Can working and employment conditions in the personal services sector be improved?

摘要

Personal services have attracted considerable attention from policy makers in France, with a view to achieving two objectives: creating jobs and reintegrating those individuals furthest removed from the labour market. Attempts to achieve these objectives have tended to emphasise job quantity at the expense of job quality, which, despite the avowed efforts of employers and regulators, remains poor. How can this discrepancy be explained? The article analyses the series of mechanisms at work. While some of these mechanisms are the same as those at work in all personal services, others vary according to the activity in question. Care activities, for example, are caught up in a 'vicious circle', while those employed in domestic services are caught in a 'precarity trap'. The fact that these two areas of activity belong to different 'worlds of production' means that the prospects for improving job quality are greater in one (care activities) than in the other.