L’encodage de la force de travail : quand des logiciels orientent les chômeurs en Allemagne et en France

Abstract

Users of German and French public employment services (Bundesagentur fuer Arbeit and Pôle d’Emploi, respectively) generally engage in de-materialised job searches where they log onto institutional search engines, enter their job preferences and generate lists ordered by decreasing locational proximity. It remains that such tools are not neutral, however, insofar as their search filters will limit which opportunities can be accessed or else are incompatible, for instance, in terms of applicants’ desired schedules and wages. Using an ethnographic approach, the study shows that whereas positions listed by French SDR software are characterised by irregular working patterns and schedules, German VerBis software comes up with low-wage and/or part-time work.

Keywords

• Unemployment
• exploitation
• labour market
• digitisation
• employment policies
• working times