Les trajectoires des territoires industriels français : expansion, industrialisation, mutation, rétraction

In France, after several decades of belief in the advent of a post-industrial economy, the question of the future of industry arises again. Industry has not disappeared and still shaping many territories. After the economic crisis of 2008, discourses relayed on them were often reductive or fatalistic. To objectify these discourses, we propose to analyze what are the French industrial territories. Assuming that territories are largely dependent on their past, this article provides an analysis that takes into account local trajectories over the last fifty years. It draws on two complementary analytical grids. Based on a comparison of the share of industrial employment in 1975 and 2012, the first distinguishes three major types of industrial living areas: ex-industrial, tradi-industrial and neo-industrial. Thanks to a study of the evolution of industrial employment and total employment, the second one furthers this first typology, by revealing four major forms of trajectories that are expansion (increase in total employment and in industrial employment), industrialization (decrease in total employment, increase in industrial employment), mutation (increase in total employment, decrease in industrial employment) and shrinkage (decrease in total employment and decrease in industrial employment). We study these trajectories for each types of living areas on three sub-periods (1975-1990; 1990-2007; 2007-2012). Then, we show the multiplicity of sequences and the influence limited of structural factors (macro-economic evolution, sectoral structure, spatial dimension). Considering that not all of industrial territories are in shrinkage especially over the three sub-periods, our analysis highlights the diversity of (past and present) situations, which conduct us to differentiate challenges that they face.