BACKGROUND: Employees working for office-cleaning companies are directly affected by the growing competition in this sector. They face a heavier workload and heightened psychological pressure. A majority of these workers are less qualified women working part-time, with flexible and inconvenient schedules. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study is to highlight the workers' strategies to deal with fast work, schedule requirements and the consequent difficulties to reconcile their professional and private life commitments. METHODS: This study is based on in-depth interviews. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred and twenty-five male and female workers responsible for cleaning offices. RESULTS: The themes generated from the results highlight a continued deterioration in working conditions in this sector. They also show that even approximate respect of the theoretical workload as calculated by the sub-contractor and the client company mainly depends on the workers' subjective strategies to accommodate increasingly fragmented work hours with their private lives. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, since these individual strategies are not enough to make up for the deterioration in work conditions, improving them requires sub-contractors and client companies to agree on organisational arrangements that take into account the reality of the employees' lives.

Drawing on two case studies from large-scale fieldwork carried out on euthanasia in Belgium and assisted suicide in Switzerland, this article focuses on the processes of normalization that structure aid in dying. Normalization takes place through a set of apparatuses only partially derived from current legislation, which underlie the relationships that develop between those requesting aid in dying, healthcare staff, volunteers, and loved ones. The resulting arrangements are specific to each national context, but the empirical data also point to broadly common traits, highlighting new paradigmatic forms of aid in dying in the contemporary era.

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Résumé. Il ne fait de doute pour personne que certains traitements cancérologiques démontrent, tout au moins aux yeux des profanes, une violence, parfois extrême. S'appuyant sur une recherche de quinze mois menée dans un hôpital de cancérologie de pointe, cet article examine deux manières qu'a la médecine de se rapporter à la violence propre à ses pratiques ordinaires : la première telle qu'elle est inscrite dans l'éthique médicale institutionnalisée, la seconde telle qu'elle est impliquée dans l'interprétation psychologique légitime des conduites de résistance des patients. Dans ces deux modes de rapport la violence thérapeutique se révèle soustraite à l'interrogation éthique.

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