When self-employment replaces wage labor The cost and the value of independence

Based mostly on interviews, this article seeks to understand simultaneously the entry conditions into self-employment, and the resources mobilized to face the cost of independence. The auto-entrepreneur regime can be used as a means to occupational integration, for the benefit of employers, and as a means, for previous employees, to work differently. The self-employed still rely on the wage-earners’ model and on a gender-based division of work, and their implication rests upon the validation of being autonomous and active, at all cost.