Part of the youth seems to enter more frankly into the mobilization against the pension reform. High school student organizations call for mobilization on March 9, to increase the pressure by then. Deciphering with the eyes of sociologist Jean Viard.
High school student organizations are calling to mobilize on March 9 against the pension reform, and they seem to enter more pronouncedly into this social issue. This is the subject of the day with, like every weekend, the view of sociologist Jean Viard.
franceinfo: Beyond the interest for the unions to punctuate the calendar, how to explain Jean Viard, this delay in ignition?
John Viard: There are several things. First, it is that the demonstrations are first strong in the provinces, in the small towns not very connected to the TGV network. So these are not big college towns. This means that the majority of young people are in fact students, if they are not in that dimension. Those who demonstrate a lot are the “little people” in France – I use Pierre Sansot’s expression (French anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist (ed.) – and it’s not at all critical, but it’s a certain France that feels permanently rejected.
There is a second thing, which is that I think that when you are young, frankly, retirement is not the first concern. Especially since young people are quite convinced that they will not have one. That is to say that we have discussed pensions so much for a few years that deep down, they have no confidence in the idea of having a pension. We’ll see what they do. So that is a real question. And then, more dynamically, each generation has its major subject. Me, I’m from the 68 generation, from the Vietnam War. The generation before was the war in Algeria.
Afterwards, there were the generations of high school battles against the Haby laws, etc. And basically, today, the central fight of young people is the climate fight. So, I would say, for the student part, it’s the climate generation. The part less student, more popular, more likely, it is perhaps rather anguished by the myth of the great replacement; great replacement as a myth, because there is no great replacement. And then, on the other side, there is the great warming.
Precisely, you mention the climate issue, but despite everything, this debate on pensions, it also opens a debate on work, the value of work, with questions about overproduction, overconsumption and therefore, somewhere, the protection of planet?
Yes, but of course. But at the same time, basically, all the discussion we’re going to have in the years to come is: we have to produce more, where? And consume less, where? It’s a bit like this game. You have to innovate, so we’re going to produce more, but produce something else. That’s what’s at stake: producing more and consuming differently, you could say.
And the debate for young people, it is more about that, perhaps about work, rather than retirement, on what time do we also devote to rest?
There is that, but young people, it’s not really their big problem yet. The problem of youth is to do things that are visible, that is to say that are in a speed of life, of short time. And they are very committed, the young people. On a ZAD, with the movement Extinction Rebellion. When we tell you in 2050, that’s going to happen, 2050, we didn’t get there!
So that’s one of the big problems in the debate on ecological issues, it’s giving very short deadlines, telling people, here we are, in two years, we want to do that, it won’t be great, but we’re making progress . It’s like a staircase, there were no steps. We must put the steps, including because the young people, the steps, they can gain weight, because it is real, it is concrete. At 30 or 40, honestly, the world can change so much, there can be wars, explosions, etc., that it’s more complicated.
Without going back to May 68, the students, they brought down the young minimum wage in 94, the CPE in 2006. When they mobilize, do they often push governments to back down anyway?
But young people are always the great anxiety of politicians, because young people, they have this festive struggle, they have this power, and in addition, they are very united. So it is clear that governments fear them. At the same time, the examples you cited, the young minimum wage, all of that was something that directly concerned young people, so it’s easy to see why they also had this type of demonstration.
I think that retirement does not concern them directly, at least not immediately, it will concern them later. We have to keep the idea that retirement is rather a problem of people during their careers, who see the story they told themselves to end their lives change, and that disorganizes them mentally, familyly, whereas young , they start a life story, they haven’t really told each other how they will stop it.