Based on an ethnographic approach, a collective work studies the changes undergone by young people from working-class backgrounds: insecurity, a feeling of dereliction and the hope of individual promotion are associated with an ethnicized vision of social relations.
I can’t exist here anymore
I can’t live there anymore
I’m no longer of any use — me
There is nothing more to do
These are the words with which Bernard Lavilliers, himself a former apprentice metallurgist, described in his song Golden hands (2001) a former worker in front of his closed factory. Indeed, what remains for the working world when the place of its suffering, but also of its identity, disappears?
This is the brutal question that the interdisciplinary work edited by Stéphane Beaud and Gérard Mauger addresses. As the two authors point out (p. 7), it is based on a paradox in French social sciences. On the one hand, there appears to be a renewed interest, particularly in sociology, in the world of work. On the other hand, the very notion of the “working world”, a group with a certain coherence, particularly symbolic, is gradually being evacuated by the plural of “working classes”.
Both authors focus on the youngest layers of this working world in crisis. This is no coincidence: the changes in French capitalism have created a gaping rupture between the workers who experienced the Fordist compromise of the post-war years and their children and grandchildren who have undergone incessant economic transformations.
The book takes the gamble of relying on an ethnographic approach. Of the 11 chapters in the book, 9 are the result of field surveys — from the suburbs to the rural world, from the Lorraine mining basin to Marseille, from the “Petits Blancs” to ethnic minorities — conducted as part of seminars of theEHESS or of theENS.
A dotted life
Something broke with the crisis of industrial capitalism. The case of Hassan, an “old young man” (pp. 21-33), is a striking example. Vincent Burckel, author of this analysis, shows here all the interest, but also the strength of the biographical narrative. Hassan lives in Hagoncourt, a small mining town whose industrial activity disappeared between 1966 and 1993. Born in 1964, he finds himself stuck between two generations from which he is excluded, like his age group.
On the one hand, he was too young to experience the long-term careers of the elders, as a miner or factory worker. On the other hand, he is too old to share the codes and practices of the “gangs”. Not working-class enough for the former (precariousness, unemployment, instability), he is too much so for the latter (work culture, respectful and slow language, refusal of pre-delinquent or delinquent behavior). Hassan tragically symbolizes this failed handover, from the 1980s to the 1990s, between the generations of the working classes.
The dotted life that is his underlines the feeling of dereliction that affects some young men from the working classes. Olivier Coquard uses a lapidary formula from one of the people interviewed to summarize it: “No diploma, no job, no girl” (pp. 51-61). One of the young people the author follows, Steve, continues to behave as an adult, an adolescent, “thug”, which closes the doors to marital and professional integration for him.
We find the same observation in Thomas Beaubreuil (p. 63-81) about the “young people of the hall”. Perceiving three ages in the street, he distinguishes the youngest (from 17 years old), the big brothers and the “pillars” of the street (in their twenties) and the “tox”, drug addicts particularly disqualified by the two previous groups from which they nevertheless come.
Stand out from the losers
This disqualification between strata of the lumpenproletariat shows, to the point of absurdity, how the concern for “distinction” can segment the same group, here on the basis of age. This opposition to behaviors perceived as anomic can, however, link the different generations of the working classes; as in the Thai boxing gym in Blancy, studied by Karim Oualhaci (pp. 83-96). This gym, which promotes both a competitive and leisure sport, constitutes a place of rigorous discipline for a more stable fraction of the working classes. The gym combines physical strength, which inspires respect, and strict rules that young adults reinvest in a more successful academic and professional trajectory than the neighborhood average.
However, the paths to social advancement are ambivalent. This is what Sophie Orange shows with regard to young graduates from BTS of working-class origin, who remained close to their high school in Bressuire (p. 113-124). In a relationship early on, assigned to a gendered role (dependent on the husband “who works”), constrained by a limited employment pool, they nevertheless acquired codes (sport, cultural or artistic activity) and a certain intellectual assurance which distinguish them from their parents, in particular their mothers.
Similarly, the hope of individual promotion of young people from a workshop RATPstudied by Martin Thibaud (p. 143-153), crystallizes the changes in the working world. The older generations, marked by the identity of the group united against management, are symmetrically opposed by more qualified young people, rejecting the working-class identity and playing on its cultural proximity to management. Managerial hierarchy and young employees mutually try to exploit this fault in the workshop, to promote personal promotion strategies.
This example of the RATP leads to the questioning of the lack of relationship between the workers’ movement and young people from the working classes. Taking the example of the CGT Faced with young people in precarious situations in large-scale distribution and fast food in Marseille (p. 127-141), Charles Berthonneau notes the ambiguity of these interactions: union activists are both references, through their combativeness, and defenders of “work well done”, sometimes in conflict with young people whose professional seriousness may leave something to be desired.
Conversely, the two studies on the forms of activism (Lorenzo Barrault and Clementine Berjeaud on vocational high schools, pp. 157-167; Samuel Bouron and Pierig Humeau on punks and identity activists, pp. 169-181) note that the supposed depoliticization of young people from working-class backgrounds must be qualified. First of all, the right-left categories survive, but they are now interpreted in an ethnic or racial manner (the “racists” against the “minorities”). Then, social positioning (housing or emergency housing, precarious parents or not, social and academic integration or educational failure and poverty) plays a major role in political interest and orientation. Thus, punks who have broken away from their families and professional high school students from very precarious backgrounds are opposed by a student close to the extreme right and socially more privileged identitarians, who, ultimately, perpetuate a very proletarian cult of work, seriousness and loyalty to one’s group.
A partial social reproduction
Three articles that are not directly ethnographic (Gérard Mauger on working-class culture, Ugo Palheta on young women from the working classes who are graduates, Florence Weber in the conclusion) allow for a more global and welcome analysis. They open up as many avenues that run through the field surveys.
The first lies in the paradox of “diplomacy” and the injunction to mobility (social, economic, academic) in which the working classes are required to participate. Thus, young girls from working classes who succeed at school, according to the implacable analysis of Ugo Palheta, come up against the doubly reinforced ceiling of gender and social background.
The second point concerns the partial social reproduction at work. If part of the working class habitus has disappeared, certain traits have nevertheless continued to exist, now seen as deviances, since they are deprived of their previous meaning. Thus physical strength, formerly sought after in the factory, is today, in a situation of idleness, a source of pre-delinquent or delinquent behavior.
Third track, probably the most disturbing of the book: the partial decomposition of what was the working world results in an intense ethnicization at work within the working classes, opposing the “Whites” and the others, as much on language, religion, positioning, as sociability. If the future may seem blocked for the children of deindustrialization, their social horizon is more and more fragmented.