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Cet article contribue au renouvellement de la réflexion sur la citoyenneté au travail en s’appuyant sur la théorie de la citoyenneté sociale de Linda Bosniak pour étudier deux groupes de travailleurs (concepteurs de jeux vidéo et artistes interprètes) incombant à une même figure emblématique du travail contemporain, soit le travail du savoir très qualifié, mobile et organisé sous la forme de projets. À l’heure où le travail du savoir prend de plus en plus d’importance dans les économies développées, il importe de prendre acte de ce qu’il occupe une position très différente de la dépendance économique du citoyen industriel dont la compétence est substituable. À la différence de la division industrielle entre la conception et l’exécution, le travail y mobilise la personne entière du travailleur plutôt que sa seule force de travail, dans un processus créatif d’innovation sur un marché très compétitif où l’apport créateur du travailleur est un atout déterminant. Les auteures y étudient l’état contemporain de la représentation des intérêts chez des travailleurs du savoir et de leur participation à la régulation de leur travail, à la fois localement et à l’échelle sociale, à l’aide de deux études de cas où des travailleurs très qualifiés transitent constamment entre des projets à courte durée déterminée plutôt que de jouir d’une relation d’emploi stable à long terme. Confrontés à des problèmes et à des enjeux collectifs, ces travailleurs déploient des moyens originaux de participer à la régulation de leur travail, hors du syndicalisme. La discussion met finalement en évidence l’émergence non seulement de nouveaux modes de représentation mais d’un nouveau citoyen au travail, à la recherche de droits et d’avantages différents du citoyen industriel de l’ère fordiste et ceci, dans un espace plus large que celui de l’entreprise.

The article reviews the book, "The Dirt: Industrial Disease and Conflict at St. Lawrence, Newfoundland," by Rick Rennie.

From the end of the Second World War to the early 1980s, the North American norm was that men had full-time jobs, earned a "family wage," and expected to stay with the same employer for life. In households with children, most women were unpaid caregivers. This situation began to change in the mid-1970s as two-earner households became commonplace, with women entering employment through temporary and part-time jobs. Since the 1980s, less permanent precarious employment has increasingly become the norm for all workers. Working Without Commitments offers a new understanding of the social and health impacts of this change in the modern workplace, where outsourcing, limited term contracts, and the elimination of pensions and health benefits have become the new standard. Using information from interviews and surveys with workers in less permanent employment, the authors show how precarious employment affects the health of workers, labour productivity, and the sustainability of the traditional family model. --Publisher's description. Contents: Working without commitments: employment relationships and health -- A short history of the employment relationship: control, effort, and support -- Working without commitments and the characteristics of the employment relationship -- Gender, race, and the characteristics of the employment relationship -- The employment strain model and the health effects of less permanent employment -- The blurred lines between precariousness and permanence -- Sustainable, less permanent employment -- "On a path" to employment security? -- Unsustainable, less permanent employment -- Creating commitments in less permanent employment: policy reforms to address rising insecurity.

The article reviews the book, "The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal," by Sean Mills.

The American trade union movement constitutes a social democratic bloc within U.S. politics. Often successful in expanding the welfare state, American unions have almost always failed to win legislation advancing their institutional strength and political legitimacy. This has been particularly true during the prosperous postwar era (1947-1979) when a depoliticalized form of collective bargaining stood at the centre of the U.S. system of industrial accommodation and conflict. But today that system is ineffectual, forcing the trade unions to return to a system of state-centred, corporatist bargaining reminiscent of that which sustained the unions during the era of the late New Deal and World War II. But this 21~ century system is a weak and tenuous version of corporatism, largely and dangerously confined to local government and those industries dependent on the state for revenue and regulation.

In the 1980s, following decades of booming business, the global steel industry went into a precipitous decline, which necessitated significant restructuring. Management demanded workers' increased participation in evermore temporary and insecure labour. Engaging the workers at the flagship Stelco plant in Hamilton, the authors document new management strategies and the responses of unionized workforces to them. These investigations provide valuable insights into the dramatic changes occurring within the Canadian steel industry. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Managing the Canadian Mosaic in Wartime: Shaping Citizenship Policy, 1939-1945," by Ivana Caccia.

The article reviews the book, "A Woman of Valour: The Biography of Marie-Louise Bouchard Labelle," by Claire Trépanier, with translation by Louise Matha.

The article reviews the book, "The Technological Imperative in Canada: An Intellectual History," by R. Douglas Francis.

Using Statistics Canada’s Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) data for 2003 and 2004, this research note addresses an important component of labour market retention by investigating whether the presence of workplace child care and elder care programs influences employees’ decision to quit. The key findings are as follows: (a) workplace elder care support is almost non-existent in Canada; (b) employees are more likely to remain with an organization that offers workplace child care support programs; and (c) those employees who actually use the workplace child care support are even more likely to stay with the organization. We suggest that future research should assess whether the particular support programs themselves ‘cause’ employees to stay, or whether there are other factors (within organizations offering these support programs) that account for the retention.

Changes in Japanese Employment Practices: Beyond the Japanese Model, by Arjan Keizer, is reviewed

There has been an increase in the number of incoming temporary migrant workers to Canada over the past decade. In this article, I critically assess recent changes in the law governing temporary migration to Canada by using theoretical tools from the fields of sociology, geography, and legal geography. A multidisciplinary framework to understand Canada's labour migration policies is provided. Within the socio-historical context of migrant labour regulation in Canada, I argue that political and regulatory developments function to further entrench segregation and exclusion of foreign workers by maintaining a subclass of flexible labour. Specifically, I show that Canada's current temporary migration regime retains the country's historical role as an ethnocratic settler state in which the regulation of migrant workers creates inherent boundaries. These boundaries demarcate racially identified space(s) on the basis of the economic and political logic underlying temporary migration.

Review of: "Les jeunesses au travail : regards croisés France-Québec," edited by Christian Papinot and Mircea Vultur.

This thesis explores women's learning in unpaid household work through the lenses of impairment and disability. Informal learning from this standpoint is a perspective that is not yet integrated into the adult learning literature. The impetus for the study came from dissatisfaction with the social undervaluing of unpaid housework and carework, and the largely unrecognized learning behind the work, which is predominantly done by women. Disability and impairment provide unique lenses for making visible what people learn and how they learn in this context. Those who have or acquire impairment in adulthood need to learn how to do things differently. For this study I have taken a segment of data from a 4-year, 4-phase project on Unpaid Housework and Lifelong Learning in which I participated. The participants in this segment are women and men with disabilities who took part in 2 focus groups (11 women), an on-line focus group (20 women), and individual interviews (10 women and 5 men). Learning is explored through three different themes: first, learning related to self-care; second, learning to accept the impaired body; and third, strategies and resources used in the learning process. Analysis of the data shows that the learning that happens through unpaid household work is multidimensional, fluid, and diverse. Learning is accomplished through a complex 4-dimensional process involving a blend of the body, mind, emotions, and the spiritual self. Furthermore, what participants learned and how they learned is influenced by the sociocultural context in which it takes place. Learning, when seen as a 4-dimensional process, provides a framework for challenging traditional Western cultural beliefs about what counts as learning and knowledge. Such beliefs have cultivated the viewpoint that learning is individualistic, cognitive, and based on reason. I contest these beliefs by disrupting the binaries that support them (e.g., mind vs. body, reason vs. emotion). Participants used both sides of the binaries in their learning processes, negating the oppositional and hierarchical categories they establish. The concepts in the binaries still exist but the relationship between them is not oppositional, nor is one concept privileged over another, either within or across binaries.

The article reviews the book ,"Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy," edited by Ruth Milkman, Joshua Bloom, and Victor Narro.

The article reviews the book, "The West and Beyond: New Perspectives on an Imagined Region," edited by Alvin Finkel, Sarah Carter, and Peter Fortna.

The article reviews the book, "Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914-1942," by Jonathan H. Rees.

The article reviews the book, "Trail of Story, Traveler’s Path: Reflections on Ethnoecology and Landscape," by Leslie Main Johnson.