LTeleworking has become a fact of society. Resistance based on the supposed need to always work in the same spaces to ensure team cohesion has weakened, while the excesses advocating, on the contrary, the eradication of all common workplaces have been forgotten. A standard seems to be emerging around two days per week open to teleworking. The necessary coordination has the virtue of forcing us to improve the effectiveness of activities carried out jointly.
Having become the symbol par excellence of a transformation in our relationship to work, teleworking nevertheless only concerns 25% of the active population. Unevenly distributed according to professions and functions, it also reflects the social divide of which the geographer Christophe Guilluy has become the theoretician (French fractures2010 ; No Society2018).
By observing the geographical stratifications of the population, Mr. Guilluy distinguishes a large peripheral zone made up of small and medium-sized towns and rural areas; 60% of French people work mainly in a network of local administrations, SMEs and small ETIs.
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In contrast, a France of metropolises (Paris and regional capitals) is emerging, which concentrates the head offices of large international companies and central administrations. It is made up on the one hand of an elite of economic, political and cultural actors involved in the globalization of trade and culture. It is in gentrified inner-city neighborhoods or in affluent suburbs, protected by high real estate costs.
A new gain in quality of life
This France of the metropolises also includes the disadvantaged social categories living in the poor suburbs and who form the battalion of low-skilled jobs ensuring the logistics of metropolitan life (catering, maintenance, transport, security, etc.). Between peripheral and metropolitan areas, the declining middle classes work in metropolises, but live further and further from them to maintain their purchasing power by benefiting from affordable real estate costs, even if it means accepting long daily commutes. .
Teleworking is excluded when production requires the physical presence of the worker (maintenance, health, cleaning staff, etc.). It is therefore largely unthinkable for 75% of the working population who live mainly in peripheral areas and suburbs. On the other hand, it is convenient for urban elites whose individualized creative work is highly valued, as well as for managers and employees whose part of their activity consists of processing information.
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