From Unemployment to Part-Time Work

by Hadrien Clouet, young resarcher in sociology

The major unemployment rates that Western societies have been experiencing for over 30 years generate great individual suffering and have become a priority issue for all governments. Many public policies have been deployed to address it, with unconvincing results.

However, the German case stands out with regard to mass unemployment: its unemployment rate (as defined by the International Labour Office) fell from 11% in 2005 to 3.5% in January 2019. Is German policy the solution?

Hadrien Clouet tackled this question by exploring unemployment in France and Germany in his doctoral work. He focused on the practices of public employment placement agencies, and particularly their part-time position postings. He shows the conditions under which these positions are posted and filled, investigating the underside of the “German model”.

Supervised by Didier Demazière, researcher at the Center for the Sociology of Organizations (CSO), Hadrien’s thesis has just received the Michael Werner prize awarded by the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and Research on Germany (CIERA). Summary presentation (select your langage via youtube parameters)

Hadrien is currently conducting a postdoc study as part of the DIRISI project on Communicating and commanding. An organizational analysis of a Defense department with CSO researchers Henri Bergeron and Olivier Borraz.