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ABSTRACT
Working-class neighbourhoods are often seen as political deserts, but can one identify discreet mobilisations that might prefigure broader movements? During fieldwork in poor urban areas in France, we observed different ways of opposing the everyday injustices of discrimination. These practices differ from the infrapolitics analysed by James Scott: the actors manifest forms of publicisation closer to what Asef Bayat calls ‘the art of presence’. The article starts out from an analysis of these non-organised practices and then examines the processes that enable feelings of injustice to be converted into more structured collective actions. Based on ethnographic studies in three working-class neighbourhoods in France over three years, the investigation highlights the conditions of emergence and publicisation of collective action by focusing on the role of intermediaries and re-placing discreet mobilisations in their institutional context of emergence.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Without reaching the ethnic homogeneity of the American ghettos, the French banlieues concentrate the most precarious populations and families of immigrant origin. More than half of the population (70% in Ile-de-France) is immigrant or of immigrant origin (Wacquant, Citation2008; Silverstein, Citation2018). Ethnic statistics being banned in France, we do not have precise data concerning the ethnic make-up of the neighborhoods we studied, apart from the overrepresentation and concentration of immigrants and descendants of immigrants from former French African colonies. The survey we conducted in these neighborhoods is part of a larger study carried out in 2014–2017 in six towns in France and three in other countries, focusing on the way the experience of discrimination shapes people’s relation to politics (Talpin et al., Citation2021).
2 In this study called PoliCité, the sample was also constituted by snowballing, aiming to diversify the profiles of the people encountered, especially in terms of age, gender, and social status. 13 women and 32 men aged 15–35 with an immigration background (mostly North-African) and from areas of social housing were interviewed. The study eventually gave rise to a collective called PoliCité.
3 For a more detailed analysis on the French context, see for instance the special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies entitled ‘Fighting Discrimination in a Color-Blind Context: The Case of France’ (2022).
4 Studies have shown that this unconventional look de facto increases, in combination with race, the likelihood of attracting the attention of the police, the look often constituting a sort of proxy for race (Jounin et al., Citation2015). The survey by Fabien Jobard and René Lévy on police identity checks in Paris nonetheless shows the importance of skin color in the likelihood of being stopped by the police, while also stressing the importance of a ‘young’ style of clothing (Jobard et al., Citation2012).
5 In France, wearing a veil is legal at university or in the workplace. However, despite the law, it remains highly stigmatized in the French public space, with some people seeing it not only as a sign of oppression of women, but also as a political claim, or even as a first step in a trajectory of jihadist radicalization.
6 The workshops organized by the association aim to support teenagers in putting their daily experiences into words and denouncing through rap and slam the injustices they experience.
7 In particular, it is young people from minority backgrounds who are the object of over-attention by the police (Jobard et al., Citation2012).
8 These two adolescents from Clichy-sous-Bois had taken refuge in an electrical substation to escape a police check. Their death by electrocution provoked a wave of riots of unprecedented length all over France.
9 Since Algerian independence, these conurbations have been home to many immigrants from that country and their descendants.
10 On the vigilance that visiting mixed or ‘white’ spaces entails for Black Americans, see for example, Anderson (Citation2015).
11 The attractiveness of these collectives also lies in their modes of action. Often, valorization of urban cultures, ludic activities, and collective discussion are mingled and favour the involvement of young people who define themselves as distant from politics (Balazard et al., Citation2022).
12 The Défenseur des droits is an independent authority in charge, amongst other things, of access to rights, anti-discrimination and security ethics. It is a form of Ombudsman.
13 Défenseur des droits (2020). Discriminations et origines: l’urgence d’agir, p. 6.
14 The article in question predates the indictment of Tariq Ramadan on charges of rape, in February 2018.
15 ‘Le mélange des genres politico-religieux d’une association de jeunesse’, Nord Éclair, 17 October 2017.
16 ‘La région cesse de soutenir Pastel FM, accusée de prosélytisme’, La Voix du Nord, 18 December 2017.
17 This was the case in 2018 for the organizing of a public event aiming to reflect on ways to ‘move from confrontation to trust’ in police-population relations. The representative of the Prefecture explicitly requested that the issue of racial profiling should not be raised. It also happened in 2019 over the strip cartoon produced by the collective, over which the representatives of the State demanded a right of veto. In both cases, the members of the collective managed to free themselves from these requests without thereby conflictualizing relations with the State.