Should unqualified young job-seekers receive training ? How the state intervenes on external labour market by training in France

This article explores the idea that the public actor tries to construct a legitimacy in the organization of the external job market by training low-skilled job-seekers. From this point of view French consensus on a minimum level of vocational training makes sense. Economic actors are largely absent from the process. The public actor bases its legitimacy primarily on the function of selecting manpower on individual criteria of motivation and career plans, rather than on the function of transmitting knowledge through training. This brings to mind the situation in firms, i.e. the individualization of labour relations in the context of developing skills management. The political challenge is to achieve a trade-off between a social logic of assistance and an economic logic of adjustment to employment in the short term, at the expense of an educational logic of preparation of labour force mobility in the long term.