Work is central to the organisation of our societies. Studying and understanding its various dimensions and transformations helps us to better understand the key issues at stake in social work and occupational therapy, and to inform approaches to intervention from the perspective of social and occupational justice.
Work takes many forms, depending on whether it is paid or unpaid, stable or precarious, salaried or self-employed, productive or reproductive, and whether or not it contributes to social integration.
These different worlds of work need to be considered both in terms of the actors involved, and in the light of the systemic transformations shaping their material conditions, as well as the different forms of solidarity and discrimination that emerge between them and within institutions.
By systemic transformations, we mean economic and social changes such as :
- digitisation,
- globalisation,
- ecological transition,
- individualisation,
- atypical contracts,
- etc. ;
These transformations have very real repercussions on working conditions, health, and social and professional integration; repercussions that need to be documented and understood, both for professionals and for the general public.
Work is generally framed by institutional arrangements that aim to regulate, at least in part, its practice, its absence and its consequences. These include the social protection system, legal frameworks and public policies, all of which are evolving and subject to processes of deregulation.
These institutional arrangements are complemented or challenged by other entities that play a role in regulation, solidarity and mutual aid, such as social partners, associations, social movements and groups of individuals. At the same time, mechanisms of individualisation, exclusion and discrimination coexist, mecanisms that these frameworks are unable to compensate for, or which may even operate within them.
There are many actors in the world of work, and they can be distinguished according to a number of criteria : whether they are individuals or groups, their function in economic structures or their relationship to the goods or services produced. MaTISS aims to study actors at the intersection of specific trajectories, affiliations and working and living conditions (precariousness and poverty, social classes, migration, gender, etc.).
