Introduction
Changes in the production model , digitalisation processes and economic crisis have exacerbated a breakdown in the terms and assumptions that previously defined and shaped the notion of employment . Given that employment has always been the pivotal issue when it comes to examining the social question in modern Western societies, analysing the changes undergone by this signifier of work makes it possible to address the transformations that have characterised our self-conception as a society. This reformulation of the notion of employment has gone hand in hand with an intensification of the deconstruction of employment as a central category for theorising, problematising and regulating the phenomenon of work (as a field that bears meaning, Donzelot 1984, and as a territory of government, Rose 1996), as well as with a new understanding of the category of âworkerâ. Such categories of thought and political action have allowed us to discussâand to problematiseâvulnerability in employment in terms of unfairness, inequality and inadequate protection. An analysis of the transformation of the âgrammar of the common goodâ opens up possibilities for conceptualising the market as an entity to be governed and regulated (Rose 1996). The crisis of the category of âemployment â represents a challenge to the main tools (social rights, social protection , workersâ organisations , etc.) that have been established in recent history in European societies to deal with social vulnerability . Therefore, the transformation in the meaning of social conceptsâas tools for narrating social experienceâis not only the result but also the main driver of mutations in the social and production paradigm.
Social sciences currently encounter major obstacles in identifying the main threads of this research topic, namely the changing sense, profile and meaning of work . Deep and far-reaching changes in the organisation of the economy, fostered essentially by the process of its digitalisation and precarisation at work , are leading to a recasting of the category predominantly used for the analysis and regulation of labour in Western societies, namely wage employment (OECD 2016; Degryse 2016). The aim of this collective reflection is to analyse, by means of an interdisciplinary approach, the numerous implications of these shifts in conceptual boundaries and in the semantic contours of the notion of employment. It is a question of analysing new semantic fields and territories that have become available for theorising, understanding and regulating employment; of scrutinising the rules governing the statements that, in a given society, organise what it is sayable and thinkable (Angenot 2010, 21) when speaking of employment. It should not be forgotten that social (and statistical) categories âemployment, unemployment , self-employment , inactivity âare, after all, invented and historically contingent institutions (Piore 1987).
The social grammar corresponding to the employment societyâthe âcommon senseâ represented by wage employment and its regulationâensured that the category of wage employment pertained to both representation and action (Demazière, in this volume). This conceptual hegemony promotes technologies to govern employment: insurance (shift from individual lack to social risk, Rosanvallon 1995), collective bargaining (the recognition of conflict of interests as the constitutive backbone of the wage relationship ) and labour law (shift from morale to justice). The wage condition becomes the metonymic condition of citizenship (centrality of work ). This semantic construction allows European citizens to think of employment from a political angle: recognition of the heteronomy of labour; visualisation of market flaws; construction of asymmetry and intrinsic inequality regarding the wage condition.
However, we are currently witnessing a substantial deconstruction of employment as a political issue. This process is intensified by (but is also the product of) important changes in the values and political identity promoted by the European Social Model (ESM) (the key effort by EU institutions to frame social cohesion), as a political project to deal with current socio-economic challenges (from problematising worker vulnerability to vulnerability of the market) (Jepsen and Serrano-Pascual 2011). These developments, together with the economic crisis and significant shifts in the production model , are intensifying major transformations in the notion of employment and the relationship between employment , citizenship and social cohesion.
A number of authors have analysed changes currently affecting the world of labour, with a focus on various aspects of its reconfiguration: digitalisation of the economy and increasingly heterogeneous modes of performing labour activities (Valenduc and Vendramin 2016); intensification of globalisation of the economy and political reconfiguration in the wake of economic crisis (Huws 2001, 2014); the weakening of labour protection and the increasingly precarious terms of employment and working conditions to which labour forces are subject (Prieto 2014), leading to the rise of a new social class variously termed the âprecariat â (Standing 2011) or âcybertariat â (Huws 2001; Dyer-Witheford 2015); new models of management organisation and control of work forces (âthe entreployee â, Pongratz and Voss 2003); the exploration of new forms of labour performance and regulation (Sundararajan 2016; Gold 2004; Schol 2013), etc. In general, these studies have analysed the impact of these wide-ranging transformations in terms of the spread of non-standard forms of work and employment status (OECD 2016) or of a radical reshaping of the nature of work (European Commission 2016; Degryse 2016). Relatively few studies, meanwhile, have examined the transformations accruing in terms of a reformulation of cultural conceptions attaching to wage earning (e.g. full-time jobs, open-ended contracts, regulated employment ) and of the deconstruction of the category termed âemployment â.
Studies of shifts in the subjective experience of work and of the underlying causes of such changes tend to belong to one of two branches of literature, depending on the specific analytical tradition within which they have been produced. In the English-speaking world, studies tend to focus on an analysis of transformations in industrial relations and in ways of understanding and organising work that have come about as a result of radical changes in modes of production (this approach is referred to by different names: the âsharing economy â, the âgig economyâ, digitalisation of the economy, the â4.0 economyâ, etc.). The French-speaking tradition, on the other hand, inspired by the work of Desrosières, Bourdieu and Foucault, analyses, predominantly, the reformulation of the categories used for studying and investigating social phenomena. Products of this tradition are the classic studies of the genealogy and social âinventionâ of the categories of unemployment and âla question socialeâ by several French academics, such as MĂŠda, Castel, Salais, Topalov and Donzelot, among others. An approach aimed at encouraging a merging of these two analytical trends could, at the same time, provide the opportunity for a transcultural, interdisciplinary analysis of how these radical economic, political and ideological changes are producing a reformulation of the conventional wisdom concerning the whole category of waged employment (aspects previously taken for granted as to the meaning of work and of being âa workerâ), as well as other closely associated categories such as unemployment, self-employment or inactivity . The chapters of this book explore different dimensions of the current transformation of the concept of work from a perspective that derives principally from a study of the language and categories used to speak of employment . This approach is aimed mainly at studying a conceptual reformulationâconstituting a deconstruction of the category of employment âfrom an interdisciplinary and transcultural standpoint; indeed, the contributors include mainly sociologists (Bonvin, Demazière, Lallement, Maruani, PĂŠrez de GuzmĂĄn, Prieto, Riesco, Valenduc), economists (Alonso, Drahokoupil, Fabo, Jepsen and SĂĄnchez), lawyers (Baylos), social psychologists (Serrano-Pascual) and statisticians (Meron), as well as practitioners (de Heusch), from Spain , France , Belgium and Switzerland. 1 On the basis of an analytical focus on the rather hazy and imprecise nature of the concept of employment and the impending dismantling of the hitherto prevailing semantic frontiers that defined the area of work, this book sets out to provide tools for analysing associated and simultaneous shifts in the conceptual boundaries affecting the category of âworkerâ. To this end, an analysis has been conducted of changes in the way work can be, and is, named, and of the new categories and semantic areas pertaining to âworkersâ, the purpose of the exercise being to identify new technologies of social subjection and subordination.
Enunciation and Denunciation: Emergence of the Category of Employment as a Condition of Its Regulation
This objective will be approached through an analytical process directed essentially towards studying the processes of change and development of employment as a category of thought. This draws its inspiration largely from a rhetorical perspective analysing the performative capacity of words, and interpreting semantic changes as political transformations (which they both promote and result from). It is therefore aimed particularly at identifying the âword struggles â taking place in the territory of social regulation and their repercussions on the transformation of the social question.
According to this viewpoint, inspired by the linguistic turn that has been applied in the social sciences since the 1970s, the action of naming is treated as an activity that organises, classifies and offers a perspective and a judgement on reality. We do not relate to or perceive real things in the singular, but integrate and classify them in a category, and, consequently, these things will be perceived only as part of a group (Lindesmith, Strauss and Denzin 2006). As a number of authors contributing to this book explore (see, in particular, the chapters by Demazière, Lallement, Maruani and Meron, and Prieto and PÊrez de Guzmån), the criteria we use to classify real things (in the case that concerns us here, employment, unemployment or inactivity ) are the product of socially and politically constructed cultural conventions through which a society thinks and reflects.
This process of categorisation and classification that characterises language allows us to share meanings and maintain reciprocal perspectives on the objects we encounter, which is a necessary condition for social interaction (Schutz 1999). Depending on the classification criterion, we are faced with different perspectives of perception (Lindesmith et al. 2006) and political evaluation...