Solidarités sociales et espaces du travail

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, together with industrialisation, a major change occurs: paid labour becomes a social act different from private daily household activity and it now takes place in dedicated collective spaces. It then spreads, becoming the nerve centre and the determining element of the social and spatial order. Factories, office buildings, working class then suburban housing estates, transport infrastructures shape the space that organises working lives. The Welfare state also unfolds, closely linked to paid labour that becomes the focal point of twentieth century solidarities, whether institutional, informal or political. But since the 1980’s global crisis, through the diversity of labour modes, we have witnessed a dual phenomenon: dissociation and despatialization of a labour that has become increasingly unsecure and dematerialised. During the recent health crisis, the development of independent work via collaborative platforms but also, indirectly enough, the boom in teleworking have illustrated this phenomenon in their own way. This move implying the dematerialisation of work, the disappearance of both its spaces and potentially its acquired wage rights thus more generally question current and future forms of social solidarity.

Keywords

• Solidarity
• Paid labour
• Space
• History