Becoming Yellow Vests: The Politicization of Ordinary Citizens (France 2018-20)

• In Event: New Perspectives on Protest: Ordinary Citizens in Extraordinary Movements

Abstract

Social movements literature has repeatedly stressed the importance of ingrained dispositions to activism. As for scholarship on political participation, it has pinpointed how inequalities in cultural and political capital largely determine the propensity for an individual to express an interest in politics, to turn out to vote and/or to join a political party or a mobilization. Therefore certain social groups – with little cultural and political capital, and no background in activism – are generally expected to remain outside of political life. Yet recent social movements like the Yellow Vests in 2018-2019 France have thrust “ordinary citizens” into the limelight. Indeed, one of the peculiarities of this movement is that it has emerged and developed mostly outside of political parties, trade unions and civil society organizations, both nationally and locally. For this reason, it has attracted numerous members of working and middle classes who had previously remained distant from politics, expressed no political commitment and abstained from voting. How did “ordinary citizens” engage and remain in the Yellow Vest movement born in November 2018, and how did such unprecedented commitment affect their biographical trajectories?

Based on long-term fieldwork, in-depth interviews and life histories with first-time protestors, this communication puts forth two main results. The duration of the movement (over a year), the originality of its repertoire and the intensity of certain commitments (regular occupation of roundabouts, participation in heavily repressed demonstrations, relentless animation of social media) have provoked major biographical disruptions among participants, particularly in terms of their relationship to politics. We argue that becoming Yellow Vests has fostered a two-pronged politicization process among ordinary citizens: first, through the contestation of the very logics of representative democracy and of the autonomy of the political field; second, through the criticism of the social order, which brings the social question back in after years of interpreting conflict in "cultural" terms.

Authors

• Cecile Jouhanneau, University Paul Valery Montpellier

• Emmanuelle Reungoat, Université de MONTPELLIER-CEPEL

• François Buton, National center for scientific research (CNRS France)