63

Since the 1980s, employability has become a central issue for a number of institutions dedicated to the poor in France, including caritative organisations. This article aims at investigating how they define the status of those who have been dubbed the “new poor”. Using the institutional conception of poverty, and based both on quantitative and qualitative research, it shows that introducing the employment issue in these non-profit organisations leads those working within them to distance themselves from the figure of the “poor”, without adopting that of the “unemployed”, nor even that of the “precarious”. The expressions used to refer to these supported individuals are varied and unfixed: “people removed from employment”, “fragile”, “in a very difficult situation”, or more simply “beneficiaries”, “the looked after”, “the users”. These expressions reveal the indeterminacy that still characterises the status of these people today, more than thirty years after the emergence of the “new poverty” issue in France. This article sheds light on the causes of this persistent indetermination.