Contenu du sommaire : Catégoriser les publics minorisés

Analyzing the social categorization of minority populations
The purpose of this article is to bring works on participatory and deliberative democracy into dialogue with social categorization theory. It studies participatory spaces in which minority groups come together on the basis of gender, ethnicity, class, or sexuality. The article first examines the circulation of minority categorizations between different social and political scenes and how they are used in participatory spaces. It then questions the modalities of the representation of minorities generated by these categorizations of participation. It ends by evoking the nature of the claims and the populations that emerge from minority groups' participatory experiences.

Participating as indigenous people. Government and protest in the Amazonian uses of consultation – PeruThrough an ethnography of “prior consultation” in Peru, this article looks at the ambivalent ethnicization of participatory devices targeting “indigenous” groups. First, it studies the place of prior consultation within the Peruvian system of social conflict management, which focuses especially on indigenous groups. It analyzes in particular how prior consultation involves the production of neutralized ethno-racial categories. The article then moves on to highlight the participants' ability to repoliticize these categories, depending on their socialization in protest action. This level of socialization varies between individuals, which helps us to better understand the pacifying power of prior consultation, which eventually marginalized those most opposed to the categories prescribed by the consultative format.

Making gay and lesbian people responsible citizens. The elitist construction of a minority group using a device of participatory democracy in Boston in the early 1980s. Through the study of a device of participatory democracy implemented in Boston in 1983, this article explains the ways in which policymakers created a “new” population, namely “gay and lesbian citizens.” I analyze the rationale behind this categorization process, focusing on the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants. While the design of the device of participatory democracy acknowledged the heterogeneity of the target population, elitist and socially selective approaches were nevertheless at play in the recruitment of “experts” with a high level of educational capital. In order to pacify relations between the city's gay and lesbian community and the public authorities, the organizing committee of the device promoted a psychologizing approach to social relations.

The obstacles to participation among precarious populations. How a charity organization shapes collective identifications. This paper addresses the question of the drivers and obstacles to participation among precarious populations. It is based on a field survey carried out in a charity organization and focuses on the construction of collective identifications among the beneficiaries. It highlights the role of the charity organization in the shaping of these identifications, as well as their fragmentation. Together, these two mechanisms make it difficult for precarious populations to have their voice heard collectively. Finally, the paper emphasizes how such a collective voice seldom emerges, by questioning who is responsible for poverty.

Quiet resistance to institutional categorizations in participatory measures in Neukölln – Berlin
This article focuses on three participatory measures implemented in the same neighborhood of Berlin: a parents' café set up by a community of educational actors, a cookery workshop run by a charity offering literacy classes, and a “neighborhood mothers” project that employs women with an immigrant background to help them integrate. Adopting an ethnographic and interactionist approach, the article seeks to determine the ways in which the categorizations of “immigrants,” “parents,” and “mothers” through which populations are targeted are appropriated by the participants (exclusively women). First, it looks at the categorizations, the sociopolitical context in which they take place, and the activation and integration objectives they pursue. Then, it studies the practices and processes by which the participants, supported by supervisors, build a form of social enclave based on resistance to these assignments and prescriptions that are attached to them.

Workplace voting, between a relationship to trade unionism and a relationship to the profession and the institution: The case of French public sector teachers. In France, abstention in workplace elections is high and rising, even among primary and secondary school teachers—a profession with a high level of commitment, mobilization, and trade unionism. Using the methods and approaches developed in electoral sociology, and based on new data from a quantitative survey, this article aims to shed light on this paradox, showing that, for teachers, workplace voting is a form of participation influenced both by their relationship to trade unionism and by their relationship to their profession and the school in which they work. Although workplace voting is strongly linked to other participation—and union-related behaviors, our analysis reveals that it is determined more by the teacher's degree of professional integration than by their union membership or awareness. Moreover, the different motivations for abstention are associated with different socio-professional profiles. On the one hand, there are non-voters “by choice,” who are very distant from trade unionism. On the other, there are non-voters “by omission,” who are very poorly integrated into the teaching profession. The existence of this latter group poses the question of a social disembeddedness of workplace voting following the implementation of e-voting.

The young activists of Ramallah against the Israeli occupation: Forms of commitment and socio-spatial positionalities. Focusing on the young activists of Ramallah engaged in the Palestinian “popular resistance,” this article aims to analyze particular forms of anticolonial engagement in the West Bank. In the context of spatial divisions caused by the Israeli occupation, we demonstrate that the territorial regime in Ramallah, within the Oslo system, partly determines the interpretive framing of the conflict, the nature of the mobilizations, and the formation of activist networks. This study examines the existing relationships between spatial context, on the one hand, and the commitment of young activists, on the other, by defining specific socio-spatial positionalities.