Employability and Industrial Mutations

Introduction to Part 1

From injunction to shared responsibility: the three analytical contributions that open this collection converge in denouncing one-sided or even truncated versions of employability, which shift the burden of adaptation to work or to the labor market onto the individual, and in identifying and promoting emancipatory versions that rebalance responsibilities between public policies, individuals and companies. They come from three different disciplines, economics, sociology and management, and as a result, they each highlight different dimensions and issues. Economics is concerned with the unemployed and public policy actions aimed at getting them back to work. Bernard Gazier’s contribution (Chapter 1) shows that these policies have long been subject to the test of reality, and also to political pressure to “activate“ the unemployed. Through the identification of seven operational versions of employability, several of which have been abandoned or reformed, he highlights the necessarily interactive dimension of the concept. Sociology is interested in individuals and groups, and in the constraints that affect them as well as the room for maneuver that is open to them. Bénédicte Zimmermann’s contribution (Chapter 3) focuses on employees in employment and shows that beyond the adaptation of skills, what is at stake is the freedom of individuals and their capacity to act. She adds the processual dimension to the interaction emancipatory employability, when practiced, ...