Local Services: Conditions for the Development of the Market

Much hope has been laid in local services as a potential source of job creation and as a possible means of reintegration for those who have been excluded from the labour market. The relatively numerous experiments that have been developed in France, especially at a local level and with the support of the State, which has sought to make part of the potential demand viable, seem to have failed to meet up to these expectations, leaving an impression of half-success or half-failure. After defining the notion of local services, the article looks at the very conditions that govern the existence of a market for such services. It will endeavour to show, based on examples and typologies, that a new production model seems to be emerging and this in turn raises the question of the economic and social regulation of these services for which the local dimension has a fundamental role to play.