Article
French
ID: <
10670/1.d3eqhe>
Abstract
Distribution of the “Social emergency fund” to the “unemployed and those living precariously” followed the social unrest of December 1996, and it aimed to remedy the economic situations of the most difficult cases. As with any procedure for sharing a rare asset, problems of justice were raised and in order to understand how these were treated, a study was carried out in the administrative “département” of Seine-Saint-Denis. The inequalities facing potential beneficiaries from the state-provided manna are considered at three practical levels. First of all, the applicant had to submit a request: signing-on is the most discriminatory stage as from one commune to the next, variations of from one to ten were noted in the proportion of job-hunters lodging a file, with the roles of the municipal services and associations of the unemployed seen as determinant. Next, the applicant has to be considered: eligibility was not subject to any prior definition, but criteria were drawn up based on the calculation of a sum available per person, for which the threshold limit was tempered by a consideration of biographical details. Lastly, some sum had to be decided, and the allocation was then subject to subtle evaluations mixing some reference to a scale, and care to give a perceptible meaning to the sum chosen – as the function of a debt, expense or project. Beyond the singularity of the facilities studied, it is the social logics at work in any individualised management of poverty which are analysed, in particular the moral evaluations and the judgemental appreciations, the issues of contingency and the arbitrary – and more widely the practices of the agents involved in the procedure, on which depends, in fine, exactly what sum each applicant would receive.