Le mouvement des intermittents du spectacle: Entre précarité déamobilisatrice et préacaires mobilisateurs

Abstract

Mobilizations of precarious people generally seem to be unlikely. Yet, the protest movement of the "intermittents du spectacle" ("temporary show-business workers") is a good opportunity to question the relationship between job insecurity and mobilization. Although actual or anticipated pauperization (lower income and weaker professional integration) is responsible for apathy and defections, the effect of the structural lack of job security can be compensated by the individual and collective resources that these workers dispose. Moreover, the common experience of job insecurity helps to create information and cooperation networks, which make mobilization easier in such a competitive and scattered economic sector. Finally, job insecurity, when used as a label, has even contributed to extending the cause of "intermittents du spectacle" and, as a consequence, to strengthening the movement.