Cities Next Door: A Social Research Experiment About Young People and Center–Periphery Cohabitation in Four Major Cities

ABSTRACT

The article presents an exploratory study conducted in four marginalized spaces of four large cities (Paris, Port-Prince, Rio de Janeiro and Montreal). The idea was to propose to young people from these neighborhoods to present their cities in a walking, drawing and photographic form. This article presents the results of this experiment by examining the themes that emerged from these interviews, drawings and photographs. The spaces are presented in terms of descriptions of the atmospheres within them, racism and discrimination, beauty rights and pride, and finally actions of transformation, hope, and change. The similarities in the descriptions are extremely strong despite the remoteness of the places and communities. The young people emphasize the normal or intended normalcy of their spaces and are highly critical of government, the media, and ordinary people. authorities, the media and the ordinary population of the large centers for the judgments made about them and their for the judgments made about them and their neighborhoods; they blame them for the visions that emphasize crime and crime and poverty. Artistic and cultural action is presented as a strength in the face of negative experiences of these young people in these environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Cohabitation
• youth
• marginalized neighborhoods
• arts
• invibilization
• resistance

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 More specifically, it is a research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Knowledge Development Grant number).

2 Although this article does not focus specifically on racism and discrimination, but rather on racialized and discriminated spaces, we mobilize the common use of these notions where racism is understood as a system that affirms the superiority of a racial group on another and where discrimination is defined as ‘an exclusionary behavior rationalized on the basis of stereotypes and prejudices’ which may be racial, cultural, geographical, etc. (Ledoyen 1998). It is therefore from the point of view of those who are considered "inferior" (those who are "racialized") and who suffer this social and geographical exclusion that the analysis presented bears and lets us glimpse the prejudice carried by what we let us call ‘the center’ in relation to these ‘peripheries’ said to be incapable of adopting ways of life and living that the former consider valid (Ledoyen 2004).

3 In addition to the authors of this article, we name here the composition of the teams at each site: in Montreal, Karoline Truchon (UQO), Fanny H.-Levy, the CIDICHA and the RQCJE. In France, Alain Bertho (MSH Paris Nord) and Amar Henni, as well as the CVS. In Brazil we add Lydia Segala (UFF), Antonio Firmino and the Museu Sankofa. Finally, in Haiti we add Frantz Voltaire, FOKAL and the CIDIHCA.

4 Following these group activities, a number of individual interviews with young people and with key persons linked to organizations that are significant to them were also held and recorded. In total, 30 individual interviews, 13 group interviews and 8 workshops were conducted in the four sites.

5 Originally from Grigny, Coulibaly committed a hostage crisis on January 10, 2015 (the day after the killing at the Charli Hebdo newspaper) in the Hyper Cacher store located in the Porte-de-Vincennes district of Paris during which he killed four people and claimed to be a member of the Islamic State.

6 On August 9 2008 in the Montreal-North neighborhood, Fredy Villanueva, an 18 year old racialized boy, was shot and killed by a police officer. This event will be remembered for the police violence and racial profiling used in an initially minor intervention concerning a game of gambling with money considered illegal in Montreal parks.

7 Racial profiling is defined as discriminatory behavior by an individual in a position of authority towards another individual for reasons related to his or her ethnic, national or religious origin.

8 The fall of 2021 has been particularly busy with events regarding racial profiling cases, especially in Montreal and Quebec City. Since the years 2018-2019, complaints of racial profiling have increased by 87% in Quebec according to the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (CDPDJ 2021).

9 The Deprivation Index allows for an understanding of inequalities through various measures of social well-being, including health, education and justice.

10 See this event: https://sacr.ca/calendrier-2021/

11 See the exhibition: https://projetajira.wixsite.com/lesvillesdacote/exposition

12 Readers can refer to the parts of the exhibition on the website that cover the same themes as this article. The drawings as well as the photos are not the work of professionals, but of people who have to deal with a complex reality, difficult to translate and full of positive and negative emotions. The photographs were sometimes taken in high resolution with the cameras that we put at the disposal of the young people, but also from their cell phones or ours, depending on the needs of the moment and the will of the young people. In such an anthropological, social and artistic approach, the requirements of the field most often take precedence over the criteria of the aesthetic approach.

13 In this section and the following we are quoting the sentences from the drawings. When we quote from interviews, excerpts are placed alongside the photographs that are included here.

Additional information

Funding

It is a research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Knowledge Development Grant number).

Notes on contributors

Francine Saillant

Professor Francine Saillant is a emeritus at Laval University, Quebec, Canada, Francine Saillant is also member emeritus of the CASCA. She was director of the Journal Anthropologie et Sociétés (1999-2009) and of the Research Center Cultures, Arts et Sociétés (2009-2015). She published thirty books as author or director and among them, Lausanne manifesto (2011) (with Mondher Kilani). She conducts her current research on diversity, human rights, ethnographic visual writing, art and mental health. She is an anthropologist, ethnographic cineast, poet and visual artist. Sue is also de director of Anthropen (also with Mondher KIlani), a dictionary of anthropology on line. In 2020-2021, she received the Gold Medal of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Weaver Tremblay Prize of the Canadian Society of Anthropology and the Marie-Andrée Bertrand Prize for her contribution to science and society in Quebec Province of Canada.

Sarah Bourdages Duclot

Sarah Bourdages Duclot holds a B.A. in Visual and Media Arts Education, an M.A. in Intercultural Communication and is currently a doctoral student in Anthropology. Her doctoral research focuses on the agentivity of Xinguanas indigenous women in an urban context in Brazil. Her broader interests include urban indigeneity, the Brazilian indigenous movement, indigenous women's associations, and the forms of agentivity deployed by minority and marginalized groups. Her multidisciplinary background and committed ethnographic approach lead her to mobilize collaborative methodologies through processes of knowledge co-construction and the mobilization of audiovisual techniques such as video, drawing and cartography. In this perspective, she co-directed the film 'Vozes das guerreiras' (Voices of the warriors) with her doctoral research partners and is working on the realization of a virtual and animated graphic book about the urban experiences of Xinguanas women.