Between deliberation and contestation: the convergence of struggles against austerity and its world in the Nuit Debout movement

ABSTRACT

Nuit debout represents one of the main mobilizations in France in recent years and the most important anti-austerity movement in the country since the financial crisis. Based on document analysis and fieldwork, this paper addresses the development of master frames within the context of free spaces. The introduction of the parliamentarian debate on the French Jobs Act can be understood as a suddenly imposed grievance that triggered the emergence in France of a movement against austerity and the perceived retrenchment of democratic life. This happened as the grievance was framed within the French left-wing movements through the adoption and adaptation of ideas coming from a movement cascade that started in 2008 in Iceland, peaked in 2011 in Spain, Greece and the US and continued in countries as Turkey in 2013. Moving from structure to action, the paper highlights how Nuit debout provided a platform for the convergence of previously disconnected mobilizations. In particular, the movement’s self-characterization as a ‘convergence of struggles’ and as a movement ‘against the Jobs Act and its world’ developed within free spaces in which contentious but also deliberative practices were accommodated.

KEYWORDS:

• Nuit debout
• democracy
• deliberation
• framing
• convergence of struggles
• France

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the seminar series of the Center for Social Movements Studies (Scuola Normale Superiore) and at the 'Cross-movement Mobilization' Conference (Ruhr University). The authors would like to warmly thank colleagues and friends that shared their feedback and insight with us as well as the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their thorough and greatly helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A list of Nuit debout’s web-pages consulted and further information on interviews is available upon request.

2. Like Gerhards and Rucht (1992) seminal analysis of master frames we observed no particular motivational frame in our case study. We concur with them that this might be because the motivational capacity of diagnostic and prognostic master frames is enhanced by their containing explicit or implicit motivating elements.

3. Translated into English by the authors.

4. Interviewee 1, 27/7/2016.

5. https://feministesdebout.wordpress.com/.

6. See for instance, https://wiki.nuitdebout.fr/wiki/Villes/Paris_R%C3%A9publique#Commissions.

7. MEDEF, Mouvement des Entreprises de France, is the largest employer federation in France. See respectively: http://plateforme2016.hautetfort.com/plateforme-2016/ and https://wiki.nuitdebout.fr/wiki/Villes/Rennes.

8. See http://www.fakirpresse.info/-nous-ne-voterons-plus-ps-98-.

9. See, for instance, https://lacollective34.wordpress.com/2016/11/02/communique-de-lag-contre-letat-durgence-et-les-violences-detat-commission-anti-repression-et-de-lag-populairenuit-debout-contre-la-loi-travail-et-son-monde/.

10. https://www.facebook.com/convergencedesluttes31M/.

11. https://twitter.com/convdesluttes.

12. Interviewee 2, 3/08/2016.

13. Interviewee 1, 27/07/2016.

14. Interviewee 4, 31/10/2016.

15. Interviewee 3, 3/8/2016.

16. Interviewee 1, 27/07/2016.

17. For a fascinating theoretical development on this topic and the idea of time in social movement research, see Gillan (forthcoming).

Additional information

Funding

This research has been funded through ERC AdG Mobilizing4democracy “Mobilizing for Democracy: Democratization processes and the mobilization of civil society”, Grant Agreement No. 269136.

Notes on contributors

Andrea Felicetti

Andrea Felicetti is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS), Institute for Humanities and Social Science, Scuola Normale Superiore. In 2014, he earned his PhD at the School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University. He has worked in Australia, Belgium, France and Italy. His work in English and French has been published in several international academic journals and he is the author of Deliberative Democracy and Social Movements (Rowman & Littlefield International).

Donatella Della Porta

Donatella Della Porta is professor of political science, Dean of the Institute for Humanities and the Social Sciences and Director of the PD program in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, where she also leads the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos). Among the main topics of her research: social movements, political violence, terrorism, corruption, the police and protest policing. She is the author of more than 80 books, 130 journal articles and 130 contributions in edited volumes.