Rebuilding the body of unemployed people: A fight against unacceptable failure of self

This contribution focuses on the actions implemented in “remobilization toward employment” workshops for welfare recipients. Through interviews and direct observation of these workshops, it analyzes the psychology-based managerial norms and ideologies deployed there. It details the way in which the obligation of reintegration is achieved through an action on the body and on the psyche. Using sociology and psychoanalysis, this article describes the mechanisms set up in these workshops. The main hypothesis of the article and the critical issues related to it is twofold. First, our society is fighting against an intolerable failure of self. Second, this failure is located in the body and the psyche, but this intolerable failure also originates in affiliations considered as obstacles to reintegration.