Stigmatisation et intégration sociale au guichet d'une institution familière. Le bureau de poste d'un quartier populaire.
Résumé
Stigmatization and social integration at the front office of a local institution. Relations between street level bureaucrats and inhabitants of a popular urban area in a post office.
This fieldwork study in a post office in a urban popular area gives elements for the analysis of practical relations between a local public agency and its public. Agents have an ambiguous attitude towards local population, because of their professionnal position, of their working conditions and because of their relations — socially distant but familiar — with customers. Their attitude varies between strict respect of rules, and involvment in deeper sociability. Clients are maintly dominated in those front office relations, but helpfulness and familiarity allow the development of more integrative relations with the institution and its employees.
This fieldwork study in a post office in a urban popular area gives elements for the analysis of practical relations between a local public agency and its public. Agents have an ambiguous attitude towards local population, because of their professionnal position, of their working conditions and because of their relations — socially distant but familiar — with customers. Their attitude varies between strict respect of rules, and involvment in deeper sociability. Clients are maintly dominated in those front office relations, but helpfulness and familiarity allow the development of more integrative relations with the institution and its employees.
L'étude ethnographique de relations au guichet d'un bureau de poste dans un quartier populaire de banlieue parisienne permet de saisir des rapports pratiques entre une institution étatique familière et son public. Du fait de leur position subalterne, des conditions de travail, et des relations qui se nouent avec la clientèle (distance sociale et interconnaissance), les guichetiers ont une attitude ambiguë à son égard, qui oscille entre mise en œuvre stricte des règlements, et investissement dans des relations de sociabilité. Les relations des habitants à l'institution et à ses agents sont ainsi ambivalentes : relations de domination, qui peuvent être stigmatisantes, quand les agents adoptent une attitude "tatillonne", elles peuvent être des relations intégratives, quand la "serviabilité" des guichetiers le permet.