This article focuses on informal control strategies and their effects on community-based organizations in Quebec (Canada). These organizations, highly institutionalized and rarely considered as radical actors, have a long tradition of political action in Quebec, intervening as interest groups to present grievances to the government, as well as social actors protesting in the streets. Many control strategies hinder this essential part of associations' mandate. Interviews conducted in 2021 with 14 groups show that, despite these associations' relatively uncontroversial repertoire of action, more than twenty forms of control can be exercised over them. Implemented by multiple actors, these strategies affect individuals, groups, and their missions. These data shed light on what informal control strategies do to the political action of community-based organizations, while informing about control strategies by actors other than the police. Drawing on a sociology of social movements and repression, this article demonstrates the informality integrated into multiple repressive tactics, highlighting the importance of taking it into account when thinking about repression and control practices and their effects, especially on marginalized individuals and groups.

Que ce soit en se revendiquant d’une norme juridique supérieure ou en s’appuyant sur des cadres théoriques interdisciplinaires, par leurs critiques et leurs propositions de réformes, les juristes en appellent souvent, directement ou non, à un droit qui répond d’un projet politique auquel correspondent des valeurs qui remettent en question l’objectif de croissance économique. À ce titre, la décroissance pourrait-elle représenter un projet politique fédérateur pour ces juristes ? Sur la base d’une expérience d’enseignement, l’autrice soutient cette hypothèse par la présentation, de manière exploratoire, d’une variété de postures susceptibles d’être adoptées par les juristes dans leurs travaux. Bien que la décroissance comporte une proposition politique radicale, plusieurs formes et degrés d’engagement permettent de la soutenir du point de vue juridique. Au regard de leurs forces et faiblesses respectives, plutôt que d’en écarter certaines au profit d’une seule, il sera suggéré de valoriser leur complémentarité.

This article reviews the main issues surrounding repression as covered in the existing literature. The main theoretical issues addressed include the forms of repression, their actors, and their potential effects. This issue brings together research on cases of discreet, informal, hidden, or even invisible repression and control, which nonetheless have a decisive impact on the capacity for political action among groups and the individuals who comprise them. In doing so, this article highlights the scientific and social relevance of the special issue on the infrapolitics of repression, explored through the lived experiences of nonprofits and activist groups. This issue presents different conceptualizations that seek to move beyond the most obvious theorizations of repression, situating it beyond its most visible forms and the obvious actors.

Whether by invoking a higher legal standard or by drawing on interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks, through their critiques and proposed reforms, jurists often appeal, directly or indirectly, to law that responds to a political project that corresponds to values that challenge the goal of economic growth. In this respect, could degrowth represent a unifying political project for jurists ? Based on a teaching experience, this article supports this hypothesis by presenting, in an exploratory manner, a variety of positions that jurists can adopt in their work. Although degrowth involves a radical political proposal, there are several forms and degrees of commitment that make it possible to support it from a legal point of view. Given their respective strengths and weaknesses, rather than dismissing some in favour of a single one, it will be suggested that their complementarity be valued.

Cet article présente une recherche en cours sur la manière dont les locataires défendent leurs droits en s’opposant aux recours introduits par leurs propriétaires devant le Tribunal administratif du logement (TAL) dans les cas de reprises de logement. Notre objectif est de relever les possibles inégalités de traitement introduites par le fonctionnement, l’organisation, les textes normatifs et les acteurs de cette institution chargée de mettre en oeuvre la défense de ces droits. Pour ce faire, nous présentons une analyse quantitative et qualitative des décisions en matière de reprise de logement de l’année 2021 (plus de 1200 décisions) en relevant les formes de représentation, les motifs, les bénéficiaires et les ordonnances des reprises.

La décroissance est encore très peu familière aux juristes, surtout dans le milieu francophone. Or elle commence à entrer dans le champ académique et retient de plus en plus l'attention des décideurs politiques. Dans la mesure où la possibilité d'une politique juridique décroissancielle existe, il est du devoir des juristes de penser cette possibilité. Cet article résume les débats qui ont pris place lors des journées d'étude des 16 et 17 mai 2023 organisées en collaboration par l'Université du Luxembourg et l'Université de Montréal intitulées « Décroissance et droit : poursuivre l'exploration des possibles juridiques ». Comme celles-ci, il est structuré autour de quatre thèmes : le rapport à la nature, à l'espace, au temps ainsi qu'à soi-même et aux autres.

While there is a growing interest in citizen-led initiatives, there is still no consensus on how to situate them, especially in relation to state institutions. On the one hand, citizen-led initiatives are seen as being co-opted by formal institutions in a context of austerity. On the other hand, these initiatives are often presented as "spaces of resistance" to neoliberalism, or as political acts of reclaiming the city. Mapping and tracing urban gardening and dumpster diving from their grassroots emergence to their inclusion in the institutional world through a two-level analysis, we show that individuals and loosely organized collectives involved in such initiatives are embedded in complex relationships with local institutions and third sector organizations that do, in turn, structure their practice and its consequences. The two-level analysis we propose follows this process: it is through interactions and relationships with other "practitioners" and with their social and institutional environment that these urban social practices gradually institutionalize.

Far from activism in formal groups or in visible and vocal demonstrations stands a type of citizen participation observed through everyday practices and daily activities in the public sphere. Targeted citizen actions in urban spaces, dumpster diving, responsible consumption movements or small acts of everyday resistance are all examples of what we call informal modes of participation. Such initiatives are not new, nor do they pertain to a particular geographic arena. However, it is only recently that social scientists have started to pay attention to such activities: scholars from urban studies, development studies, political sociology, and critical geography have started to address this phenomenon. After discussing the existing literature on this topic, this introduction proceeds to define and operationalize the concept of informal participation, while also providing a common analytical framework for dialogue among the six contributions to this special issue briefly described in the last section below.

Entre 2005 et 2016, le visage du mouvement étudiant français s’est transformé. En effet, la Fédération des associations générales étudiantes (FAGE) supplante aujourd’hui la prédominance historique de l’Union nationale des étudiants de France (UNEF) comme première organisation nationale étudiante. En nous attardant sur le travail de représentation et de médiation des associations étudiantes vis-à-vis de l’État et de la gouvernance universitaire, nous montrons que certains arrangements institutionnels ont favorisé l’émergence de la FAGE, et que son organisation interne lui a permis de développer et consolider sa position. Au final, il apparaît que l’encadrement formel de la participation étudiante a eu pour effet de déconflictualiser les relations entre les associations nationales étudiantes et les institutions publiques, faisant passer d’un syndicalisme étudiant marqué par une posture de lutte à un syndicalisme tourné vers la gestion de la vie étudiante et universitaire.

Comparative research has been rare in social movement studies and scholars who embark on this path are confronted with several analytical and methodological challenges. This paper offers an avenue for developing comparative analytics using 'local spaces of protest' as path for comparison. We first situate this concept vis-a-vis other models available (field, space, arena, networks). We then define the three dimensions of 'spaces of protest': specific aim prompting collective action; particular distribution of political actions along different poles (electoral, protest, concerted and participation) and specific scales of protest (local, societal or/and global/glocal). By invoking critical geography to enhance the definition of place and scales of actions, we propose a systematic set-up for comparison. The last part of the paper shows how this notion allows for the comparison of local social forums (gatherings of activists fighting against neoliberal globalization) in two societies, France and Quebec. The data presented have been gathered during extensive fieldwork and semi-structured interviews conducted between 2010 and 2011.

It has long been recognized that changes in public policy governance have an impact on how state and civil society actors interact. The effects that such changes in governance have on contentious politics, however, are not as well understood. Looking at university reforms undertaken in France between 2005 and 2016, following the Bologna process, we show that the organization of student political representation, both within universities and at the national level, strongly influences the type of actors that mobilize, as well as the tactics, claims, and strategies that inform contentious politics. France’s postsecondary education system has experienced substantial changes following successive reforms passed in 2002, 2007, and 2013. These have led to major changes in the configuration of university governance, including a decentralization of power from the central state to local universities, accompanied by the centralization of power in the hands of new administrative bodies, particularly university presidents. We argue that these changes have not only had direct effects on student representation within university and state bodies but have also shaped student movements and the organization of protest. More precisely, they have limited student organizations’ ability to defend the interests of their members at the national level and have contributed to making autonomous, non-affiliated, local student protest more visible, thereby shifting the location of conflict from the national to the local level.

L’appropriation et la diffusion de la souveraineté alimentaire au sein des coordinations nationales de la Marche mondiale des femmes, comme projet politique féministe, suit une logique régionale qui distingue clairement les coordinations nationales latino-américaines, africaines et européennes. Ces variations régionales s’expliquent par trois facteurs : 1) la structuration interne de la Marche et les occasions de contact à l’échelle régionale entre les militantes des coordinations nationales; 2) la pertinence de la souveraineté alimentaire par rapport au quotidien, telle qu’elle est perçue par les militantes et les groupes membres; 3) les contacts avec des organisations alliées actives sur le thème de la souveraineté alimentaire à l’extérieur de la Marche. L’analyse repose sur des entrevues semi-directives menées auprès des responsables des coordinations nationales et des observations directes dans certains pays. Elle montre que l’échelle régionale, encore peu considérée par la littérature féministe, s’avère une échelle pertinente d’analyse en vue de mieux comprendre les actions collectives transnationales féministes.

AbstractBy taking a historical perspective on the higher education and the housing sectors in Quebec, we demonstrate how the political cleavage around the national question has had long-term effects on the dynamic of contention in these two sectors. At a general level, the presence of this cleavage has favoured the adoption of institutional arrangements related to funding that have allowed the reproduction of social protest over time. Nevertheless, the institutional arrangements vary from one sector to another: in the case of higher education, Bill 32, adopted in 1983, facilitated the division of the student movement into two branches and, to some extent, its dynamism; in the case of housing, the AccèsLogis program and thecontribution au secteur, implemented in 1997, ensured the selection of claims for social housing and favoured the grouping that leads this issue. In both cases, the national question is at the heart of the process that led to the adoption of these policies.