My name is Loman-Pierre CHARRIER, and I am a doctoral student in contemporary history. After completing a research-oriented master’s degree and earning a master’s degree in Contemporary Worlds at UCA, I began working on a dissertation focusing on the workers at the Sept-Fons factory. Building on my master’s thesis, my research aims to understand how these workers experience their daily work. I also seek to explain why no major social movement has emerged at this factory since the late 1950s, even though the region has a strong tradition of left-wing politics.
Project Statement
The History of Workers’ “Immobilization”: The Case of the Sept-Fons Foundry, a Factory in a Rural Setting (1921–2000s)
My dissertation analyzes, over the long term (from 1921 to the present), the factors that led the workers at Sept-Fons—a factory located in the Allier department—to become “immobilized.” This concept, which I propose to the academic community, refers to the mechanisms explaining the absence of social mobilization. While the workers were largely members of the CGT and actively participated in protests until 1955—the date of the last mass social mobilization at the factory—they gradually became immobilized in the face of threats of job cuts and the closure of the site. This lack of collective mobilization, at both the local and national levels, does not, however, mean that forms of protest have disappeared. Workers’ resistance has shifted more toward individualized and diffuse forms of insubordination. My work thus falls within the field of everyday history (Alltagsgeschichte), pioneered notably by Alf Lüdtke. Through fieldwork combining oral history and participant observation, I have been able to collect narratives and observe, on a microhistorical scale, these discreet forms of resistance that nonetheless contribute to a broader stagnation within the working class. Finally, since the factory has been owned by several multinational corporations—Chrysler, Simca, Peugeot, PSA Peugeot Citroën, and now Stellantis—my research also has a transnational dimension.
