Industrial citizenship rediscovered: the work rootings of political agency, past and present – CITINDUS

Industrialcitizenshiprediscovered: the workrootings of politicalagency, past and present

Is‘industrial citizenship’ an outdated concept? This project proposes to give a negative answer to this question by exploring how industrial citizenship has always changed, following the transformations of economic, social and political contexts, and by crossingviewpoints of political science, economy and sociology. The main objective of the project is to reopen a research agenda on industrial citizenship, detached from normative references to "democracy" or "pluralism".Indeed, if academics are often interested in corporate power and companies’ influence on policy makers or democratic politics, there is a lack of scientific knowledge concerning how they “produce” citizens and “frame” citizenship. Yet the current blurring of the boundaries between the spheres of political and economic activity requiresto rework the definition of rights as well as the boundaries of the community of citizens, without limiting ourselves to a purelylegal concept of citizenship.
Our main working hypothesis is that ‘industrial citizenship’ is a disputed concept, which confronts opposed and ever-evolving discourses. Thus, we will study these various and competing definitions and practices of industrial citizenship. Our second working hypothesis is that ‘industrial citizenship’ is a fruitful concept to study how political behaviors are embedded in the workplace. The work experience and the work environment profoundly and durably shape the identities, representations and practices of social actors, even in their relationship to citizenship outside labor relations, and this hypothesis sheds light on the second objective of the project: to de-compartmentalize the study of industrial citizenship. Thus, industrial citizenship can be grasped at the level of a firm or an institution, as many historians and sociologists specialized in industrial relations have already done, but also at the level of a territory. We will study the way in which industrial citizenship is shaped both "from above", i.e. by the policies of the management of companies and state authorities, and "from below ", i.e. by the workers themselves and their representatives, and also by the actors (political, associative, and so on) of the territories in which these processes take place.
First, using an approach inspired by political and intellectual history, we will investigate the discourse of employers, the state and workers about industrial citizenship in France. A second empirical study will be devoted to the practices of industrial citizenship. The use of public statistical data will allow us to establish an overview of industrial citizenship practices in contemporary France. Then with three qualitative monographs we will move from (objectified) practices to the (subjective) experiences of industrial citizenship. Finally, we willexplore industrial citizenship through a collective and multi-sited field survey in a large French company located abroad. It will involve studying the firm from the multiple disciplinary points of view (sociology, economics, political science), specializations (corporate management, public action, workers' participation and unionism) and locations (France and Tunisia) that allows our researchconsortium.