“Until the end. Aging and resisting in the world of work”, by Nicolas Renahy, La Découverte, “L’envers des faits”, 208 p., €21, digital €15.
Almost everything has been written about retirees, those supposed enjoyers of free time. However, one fact is often overlooked: three out of ten are former workers. Because not long ago France was a highly industrialized country. The factories closed, the proletarians stayed. It is their lives that interest Nicolas Renahy in his new essay, until the endby proposing a sociology of working class old age.
But not anywhere or with anyone. It is to Sochaux, in the Montbéliard region (Doubs), in the retired section of the CGT-Peugeot-Sochaux, where the sociologist takes us. His research (spread between 2019 and 2023) follows that of Michel Pialoux, carried out thirty years ago, some of whose interviews were published in The misery of the worlddirected by Pierre Bourdieu (Seuil, 1993). Like his predecessor, Nicolas Renahy stays with Christian, a former skilled worker (OS), amateur sociologist, who integrates him into his network of activist friends.
The group of former colleagues that the author introduces us to experienced the height of unionism, that of the strike pickets of 1968, when the 204 stopped leaving the factory and the CRS began shooting at the workers, killing two and wounding another. seven. very soon oriented towards learning, but who rubbed shoulders with students, intellectuals, Spanish resistance fighters, Trotskyist and Maoist activists.
In Sochaux, “the convergences between the work world and the intellectual world also took another completely unique form: that of an experimental social cinema”. Christian and his wife, helped by technicians and filmmakers, made fourteen films to show “working conditions from within”. This particular context resulted in the creation of a counter-elite composed of OS. “We wanted to learn (…). “It is the student life we never had.”says Christian.
The reasons to fight
Added to this frustration is often a childhood marked by injustice: that of great poverty, that of “tyrannical father”violence… “These first experiences (…) has been (…) powerful reasons for militant commitment »explains the author. Massive deindustrialization will do the rest. Starting in the 1980s, the reasons for fighting multiplied: harsher working conditions, increased work rates, aging operating systems.
You have 45.24% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
