L'employeur territorial, une notion utile pour comprendre la (dé)structuration de l'emploi

From the late 1970s early 1980s, the interest in locally-based analyses on employment has grown. Studies on labour pools are supported by different research works in sociology and economy and interact with public policies. The increasing number of local studies is also associated with a controversial move of theoretical view and references. This article is an attempt to participate in this debate while highlighting the notion of ?territorial employer?. The employers? influence is still crucial but has partly moved from the company to the labour market. The ?territorial employer?, more or less homogeneous, complementary or coordinated, composed of companies, employment intermediaries and training institutions, has more and more become a key actor to deliver rights to resources. He/she gives an individualized judgment that is more and more locally-based, on people?s employability, in opposition to the collective conquest of a space of qualifications linked to an interprofessional or national wage-based solidarity that had been developing up to the mid-1970s. According to different configurations, he/she has to face a more and more disputed territory-based social context, which is more historically rooted than the analyses may indicate in terms of labour pool, transition-to-work local system or territorial agreements. This work is based on researches that have been driven since the beginning of the 1980s in the Longwy region. For a long time this region has been dominated by a steel industry activity which brutally disappeared and is often presented as a pioneer in the experimentation of retraining measures.