Created in 2019 at Iméra (the Institute for Advanced Study of Aix Marseille Université), the Labour and Freedoms Research Workshop (ArTLib) is an interdisciplinary and international collective that aims to discuss and disseminate ideas and practices related to the profound transformations of labour and their effects in the sphere of personal and collective freedoms and utopias.
Coordinated by Enrico Donaggio (amU professor and scientific director of Iméra), the ArTLib collective is currently made up of Blaise Barbance (human resources, amU associate professor, vice-president of APSE), Thierry Berthet (director of research, political science, CNRS LEST), Elisabeth Brun (associate lecturer, amU, formative researcher at the LaSSA), Mariagrazia Cairo (lecturer, philosopher, CNRS CGGG, amU), Anne-Marie Daune-Richard (associate researcher, sociologist, CNRS LEST, amU), Olivia Foli (senior lecturer, sociologist, Céreq, Sorbonne Université), Sébastien Jousse (filmmaker, IPDT), Luc Joulé (filmmaker, IPDT, Images de Ville), Christophe Massot (associate researcher at CRTD-CNAM, sociologist, expert to the CSE), Nadine Richez-Battesti (senior lecturer, economist, CNRS LEST, amU), José Rose (professor emeritus, socio-economist, CNRS, LEST, amU), Madeleine Sallustio (CNRS, political science and anthropology Sciences Po).
Since it was founded, the collective has included Carmen Alvarez (director of studies, expert to CSEs, Acante-Travail), Lucio Castracani (anthropologist, University of Montreal), Fréderic Décosse (research fellow, anthropologist, CNRS LEST, amU), Maryline El-Khoury (political sociologist, PragmApolis, Uliège), Emmanuelle Hellio (sociologist, National Autonomous University of Mexico), Juana Moreno Nieto (social anthropologist, University of Cadiz), Laura Sanna (manager, head of incubation programmes, Inter-Made), Frédéric Séchaud (sociologist, trade union activist, CEREQ).
The holders of the CNRS LEST Chair ‘Worlds of Labour’ also took part in the ArTLib sessions during their residency at Iméra: Ewan Oiry (professor, Université de Poitiers), Carole Baudin (researcher, EVS Environnement Ville Société, Université Lumière Lyon 2), Franco Bonomi Bezzo (post-doctoral researcher, La Statale. University of Milan), Alihan Gök (teacher-researcher in Political Philosophy, Marmara University, Istanbul).
Hendrik Sturm (artist, teacher, Ecole supérieure d’art et design, Toulon) has been a member of ArTLib since 2020. His death on 15.8.2023 leaves an unfillable hole in the collective.
ArTLib maintains links with various study and research bodies at Aix Marseille Université, including UMRs – Laboratoire d’économie et de sociologie du travail (LEST), Centre Gilles Gaston Granger (CGGG) – and other centres – Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur les Qualifications (CEREQ), Association des professionnels en sociologie de l’entreprise (APSE) – as well as with experts and freelance artists linked to the world of work.
Research programme and activities
In recent years, the subject of work has come to occupy an increasingly important place in public and specialist debate. The representations and practices that relate to this fundamental aspect of the human condition are currently undergoing a radical transformation. Under the impact of multiple factors (digital revolution, accelerated degradation of nature, financialisation of the capitalist commercial society, globalisation, development of neo-liberal policies, widening social inequalities), the forms of labour and the way it is organised are being turned upside down. And the future is proving increasingly difficult to anticipate and prepare for. A new order of reality and discourse is emerging. Its configurations, not yet clearly decipherable, give rise to both fear and hope.
Numerous publications by a wide range of bodies – major international institutions, research teams, trade unions, groups of committed activists – offer very similar descriptions of the territory and the horizon. They focus on unprecedented developments affecting society as a whole (demographic changes, the urgent need to address ecological issues) and work in particular – digitisation, the crisis of the wage-earning system, changes in forms of employment, universal income, problematic access to the labour market, all of which sometimes take the form of a return to a past we thought was over (precariousness, vulnerability, multi-activity, de-unionisation, etc.), All of this sometimes takes the form of a return to a past thought to be behind us (precariousness, vulnerability, multiple activities, de-unionisation, the welfare crisis, corrosion of rights) or an eternal recurrence of the identical, such as the prophecy of the end of work, which is as old as work itself, and which is being announced today with the massive destruction of jobs under the effect of robotisation, or even the disappearance of work altogether.
A remarkable amount of thought has been put into the dark side of this umpteenth metamorphosis of work. Among the most interesting results are the renewal of certain classic categories (injustice, exploitation, alienation, domination, voluntary servitude, the banality of evil), the discovery of fertile ground for denunciations (of suffering at work in its psychological dimension, of the lack of recognition experienced and felt) and analyses: deconstruction of managerial practices and rhetoric which – despite their appeal to freedom – are always aimed at submission; exposure of new forms of proletarianisation and creation of value through labour hidden behind the anonymous opacity of algorithms (micro-labour, click workers, delivery drivers, logistics, platforms).
On the other hand, reflection on the other side of work – autonomy, self-fulfilment, empowerment, happiness, emancipation – remains the almost exclusive preserve of neoliberal discourse, management and corporate culture, where the working individual is seen above all as capital or a human resource to be developed. The promise of individual and collective freedom that work has brought with it since the beginning of modernity is thus recuperated by neoliberal ideology, but at the same time it runs the risk of being neglected by its critics, who more often than not remain focused on the negative side of contemporary work.
The questions posed by the ArTLib Collective attempt to counterbalance the imbalance in sensitivity and diagnostic depth that characterises the best work criticism today. ArTLib’s approach is based on the idea that, in the experiences and representations of work, multiple contradictory and conflicting dynamics are always at play: autonomy and domination, subjectivation and subjection, appropriation and alienation, self-realisation and loss. A crucial part of the individual and collective destiny of human beings in every age is decided in this field of tension.
Work, a practice and social relationship in its own right, is thus central to the lives of individuals and societies: there has been, there is and there always will be human work, even if it is hidden, invisible, repressed or yet to be invented. For this reason, work needs to be thought through and criticised in its constitutive relationship with the apparently opposite pole of freedom. Freedom cannot be instrumentalised by a neo-liberal rhetoric that would claim a fictitious and contingent monopoly on this crucial truth of the human condition. But freedom cannot be reduced to a dependent or negligible variable by a critique of work that focuses exclusively on the pathogenic side of this experience.
Work and freedom: this is the premise that characterises ArTLib’s approach.
From this fundamental position stem the questions that ArTLib puts at the heart of its research: what are the dominant links today between work (content of work, relationship to work, work relations, organisation and meaning of work) and freedom (individual and collective, positive and negative, autonomy and power to act, emancipation and voluntary servitude)? What is objectionable or intolerable about these configurations? Are there possible alternatives, or even concrete or necessary utopias, emerging in this field today, both theoretically and practically? And finally, how can these questions help us to reflect on the future of work, and even anticipate its forms, taking into account its ambivalence and the plurality of its facets?
Since 2019, this research programme has developed in a number of directions: multidisciplinary research seminars, a series of conferences with specialist researchers, meetings between researchers and field workers, publication of a collective work, participation in conferences or venues for a variety of audiences (popular universities, libraries, training establishments), fieldwork on experiments with a utopian dimension.
ArTLib sees itself as a space for plural reflection and collective research on the links between work, freedom and utopia, for the exchange of experiences by people imagining new ways of doing things, and for the open exchange of ideas and practices.
ArTLib activities in 2025
15 and 16 May 2025
The ArTLib research workshop celebrated its 7ᵉ anniversary on 15 and 16 May 2025 at Iméra, the Institute for Advanced Study of Aix Marseille Université.
Round tables, theatrical concerts, photo exhibitions, film screenings, games, jam sessions, body expression sessions, listening to or watching songs and podcasts… There’s so much to do at this great festival!
Taking part provided an opportunity to discuss work today, a central human activity, but one divided between freedom and domination, utopia and reality.
17 March 2025: Nadine RICHEZ-BATTESTI & Enrico DONAGGIO – Social innovation and utopia: what kind of work do we want?
What are the links between innovation and utopia, two fashionable concepts? If we think of utopia as a fantasy or as an ideal of perfection that cannot (or should not) happen, the link with innovation is non-existent. Conversely, if we adopt a conception of utopia rooted in reality, in the small experiments of everyday life, social innovation becomes one of its expressions. We will discuss together the possible agreements between social innovation and utopia, with a particular focus on work and freedom. Drawing on theoretical readings and an analysis of specific experiments in the Marseille area, we will show that they open up possibilities for inspiring, but always risky, alternatives.
Nadine Richez-Battesti is a lecturer in economics at the Faculty of Economics and Management at Aix Marseille Université. LEST-CNRS UMR 7317; Member of the ArTLib collective: travail, liberté et utopies, Iméra, under the direction of Enrico Donaggio; Co-president ADDES, Association pour le développement des données en Économie Sociale; Prix des femmes en ESS en France: Research category, 2023.
Enrico Donaggio is Professor of Philosophy at Aix Marseille Université, Scientific Director of the Imera Institute for Advanced Study, and coordinator of the ArTLib workshop.
14 July 2025: Théâtre de la Bourse du Travail CGT, Avignon
Alihan Gök and Enrico Donaggio take part in the Avignon Festival’s 7th national Culture; Arts/Travail meeting: Quand le travail entre en scène.
- 2.30pm: Alihan Gök will take part in the round table discussion Sensitive bodies and performing bodies: the sensitive engagement of bodies at work.
- 4.30pm: Enrico Donaggio will be taking part in the round table on Rethinking Work to Change Life: Utopias at Work.
ArTLib activities for 2024
3 February 2024, Maison des arts et de la culture de Martigues, Martigues
Film debate on the film Par la fenêtre ou par la porte by Jean-Pierre Bloc, organised in partnership with ArTLib.
14 March 2024, Faculty of Economics and Management – Ilot Bernard Dubois site, Marseille
Meeting-debate “The strategies of ordinary companies in the face of major challenges”, organised in partnership with ArTLib.
12 April 2024, Bibliothèque de l’Alcazar, Marseille
Conference-debate “What changes for work?” based on the book of the same name, organised in partnership with ArTLib.
16 July 2024, Chapelle des Italiens, Avignon
A day of performances and debates entitled “Quand le travail entre en scène”, organised in partnership with ArTLib as part of the Avignon Festival.
ArTLib activities in 2023
6 March 2023: Anne Marie Daune-Richard – Work, freedom and citizenship through a gender lens
Individual freedom is at the heart of modern democratic citizenship. Freedom is the foundation of individuality, which is the basis of citizenship: there can be no citizenship without individuality. And freedom and individuality are linked to work. But if we look at the definitions and components of freedom, we see that they are not conjugated in the same way in the masculine and feminine genders. After unfolding the links between freedom, work and citizenship, we will follow their evolution to reveal what remains today of this gendered conception inherited from the philosophy of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
Anne Marie Daune-Richard, Sociologist, honorary researcher at the CNRS, member of ArTLib
13 March 2023: Mariagrazia Cairo – Work, freedom and utopia through the prism of education
In the field of education, two major polarities seem to emerge: the autonomy of the learner and the transmission of a culture by a teacher, a parent or an institution. The ensuing educational relationships are organised within a working relationship and on the basis of personal, professional and societal norms and values. Freedom then takes on different, even opposing forms, between exercising one’s own free will and being more or less subjugated. These tensions are particularly visible in the utopian experiences of Western societies. To what extent do these legacies, which advocate both the construction of a free subject and the transmission of a culture, find their way into schools and education today? What room for manoeuvre do teachers, educators and learners have in more or less constrained environments?
Mariagrazia Cairo is a lecturer in philosophy at Aix Marseille Université and a member of the Gilles Gaston Granger Centre and the Institut supérieur du professorat et de l’éducation (INSPÉ).
13 April 2023
In 2023, ArTLib made a commitment to popular education in Martigues by organising a meeting and debate in partnership with the Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture de Martigues. 4 members of the workshop – Enrico Donaggio, Olivia Foli, Christophe Massot and José Rose – presented their thoughts on the theme of “Work and freedom? What an idea!”, based on illustrations from experiments and field surveys, as well as the broadcasting of audio testimonies from workers.
Work is in the news, with the struggles over pensions calling into question the place of forced labour in our lives. It is also an experience shared by all, in so many different forms: salaried work, self-employment, voluntary work, domestic work. And everyone wonders about the meaning of work and how it is recognised. Finally, work is ambivalent, both a factor of exploitation and a potential source of emancipation.
These issues were addressed on the basis of the collective work Travail e(s)t liberté? (ed. Erès, 2022), starting with the five figures that characterise the possible relationships between these two notions: liberation in work, liberation through work, liberation in spite of work, liberation from work, liberation from work.
The discussion with the participants provided an opportunity to exchange experiences and thoughts on current forms of work and the perspectives that can be opened up in this respect.
With contributions from : Enrico Donaggio, Olivia Foli, Christophe Massot, José Rose
28 September 2023: Film debate on the film Réquisition de Marseille – service provisoire by Luc Joulé and Sébastien Jousse
5th edition of the EHESS “Allez savoir” Social Sciences Festival, organised in partnership with ArTLib.
17 October 2023: Complaints at work and (mental) health in companies – Conference-debate with Olivia Foli at the Louis Aragon media library in Martigues
As part of Mental Health Information Week, a talk by sociologist Olivia Foli on her book: Les paroles de plainte au travail. Des maux indicibles aux conversations du quotidien.
Based on interviews and observations she has carried out in various companies, Olivia Foli will discuss the issues surrounding communication in the workplace and their links with health. When what’s going wrong can’t be said, when the expression of complaints is prevented, workers’ health is undermined.
Working is a key activity for the health of men and women. It provides a sense of self-fulfilment and recognition from others for a job well done. But what happens when something goes wrong, in terms of working conditions, management or cooperation difficulties for example? The complaints voiced during interactions in the workplace put into words the ills felt. They express the problems experienced by employees and a request for help. However, empirical surveys conducted in companies show that not everything can be said and that it is not always easy for colleagues or management to listen to complaints. This can damage health in the workplace, sometimes seriously.
The presentation will be based on the book: FOLI Olivia, 2022, Les paroles de plainte au travail. Des maux indicibles aux conversations du quotidien, preface by J. Le Marec, published by Archives Contemporaines.
ArTLib activities in 2022
17 March 2022: Utopie, travail et liberté #1 with Gérard Cazorla
Gérard Cazorla is the first Chairman of SCOP-TI 1336 – Gémenos
The Atelier de recherche Travail et Libertés (ArTLib) is organising three conferences bringing together researchers who have explored the history of utopias and work with women and men who have fought and are fighting together in Marseille to liberate their work, invent alternatives and experiment with concrete local utopias.
7 April 2022: Utopie, travail et liberté #2 with Thomas Bouchet & Caroline Caccavale
Thomas Bouchet is a historian of political thought at the University of Lausanne and Caroline Caccavale is the founder of Lieux fictifs in Marseille.
The Atelier de recherche Travail et Libertés (ArTLib) is organising three conferences bringing together researchers who have explored the history of utopias and work with women and men who have fought and are fighting together in Marseille to liberate their work, invent alternatives and experiment with concrete local utopias.
4 April 2022 : Mariagrazia CAIRO Nadine RICHEZ-BATTESTI – The social economy, between innovation and utopia
Change in work organisations: the contribution of the SSE between innovations and utopias. This conference is part of the work of the “Atelier de recherche travail et liberté” (ArTLib) research group at Iméra.
ArTLib’s project looks at transformations and changes in forms of work today. Between denouncing suffering and praising self-employment as a factor of freedom and emancipation, are there alternative ways of understanding, describing and characterising the structural tension between work and freedom? The ArTLib collective is combining reflection and open debate with a survey of the Marseilles area, in order to identify initiatives and experiences where the relationship between work and freedom is a source of collective questioning and transformation of practices.
14 June 2022: Conference-debate at APSE (Association Pour la Sociologie de l’Entreprise) with José Rose and Mariagrazia Cairo
As part of our partnership with Iméra (Institut d’Etudes Avancées d’Aix Marseille Université), APSE organised a café socio on the possible links between work and freedom.
At this café socio, in the presence of Mariagrazia Cairo and José Rose, we collectively explored the notions of work and freedom. How do they relate at individual, organisational and macro-social levels?
Mariagrazia Cairo is MCF in philosophy at AMU-CGG-CNRS and José Rose is emeritus professor in sociology at AMU-LEST-CNRS.
The discussions were chaired by Grégory Lévis and Blaise Barbance.
ArTLib activities in 2021
25 March 2021: Isabelle Berrebi-Hoffmann: Between history and utopia. What is free work?
Isabelle Berrebi-Hoffmann is a sociologist (CNRS, Lise-Cnam), author of Politiques de l’intime. Des utopies sociales du XIXème siècle aux mondes du travail d’aujourd’hui (2009, 2016) and co-author of Makers. Enquêtes sur les laboratoires du changement social (2018).
Since the 1970s, attempts have been made to reinvent the organisation of work, to eradicate subordination, rules, hierarchies and routine. But a close reading of the history of these experiments – with a view to work defined as creative and free – shows that the freedom dreamed of and the price to be paid are redefined over time. In her talk, Isabelle Berrebi-Hoffmann will explore this history of imagined emancipation and productive practices. She will draw on examples from her sociological work over the last twenty years in the digital world and from a recent survey of the ecosystem and worlds of artificial intelligence in the Greater Boston area and Silicon Valley.
8 April 2021: Emmanuel Dockes : Le travail en misarchie. Une utopie pragmatique
Emmanuel Dockes is professor of law at the University of Paris Nanterre and author of Voyage en misarchie. Essai pour tout reconstruire (2017), Droit du travail (2017).
Misarchy is a big, imperfect, pragmatic piece of tinkering that sketches out a kind of ecological hyper-democracy, in which we get rid of the State, capitalism and productivism, while trying to retain the very useful functions that these monsters provide. It’s a question of thinking about the disappearance of the state, without doing away with taxation, public services or even the police, or doing away with capitalism without doing away with entrepreneurial freedom, money or even property, or doing away with productivism while retaining the market and even a little consumerism that’s not unpleasant. What is the place and destiny of work in this utopia?
27 May 2021: Antonio Casili: Waiting for the robots. Utopia of the end of work or new exploitation?
Antonio Casilli is professor of sociology at Télécom Paris and author of Les liaisons numériques. Towards a new sociability (2010), En attendant les robots. Enquête sur le travail du clic (2019).
What if, like the enigmatic Godot in Samuel Beckett’s play, robots never arrived? What if our quasi-messianic expectation of complete automation turned out to be a promise constantly renewed, but never kept? It is in the field of work that this prophecy has the greatest impact. From the first appearance, in the seventeenth century, of the notion of the ‘factory without workers’ to the great digital platforms, it is not so much a ‘great technological replacement’ that is taking place as a great encasement of work within material and ideological structures that are pushing for ever more extreme forms of subordination and flexibilisation. Yet this situation is not without contradictions, tensions and alternatives.
Labour and freedom: yesterday and today
In 2021, three members of the Work and Freedom (ArTLib) research workshop presented ArTLib’s research and issues at two conferences organised by the Université Populaire de Marseille (UPOP).
Enrico Donaggio, philosopher and multi-annual researcher in residence (2019-2021), Christophe Massot, associate researcher at CRTD-CNAM, and José Rose, professor emeritus of sociology at Aix Marseille Université, discuss the reasons behind ArTLib.
While the subject of work is becoming an increasingly important part of the debate, they explain, most research focuses on its negative aspects. The ArTLib collective wants to counterbalance this imbalance and present work in the form of contradictory dynamics: autonomy and domination, subjectivation and subjugation, appropriation and alienation, self-fulfilment and loss, and so on.
There will always be human labour, they argue, and it needs to be seen in its relationship with freedom, which has evolved over the ages. With modernity, labour has become capital as a factor of production, the foundation of the social bond and a vector of self-realisation. Five typical figures emerge: ‘liberating work’, ‘liberating oneself from work’, liberating oneself ‘in’, ‘despite’ and ‘through’ work. They conclude that there are three perspectives to be considered: one is macro-social, the second is at the intermediate level of organisations and companies, and the third is more individual.
26 April 2021: Enrico DONAGGIO – Work and freedom: yesterday and today
3 May 2021: Christophe MASSOT & José ROSE – Labour and Freedoms: yesterday and today
ArTLib : Suspension of activities at Iméra in 2020 – a letter from the pandemic (in French)
ArTLib activities in 2019
7 March 2019 : Travail et libertés aujourd’hui #1 – with Christophe Dejours: Travail vivant et émancipation: quelle problématique? – and Emmanuel Renault: Democratising work
“Living work and emancipation: what are the issues?”, with Christophe Dejours, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, professor, founder of psychodynamic work and the IPDT in Paris. Author ofSouffrance en France. La banalisation de l’injustice sociale and Le choix. Suffering at work is not inevitable.
“Democratising work”, with Emmanuel Renault, philosopher, professor and creator of a critical and social theory based on the centrality of work and recognition. Author of L’expérience de l’injustice and Le Mépris social.
11 April 2019: Travail et libertés aujourd’hui #2 with Michel Lallement: Libertarian work and concrete utopias
“Libertarian work and concrete utopias“, with Michel Lallement (CNAM, Paris, sociologist, author of l’Âge du faire Hacking, travail, anarchie (2015) and co-author of Makers– Enquête sur les laboratoires du changement social (2018).
On the fringes of the dominant economic system, utopians have long been tinkering with alternative forms of work, with the ambition of emancipating those who practise them from domination of all kinds. By taking an anthropological plunge into the heart of concrete social experiments, past and present, in France and the United States, the aim is to paint a picture of what might be called ‘libertarian work’, to identify the promises it holds out and to raise some of the questions it poses for our future.
16 May 2019 :Travail et libertés aujourd’hui #3 with Danièle Linhart: Employee subordination: the eternal managerial obsession
“La subordination des salariés: l’éternelle obsession managériale” with Danièle Linhart, sociologist (CNRS), author of Se battre, disent-elles, La Dispute, (2012)
From Taylorism to modern management, the logic remains the same: a disqualification of jobs, professionalism and experience that tends to reinforce the domination exercised by managers. Work loses its meaning and creates a precarious situation for employees, who, constantly put to the test, are led to doubt their value and legitimacy.
20 June 2019 :Travail et libertés aujourd’hui #4 with Massimiliano Nicoli, Luca Paltrinieri and Muriel Prévot-Carpentier: Labour and digital platforms: between exploitation and opportunities
“Labour and digital platforms: between exploitation and opportunities“, with Massimiliano Nicoli, University of Paris-Nanterre; Luca Paltrinieri, University of Rennes 1; Muriel Prevot-Carpentier, INRS Nancy.
The advent of digital work platforms has brought about a series of paradoxical transformations affecting both work and the enterprise: the legal subordination of the wage contract is increasingly giving way to new forms of economic and psychological dependence, while the traditional enterprise form is tending to explode in the various forms of self-entrepreneurship, or to merge with the market in the form of the platform enterprise. Yet this situation of intensified (self-)exploitation of the productive individual is a testing ground for new forms of cooperation rooted in the long history of the political intelligence of work.
