The implications of deprofessionalisation

The paper investigates changes in the regulation of professions, taking as its starting point three empirical cases, namely those of French Post Office workers, university academics and psychiatrists working in the public health system. These are three groups with very different modes of professionalisation: (1) skilled manual or clerical, (2) academic and (3) liberal (in the sense of 'liberal profession', although in fact the members of this group are salaried employees). These three occupational groups are similar in that they all work in public services. It is shown that all three are facing a severe and sudden destabilisation of their modes of professionalisation and of their professionalities. In some occupational segments that can be conceptualised in generational terms, this weakening can even be regarded as unalloyed deprofessionalisation, characterised by a sharp diminution of autonomy at work and a powerlessness collectively to conceive of any positive reconstitution of a lost professionality. The reduction in self-regulation and in joint regulation and the increase in regulation through external supervision pose the problem of a general transformation of social regulation and a weakening of the position of occupational groups. This phenomenon could be thought of as the deprofessionalisation of French society