L’expérimentation «Territoire zéro chômeur de longue durée ». Un projet entre dispositif d’insertion et projet de territoire

The persistence of mass unemployment has led to the implementation of liberal-inspired employment policies built around two objectives: lowering labor costs by reducing payroll (social security) contributions, and reducing unemployment benefits to encourage jobless workers to return to work more quickly. These public policies were supplemented by a "social" component aimed at combating exclusion, based on the recognition of initiatives emerging from social work, training, and local development, which were written into the French Labor Code in 1998 under the name "integration through economic activity". It is in this context that the "Zero Long-Term Unemployment Territories" project was launched, starting with the 2016 law. This chapter reviews the history and the core principles of the project's philosophy, then presents its implementation under experimental laws, pointing out the limits that emerged between the project's ideal and its realization under the first law, and reporting the results of implementing the second law. Finally, it examines the innovations these experiments may offer for renewing territorialized responses to social issues.