INJUVID : Injustices and Disputes: Examining the Lived Experience of the Law during the COVID-19 Crisis

Financed by the ANR, this project "Injustices and Disputes: Examining the Lived Experience of the Law during the COVID-19 Crisis" is led by Emilie Biland-Curinier, Full professor at Sciences Po and member at the CSO with Jérôme Pélisse, Full professor at Sciences Po and member at the CSO, and de Fabien Jobard at the Centre de recherches sociologiques sur le droit et les institutions pénales (Cesdip).

Summary : 

INJUVID will study three significant domains of daily life – public space, family and work – in order to explore the ways in which both individuals and groups negotiate those tensions and disputes which have been exacerbated by measures to impede the spread of COVID-19, such as; lockdowns, curfews, limited access to social services and the institution of new sanitary measures in the workplace. This project seeks to understand how, when and to what effect citizens attempt to utilise the law when they perceive themselves to be the victims of unfair or unsafe conditions, within the context of daily life during the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, this project will make use of a Legal Consciousness Studies approach, a tradition which has since the 1990s revived the analysis of how individuals use and understand the law in day-to-day contexts. Drawing on interviews and written documents from individuals (who have encountered problematic legal situations) as well as legal intermediaries (such as grassroots organizations against police violence, trade unions, feminist groups, family community services and labour inspectors), this project will endeavour to study the lived experience of the law in two different regions of France (Ile de France and Bretagne), which have had substantially divergent experiences of the COVID-19 crisis. This project will more specifically look into how individuals and communities mobilise the law, solicit legal intermediaries and find (or do not find) recourse in legal institutions. This work will allow for an improved understanding of how forms of inequality and vulnerability come to shape individuals’ experience of the law and legal enforcement in the context of the ongoing pandemic, thus helping to improve our overall resilience in the face of the current crisis.