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Discreet Mobilizations Against Discrimination: Informal Participation in the French Suburbs

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Abstract

While disadvantaged neighborhoods are often seen as “political deserts,” discreet mobilizations of young people rooted in everyday practices can be observed on the issue of discrimination. Within small groups of loosely collaborating individuals, they develop a mix of sociability, mutual aid to “get by in life,” and awareness raising on social and racial inequalities. Observing these kinds of informal participation practices gives us information on the repertoires of contention of the powerless. The ethnography of an association named Zonzon 93, founded by racialized young people in Villepinte, in the far suburbs of Paris, contributes to the understanding of informal participation in a French context which restrains the politicization process on discrimination. These young people sometimes organize visible collective activities, but their mobilizations remain discreet as they do not display a militant message and articulate small acts embedded in daily life and public spaces, very cautiously. Contrasting with activism, the political dimension is implicit in these discreet mobilizations and is built in the process of doing things together, experimenting and sharing with others activities to express a gentle resistance against stigmatization. The power of identification with a leader, the attention given to the personal narrative, and the democratic dimension of “doing things together” in informal practices are the main conditions of emergence of discreet mobilizations. They ultimately appear as a substrate for consciousness of discrimination and could fuel potential social movements.

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Notes

  1. This ethnography has been realized in the context of a collective research on experience of discrimination, for which ethnographic observation and interviews have been conducted in nine working-class neighborhoods mainly in France, but also in Montreal, London, and Los Angeles (Talpin et al., 2021). While several collective articles have emerged from this research (Balazard et al., 2022; Purenne et al., 2022), this one focuses particularly on the notion of “discreet mobilizations,” using more empirical evidence from my field research.

  2. (2016). Le community organizing en France: quel projet politique: Table ronde avec Laetitia Nonone, Adrien Roux et L. Real. Mouvements, 1(1), 31–51. https://doi.org/10.3917/mouv.085.0031

  3. On 27, October 2005, two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, died after evading a police checkpoint, leading to violent clashes between individuals from Clichy-sous-Bois and the French police force. These deaths and violence launched the 2005 riots in the French suburbs qualified by many sociologists as political (Kokoreff, 2009).

  4. Le Parisien, 30 October 2015.

  5. In reference to the “mantra of empowerment” cited by Eliasoph (2011)

  6. Interview with a municipal officer.

  7. http://www.bfmtv.com/mediaplayer/video/je-suis-cent-maux-l-emouvante-video-d-une-association-du-93-apres-les-attentats-699667.html

  8. Big sister of Amine Bentounsi, 28 years old, shot in the back by a police officer in Noisy-le-Sec, triggering her commitment against police violence through the creation of the collective “Emergency our police is murdering,” http://www.urgence-notre-police-assassine.fr/

  9. Big sister of Adama Traoré, 24, who died in July 2016 in Beaumont-sur-Oise during a police stop and committed to “fair justice for all and equal rights for all” (Traoré & Vigoureux, 2017).

  10. See, for example, https://wetalk-community.org/project/laetitia-nonone.

  11. Film by M. Caillaud and A. Marie, produced by France 3 Paris Ile-de-France (52’) http://m.france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/paris-ile-de-france/il-y-10-ans-les-banlieues-s-embrasaient-un-numero-special-de-grand-paris-reportages-829113.html#xtref=https://www.google.fr/

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  1. Institut Des Sciences Sociales, Université de Lille-CeRIES-URL 3589, 59000, Lille, France

    Marion Carrel

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  1. Marion Carrel
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Correspondence to Marion Carrel.

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Carrel, M. Discreet Mobilizations Against Discrimination: Informal Participation in the French Suburbs. Int J Polit Cult Soc 36, 17–33 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-022-09434-x

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