Mourir en salopette

The aim of this article is to study the relationship between work and retirement among farmers. How do they experience retirement and give meaning to their work activities until death? The study is based on a qualitative survey of male and female farmers receiving a retirement pension in two rural regions of France and Switzerland. The analysis focuses first on understanding the negative representations associated with retirement, which is perceived as an economic and moral risk. The idea of the ’peasant at heart’ has a key meaning. It explains why farmers keep working after retirement age. The new ways of carrying out farming work are then analyzed considering whether or not the farm is taken over by a successor. The analysis concludes that this relationship to work is fragile in a context of crisis for small family farms. Economic constraints and the valorization of work until death have an ambivalent relationship.