Omnipresent in the public debate, the concept of downgrading certainly refers to the feeling of fear expressed individually, but also to a social and statistical reality shared by the members of different cohorts born since the turning point of the 1960s.
Published in the fall of 2006, the work of Louis Chauvel, Average derivative classese, highlighted the fact that the social question was no longer on the outskirts, in the marginalization of a disaffiliated subclass, but at the very heart of the company and that it concerns part of the average salaried classes. The destabilization of these categories, formerly considered to be sheltered from the difficulties encountered by the popular classes, is illustrated by multiple indices such as the stagnation of intermediate income, the weakening of wage earners, the school downgrading of young graduates and the processes of descending social mobility. Taken from a sociology thesis supported in 2007, Camille Peigny’s work deeply analyzes one of these clues: social downgrading between generations. For individuals, it is a question of occupying a lower social status than that of their parents – the status being measured by the professional category. Omnipresent in the public debate, the notion of downgrading certainly refers to the feeling of a fear expressed individually, but also – and it is the central object of the book – to a social and statistical reality shared by the members of different cohorts born since the 1960s. But the investigation does not stop there. Chapter 2 looks at the report of individuals concerned by a descending social mobility in their trajectory. Chapter 3 is finally interested in the political consequences of the downgrading insofar as this phenomenon structures a certain number of attitudes and representations.
Downgrading as a social phenomenon
In a first chapter, Peigny briefly retraces what one might call a “ turnaround ». At the period of the Thirty Glorious Years, during which different birth cohorts (especially those born between 1944 and 1948) experienced an advantageous collective destiny, succeeded a post-industrial society where several fundamental ruptures come, in a different economic context, transform the organization of French society. Sociological works therefore change in tone. After the theory of the mediumnation of society, surveys on social inequalities and the consequences of economic transformations appear. The introduction of the concept of generation in quantitative sociology then reveals very different social situations between, for example, the thirties of 1968 and the thirties of 1998.
Following this work, Peigny highlights the general degradation of social mobility prospects for individuals born at the turn of the 1960s. The survey method is classic: only the profession of individuals is taken into account to measure social mobility. This is compared to the father’s profession, and sometimes the mother. Overall, ascending social trajectories are less and less frequent. Among the individuals “ mobile “, The share of downgrades increases. In terms of social mobility, women are more disadvantaged than men: in 2003 for example, among children of senior executives aged 30 to 45, 48 % of men reproduce their father’s position against 33 % of women (p. 36). Faced with these results, the explanation that delays at the start of their career would announce later ascents is not worth. On the contrary, recent works show that the start of a career is essential in a professional trajectory given the scarcity of promotions for employees born after the 1950s. For individuals of modest environment (worker, employee), the prospects for ascending social mobility are increasingly low. In other words, the fate of the children of the popular environment, measured at the age of forty, deteriorated: ascent cases were more numerous in the 1980s than in the 2000s. For the higher and medium categories, the descending trajectories increased sharply. The proportion of foreman employed and workers among the sons of senior executives goes from 14 % for generations born in 1944-1948 to almost 25 % for those in the early 1960s. For girls of senior executives, this share is 22 % for those born between 1944 and 1948 and 34 % for cohorts 1964-1968. Peigny underlines one of the main results of the survey: “ In France in the 2000s and at the age of forty, one in four in -senior managers and one in three daughters are used or exercises workers’ jobs (P. 44-45).
By scanning the levels of education and the occupied profession, Camille Peigny shows that the diploma remains the strongest rampart in the face of the risk of downgrading. But more specifically, within the higher categories, it is mainly children graduated from graduate parents who remain sheltered from downgrading: “ The hereditary transmission of places would have been replaced by the tendency to the hereditary transmission of a school capital (P. 55). It is especially from the third university cycle that the diploma protects from the downgrading. For other individuals who have not reached this level, the experience of double downgrading, social and school, is observable. Still on the analysis of the evolution of education levels, two other results of the survey shed light on the changes in the report of French society at the school. If a democratization “ quantitative »Having occurred given school policies, the weight of the diploma in the acquisition of social status tends to decrease over the generations. In reverse of the Meritocratic Republican Ideal carried by the School, it is the characteristics of the ancestry that come more playing a role in the social position affected. Even though generations born since the 1960s are significantly more qualified than their elders, the degradation of the prospects for social stability and mobility forces many individuals to experience the downgrading.
Live social downgrade
Based exclusively on a material of interviews carried out with individuals faced with downward social mobility, the second chapter presents two types of experience in social downgrading. After a reminder of the literature devoted to the effects of social mobility on mental health and the balance of individuals, Camille Peigny underlines the difficulties of collecting the subjective experience of the downgrades, which shows how the individualization of responsibilities is a deep characteristic of modern societies. The first type of experience brings out a generational identity based on a strong feeling of belonging to a stratum “ sacrificed Compared to that of parents. A strong feeling of injustice is expressed by these forties insofar as, after a schooling to sometimes high levels of the university system, the diploma does not allow access to the social position of parents affected by other ways than the school. A surveyed, aged thirty-nine years and whose father is an executive of the public service, testifies: “ I find myself making a hostess … Even if, Bac + 2 to answer the phone, it’s crazy when you think about it … my father, with the BEPChe heads a team ! After the critical attitude, the second type of experience features favored environments, having experienced a rather unstable schooling and whose parents are graduate executives. Unexpected, the downgrading is this time experienced in the register of individual failure. The critical behavior of the first type of experience replaces an attitude of withdrawal.
The effects of downgrading on discourse and political attitudes
The question of the political consequences of the downgrading on political attitudes is dealt with in the third and last chapter through the exploitation of surveys (three waves between the months of April and June 2002). The challenge is to analyze recent political events in the light of the increase in descending social trajectories. Two areas of investigation are retained: one is linked to questions of ethnocentrism and authoritarianism, the other concerns economic and social issues. The political discourse of the Dechinerated insists on the necessary return to traditional values and is also based on the expression of a racism stressing the massive presence of immigrants, the latter being seen as those responsible for the social and economic difficulties of France in the 2000s. On economic and social issues, the rejection of liberalism is unambiguous among descending mobiles. While being attached to the protection and regulation guaranteed by the State, they are less concerned with the need to fight for the reduction of inequalities (p. 131). A need for protection is then combined with a concern for distinction vis-à-vis more modest populations. If the unemployed is seen as a victim of globalization, he is also perceived as a “ assisted ». The emphasis is placed on individual courage and will (p. 140).
Does this specific discourse illustrate in a particular partisan vote ? The answer to this question is complex. The data used date from 2002, because those of 2007 have the unfortunate defect of not containing information on the profession of parents of those questioned. Pronouncing less significantly in favor of the left, the downgrades are more numerous than the “ Immobile frames “, THE “ Ascending mobiles “And the” Immobiles employees and workers »To prefer the extreme right (FN Or Mnr). If the rate is low (9.5 %), the lepenist and megrétist movements, however, attract more individuals confronted with a descending social trajectory than immobile people and ascending mobiles. The phenomenon is in no way massive and mechanical, but as Peigny points out: “ Their political landscape constitutes a unique mosaic, built of original recompositions, which in terms of partisan behavior seems to result in a sensitivity relating to the sirens of the extreme right (P. 152). If the analysis presented in this chapter appears stimulating, one can however issue a regret: nothing is said on the abstention of declared individuals.
Because it develops both a statistical portrait of the downgrading and an analysis of its social, ideological and political consequences, Camille Peigny’s work makes a rich contribution to the study of social stratification. With such content, the work could have included a final reflection on the recomposition of social categories in contemporary France. Faced with the multiplication of downgrading situations, it is indeed to the conditions of appearance of new strata that this work devotes: those bringing together individuals whose socioeconomic position does not assimilate them to the middle classes, and whose school and cultural resources clearly separate them from the working classes.