"A survey of a French corpus of the 1980s and 1990s enonomic and sociological literature demonstrates the gradual emergence of the use of the notion of "précarité de l'emploi" in France. This notion first appeared in the field of family policies, with a meaning associated with the risk of "poverty". Before the notion was extensively disseminated, its usage was debated by economists analysing the strategies of firms to understand labour market developments in the late 1970s. Little by little, the notion of précarité has become more common in research and has even emerged as characterising society as a whole. This usage points to specific characteristics of the French debate and its "societal coherence". Précarité, as a notion in the French language, is very much linked to the way French society envisages the question of "status". Achieving a "scientific" definition of précarité is all the more difficult, than it belongs to the political discourse."
(Author's abstract)

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