Cette thèse étudie le rôle et l’impact du « stage en entreprise » sur la construction du projet professionnel de personnes de « bas niveau de qualification » engagées dans une formation en alternance. Notre objectif principal vise, d’une part, à mettre en évidence leurs profils, leurs besoins ainsi que les représentations qu’elles ont de la formation, du travail et du projet professionnel, et, d’autre part, à identifier et caractériser leurs attitudes et les problèmes spécifiques qu’elles affrontent lorsqu’elles sont en interaction avec les acteurs et le milieu de l’entreprise. Nous partons de l’hypothèse que l’efficacité du stage et du dispositif de formation dépend de la « dynamique biographique » de chaque stagiaire et des difficultés qu’il exprime dans le contexte de l’alternance. Après une phase d'enquête sur terrain et la réalisation d’études de cas à partir d’une série de questionnaires et entretiens, nous pensons que les problèmes rencontrés par ces stagiaires ne sont pas de l’ordre de la construction proprement dite du projet professionnel, mais des doutes, sinon des craintes, sur leurs capacités à pouvoir le construire. Le blocage semble en amont même de la construction du projet : ils peinent à surmonter des obstacles biographiques, personnels, psychologiques et contextuels. L’efficacité recherchée pourrait être obtenue à deux conditions : une réorganisation institutionnelle et pédagogique des dispositifs de formation et une amélioration de l’accompagnement psychologique et social des stagiaires. / This thesis analyses the role and impact of “a company internship” onto the development of professional scheme with “low skilled individuals” involved in alternative training. Our main target is, on the one hand, to highlight their profiles, their needs, as well as the representations they have of their trainings, their jobs, their professional schemes and, on the other hand, to identify and characterize their attitudes and the particular problems they are confronted with, when interacting with the different actors and with their business environment. We take for granted that the efficiency of the training system is connected with the biographical dynamics of each trainee together with the types of difficulties experienced in the context of alternative training. The research highlights that the problem for this group of the professional scheme as such but rather to doubts, even fears about their actual capacity to carry it out. The blocage seems even prior to the development of the scheme: they are having difficulties to overcome the biographical, personal, psychological and contextual obstacles. The expected efficiency could be obtained on two conditions: an institutional and pedagogical reorganization of the training system together with a better psychological and social accompaniment of the trainees.

Over the last few decades, production processes have become increasingly fragmented: they are divided into ever smaller parts considered as separate activities, which are then spread over various locations in different countries. In other words, value chains for many products are becoming global. This implies that inputs into the production process are sourced from both local and foreign suppliers. The latter mode of sourcing is commonly referred to as offshoring. Expressed as the share of imported in total intermediates, offshoring has grown relatively fast in the recent past. Moreover, its scope has been extended as it increasingly encompasses not only manufacturing but also service activities. A typical example for the former is the sourcing from abroad of parts and components for car assembly. While offshoring of manufacturing activities has been occurring since long and has been largely facilitated by trade liberalisation, the offshoring of service activities such as the provision of accounting or call centre services is a more recent phenomenon that has been fostered by the increased tradability of such services.<p>With the increasing scale and scope of offshoring, it becomes crucial to get a grasp of its drivers as well as the gains and threats associated with it. The latter are the focal point of the public and academic discussion around offshoring, in particular the potential threats for workers in developed economies. Typical questions that are being raised are whether offshoring leads to job losses in developed countries and whether it favours certain categories of workers and is to the disadvantage of others. These threats are directly linked to the motivations for engaging into offshoring. In this respect, wage costs play a prominent role. But other factors may also influence offshoring decisions, e.g. regulations, in particular those regarding the environment. Last but not least, offshoring may also entail gains for developed economies through the improvements in the efficiency of production. In this PhD thesis, several causes and consequences of offshoring are examined empirically for Belgium.<p>The first issue that is investigated is whether offshoring of materials and business services affects industry-level employment. An improved offshoring intensity measure is introduced. It is a volume measure of the share of imported intermediates in output split into materials and business services and according to the country of origin of imports, i.e. high-wage and low-wage countries. Estimations of static and dynamic industry-level labour demand equations augmented by offshoring intensities do not reveal a significant impact of either materials or business services offshoring on total employment for Belgium. This result holds for both the manufacturing sector and the service sector and it proves robust to splitting the manufacturing sector into high-technology and low-technology industries.<p>These results raise the question whether there are actually productivity gains from offshoring. Therefore, estimates of the impact of materials and business services offshoring on industry-level productivity in Belgium are presented. Two features of the analysis are new compared to the existing literature on this subject: the issue is examined separately for manufacturing and market services industries and the possibility of forward and backward spillovers from offshoring, i.e. that productivity gains from offshoring feed through to upstream and downstream industries, is investigated. Results show that materials offshoring has no effect on productivity, while business services offshoring leads to productivity gains in manufacturing. Furthermore, there is no evidence of either forward or backward spillovers from offshoring.<p>Despite the absence of an industry-level total employment effect, offshoring may alter the within-industry composition of employment. In this respect, a major concern is the worsening of the labour market position of low-skilled workers. This issue is addressed by providing evidence on the impact of offshoring on the skill structure of manufacturing employment in Belgium between 1995 and 2007. Offshoring is found to significantly lower the employment share of low-skilled workers. Its contribution to the fall in the employment share of low-skilled workers amounts to 35%. This is mainly driven by offshoring to Central and Eastern European countries. Business services offshoring also contributes significantly to the fall in the low-skilled employment share. As a complement to the existing literature, the widely used current price measure of offshoring is compared with a constant price measure that is based on a deflation with separate price indices for domestic output and imports. This reveals that the former underestimate the extent of offshoring and its impact on low-skilled employment. Finally, further results show that the impact of offshoring on low-skilled employment is significantly smaller in industries with a higher ICT capital intensity.<p>Furthermore, attention is drawn to environmental effects of offshoring by asking whether offshoring contributes to reducing air emissions from manufacturing. Indeed, since the mid-90’s, production-related air emissions in Belgian manufacturing have been reduced substantially. It can be shown that the pace of the reduction has been fastest for domestic intermediates. The issue of whether offshoring has played a role in this reduction by replacing domestic intermediates by imported intermediates is widely debated. Here, a decomposition analysis is developed to measure the contribution of offshoring – the share of imported intermediates in total intermediates – to the fall in air emissions for domestic intermediates. Based on the results from this decomposition analysis, it is possible to calculate that 17% of the fall in greenhouse gas emissions, 6% of the fall in acidifying emissions and 7% of the fall in tropospheric precursor emissions in Belgian manufacturing between 1995 and 2007 can be attributed to offshoring.<p>Finally, emission intensities are also considered as a potential determinant of offshoring. An econometric approach for testing the pollution haven effect for imported intermediate materials is developed. The approach is new with respect to the existing literature on pollution havens through its specific focus on imports of intermediates. The test is embedded in a cost function framework from which a system of cost share equations for variable input factors is derived. The set of potential determinants of the demand for imported intermediate materials includes emission intensities for three types of air pollutants. Their impact constitutes a test of the pollution haven effect. The system of cost share equations is estimated by a within ISUR using data for the Belgian manufacturing sector. Results show some albeit relatively weak evidence of a pollution haven effect for imported intermediate materials.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished