Research, for what? The European discourse on restructuring and the social research - The article examines the discourse relating to restructuring, as developed by the European Commission since the end of the 1990s, and discusses the implications of the various activities initiated or financed at the European level for social research in this field. The community discourse is characterised by a discursive strategy reversing the negative perceptions linked to restructuring by constructing a generic concept, which ultimately leads to a cognitive framework based on the "naturalisation" of economic change and competitiveness. Given this context for social research, the use of empirical methods has to be accompanied by a constant exercise of deconstruction in order to break up the "cognitive cage" which the actors are confined to.
Key words: concepts, deconstruction, discourse, Europe, research, restructuring