Why French racial minorities do not mobilize more often. Disempowerment, tactical repertoires and soft repression of antiracist movements

ABSTRACT

This article demonstrates why collective action remains a rare phenomenon among French racial minorities. Three factors – at individual, organizational and institutional level – have been identified. First, the investigation reveals that despite feelings of racial injustice and identification expressed more frequently than previous research had indicated, French minorities demonstrate a strong mistrust of politics and collective action, distracting them from civic engagement. Then, the study over several years of eleven antiracist collectives in six cities indicates that their dominant repertoire of action is out of tune with the targeted public, mostly working-class. Finally, antiracist NGOs are subject to soft repression and channelling by institutions, which explains activists’ tactical choices, but limits their mobilization potential. This article is based on a survey comprising 160 semi-directive interviews with a diverse panel of French racial minorities and the ethnographic follow-up over several years of eleven antiracist collectives in six working-class towns in France.

KEYWORDS:

• Antiracism
• social movements
• banlieue
• misrecognition
• discrimination
• repression

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 These groups, which mainly take the legal form of non-profits, are Sorties Scolaires avec Nous and the “Collective for information and the fight against discrimination” (CILDA) in Blanc Mesnil; Le Labo Décolonial in Bordeaux and the Collective Vivre Ensemble l’Egalité (VEE) in Lormont in the Bordeaux suburbs; the Association Nouveau Regard sur la Jeunesse (ANRJ), the Université Populaire et Citoyenne (UPC) and the Collectif de Lutte contre les discriminations in Roubaix; Agora and the Fédération régionale de Hip-Hop et de cultures urbaines (Fedevo) in Vaulx-en-Velin; Zonzon 93 in Villepinte. The survey in Grenoble focused on the experience of discrimination but little on the mobilization of associations, although the Alliance Citoyenne – and the actions it organized on the ban of Burkini in swimming pools – was also followed.

2 Our approach is similar to the one followed by Michèle Lamont and her colleagues (2016, 296) for the conduct of their Brazilian fieldwork, where, due to the low legitimacy of ethno-racial frames in that country, they chose to negotiate their interviews as dealing with “social mobility”, in order to identify if and when the issue of ethno-racial discrimination arose.

3 I use the concept of “identification” which appears less vague, encompassing and reifying than that of “identity” (Brubaker and Cooper 2000).

4 Figures based on inductive analysis of the corpus of interviews with Atlas.ti software. Numbers do not represent a statistically significant survey of the French population responses to discrimination.

5 A national anti-racist association created in 1984 after the March for Equality and Against Racism, still active today. It has been strongly supported by the Socialist Party.

6 This can also explain why schools and libraries are frequently burned down in case of civil unrests in the banlieues (Merklen and Murard 2013).

7 In 2019, 44% of French associations total funding came from public authorities (it was 56% in 1999). But smaller local associations and community organizations, such as the one studied here, rely quasi-exclusively on public funding. Sources : Paysage associatif français, 2019.

8 “Le mélange des genres politico-religieux d’une association de jeunesse.” Nord Eclair, October 10, 2017.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Agence Nationale de la Recherche: [grant number ANR-14-CE30-0011-].