This volume explores the lives and work of those who are kept out of poverty by their employment, but who occupy tenuous social positions and subaltern jobs.
Presenting a score of household portraits - urban, suburban, and rural - the authors examine what it means to -get by- in France today, considering the material and symbolic resources that these households can muster, and the practices that give meaning to their lives. With attention to their aspirations and disappointments - and their desire to be -like everyone else- in a supposedly egalitarian society that nonetheless gives them little credit for their effort - this book offers a sociological interpretation of their situations, offering new insights into what it means to be -working class- in a 21st-century post-industrial society. Combining statistical analyses with ethnographically-based examinations of how changes in the structure of the employment market relate to plans for upward mobility, Subaltern Workers i
