Employability and Industrial Mutations

4The “Unemployable”: Different Figures, Between Societal Construction and Unconscious Meanings

This chapter will take us “to the door” of the company, in both senses of the term: on the side of those who cannot enter it, or who are subsequently excluded. It is based on my experience as a psychologist-psychoanalyst: previously in various integration schemes (from the 1990s to 2018), currently as a freelance professional, external consultant to several associations or firms that support people in integration or suffering from work-related problems.

In the field of this experience, in a team or network, employability has a concrete and practical meaning: it is a question of knowing whether a person has a chance of finding or regaining a job, as he or she presents himself or herself. And if not, does it seem possible to assist him/her to get closer to it? By what means? These questions have enabled the practitioner to identify over time several recurring patterns of difficulty, which are most often shared with other professionals in the field. Strangely enough, some of these figures do not seem to be taken into account, or very poorly, by the integration mechanisms, and seem to constitute a challenge for the companies’ attempts at inclusion. Hence my motivation to look further into this subject as a researcher, hoping to contribute to a rapprochement of points of view and to a better overall effectiveness.

Here, I will use an action-research approach, using observation based on ...