L'intime au travail : un «espace» aux frontières labiles. Mise en question de la frontière entre vie intime et vie professionnelle dans nos sociétés contemporaines

Abstract

Private life in the working environment : a “ sphere” with labile contours. Examining the border between private life and professional life in contemporary societies. This article examines the border between professional life and private life based on a socio-anthropological study of what working women involved in medically assisted procreation programmes reveal of their couple’s infertility in the working environment. The medical assistance programmes in which couples become involved require women to justify their unexpected absences and their apparent lack of availability to their superiors and colleagues. Examining how these women organise themselves to reveal or hide what usually has no role to play in a professional world where rational values of management and performance prevail, allows us to draw up a topology of private life and its borders.