ILPC 2026

Social sciences have a complex relationship with the working-class world, which arouses fantasies of disappearance as well as fantasies of resurgence. Though de-industrialization has not occurred, the transformations of Western economies have led to displacements within this social group. These transformations created new working-class spaces, and suggest the need for a renewal of analysis frameworks. The WORKLOG research program proposes to contribute to this renewal using an original approach at the intersection of sociology of work, sociology of lifestyles, and urban studies. Logistics is one of those areas of work that emerged from the restructuring of large groups and the globalization of trade. Although this sector accounts for a growing share of working-class employment, little is known about the universe that unfolds in warehouses, and even less about who the employees who handle the stored goods are.

We focus on retail's logistic workers that occupy an intermediate position between industry and services and represent more than 10 % of total worker's employment in France and Germany. Their work consists in getting the goods into cities, which is a core function for urban lifestyle. Having identified this group, we intend to understand what it's social practices outside warehouses are. Observing their residential areas, consumption practices and leisure activities, we analyse how they create their own socio-cultural spaces and to what extend they are autonomous or open to other influences. We see connections with other social groups, including dominant social groups, as a part of identity-building processes. We want to show that logistics workers create forms of self-segregated in-groups that are both socially and spatially scattered. Our ambition is also to identify how similar social conditions and cultural circulations both generate cultural forms that make sense together across national borders and how those cultural forms can be considered as practices of resistance.

Empirical investigation is based on an ethnographic survey. Four samples with 20 employees each one (with a total of 80 employees) have been selected. They concern logistic parks and their workers in four cities (Paris, Orleans, Frankfurt/Main and Kassel) for a visual and transnational ethnography in the world cities' backstage. The first original aspect of the study is to use workplaces as an empirical basis. Using this approach, we observe a limited group whose members share similar working conditions and we analyse how those conditions affect their consumption, residential practices, leisure activities and political commitment. The second original aspect is to conduct our investigation into two "world cities" and their satellites. We will be able to identify and analyse connections between "centres" and "peripheries", at local to transnational levels. The third original aspect is to match up a classical ethnographic method including interviews and participant observation with a visual ethnographic method including image production and image collection (especially photographs). This approach aims to study the material and visual cultures of the workers' universes and to define what sort of visual references and categories of thinking and judging circulate among them and sometimes beyond them.

Our contribution will focus on the processes of labour market fragmentation in Paris and Frankfurt/Main, in order to analyze them in a political and transnational perspective. Indeed, observing a labor market at this scale and in the context of "world cities" enlightens the internal divisions of the working class and the ways these divisions differ from one context to another. Depending on the types of goods, the urban contexts and the ways industrial relations are regulated at different levels (from the local to the European one), the difficulty of working conditions in the warehouses, the salaries and the social recognition of these positions are quite different. Permanent employment on positions that aren't seen as "true occupations" is considered in the light of what it can offer: considerable wage increases in Frankfurt and an access to mortgage loan in Paris. Such differences have a major impact on professional careers, occupational health and way of life in both countries. We consider those elements as a way to understand in the same time the weak involvement of logistics workers in unionism and the emerging new forms of political mobilization, especially in France.