Metropolitics

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

Julien Talpin & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-10-19T05:00:00Z

Taking as its starting point a study of a neighborhood roundtable in the northern French city of Roubaix, this article examines the discreet but effective way in which public institutions, and local politicians in particular, have sought to thwart the collective action organized by local residents regarding an urban-renewal project. Working-class neighborhoods are all too often described as political deserts, but this experience shows this couldn't be further from the truth, and that in fact

- Debates / France, participation, housing, democracy, working-class neighborhoods, urban renewal, local councillors, local democracy, urban regeneration, Roubaix, working classes, associations, Lille, mobilization, Hauts-de-France, Northern France, Nord–Pas-de-Calais

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

Julien Talpin — 2017-06-29T05:05:00Z

In this second of two articles, sociologist Julien Talpin discusses the importation to France of American traditions and practices of community organizing. Despite the successful cross-cultural transfer of methods that allow groups to tackle racial issues, which have been difficult to accommodate within the French activist paradigm, American-style community organizing has encountered resistance from the left. Practices imported from the US may nevertheless influence French civil society more

- From the Field / France, banlieue, participation, social movement, race, mobilization, community organizing, French politics, L'Alliance Citoyenne, Studio Praxis, Graines de France, Movement for Black Lives, Soros Foundation, ACORN

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

Julien Talpin — 2017-06-22T07:00:00Z

With the eclipse of the once-powerful Communist and Socialist Parties in France, and these parties' traditional roots in the country's white working class, the residents of long-neglected blue-collar and immigrant suburbs (banlieues) have had little political voice. In recent years, some have turned to the American tradition of community organizing as a way to build power independently. In this first of two articles, Julien Talpin explains the different ways in which activists from the banlieues

- From the Field / France, banlieue, participation, social movement, race, mobilization, community organizing, French politics, L'Alliance Citoyenne, Studio Praxis, Graines de France, ACORN