ABSTRACT
Unemployment is a troubled concept. Its meaning, statistics, remedies and even at times its very existence are contested. It certainly divided French opinion between the wars. France and Britain took different roads to capitalist development and this had a crucial impact upon the character of unemployment in the 1930s. The geographical pattern of French unemployment was highly differentiated. A survey of France in the early 1930s reveals this complexity. The study of French unemployed protest in the 1930s was given renewed pertinence by the emergence of new social movements in 1990s France. The relationship between the unemployed movements of the 1930s and the 1990s casts the new social movements in a distinctive light. This relationship reveals a relative amnesia in the French working-class movement about the French hunger marches, unemployed demonstrations and riots. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
