Local services: Conditions for the development of the market

Much hope has been laid in local services as a potential source of job crea tion and as a possible means of reintegration for those who have been exclu ded from the labour market. The relatively numerous Experiments that have b een developed in France, especially at a local level and with the support o f 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 nation of local servic es, 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 t urn raises the question of the economic and social regulation of these serv ices for which the local dimension has a fundamental role to play.