Les musiciens de variété à l'épreuve de l'intermittence : des précarités maîtrisées ?

The specific regime of the occasional entertainment workers and their living conditions make debate in the French society, as testifies of it important social movements marking occasionally the political scene. This economic and social context invites to question the conditions of employment, work and life of the occasional musicians by a qualitative investigation covering about sixty conversations with music authors, composers and\or interpreters, completed by a dumping of two years in professional networks in Paris and in Lyon. The irregularity and the precariousness not being confined in a single domain, we proceeded, to answer this questioning, to an analysis which crosses the spheres of their employment, their work and their lifestyles, while demonstrating their interdependences. The first part presents the secure flexi-precariousness of the occasional employment, where the discontinuity and the insecurity of occasional employment are, partially, secured by the regime of the occasional entertainment workers. The second part approaches the instability and the unpredictability of the income of the musicians which are counterbalanced, nevertheless, by a vocational regime of the relation of employment as well as intrinsic and extrinsic satisfactions of the artistic work. This part allows to understand why trajectories so split by the flexi - precariousness of the employment attract so many artists. Finally, the third part handles social and occupational trajectories of the musicians, and allows to understand in what the relationship in the employment and in the work generates concrete effects on the lifestyles. The analysis concerns, more exactly, the social risks inherent to the characteristics of the job, the disintegration of the rhythms of life as well as the fragility of the social, conjugal and parental links. As a matter of fact, this thesis advances the central idea according to which the musicians succeed in surmounting these conjugated precariousness thanks to anchor-points such as the socialized salary (the regime of the occasional entertainment workers), the networks of cooptation, the job satisfactions, the strategies of diversification of the activities as well as the family solidarities. The hillside of the precariousness which makes reference to the instability and the fragility is thus compensated, to a certain extent, with these factors of stability, even if being unevenly distributed between the musicians, they strengthen social inequalities. This close look at conditions of employment, work and life of the musical workers allows to highlight their interdependences, the way the artists manage them to the everyday life as well as to seize the complexity of the construction of their social and occupational trajectories, both from a subjective