- 1 Coquart B. (2020). Revitalizing the countryside: towards a renewal of living together, October 8, URL (…)
1This is an exciting book published in 2019 by Benoît Coquart, sociologist at INRAE, following a ten-year survey in several cantons of the Grand-Est region (Meuse, Haute-Marne , Aube, Ardennes, Vosges) out of approximately 200 young people (aged 20 to 35) remaining to live in formerly industrialized countryside (see the author’s intervention: Coquart, 2020)1.
- 2 Reasons for Action Festival (2021). Conference – debate “End of the world or end of the month? Save the planet (…)
2The first chapter provides a better understanding of the involvement of “local people” in the Yellow Vests movement, which is explained in particular by the growing lengthening of travel (work, children) in sparsely populated areas and which concerned many people unaccustomed to demonstrations (especially women). We will find these analyzes explained in interviews with the author (Festival Reasons to act, 2021 or Coquard, 2018)2.
3The second chapter entitled “It was better before” highlights the nostalgia for the past in these territories: fewer administrative rules, more tolerant police, fewer alcohol and speed checks, easier hunting, a better labor market. and greater autonomy, less constraints on buildings, vitality of balls…
- 3 Pistre P. “Staying in the countryside, leaving or returning. A statistical perspective of “(…)
4Chapter three is devoted to the making of a sedentary lifestyle (“From those who leave” to “those who stay”). Among the emigrants, two poles can be identified: the children of academic success and the most precarious. In a statistical perspective on the scale of the Grand Est region of the work of B. Coquart, P. Pistre3 indicates that with 14.6% of inhabitants aged 15 to 29 in the 2016 census, the territories rural people in this region are among the youngest in mainland France, and that departures are in line with the national average but with fewer returns or new arrivals.
5This emigration is essentially the result of academic success and first affects girls from the working classes, mainly towards towns in the same region, as well as children from the cultural lower middle class: the pursuit of university studies in the big towns (relatively far from these territories) gives them access to stable management jobs. B. Coquart emphasizes the gender difference in pursuing studies outside the territory and with a view to leaving a labor market that is mainly “provided with jobs considered to be masculine”.
- 4 Autochthony capital was defined by N. Renahy (2010) following J.-N. Retière (2003), co (…)
6Among the other aspirants to emigration, we find the most precarious, generally called the “lost” or the “cassos”. These, lacking a capital of autochthony4, have a bad reputation with local businesses (often a past of drug addicts) and are therefore often condemned to stay on the spot without work (a non-mobility suffered) while living the local anchoring as a constraint.
7Chapter four deals with the “possible and impossible elsewhere” of emigration: “Swiss El Dorado” with successes and failures, or “national paths” (military, Paris firefighters) allowing both stability and local honor (in multiplying round trips). Young people compare these elsewhere to their locality which allows for inclusive sociability in the face of the big city (particularly Paris) perceived as the place of anonymity and insecurity.
8Chapters five and six constitute the center of the work by describing for “those who remain” – the established – the functioning of the universe of “true friends” in the structuring of the lives of “locals” and the construction identities and reputations.
9The main reasons given for staying are to have a house (inherited or acquired through debt), to benefit from a cheaper life than in the big cities, to have access to consumer goods (for men, motorbike or for women, horse) and to have a “group of friends” who provide confidence (while precarious and poorly reputed young people see the big city as a way to escape gossip).
10Chapter five, titled “With each other”, takes us to the heart of the functioning of the central place of “true friends” (sometimes called “clans”, “the family” or “cliques”), “on whom we can count “. Their local belonging is recognized through professional integration, resulting from short training courses (CAP, bac pro, more appreciated on the local job market than a university education), direct knowledge of employers, a certain virility and a capacity for manual work, and it is supported by friendly networks.
11Faced with the end of balls and bistros that have become poorly frequented and taken over by unemployed “lost” people, sociability circles are no longer limited to villages whose attractiveness is declining due to the disappearance of industries structuring and fixing them locally. the workers ; a process that has emptied the streets and forced people to travel several kilometers to reach work. The devitalization of the local space is further reinforced by access to property, which takes people away from the centers due to the price of land. It is no longer the locality, which provides less assets, which makes the membership, but the circles of friends which can count several tens of kilometers and members, and are socially heterogeneous (presence of craftsmen and small bosses ). A popular, restrained and exclusive self-segregation allows respectability once morest gossip.
12These new sociabilities are strongly structured by the family home, seen as a space for loosening social control (the free entrance to the café is replaced by the home reserved for friends). Faced with the fear of the “dirty reputation” is favored the withdrawal to the marital home which is transformed into a friendly home, during long drunken evenings (sometimes with the addition of cannabis consumption) in the living room and in front of a big screen TV permanently on. Friends with strong elective affinities and strong mimicry for men meet there (in particular, in the choice of the moment to access the property or to become fathers). These evenings are strongly marked by a “male interpersonality” where women are relegated to playing spectators so as not to appear as “borers” or “leashers”. Indeed, these sociabilities are marked by gender inequalities (accentuated by obtaining more stable jobs for men and the decline of women’s sports clubs) as well as between the guys in the gang to the benefit of the most stable.
13In chapter six in particular, entitled “The friendly economy, between collective solidarity and the reinforcement of inequalities”, we perceive that friendly sociability not only provides symbolic resources, but also protects once morest competition on the labor market (mainly in building for the men and in personal assistance for the women) and to precariousness: piston for work or activities “on the black”, guarantee of respectability (they are “real hard workers”, not ” idlers”), particularly in the event of unemployment. These affinity logics promote “competitive self-segregation”. What is appreciated in these groups of “friendly realism” are the availability to spend time for friendly sociability and specific skills (example of masonry), in particular to “lend a hand” on construction sites “at the black” exercised in common, which presupposes exclusive solidarity and not being part of several bands.
14Chapter seven entitled “Already us” clarifies the closure conveyed by the expression “already, us”, frequently used by respondents to show this solidarity reduced to relatives and designating “a political awareness of what is necessary”. This “already us” offers fertile ground for the far right, which reserves solidarity only for the French (the National Rally exceeds 40% in certain communes of the Grand-Est). This does not systematically mean a racist attitude, at least towards the immigrants integrated into the group of friends.
15The book ends with a conclusion on “a relegated space, but a space of autonomy”. Peer groups function as “small selective, affinity and solidarity institutions”, which compensate for the obsolescence of integrating frameworks which previously structured sociabilities anchored in the local economic system. These solidarities are reinforced by a feeling of being opposed to other “prisoners of an autochthony of precariousness” leaving few prospects. B. Coquart concludes his book with the hope that the rural working classes will escape their status as “object class” by seeing “spokespersons emerge within them”, in the wake of the “Yellow Vests” movement.
- 5 Page 12 of the book.
16If the strong depopulation of these countrysides “in decline” distinguishes them from the attractive countrysides, it is not therefore a question of a “France of the void” but of places of strong sociability (cf. declaration of an interviewee5: “Here, it’s Corsica without the sea”!), of which we would like to have a statistical approach. However, we note that these sociabilities express solidarities marked by male domination (caused by inequalities in the labor market) and excluding the most precarious.