L’Égalité au travail. Justice et mobilisations contre les discriminations

L’Égalité au travail

Justice et mobilisations contre les discriminations


A book by Vincent-Arnaud Chappe


Equality at work

Justice and mobilizations against discriminations


For twenty years, the law of non-discrimination has been considerably extended. The qualification of « discrimination » is currently used in many instances to denounce numerous unequal treatments.

But what about its real uses? Why and how do people decide to report discrimination in the courts? What difficulties do they encounter?

This book focuses on the appropriation of the category of discrimination in labor litigation. Based on extensive ethnographic work with plaintiffs and legal intermediaries (CGT union or SOS Racisme), it retraces the difficult path of the victims before the labor courts (prud’hommes) and the strategies developed to make the law more effective.

Based on the contributions of a pragmatist-oriented sociology of law, the book shows how legal norms are capable of punctually restoring justice in the workplace.

Turning law into a real lever for equality will depend on the ability of the advocacy organizations to reconcile legal grammar with a concern for the victims and a transformative horizon of social practices.







Vincent-Arnaud Chappe is a sociologist and CNRS researcher, member of Center for the Sociology of Innovation at Mines ParisTech. After working on the socio-political stakes of legal disputes regarding work discrimination, he currently explores the statistical base for equality policies within companies, at the crossroads of the sociology of law and the sociology of quantification.


L’Égalité au travail. Justice et mobilisations contre les discriminations is published by the Presses des mines

ISBN: 9782356715753
Language: French  
Number of pages: 210

Read an excerpt