[Comment expliquer le manque d’attrait pour les métiers du nettoyage, davantage occupés par les femmes et les personnes issues de l’immigration ? C’est le sujet sur lequel se sont penchés deux économistes. François-Xavier Devetter est chercheur au Centre lillois d’études et de recherches sociologiques et économiques (Clersé, université de Lille) et à l’Institut de recherches économiques et sociales (IRES). Ses travaux de recherche portent sur le temps de travail et les emplois à bas salaire, tout particulièrement les agentes et agents d’entretien, les aides à domicile et les assistantes maternelles agréées. Julie Valentin est maîtresse de conférences au Centre d’économie de la Sorbonne (CES, université Paris-I). Ses travaux de recherche portent sur les formes de mobilisations de la main-d’œuvre alternatives au contrat de travail à durée indéterminée et l’analyse économique du droit du travail. Ils sont les auteurs du livre 2 Millions de travailleurs et des poussières. L’avenir des emplois du nettoyage dans une société juste (Les Petits Matins, 2021)].
Cleaning (or more broadly maintaining a living space) is both a common and very specific activity. Common because it occupies part of the time of almost every individual (on average 5% of daily waking time with still huge inequalities between women and men). Common also on the professional level because it is nearly 8% of the employees whose one of the important functions consists in cleaning private or public spaces.
But this activity also appears very specific because of the meaning it frequently takes on (“domestic chore”, thankless or invisible job), and because of the conditions in which it is carried out.
First, we will seek to define what these cleaning professions are and how they are at the heart of major current social issues. However, and this is what we will insist on in a second step, these professions, which contribute to the same activity, can be exercised in forms and in frameworks whose differences have a significant influence on the type and combination associated difficulties.
Understanding this heterogeneity and its effects can then help to identify certain difficulties that cross the world of work more broadly.
1. Two million people have cleaning as their main occupation.er
To define cleaning jobs, we cross criteria linked to the main function performed (where cleaning can be identified alongside production, teaching, personal care, accounting, sales, etc.) and the description of occupations provided by Insee. Through this we identify eight professions:
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