By studying the Reunionese company, where the massive recourse to national solidarity transforms without destroying them private solidarity, Nicolas Roinsard is led to put into perspective the concept of disaffiliation, designed by Robert Castel to analyze the social question in metropolitan France. Perhaps excessive relativization.
The work of Nicolas Roinsard comes from a thesis. His title, A sociology of reaffiliations. The social effects of Rmi in Reunionimplicitly indicates the concept to which the author proposes to reflect by studying the impact of Rmi on social integration in Reunionese society. This is disaffiliation, concept forged by Robert Castel to account for the procedural and multidimensional nature of “ exclusion “Characteristic of” new social question In France in the 1980s and 1990s. Putting this concept into perspective constitutes, for Nicolas Roinsard, an essential prerequisite for understanding how the company Reunion has integrated the Rmi From its own logic. The notion of “ integrated poverty It turns out, according to him, is much more relevant to think of the forms of life and survival that are deployed in the island, on the margins of wage earners.
This critical review is made from a singular research procedure. This consists in identifying the impact, in a particular society, of the application of a measure-the Rmi – Designed for a deeply different society. From ethnographic surveys carried out for several years, Nicolas RoSSard shows how the social system whose island inherited managed to integrate the exogenous shock that originally constituted the introduction of Rmi. Reunion is indeed distinguished in its regulation of mass unemployment by the reproduction of a “ integrated poverty »In concentric circles of close protection, within which the Rmi integrated while influencing them.
The rereading of the central concept of Robert Castel, which is found in the introduction, constitutes an essential contribution for the study of poverty. The author first recalls that this concept was developed to think of a “ Double economic and relational vulnerability »Of which Rmi is ultimately only the “ receptacle ». The approach in terms of disaffiliation is greeted in several respects, in particular for the “ Clarification of a collective process of disqualification and marginalization of long -term unemployed (P. 16).
However, the object of Nicolas Roinsard being to study “ the validity of such a sociology passed the framework of France “(P. 16), he made a decentering of the approach of poverty both by an extension in space and a reassessment of the historical anchoring of the wage company. On this last point, the author begins by indicating the risks that there is to refer to the standard of wage integration characteristic of the Thirty Glorious Years while in mainland France, this model is “ Much more a parenthesis in history (…) than a social and economic model strongly anchored and today weakened. (P. 17)
Comparison with other salary companies also invites you to question the scope of the concept of disaffiliation. If the correlation between unemployment of individuals and relational isolation is valid in mainland France, it seems on the contrary that in the Mediterranean countries (Italy, Portugal, Spain) and to a lesser extent in the countries of Protestant tradition (like the Netherlands and the United Kingdom), it is the individuals who occupy a stable job which know the greatest probability of living a family relational isolation. However, the Latin countries and the Creole company of Reunion share many common features which, according to Nicolas Roinsard, “ make this idea of disaffiliation not very operational. It is that the phenomenon of integrated poverty constitutes, according to him, a real alternative to wage integration ; There are several economic circuits and private solidarity intended for the social protection of families and inter-connience groups.
These different criticisms logically lead to the idea that “ It is first of all at the cost of relativization of integration by salaried work that we are led to put the concept of disaffiliation into perspective. “(P. 20) This tight introductory rereading is also strategic insofar as the criticisms formulated announce the main dimensions of the social integration of the” integrated company From Reunion, whose sociology is proposed in the book. Thus, the first chapter shows that in a given social context, social integration is the product of the interlocking of different types of social belonging. In the case of the meeting, the family group, the residential group and the ethno-religious group are vectors of reciprocal solidarity obligations solidly integrated into the values systems that define the groups.
The second chapter indicates that this multi-apartment, which leaves the largest part to private solidarity to regulate relatively generalized poverty, has been constructed historically and culturally within the framework of a plantation system-the author of which delivers a description as useful as it is precise. The status and social function of work, in fact, are marked by the inheritance of the planting economy which dominated the island for several centuries. This one, long built on slavery, then resorted to the “ committed Recruited to Asia and Africa under conditions which submitted them, in fact, to forced work. Was thus built “ a negative and traumatic image of work »(P. 67) which partly allows us to understand that the Reunionese company does not refer to the integration model through salaried work.
It is in this context that the rightly named “ revolution Rmi In the island. The system has indeed experienced immediate development which has never denied itself. Thus, at the end of 2004, the share of people covered by this service in the local population was 26%. And the author of seeking to “ understand the nature and extent of the effects produced by this service with its beneficiaries By the way of the ethnographic approach. This took place in two emblematic types of district of the two contrasting forms of Contemporary Reunion Housing (traditional district of horizontal housing in sheets or concrete blocks and vertical district type Hlm) and covering the diversity of social forms of the island: peasant society ; planting company ; fishermen’s micro-society.
The massive use of national solidarity transforms without destroying them private solidarity. Reunion company has made an appropriation of the system Rmi to the point that it has become “ The cement of a new social bond in Reunionese society by compensating for the weakness of labor income and by consolidating the exercise of family and friendly solidarity. »(P. 25) Thus, the new affiliations to the welfare state and their relays on the territory (town halls and associations in particular) driven by the Rmi And insertion led to an adjustment of pre -existing solidarity while employee work is less than ever perceived as a vector of social integration. This result is of course paradoxical if one thinks that the promoters of the system had on the contrary the ambition to reconcile reintegration and work.
One can however wonder if the author questions the price of this absorption of exogenous shock that represented the introduction of the Rmi by the Reunionese company. His laudable concern to avoid Western ethnocentrism may lead him to minimize the deleterious effects, especially in terms of image-and internalization of a negative image-of integration into the “ dependence ». If, as the author affirms in conclusion, there is “ dependence and dependence “And if” the impact of Rmi In Reunion can be interpreted as an essential factor in relative empowerment of limited individuals and social groups, where in mainland France would tend to see only a return of dependence (P. 286), the meeting is nonetheless marked by a stigma due to the proportions that the “ transfers That she has partially become. One can wonder about the price that the inhabitants of the island pay in symbolic terms in return for the possibility of choosing the assistance and doing it rather than integration into disqualified wage earners. If the identity of the overseas territories was only defined by its own logic and if its modes of integration and solidarity could reproduce in a strictly endogenous way, there would undoubtedly not be matter to criticize the “ Sociology of the integrated company Which is offered to us. We can however doubt the capacity of this territory to define itself without reference to the metropolis.
Finally, the author clearly shows that if he has compensated for the weakness of labor income and reinforced the exercise of family and friendly solidarity, the Rmi also had the effect of strengthening the “ logic of domination and clientelism »(P.80) Exerted by the notables of the island: local elected officials, administrative managers, even associations managing integration systems. This point evokes a similarity with the metropolitan context whose study could have been deepened. Indeed, in the two contexts, the integration devices by economic activity compensate for a distance from the labor market more than they encourage integration or professional reintegration. And in Reunion as in mainland France, the choice of certain individuals to settle for a solidarity income is more explained by the low quality of the jobs offered than by the refusal to work. Is thus proposed an ultimate lesson, inseparably sociological and political, of this decentering of wage integration by the highlighting of Creole reaffiliations : It is necessary to take into account work in its materiality, and not only the status of employment, to understand the individual strategies to which assistance offers support.