Articles and publications Last update : Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Domicile-travail : Les salariés à bout de souffle Dir. Eric Le Breton. Editions Les carnets de l’info Parution en mai

Flexible city, flexible work: how can they be combined?

Eric Le Breton, sociologist, lecturer, University Rennes II; scientific director of the City on the Move Institute’s “Day-to-day Employee Mobility” project

With the transformation of the corporate and urban world, we are seeing the emergence of a new set of work-related challenges. These operate on the periphery of the world of work, in spheres such as commuting, residential mobility, childcare and the organisation of day-to-day life. We will look at these new challenges from several angles: the regional perspective of employment markets, the transformation of the social contract between employer and employee, the emergence of a new day-to-day service economy.

Changer de travail, changer de trajet : la difficile mobilité des intérimaires (french version)
Yves Jouffe, sociologist, University Paris Est, National Civil Engineering School, City, Mobility Transportation Laboratory

Contract workers in the catering sector based in Paris’s outer suburbs have to travel to unfamiliar locations all over the region. They sometimes achieve this with no car and with limited ability to read and speak French. These difficult travelling conditions are familiar to the temporary employment agencies, who have set up support procedures to help people both before and during journeys. Nevertheless, their analysis primarily stresses motivation to explain differences in flexibility. In fact, contract workers all find ways to deal with their precarious conditions, through different approaches. Their day-to-day mobility is thus the outcome of tactical choices between options, based on long-term strategies.

Day-to-day mobility: can workers go even faster, and even further? (French version)
Sandrine Wenglenski, lecturer in sociology and urban planning, University ParisEst – Marne la Vallée, City, Mobility, Transportation Laboratory

In recent years, day-to-day mobility has become an important component in adaptation to change in what is now a primarily urban economy. Within towns and cities, improvements in transport have enabled workers to reconcile their professional and residential needs, and allowed companies to rely on this capacity for movement to free themselves from the traditional demands of location. But Day-to-day mobility isn’t infinitely extendable?

‘Companies, territories and the day-to-day life of employees: towards new compromises’, in Sociétal, No.56, 2nd quarter 2007, pp. 19-28

‘Peri-working. Outlines for the definition of a problem’

Communication to the Conference of the Regional Agency for the Analysis of Working Conditions, Ile de France, from Wednesday May, 23, 2007, at La Défense