Tribune. We come from political backgrounds or have various commitments and will no doubt vote differently in the first round of the presidential election. However, before this election, we wanted to agree on a series of observations and imperatives concerning social mobility and precariousness in France, the objects of our work and our concerns.
For twenty years, competition with an Asia with strong economic and demographic growth has eroded the condition of the working and middle classes in the West, to which is added the automation of many tasks that were once the task of a working class then flourishing but struggling since: the jobs that remain require diplomas or solid training.
At the end of the pandemic, a new global digital architecture might threaten jobs that have not yet been relocated and the hybridization of work risks dissociating the links between employees and their companies.
Many social fractures
France is not immune to these upheavals which weaken various segments of its population and, following a sustained decline, even saw indigence rise once more in the early 2000s. Although it maintains a rather low poverty rate among advanced economies thanks to a redistributive system that has remained generous, social origin is an important factor in explaining belonging to a poor household, and a child of a manager is 4.5 times more likely than a child of a blue-collar worker. belonging to the wealthiest 20%, a sign of low social mobility.
The education system, in particular, manufactures multi-speed public schools and pushes some towards private schools, with gaps in PISA performance among the largest in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) between students from privileged backgrounds and others. Downstream, there is a strong bias towards accessing the Grandes Ecoles. The fractures are thus widening between the generations, half of the poor being under 30 years old, but also within the youngest generations.
While “gentrified” cities are becoming inaccessible to the most modest, regions lacking skills are struggling to generate economic opportunities. The failures of housing policies have contributed to the relegation to the margins of car-dependent working classes. The digital divide widens the gap in social integration and empowerment of the poorest.
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