Research aimed at shedding light on contemporary trends in trade union renewal amongst workers in precarious employment, from a Franco-Japanese comparative perspective. More generally, this project aims to help address the issue of the crisis of representation, a crisis facing almost all industrialised countries today: can trade unionism serve as a form of solidarity against the current trend towards precarious employment?
By combining a new research theme known as “trade union renewal” – which examines trade unions as social actors from a dynamic, and often international, perspective – with a body of French research based on fieldwork, my research takes a comparative look at possible contemporary forms of trade union renewal in both France and Japan.
A regional and cross-sectoral trade union approach has been strategically chosen for three reasons: to investigate individuals with different social profiles and motivations; to broaden the scope of analysis beyond the national level in international comparisons, notably to include a territorial and an organisational level; and to compare how trade union action in France and Japan has been reoriented towards workers in precarious employment.