The Impossible Confinement of Nuclear Work

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Based on an ethnographic study attentive to biographical careers, this article concerns how employees of subcontracting companies in the electro-nuclear industry and their female life partners relate to an occupation characterized by significant geographical mobility and an intrinsic exposure to radioactivity. These young men and couples invest in this line of work as an opportunity that requires a particularly delicate management of life outside of work for both members of the couple. Tolerated and managed for a time, it sometimes proves inadequate for averting occupational strain on the worker, and may even be a source of strain on the family. While workers and their partners are busy holding the relationship together despite the travel demands of the job, which prove to be increasingly burdensome, initially invisible workplace hazards end up causing problems and worry at home. Friends and family are once again exposed to the strains of nuclear work, and their support proves to be determinant as much in the dynamics of mobilizations for workplace health protection as in withstanding the ordeal of occupational illness.