in the state over the last decades, do community-based organisms have a role to play and an impact over this situation for the people who are involved in those organizations ? Based on a survey of people in charge of Quebec community-based organizations dedicated to individuals with physical and/or psychological disabilities, we tried to answer this question. The results demonstrate a decrease of institutional trust in favor of higher trust in community-based organizations as a result of being involved in this type of actor, particularly at the level of the two groups of explanatory factors (representativeness and expertise).

Keyphrases: Expertise, Institutional trust, Community-based organizations, State, Representativeness, Proximity, State funding, Survey, Socio-demographic background
L’Adoption des Accords de Poursuite Suspendue au Canada : le pouvoir politique bien peu silencieux d’un champion national

Multinational companies play a leading role in shaping public policies. Inspired in particular by Professor Culpepper's work on Quiet Politics and Business Power (2011, 2015), I study the power dynamics that led to the inclusion of “Deferred prosecution agreements” (DPAs) in the Canadian Criminal Code. Developed in the U.S., DPAs allow businesses to put an end to criminal judicial proceedings - without guilty pleas – by paying fines and often by adopting various governance reforms. Although their efficiency and legitimacy are being questioned in the United States, they are spreading to the UK, Brazil, France, Singapore and now Canada. How do we explain the adoption of Canadian DPAs despite the lack of evidence of their effectiveness and the controversy they raise in the specialized literature? Our main assumption is that the government responded to a request from SNC-Lavalin, a national engineering champion of Quebec and Canada, accused of foreign bribery, fraud and corruption. SNC properly framed its lobbying campaign, but had a structural advantage because of its importance to the Canadian economy. For this reason, SNC obtained the public policy of its choice even though Culpepper’s model would have predicted a more difficult context of adoption for DPAs. Indeed, there was no real partisan debate despite the salience of SNC's corruption scandals and the (formal) legislative framework necessary to the adoption of the Canadian DPAs. Furthermore, our analysis of the salience of the “issue” shows a marked difference between the wider media coverage of the corruption scandals as a political issue and the narrower interest in the highly technical public policy of the APS as a response to it. Also, the "formal" legislative framework variable, which could have triggered partisan debate, is less applicable in Canada where the legislature is dominated by the executive. The adoption of these new corporate criminal accountability instruments is therefore a "pathway case" for business power. Their study allows us to refine the application of Culpepper’s model and to better understand the causal mechanisms of corporate power.

Keyphrases: Political science, Public administration and public policy, Deferred prosecution agreements, Political power of multinational corporations, Accountability and anticorruption instruments, Corporate and criminal law, Historical institutionalism
Représentation proportionnelle et participation électorale : l’hétérogénéité des populations importe-t-elle?

Recent studies have challenged the conventional wisdom that proportional representation systematically increases voter turnout (Cancela and Geys 2016). In fact, this relation doesn’t seem to hold outside of Europe (Blais 2006), although no study has yet been able to explain why the impact of electoral systems differs from one region to another. Using a dataset of 572 legislative elections that took place in 87 countries between 1970 and 2013, our analysis reveals that while proportional representation heightens turnout in ethnically homogeneous countries like most of those in Europe, it doesn’t have an impact when populations are heterogeneous. Furthermore, we find that this is caused by the fact that lower electoral distortions entailed by proportional representation don’t generate better propensity to vote in ethnically divided societies, probably because ethnic minorities can sometimes benefit from disproportional systems to secure more legislative seats than they could otherwise win in fully proportional systems (Norris 2002). Finally, we show that proportional representation increases the number of parties independently of population heterogeneity and while this political fragmentation has a reductive effect on turnout in ethnically homogeneous countries, it has no impact when populations are heterogeneous.

Keyphrases: Voter turnout, Proportional representation, Ethnic heterogeneity, Electoral systems, Political institutions, Electoral behavior
Migration as adaptation in ‘Disappearing states’ : examining socio-political adaptation strategies in the sinking islands of the Pacific

As climate change and globalization accelerate, at-risk communities in developing countries particularly vulnerable to environmental degradation are turning to migration as an adaptation strategy. This study aims to understand why these adaptation strategies in the form of climate-induced mobility vary in cases of similar climatic disruption. Based on a qualitative and inductive model of MDSD, the Carteret islands of Papua New Guinea and the Republic of Kiribati are comparatively studied to extract explanatory factors relating to the variation of their socio-political reactions to sea-level rise. The research examines the role endorsed by three actors: international organizations whose juridical and political apparatus is deemed inefficient to deal with the new transnational challenges posed by climate migrations; the states for their influence on the construction of migration as an adaptation strategy; and civil society actors, whose role has been increasingly important to surpass institutional weaknesses and governance deficiencies in the context of climate change. The divergent adaptation strategies of the Carteret and Kiribati islanders are inscribed in distinct political and social systems, reinforcing the importance of a contextualised study of climate migrations. This research proposes a new analytical framework through the use of three explanatory factors to understand movement: (i) state capacity, (ii) civil society agency, and (iii) conceptions of migration. These three factors could permit a standardized but contextual analysis of migration, the objective being to understand the particularities of each case to establish appropriate policies. This study thus fills an academic gap in the understanding of political and social actors in climate mobility. By approaching climate migrations from a constructivist and inductive view, it has created an analytical tool that will surpass generalisations found in academic literature as well as international and domestic political deficiencies to understand the variations in adaptation strategies of communities facing slow-onset environmental degradation. This case study highlights the importance of examining climate migrations in their social, political, cultural and economic contexts, to facilitate the mobility of these populations and uphold their most fundamental human rights.

Keyphrases: climate migrations, Carteret islands, Kiribati, adaptation, climate change, state capacity, civil society, relocation
Le populisme et la démocratie

The rise of the populism in the world arouses the confusion as if populism is a threat to democracy or not. The current definition of the populism does not specify somewhere else its relation with the democracy. This master’s thesis thus tries to validate if populism is set against the democracy in which we live, that is the liberal democracy. We proceeded in two different studies. At first, we verified if the indicators of democracy of Freedom House and Reporters without borders deteriorate in countries ruled by populists. Our results indicate that the great majority of the cases involve no deterioration. They demonstrate however also that majority populist governments seem to have more negative impact on the democracy than those in coalition, no matter the rank occupied in this one. Then, our second study tries to verify if this low impact is simply due to the absence of democratic reform proposals in the programs of the populists. This analysis of contents reveals, on one hand, the absence of common denominator in the treatment reserved for democracy by the studied populists, and on the other hand, that the populist nature of their speech adapts itself over time. So, as no common denominator seems to allow to distinguish the populists on the democratic plan, our contribution to the literature is to defend the theory according to which the populism would be more a speech, a strategy of mobilization, rather than a vision of the world, a long-lasting ideology.

Keyphrases: Populism, Democracy, Ideology, Strategy, Representative democracy, Direct democracy
Caractérisation fonctionnelle de nouveaux gènes mitochondriaux chez les espèces à DUI : étude du gène f-orf chez la moule marine Mytilus edulis

In animal cells, mitochondria are organelles responsible for energy production. They carry their own genome, which is distinct from the nuclear genome but is normally passed on to progeny in a strictly maternal fashion. Interestingly, many species of bivalve mollusks instead pass on their mitochondrial genome through a process known as doubly uniparental inheritance, or DUI. This system implies that male and female individuals each possess their own unique mitochondrial transfer pathway and have a mitochondrial genome which differs greatly from its opposite-sex counterpart. Recently, new genes were discovered within male (m-orf) and female (f-orf) mitochondrial genomes of DUI bivalve species. However, these genes have no homologues in sequence databases, meaning the functions of these genes have not been clearly established. Because these genes demonstrate a high level of sexual dimorphism, they are suspected to be involved in processes pertaining to DUI function, persistence of gonochorism throughout generations or sex determination. Here we have attempted to characterize the protein encoded by the f-orf gene in the blue mussel Mytilus edulis by preparing an antibody against a 20 amino acid sequence motif in the predicted protein. The antibody reacted with a protein of 60 kDa on Western blots, instead of the expected 25 kDa, but a signal was found in all tissues as anticipated. The subcellular distribution of the antigen recognised by the antibody, as determined by immunohistochemistry, was found to be uniquely mitochondrial. Immunoprecipitation of the 60 kDa band, followed by LC-MS/MS sequencing of the band excised from an SDS gel, did not identify any peptides expected for the F-ORF. Although a complete functional analysis of the protein could not be realized, the experiments described here represent a coherent and complete experimental protocol for this purpose.

Keyphrases: bivalve, ORFans, f-orf, Mytilus edulis, Mitochondria
Réponse physiologique d’espèces ligneuses à un sol contaminé en PCP et ACC dans un contexte de phytoremédiation

Contaminated soils represent a worldwide environmental issue. Phytoremediation which is the use of plants to decontaminate soils is a promising technology. However, until now few native species were studied. This is why the objective of this research was to evaluate the potential of nine native tree and shrub species from northeastern America for the phytoremediation of mixed contaminated soil with pentachlorophenol (PCP 38 ± 22 mg/kg) and chromated copper arsenate (CCA; As: 360 ± 420 mg/kg, Cu: 195 ± 93 mg/kg, Cr 190 ± 24 mg/kg). The species were Acer saccharinum, Alnus crispa, Cornus stolonifera, Physocarpus opulifolius, Rhus typhina, Salix bebbiana, Salix eriocephala, Sambucus canadensis and Viburnum trilobum. Individuals were exposed to an arid technosol substrate (non-contaminated treatment) and their performance was compared with individuals exposed to the same substrate but contaminated with PCP and CCA in order to recreate an accidental spill (contaminated treatment). Survival, photosynthesis, maximum quantum yield of PSII (Fv/Fm), occurrence of root development, and uptake of As, Cu, and Cr in the stems were measured. The hypothesis stating that the species performance rank of the non-contaminated treatment would be reversed as compared to the contaminated treatment was tested. The results confirmed this hypothesis, indicating that the traits favoring productivity in a non-contaminated environment would become a disadvantage in a contaminated environment. Hence, the choice of a plant species for phytoremediation should reside on an intermediary level of performance observed in a non-contaminated environment in order for it to stay productive in a contaminated environment. This was the case for Salix bebbiana.

Keyphrases: PCP, ACC, Furanes, Dioxins, Furans, Phytoremediation, Native species, Mixed contamination, Co-contamination, CCA
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities of 31 durum wheat cultivars (Triticum turgidum var. durum) under field conditions in Eastern Canadian province of Quebec

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi can provide ecosystem services such as growth and nutrition enhancement, protection against pests and diseases, mitigation of abiotic stress, as well as stabilization of the soil. In the agriculture sector, symbiotic relationships between crops and AM fungi are being explored to help reduce agriculture’s ecological footprint and enhance its sustainability by decreasing demand for fertilisers, pesticides and other chemicals. However, information available to date indicates that wheat may sometimes show poor response to AM symbiosis (growth depressions and lower yields), and the relationship has in some cases been labeled parasitic. We tested the hypothesis that genetic variation among durum wheat cultivars (Triticum turgidum var. durum) might lead to shifts in fungal community structure. We tested 31 durum wheat cultivars released at different times in the history of durum wheat selection in Canada in a field experiment under phosphorus limiting conditions. Based on the 18S ribosomal subunit sequences of DNA extracted from roots, rhizosphere and soil, we found that AM community in durum wheat roots is dominated by Rhizophagus irregularis and R. intraradices. Meanwhile the community in the rhizosphere and soil have more Glomus spp., Claroideoglomus spp. or Rhizophagus spp. The mycorrhizal community associated with wheat roots is not significantly different between genotypes (p-value > 0.05). Mean colonization levels in the roots of the different cultivars varied between 57.8% (Arnautka) and 84.0% (AC Navigator). However, these differences were not statistically significant (p-value > 0.05). Despite that durum wheat roots could select a subset of taxa from the soil community to colonize their tissues, results suggest that all cultivars select similar communities. The genetic variation in durum wheat seems insufficient to allow the use of traditional plant breeding methods to produce genotypes associating with highly effective arbuscular mycorrhizal taxa.

Keyphrases: Agriculture, Microbiome, Triticum turgidum var. durum, Agriculture, Microbiome, Fungal community, Triticum turgidum var. durum, Wheat, Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, Mycorrhiza
Épigénétique mitochondriale chez des espèces avec DUI

DNA methylation is one of the most studied and consequently one of the best known epigenetic mechanisms. Researchers have shown that it can have important effects on the phenotype of eucaryotes. DNA methylation is particularly studied in vertebreates, in which i can effectively switch off genes. Methylation levels are generally lower among invertebrates, yet noteworthy in certain groups such as molluscs. Furthermore, several recent studies point to the presence of DNA methylation in the mitochondrial genome. It just so happens that some bivalve species carry two different mitchondrial genomes which could potentially play roles in regards to reproduction. This system is named DUI (doubly uniparental inheritance) and is exclusive to bivalves. Distribution and expression of these genomes seem to follow tissue-specific patterns. Methylation could thus be a key mechanism for regulating the mitochondrial genomes and ensure a good maintaining of DUI. For this reason, my objectives for this  project were to 1) assess the presence of methylation among the mitochondrial genomes of DUI species, and 2) determine whether the observed methylation patterns were tissue-specific, sex-specific or  genome-specific for instance.

Keyphrases: ADN mitochondrial, Double transmission uniparental (DUI), Bivalves, DNA methylation, Mitochondria, Mitochondrial DNA, Double Uniparental Inheritance (DUI), Epigenetics, Bivalves