Aims

To demonstrate the numerous inter-dependences and interactions between shifts in the size of populations and demographic structures by gender and age, and by shifts in the size of the active population and socio-professional structures.

Main themes

- Concepts and definitions: The active and inactive population, employment and unemployment.
- Factors in shifts in the size of the active population: The role of natural growth and of migrations.
- Employment behaviour as a function of age and gender, and its development in history.
- The complex relationship between women's fertility and employment.
- Those who work and those who do not: The relationship between professional structures and social structures of class and power.
- An introduction to matrixes of social accounting.
- The sectoral development of the active population: From the primary to the quaternary.
- Productivity, longevity and working hours: The emergence of free time and the civilisation of leisure.
- New forms of employment and of relationship to work (e.g. flexible working, precarious employment and tele-working); human resource management, and designing employment policies and policies to combat unemployment.

Content and teaching methods

This course will aim to introduce students to the development of the main trends of socio-professional structures in the world today. The course will first take the form of a critical presentation of the basic concepts of the labour market and factors that are specific to it, together with its development (i.e. active population, employment and unemployment), while at the same time giving a very important place to two entries in particular: by age and by gender. This initial phase of the course, which will be very descriptive and quantitative, will lead on to a more sociological examination of the development of values in contemporary society: What place is accorded to work these days? Are we moving towards a leisure society?
This dual reflection will enable students to situate the great developments on the labour market by giving them the interpretative tools essential for an understanding of today's socio-economic world. A theme to be selected from the current scientific debate will also be addressed briefly with the assistance of an in-house expert.
Students will be given a file of reading that will cover all the main issues addressed on the course; it will also serve as a back-up tool to the teaching.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Assessment: This will take the form of summarised reading and applied work.

Other credits in programs