Mohamed Slim Ben Youssef thesis defence: "Des mondes du travail en révolution: une sociologie politique des (dés)ordres industriels en Tunisie post-2011" (Worlds of work in revolution: a political sociology of industrial (dis)orders in post-2011 Tunisia)

Friday 6 December 2024 | from 2pm | MMSH (Salle Duby)

We are pleased to inform you that the defence of Mohamed Slim Ben Youssef's thesis entitled " Worlds of work in revolution: a political sociology of industrial (dis)orders in post-2011 Tunisia" will be held on Friday 6 December 2024, from 2pm, at the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l'Homme (5 Rue Château de l'Horloge, 13090 Aix-en-Provence), in the Duby Room.

Summary:

In the wake of the popular uprising in Tunisia in 2010-2011, social protests are multiplying across the country. In the labour arena, the growing conflict is reflected in workers' mobilisations and high levels of unionisation in companies. This has been accompanied by a variety of employer and managerial strategies aimed at taming wage demands and/or repressing those who make them.

Based on a series of qualitative surveys carried out in a number of work situations, this thesis seeks to understand the forces behind the (de)stabilisation of the industrial order in a revolutionary context. By focusing on the words and practices of the protagonists of these struggles, it aims to grasp simultaneously the moral economies of domination at work and the forms of agentivity of employees and their union representatives. To this end, the study focuses on the following cases: a biscuit factory (L'Appétissante) and a glass factory (Technoverre) located to the west of Greater Tunis; the first call centre to be set up in Tunisia (Teleperformance); and a major group in the Tunisian textile industry, located in the Sahel region (Sporbic).

My approach consists in grasping, at the very heart of the moments of protest, the traces of the industrial order considered legitimate by the workers. On the one hand, nostalgic evocations of the old bosses at times of conflict call to mind a paternalism in crisis, the socio-history of which this manuscript traces. By mobilising this notion, the present work links the issue of the legitimacy of an industrial - and inseparably political - order to that of the material subsistence of subordinates. It not only explores the genealogy of these consent-producing orders, but also examines their crises of reproduction. On the other hand, wage mobilisations take place against a backdrop of revolutionary temporality, producing transversal effects on the reciprocal anticipations of actors in the worlds of work. This is the case for 'grassroots' trade unionists, at the interface between the trade union field and labour relations, and for company directors and their managerial strata.

Rejecting both economic determinism and post-materialist readings in the analysis of mobilisations, this research reaffirms the political dimension of relations of work and subsistence. It invites us to reintroduce the political and moral economies of industrial orders in order to grasp the processes of (de)legitimation, and to apprehend their (re)production in the light of a relative expansion of the autonomous capacities of the dominated in revolutionary temporality.

Key words :

Labour, Industrial order, Political economy, Moral economy, Trade unionism, Tunisia.

The jury is made up of :

• Amin AllalResearch Fellow, CERAPS (thesis co-supervisor)
• Sophie BéroudUniversity Professor, Université Lumière Lyon 2 (Examiner)
• Assia BoutalebUniversity Professor, Université Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne (Rapporteur)
• Myriam CatusseDirector of Research, Institut Français du Proche-Orient (Examiner)
• Eric GobeResearch Director, CNRS - University Professor, Aix-Marseille University - IREMAM (Thesis Director)
• Choukri HmedUniversity Professor, Université Paris Cité (Chairman of the jury)
• Benjamin RubbersProfessor, University of Liège (Rapporteur)

This event will be in a hybrid format : please contact amin.allal@gmail.com for the invitation link.