Penser la flexicurité au niveau « méso » : entre ancrage territorial et innovation sociale

As a concept, flexicurity is all at once paradoxical, ambiguous and strongly tinted with ideology since it tries to help provide answers in a work market torn between firms? growing need for flexibility and the actual or potential rise of precariousness for the employees. The present article focuses on how to make flexicurity work. It purports to show the prime importance of the meso level, considering the precedence of the reticular structure in firms nowadays, particularly SMOs. Through a case study of four local sites providing a variety of actors, contexts and purposes, the article shows that, to be effective, flexicurity practices have to be rooted both in the stakeholders local background, implying geographic and organizational proximity, and in their will to provide genuine answers to vital social and societal problems. The various promoters of flexicurity exercise their role thanks to the local background which emerges as the key to make flexicurity a real winner.