Metropolitics

Electoral Organizing During a Pandemic: Lessons from Wisconsin

Aaron Shapiro — 2021-01-12T06:00:00Z

The global Covid‑19 pandemic has radically altered social and political practices. Aaron Shapiro reflects on the impact the pandemic had on electoral organizing leading up to the 2020 general election in Wisconsin and how organizers responded.
2020 was a year and an election season like no other. Any campaign with Donald Trump on the ballot was sure to be unorthodox, but the pandemic radically altered every aspect of social life and left an indelible mark on electoral organizing. Voter

- From the Field / Wisconsin, United States, US election, presidential election, elections, vote, coronavirus, Covid-19, mobilization, pandemic, Working Families Party

Post-Election Dispatches from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania

Jamie Longazel — 2020-12-22T06:00:00Z

Jamie Longazel reflects on organizing for the 2020 general election in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. A longtime Democratic stronghold, the County voted for Trump in the 2016 election. Longazel discusses the role deindustrialization, job loss, and immigration have played in election politics.
On a warm August evening in 2018, I gave a speech outside of a Trump rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The stage was the top of a grassy hill that sloped downward from a shopping-center parking lot.

- From the Field / community organizing, civic organizing, mobilization, US election, presidential election, elections, vote, Donald Trump, immigration, Latinx, protest, United States, Pennsylvania, Wilkes-Barre

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

Rosa Saavedra & Edwin Mayorga — 2020-11-02T18:33:02Z

Edwin Mayorga interviews organizer Rosa Saavedra from North Carolina. They discuss the political landscape and community organizing beyond voter mobilization. A lightly edited transcript is published below.
Edwin Mayorga: Buen día, I'm Edwin Mayorga, an associate professor of educational studies at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and a member of Metropolitics.
I recently spoke with political organizer Rosa Saavedra about the political landscape in North and South Carolina as the 2020 US

- Interviews / audio, US election, presidential election, elections, vote, community organizing, North Carolina, United States, mobilization

Electoral Organizing in North Carolina: An Interview with Tomás Garduño

Tomás Garduño & Kate Selden — 2020-10-27T06:00:00Z

Kate Selden interviews Tomás Garduño, a social-justice organizer, about his work in Lenoir County, North Carolina, leading up to the 2020 general election and the importance of organizing in rural areas. A lightly edited transcript of their conversation is published below.
Kate Selden: My name is Kate Selden, I'm an urban planner in Brooklyn, and I work in affordable housing development.
I'm here with Tomás, who I will let introduce himself.
Tomás Garduño: My name is Tomás Garduño, I'm

- Interviews / US election, presidential election, elections, vote, social justice, North Carolina, United States, rural, community organizing, video

Far from the Ballot Box: The Political Exclusion of the Working Classes in France

Camille Peugny & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-07-04T05:00:00Z

Following the French presidential and parliamentary elections of 2017, the question of equal access to the electoral process once again came to the fore. Sociologist Camille Peugny, who has exhaustive measured different forms of non-participation (linked to nationality, non-registration or abstention), reveals the extent to which political exclusion affects working-class populations, and underlines the role of collective work in the (uneven) politicization of these populations.
Each time the

- Essays / France, democracy, inequalities, vote, exclusion, elections, working classes, presidential election

The electoral effects of social divisions in French cities

Jean Rivière & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-07-02T04:50:00Z

According to many commentators, France's major cities are bastions of support for the parliamentary left when it comes to election time. However, Jean Rivière's analysis of the situation – far from confirming these kinds of simplifications that contrast city-dwelling “bobos” on the one hand with “suburbanites” on the other – invites us to reconsider the electoral geography of French cities by examining them at polling-district level, revealing their socially composite nature.
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- From the Field / inequalities, vote, elections, mapping, cartography, neighborhood effects, metropolitan areas, urban geography

Preparing for a protest vote?

Rémi Lefebvre & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-06-18T04:55:00Z

Between 2008 and 2014, the French Socialist Party was, more than ever before, a party of “local politicians”. Here, Rémi Lefebvre describes how, in the face of a protest vote, the party has sought to reduce the recent municipal elections to their “local” dimension alone, thus contributing to a further depoliticisation of the issues at stake, and indeed of the significance of these elections.
---- Series: Local elections as seen by the social sciences Note: the French version of this text was

- Debates / local democracy, municipal, vote, elections, abstention, Parti socialiste, Socialist Party

The grandeur and decadence of the suburbs

Violaine Girard & Jean Rivière & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-09-18T09:58:19Z

Periurban areas emerged in the 2000s as “new” spaces indicative of recent changes in French society – the weakening of the middle classes, the rise of the far right, etc. However, these spaces, which have been put under the microscope since the 1970s by geographers, sociologists and political scientists, cannot be reduced to the simplistic image promulgated by the media every election season.
Translated with the support of the Institut Français Dossier : Urban studies in France
“One fine

- Debates / periurban, vote, suburbs, elections, middle classes

Mapping votes and social inequalities: the case of Paris and its inner suburbs

Jean Rivière & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-06-27T13:39:13Z

Analysing local contexts can prove particularly enlightening when it comes to understanding electoral processes, whether in terms of party-political mobilisation or in terms of the choices voters make. In the inner Paris suburbs, as we shall see, voting patterns are very much structured by the geography of social inequalities.
Following any kind of ballot, electoral maps are sure to proliferate across the media, and the 2012 French presidential election was no exception – especially as

- Essays / Paris region, inequalities, Paris, vote, elections, mapping, cartography, Greater Paris, electoral geography

Explaining the periurban right-wing vote: “social frustrations” of low-income households or the reshaping of the working classes?

Violaine Girard & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-06-13T11:36:19Z

There is a growing interest in voting patterns in periurban areas, which tend to lean to the right or even far right. However, the interpretation of these patterns is often unsatisfactory: Violaine Girard shows that they reflect not a “downgrading” or “relegation”, but rather the profound transformations that have, for several decades, affected the stable fractions of the working classes.
Although periurban areas have for a long time been almost absent from research and media coverage, they

- Essays / homeownership, working-class neighborhoods, periurban, housing estates, work, vote, suburbs, elections, electoral geography, Front national, far right wing