Self-employment and wage employment: reversed fronts and fragmentation. Forms of employment in the architectural trades market.

Summary The architects' labor market is traditionally characterized by a very strong influence of self-employment or "atypical jobs" (fixed-term contracts, internships, temporary work), the latter functioning as adjustment variables in a services market marked by very strong economic irregularity. In this respect, it offers itself as a privileged observation post for understanding the transformations of the forms of wage employment, all the more so since, while some argue that the recompositions at work draw the enchanted figure of a new professional free of all constraints, the empirical survey shows, on the contrary, how the professional trajectories of these actors are overdetermined by permanent exposure to market tensions. However, the architectural labor market is of further interest in terms of an examination of the margins of employment. For several years now, we have been observing the rise of more permanent forms of employment, particularly in fields of activity that offer architects new outlets. These forms of employment tend to destabilize architectural professionals who are accustomed to thinking of their identity in terms of the liberal professional model. In this respect, the architectural labor market functions as a negative of the labor market in general: atypical jobs have long been the norm, while salary stability is seen as a marginal or temporary situation (especially at the beginning of one's career). From then on, the paradoxical situation of architecture allows us to think about the dialectic of the margins and the center in the labor markets by showing to what extent this dichotomy is the result of a social and normative construction.