Precarious Employment, Individualization Processes, and Professional Cyclists in France

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between the experience of precarious employment and individualization processes. Drawing from the historical‐sociological approach of Norbert Elias, we explain how and why individualization processes advanced in France over the course of several centuries and how this shaped the employment experiences of professional cyclists. Elias's theoretical explanation of individualization differs significantly from those of Giddens, Beck, and Bauman whose work tends to undergird the causes of precarious employment within many studies. As explained in this article, the individualization of the social habitus was a long‐term, and unplanned, development which ran in parallel with the gradual, but uneven, improvements in the employment conditions of professional cyclists.