Changing one’s job, changing one’s life? The case of “intellectual” workers retraining as craftspersons

White-collar professionals retraining as craftspersons have, seemingly, become more commonplace in recent years. Such career changes may well go hand in hand with profound changes in one’s everyday life: career change is likely to imply embracing an alternative lifestyle, as well as to require adjustments outside of the professional sphere. Drawing mainly on three cases of highly educated professionals who have engaged in a major career change to become craftspersons, the paper dwells on the links between evolutions in one’s professional sphere and in one’s everyday life.