Critique internationale - Content
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[“Without a Struggle, There Won’t Be Anything at All!” Undocumented Migrants' Fight for Regularization]
Between spring 2008 and summer 2010 in the Paris region, several thousand undocumented workers launched a strike during which they occupied their work places. Drawing upon an ethnography of this mobilization, the present article examines the engagement of migrants lacking authorization of residence through the lens of the “tactics of everyday life”, as Michel de Certeau put it, that characterize the experience of migrant illegality. The controversy between the organizers and some participants as to direction in which the movement should go shows why the actors’ involvement must be apprehended from the social substrate that constructs their rationality and understanding of collective action. This perspective allows us to grasp the fact that the actors public discourses are based on a vernacular reflexivity fed by “spaces of hidden script” as defined by James C. Scott. This discussion also contains a significant reflexive dimension on the researcher’s “engaged” position in the field of mobilization – a position that appears to be a necessary condition for accessing these spaces and thereby the speech of mobilized actors.
[Violences of Exile, Memory of Past Struggles and Plasticity of Engagement: The case of Sudanese Asylum Seekers in Israel]
This article draws upon three case studies to examine the differentiated consequences of migration and violence for activist trajectories. Indeed, the “bottom up” approach adopted here to address asylum seeking in Israel leads one to consider the role played by the violences of the exile and, in particular indefinite detention, on representations and practices of engagement among migrants. The notion of experience, rather than the one of ressources, allows one to understand how engagement and disengagement may develop over time and affect one's mobilization. Addressing the memory of past struggles for asylum-seekers' rights appears as another essential component of individual experience that explains the reasoning leading one to particular types of engagement. Comparing different migration, repression, and mobilization experiences reveals three types of engagement: a mobilization against injustice, a mobilization to demand respect for one’s rights and renunciation of the struggle.
[Dynamics of Political Protest among Afghans in Berlin: Between Silence and Speaking Out]
In Germany, the 2015 “summer of migrations” was followed by a series of asylum law restrictions and an increasingly hostile public debate in regards to foreign-origin populations. One of the country’s largest migrant communities, Afghans were particularly affected by these political U-turns. This article draws upon field work as well as cultural and interactive theories of protest to examine the dynamics of political mobilization among these migrants in Berlin. The perception that they face a genuine threat of being expelled, feelings of injustice, the indignation provoked by the restrictive new measures and the brokering role played by more established migrants combined to allow the Afghan community in exile to provisionally come together, ultimately prompting many asylum seekers to temporarily opt for public expression rather than silent acceptance of a restrictive migratory regime.
[The Movement for Migrant Justice: A Montreal History]
While the study of mobilizations on behalf of migrants is a well-developed research field in France and the United States, the situation is quite different for Canada, where these struggles – albeit very much present and observable – have received little attention from sociologists. On the basis of data drawn from a multi-year ethnographic study within a Montreal activist collective, I sketch the history of what Canadian activists call the Movement for Migrant Justice. I begin by examining its emergence and roots in the Canadian anti-globalizationist movement (2000-2002). I then turn to consider the crucial episode of undocumented Algerians (2002-2003). I conclude by laying out the main lines of the movement’s evolution. Initially focused on the objective of regularizing undocumented immigrants (2004-2007), the movement increasingly turned towards forms of resistance inspired by sanctuary city movements (2010-2018).
[Mobilizing for Security: A Comparison of Anti-Migrant Mobilization in France, Italy and the United States]
In recent years, various political and social actors have mobilized with the goal of constructing migration as a security “problem”. This paper compares the action repertoire and discursive strategy of these collective actors in Europe (France and Italy) and the US (Arizona). Based on semi-structured face-to-face interviews with activists who engaged in anti-migrant protest in these different national contexts, the study shows that mobilization converges around three main modes of action. First, anti-immigration actors promote direct social interventions that aim at exerting control over the territory to prevent the settlement or transit of migrants. Second, they engage in the construction of a shared knowledge about migration, with the goal of challenging the mainstream narratives promoted by their opponents, notably national governments and migrant solidarity organizations. Finally, they mobilize by targeting their potential allies in the electoral and mass media arenas, and try to shape the agenda of migration policy at the local and national level. Offering new, comparative, insight on the nature and extent of anti-immigration protest in Europe and the US, the results of the paper invite further investigation on the political and social consequences of the progressive securitarization of border control in contemporary democracies.
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[Volunteering among Migrant Men in Switzerland: Unpaid Labor as a Civic Test]
In Switzerland, asylum and residency permit policies confine many people to uncertain civic spaces, limiting the range of professional possibilities available to them. In this article, I recount the considerations framing the volunteer labor of migrant men within a charitable organization in a town of French-speaking Switzerland. Kept to the margins of the labor market due to their precarious civic position, these men turn towards charitable volunteering to be able to “work”, as they put it. Relying on ethnographic observation and interviews, I examine the frontier between compulsory unpaid labor and volunteer work in a context marked by the meritocratization of access to a legal status. Underscoring the labor market constraints with which they are confronted, I thus consider the paths by which these men are led to work for free. I also revisit the demands to prove one’s “civic merit” that are commonplace in Switzerland and the manner in which these migrants use volunteer work to re-appropriate them.
[What’s at Stake in Protest: Defending Coca to Seize the State in Peru]
Drawing upon an ethnographic study of a demonstration involving the defense of coca in the Valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro rivers in Peru, I consider the role played by protest actors in state formation in a region where the economy is dominated by narco-trafficking. By drawing upon a conflictual relationship to the state with roots in the Shining Path conflict, the leaders of the Valley’s social organizations positioned themselves in the local political field and acquired legitimacy, allowing them to capture national and transnational resources. In this way, they have established themselves as intermediaries in the implementation of regional development policies, which have become priorities since the issues of “narco-trafficking” and “narco-terrorism” were put on the agenda. Far from confirming an “absence of state” in the regions where illicit activities take place, the Valley mobilization sheds light on the process of state formation and its capture by intermediaries positioned to capitalize on the overlapping fields of protest and resource administration.
[Turkish Knowledge Takes on the Mideast: Sociology of a Foreign Policy Expert Field]
Starting with the normalization of Turkish-Syrian relations in 1998, Turkish-Arab relations began to warm and develop. This renewed political interest for the Mideast and, more particularly, the Arab Near East was accompanied by growing academic and media interest. When Ahmet Davutoğlu was named Minister of Foreign Affairs in the late 2000s, a constellation of individual and collective actors from the academic world, the politico-administrative field and the media stood out by virtue of their intense production and diffusion of knowledge relating to the foreign policy of the AKP government vis-à-vis this region or directly connected to Near Eastern sociopolitical developments. Multiple individual positions as well as collaborations and rivalries between actors suggested the possibility that an autonomous expert field was emerging at the junction of several sectors of activity. However, with Turkish Mideast policy called into question following the Arab uprisings, the operation and divisions of this field were revealed.
Amin Allal, Myriam Catusse, Montserrat Emperador Badimon (dir.). Quand l’industrie proteste : fondements moraux des (in) soumissions ouvrières. Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2018, 207 pages.
Jessé Souza (dir.). A Ralé Brasileira. Quem é e como vive. Belo Horizonte, Editora UFMG, 2018 (3e rééd.), 484 pages.
Dominique Lorrain, Charlotte Halpern, Catherine Chevauché (dir.). Villes sobres : nouveaux modèles de gestion des ressources. Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2018, 360 pages.
