mobilization

From the Field

Working-Class Ecology Versus Olympic Urbanism

Flaminia Paddeu & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 April 2024
In Aubervilliers, north of Paris, swathes of a community garden—the Jardins Ouvriers des Vertus—have been destroyed...
From the Field

Female Factory Strikes: Emancipatory Non-Mixity?

Ève Meuret-Campfort & translated by Oliver Waine - 26 January 2024
The division of industrial labor often places women workers in all-female factories and low-skilled jobs. Ève...
Essays

New Tourism Geographies and the Politics of Tourist Taxation

Elizabeth Strom - 7 June 2022
The changing geography of urban tourism has led to new forms of political contestation. How hotel-tax revenues are...
From the Field

Covid‑19 in China: A Civil Society in the Making

Beiyi Hu - 18 May 2021
Beiyi Hu examines responses to Covid‑19 in China, focusing on civil-society efforts at the social, political, and...
From the Field

Holding Their Own: Gilets Jaunes’ Occupation of Public Space

Antoine Bernard de Raymond & Sylvain Bordiec & translated by Oliver Waine - 30 April 2021
The Gilets Jaunes (“Yellow Vests”) movement that emerged in France in the fall of 2018 was striking by dint of both...
From the Field

Algeria’s Hirak: When a Social Movement Puts Citizenship Under the Microscope

Islam Amine Derradji & Amel Gherbi & translated by Oliver Waine - 26 March 2021
The popular mobilization that rose up in Algeria in 2019 was not only a revolt against living conditions that had...
Interviews

Fighting for Housing Justice: An Interview with Two Youth Organizers in Curtis Bay, Baltimore

Nicole Fabricant & Carlos Sanchez & Terriq Thompson - 16 March 2021
Two Baltimore youth organizers discuss the importance of community land trusts, for housing and beyond. Series:...
From the Field

Electoral Organizing During a Pandemic: Lessons from Wisconsin

Aaron Shapiro - 12 January 2021
The global Covid‑19 pandemic has radically altered social and political practices. Aaron Shapiro reflects on the...
From the Field

Post-Election Dispatches from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania

Jamie Longazel - 22 December 2020
Jamie Longazel reflects on organizing for the 2020 general election in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. A longtime...
Interviews

Political Organizing Beyond the Election: An Interview with Rosa Saavedra in North Carolina

Rosa Saavedra & Edwin Mayorga - 2 November 2020
Edwin Mayorga interviews organizer Rosa Saavedra from North Carolina. They discuss the political landscape and...
Debates

When Revolution Reinvents Public Space in Beirut

Ines Lakrouf & translated by Oliver Waine - 18 September 2020
In the fall of 2019, peaceful protesters in Lebanon were demanding an end to corruption and calling for a movement...
From the Field

How the Youth of the Banlieues See the Gilets Jaunes

Ahmed & Baptiste & Hachimia & Jeremy & Karima & Lisa-Marie & Louiza & Thibaut & translated by Oliver Waine - 24 April 2020
Do the “Yellow Vests” and the youth of France’s banlieues share a common vision of the inequalities and discrimination...
From the Field

Nuits Debout Across Greater Paris: The Spread of a Political Innovation

Laurent Beauguitte & Nicolas Lambert & translated by Oliver Waine - 20 December 2019
As France experiences strikes and demonstrations in protest against pension reforms, we look back to the spring of...
From the Field

How to Defend the Planet in Law

Valérie Cabanes & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 April 2019
In the face of a growing raft of evidence that increasingly points to an imminent global catastrophe—the very...
Debates

Deafening Discord: Reclaiming Residents’ Anger in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Pierre Chabard & translated by Oliver Waine - 26 October 2018
We recently published an article showing how, in Roubaix in northern France, elected officials took steps to...
Debates

Silent Suppression: How Local Politicians Stifle Collective Action in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Julien Talpin & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 October 2018
Taking as its starting point a study of a neighborhood roundtable in the northern French city of Roubaix, this...
From the Field

From “Black City” to “Slum City”: The Importance of Image in Saint-Étienne

Vincent Béal & Christelle Morel Journel & Valérie Sala Pala & translated by Oliver Waine - 20 September 2017
In December 2014, an article in the French daily newspaper Le Monde painted a highly negative portrait of the city...
From the Field

The Americanization of French social movements? Community organizing and its discontents in the banlieues

Julien Talpin - 29 June 2017
In this second of two articles, sociologist Julien Talpin discusses the importation to France of American...
From the Field

What’s the matter with the banlieues? Exploring the importation of the American community organizing tradition by French social movements

Julien Talpin - 22 June 2017
With the eclipse of the once-powerful Communist and Socialist Parties in France, and these parties’ traditional...
From the Field

Building a Multifaceted Campaign for Public Higher Education

Stephen Brier & Michael Fabricant - 4 October 2016
In their new book, Austerity Blues: Fighting for the Soul of Public Higher Education, Michael Fabricant and Stephen...
From the Field

Federal Anti-Segregation Milestones Demand Local Mobilization

Justin Steil - 24 November 2015
In June 2015, the US Supreme Court affirmed a legal tool that stands to hold municipalities and lenders accountable...
Essays

After Fukushima: The Silence of Environmental Organizations on Nuclear Catastrophe

Michael Dreiling & Nicholas Lougee & Tomoyasu Nakamura - 22 September 2015
The nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima plants in Japan in 2011 raised global awareness of the massive dangers...
From the Field

The world of the blue-collar worker: changed, but not gone

Julian Mischi & Olivier Pasquiers & Caroline Pottier & Nicolas Renahy & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 February 2014
Despite deindustrialisation and increasingly acute economic difficulties in the former strongholds of heavy...

Series

Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces
Urban Wastes, Present and Future
New York Dossier: The Food Industry Faces the Covid‑19 Pandemic
Cities in the Age of Financialization
Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research
New York Tech Dossier: The Dark Side of New York’s Tech Economy
Progressive Mayors and Urban Social Movements
Land Rights in the Urban Global South
Climate Change and Social Change

Featured

From the Field

Covid-19 Transformed New York’s Destination Food Markets

Ivana Mellers - 5 October 2021
Ivana Mellers analyzes how New York’s destination markets—key spaces of economic and social interactions—coped during...
From the Field

Moving Inside City Limits: The Urban Mobility of Undocumented Youth

Stephen P. Ruszczyk - 4 June 2019
The urban context and public transportation shape how undocumented youths move within cities. In a comparison of...
Reviews

Filming Ethnic Diversity in New York

Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 21 October 2016
Frederick Wiseman’s fortieth documentary film, In Jackson Heights (2015), returns to an urban theme explored in...
From the Field

Looking Inward, Across the Border

Harel Shapira - 19 April 2016
In the constellation of anti-immigrant politics in the United States, groups like the Minutemen, civilians who...
Essays

The Political Aesthetics of Drag

Shaka McGlotten - 13 October 2015
Drag, or the diverse art form and culture of performance that typically plays with gender and sex, is an integral...
Debates

Disarm the Police

Gregory Smithsimon - 29 September 2015
In the current political debates about discriminatory policing, there has been a lack of serious discussion of...

Other resources online

Cycles of Violence: Analysing Media Discourse in the Newspaper...

Mobile Lives Forum
How are cyclist and pedestrian deaths depicted in newspaper reports, and how do these reports help shape...

Lahti: The First Carbon-Rationing Experiment Applied to Local...

Mobile Lives Forum
The city of Lahti in Finland was the first to experiment with a carbon-trading scheme among its inhabitants to...

Is Rationing Carbon for Travel a Fair, Efficient, and Realistic...

Mobile Lives Forum
In the wake of the pandemic, a carbon tax at Europe’s borders is now on the agenda, but a domestic version for...

Reducing Carbon-Emitting Travel: A Factor of Social Cohesion and...

Mobile Lives Forum
As part of France’s Mission on the Future of the Economic Model of Public Transportation, commissioned by the French...

Strasbourg, An Example of a Cycling City

Mobile Lives Forum
Strasbourg is the leading city for cycling in France and a constant source of inspiration for all French cities...

The Trinity of Walking, Cycling and Public Transportation Must Be...

Mobile Lives Forum
While emissions from the transportation sector remain at a very high level, all hopes are currently pinned on the...
Centre national de recherche scientifique (CNRS)
Journal supported by the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales (Institute of Human and Social Sciences) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

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