Following the ANR VICO project – Life in lockdown, this new ANR project is led by Pierre Mercklé (Pacte – Social Sciences Laboratory) and co-coordinated by Michel Grossetti (LISST, CNRS) and Claire Bidart (LEST, CNRS).
Still focusing on the issue of relationships and social cohesion in the face of the health crisis, the project is structured around three work packages being developed simultaneously:
WP 1: The impact of the crisis on professional practices and industrial relations (analysis carried out at the LEST in Aix-en-Provence); ;
WP2: Lthe effects of the crisis on daily life, social relationships, family life, cultural practices and digital habits (Grenoble); ;
WP3: Upheavals in life courses, vulnerabilities, and attitudes towards uncertainty, the future, authority and the state (Toulouse).
The aim of the research project is to analyse changes in relationships in order to understand the future of social cohesion and to examine how a crisis might bring about lasting changes (or not) in the ways in which we function as a society.
Beyond the many victims of the Covid-19 pandemic and the upheavals witnessed during the health and social crisis it caused, everyone is at risk of being affected in the long term in their daily lives and social relationships by the consequences of the pandemic. The programme’s scientific ambition is structured around a primary objective, which is to address this central question: how has the health crisis affected, over the long term, relationships between individuals, as well as between individuals and communities and institutions? The second objective then aims to assess the interplay between these transformations in social ties on the one hand – some of which we hypothesise will be lasting, if not irreversible – and developments in a number of fundamental areas of social life on the other. Thus, in the sphere of work, how do the upheavals in professional practices and changes in labour relations interact, particularly with the rise of remote working? Or, in the sphere of cultural practices, will the current decline in attendance at cultural venues persist, and can it be explained by the shift in social interaction towards family relationships, at the expense of friendships? And what are the effects of these tightening and reshaping of social ties on people’s relationship with authority, the deterioration of which had already been highlighted by the «Yellow Vests» crisis? To answer these questions, PANELVICO will draw on a large-scale longitudinal study, spanning a sufficiently long period to observe these transformations over time, by repeatedly surveying, through questionnaires and interviews, a panel of several thousand people who have been tracked since the first lockdown in 2020 as part of an initial survey currently underway, and subsequently throughout the four-year research period.