Unemployment Categories, Social Reform, and Structural Change in 19th-Century France

Abstract

  Unemployment categories are historical and social constructs. Genealogical studies of unemployment have shown that unemployment did not exist a priori but was created by institutions and discourses. However, further research is needed on how social structural changes have changed the unemployment categories held by individuals. This paper analyzes unemployment categories in France from 1789 to 1914. It focuses on the process by which unemployment changed from a moral issue to a social risk. During the French Revolution and in the économie politique of the 1830s, the unemployed were incorporated into the category of the “false poor” who refused to work and were regarded as lazy. On the other hand, économie sociale criticized classical equilibrium theory based on the overproduction theory and turned the unemployment category into a structural problem. The école de Le Play understood unemployment as the periodic factory shutdown, but solidarisme redefined unemployment as an accidental social risk. This categorical change was related to the economic structure transformations after 1873, especially the development of heavy industry and international market competition. At the same time, scholarly conflicts shaped the way the phenomenon of lack of work was understood.