L’économie sociale compte-t-elle ? Comment la compte-t-on ? Représentations de l’économie sociale à travers les indicateurs statistique

Producing stats on the social economy (SE) aims to quantify its weight and show its role within the economy in order to give it more visibility and to produce knowledge about it (UN 2003). However, social economy is a relatively new concept in the world of economic statistics. Many issues arise, such as establishing the perimeter of the statistical population and finding appropriate classifications. One of these issues has to do with economic indicators. Standard economic indicators reflect part of the reality but also partly leave out some of what the SE produces. Most important, standard economic indicators do not take well into account particular aspects of SE enterprises. Nonetheless, the actual production of statistics manages to draw portraits that outline various aspects of the SE. This paper discusses the representations of the SE that such indicators depict. We first expose our perspective on statistical indicators, viewed as social constructs. Second, based on the analysis of reports exposing the social economy between 2005 and 2012, we describe the main data sources for producing stats for the social economy and expose some of their strengths and weaknesses. Lastly, we outline the various underlying conceptions of the SE that indicators implicitly suggest. Three figures of the SE are observed: that of a is a fullyfledged economic actor, representing a significant share of the economic output in many sectors of activity; that of a specific economic model that combines different resources; and the figure of a territorialized economy in order to respond to the needs of the population.