La crise du syndicalisme comme crise de la représentation des travailleurs : une étude de cas de l'évolution des identités collectives dans l'économie solidaire au Brésil

This thesis is based on the premise that the crisis of trade-unionism is the product of the questionning of the collective identities which had legitimized their workers’ collective representation up to the end of the 1970s. The evidence lies in the mobilization – often outside of the trade-unions and in conflict with them – of workers who have long been “minoritized” by the institutional arrangements which were dominant with the wage society. Various studies in the trade-union renewal literature point out that trade-unions have difficulty taking into account the needs and aspirations of these workers, because their collective identity leads them to maintain their established representations and orientations. However, these scholars focus on the way trade-unions, and specifically their leaders, can rebuild the representation of workers, rather than on the way collective identities are transforming themselves.  Studies on trade-unionism have inherited a debate from within the field of social movements, dividing theoretical approaches regarding collective identities.  In one approach, collective identities are conceptualised in the context of questionable theories about the evolution of societies; in the other, collective identities are under-theorised and social movements are seen to emerge in the context of political process and ressources mobilization. Literature on trade-union renewal generally returns to this second approach and assimilates workers movements to trade-unions, thus considering implicitly that the targets of collective action are given. However, a social movement is a concept; it cannot be reduced to an organization without the risk of losing its heuristic value, which is to lead us to seek an understanding of collective identities in conflict and the strategies associated with them.   On the basis of a case study of the workers’ movement in the Brazilian “solidarity economy”, this thesis poses the following questions:  Why are new workers’ collective identities emerging? How or why are trade-union identities being transformed or reproduced, at a time when they are being confronted with the emergence of new ways of defining the forms of domination they have to contend with, and new ways of defining how to do this? Collective identities are operationalized in this thesis as cognitive and normative matrices. This allows us to take in account their evolution, in association with different modes of interaction.  The case study highlights that the autonomous mobilization of “minoritised” workers brings with it new problem definitions as well as transformational social practices, which enter into conflict with institutionalized trade-union meanings and practises. The case study shows that it is after trade-unions and workers have entered into deliberative interaction that trade-union identities begin to change. However, the reconstruction of the trajectories of two trade-unions (both members of the main Brazilian confederation) shows that interacting with minoritised workers movements does not depend on a rational choice, but on the perception (by trade-unions) of workers ability, through collective action, to transform their relationship to work and to the world. A last result, and a corollary of those mentioned, is the falsification of an assumption found in some of the trade-union renewal literature, namely, that trade-unions, and specifically their leaders, can bring about a transformation of collective representation by aggregating different collective identities. This assumption, which considers the target of collective action as a given, is contradicted by this research: we demonstrate that, in such a case, there are indeed real institutional innovations introduced by the union, and that these innovations promote the adaptation of trade-unionism to changes in capitalism. But they do not promote the transformation of the social relations of domination; rather, as social ties with dominant actors prevail, they reproduce existing relations of domination as they reproduce dominant interpretations of the problem.

Keyphrases: crisis of trade-unionism, collective identities, social relations of domination, public problems, cognitive and normative matrix, deliberative interaction, social ties