Discreet empowerment: Race- and gender-separated participatory mechanisms in French working-class neighbourhoods Open Access

This article examines the possibilities of implementing race- and gender-separated organisational models within institutional participatory mechanisms in the light of the concept of discretion. Based on an investigation carried out within a participatory mechanism in a French working-class neighbourhood, the text shows how discretion allows the existence of a homogeneous public in terms of gender and race, despite the French colourblind political context marked by the valorisation of the norm of ‘social mix’. The article highlights the effects of this discreet non-mixed organisation both in terms of individual empowerment processes for the participants and in terms of the acknowledgment of this group as a legitimate audience by local institutions.

The observation of the beginning of a meeting of the ‘neighbourhood round table’ (NRT) participatory mechanism enables one to grasp the discrepancy between the actual public of the device and the way it is presented by its spokespersons (the facilitators).¹ On the one hand, the group is homogeneous, i.e. not mixed, in terms of gender and ethnicity, being composed solely of women from Comorian or North African ethnic minorities, some of whom are Muslim. However, this group is not presented by the facilitators from the perspective of its non-mixity, but on the contrary by the term ‘residents’ (habitants) which tends to blur the social, ethno-racial and gender specificities of the actors. This article focuses on the unclaimed – or discreet – dimension of this non-mixed public. It aims to understand both the elements that make this non-mixed organisation possible in the French context and the effects that non-mixity can have on participation in working-class neighbourhoods.

Non-mixing is a political tool used by subaltern groups to organise themselves on the basis of a common identity or social experience (François et al., 2021; Taylor, 1999). Since the nineteenth century, feminist movements have mobilised the temporary separation of those directly concerned and their and the ‘allies’ in order to work towards equality (Jacquemart & Masclet, 2017). Marion Charpenel highlights how separated feminist spaces are spaces for peer learning and politicisation that allow the construction of a collective point of view and the creation of solidarities outside the gaze of the majority group (Charpenel, 2016). However, in France, non-mixed modes of organisation are subject to political and media stigmatisation (Dhume-Sonzogni, 2016; Mohammed & Talpin, 2018), particularly when they are carried out by ethno-racial minorities. This article mobilises the notions of ethnicity and race understood as social and historical constructions, products of social power relations, and not as biological realities (Bessone & Sabbagh, 2015; Fassin & Fassin, 2006; Guillaumin, 1992). Ethnicity refers to the result of a process of constructing social boundaries based on the selective capture of signs arbitrarily constituted as clues to the ‘origin’ of individuals such as country of birth, nationality or language (process of ethnicisation) (Barth, 1969; Poutignat & Streiff-Fenart, 1995), while racialisation refers to differences presented as hereditary and essential such as skin colour or cultural traits designated as natural (Barker, 1981). This distinction refers more to a difference in degree than in kind (Simon, 2006); ethnicity and race are very often intertwined in concrete social situations (Grosfoguel, 2004), which leads me to mobilise the term ‘ethnoracial’. Ethnic or ethnoracial minorities are groups of individuals who experience domination to varying degrees (Wacquant, 1997) because of their real or assumed membership of ethnic or racial groups.

The French political context, often presented as colourblind, denies the existence of social relations of ethnicity and race (Fassin & Fassin, 2006) and therefore does not provide itself with the political means to fight against ethno-racial inequalities and discrimination (Talpin, 2021). This is particularly true in peripheral working-class neighbourhoods, often called ‘banlieues’, where ethno-racial minorities are concentrated due to the mechanisms of social and ethno-racial segregation (McAvay & Safi, 2018; Pattillo, 2007) inherent in housing policies since the 1970s, which have encouraged the departure of the white middle classes and concentrated ethnic minority households in the outskirts of large cities (Chamboredon & Lemaire, 1970). In these neighbourhoods, in line with the colourblind republican ideology, public policies have developed around the objective of rebuilding a ‘social mix’, which never really existed, and which translates into an injunction for ethnic minority residents to mix, particularly in participation schemes and local associations (de Barros, 2004). In fact, associations or collective mobilisations that claim to belong to a religious or ethnic group are considered a threat to the republican order under the highly pejorative term ‘communautariste’.² Since the Islamist attacks committed on French soil in 2015, an additional step has been taken with a particular stigmatisation of Islam and the dissolution by state authorities of various organisations representing the interests of Muslims in France (Observatoire des Libertés Associatives, 2022). Conversely, participation policies value more occupational activities that aim to weave a ‘social link’ among inhabitants without mobilising in the institutional arena (Carrel, 2013; Doytcheva, 2007; Tissot, 2007). Various studies have thus underlined the strong injunctions to participation in working-class neighbourhoods, which are reflected in the multiplication of mechanisms whose aim is more to build acceptance for urban renewal projects in these neighbourhoods or to tame criticism rather than to engage in co-constructed public policies (Bacqué, 2005; Tissot, 2007). Although the inhabitants of working-class neighbourhoods are expected to take part in these bodies, especially those belonging to ethno-racial minorities, some studies show that their participation does not lead to their experiences and demands being taken into account, but rather to the depoliticisation of their experience of inequalities, particularly ethno-racial ones (Haapajärvi, 2022; Talpin, 2022). In such a context, how does a group of ethno-racial minority women manage to mobilise in a participatory mechanism such as the NRT (neighbourhood round table) without being delegitimised?

In order to answer this question, it seems to me central to highlight the discreet nature of the unmixed dimension of this public of participation. The approach through discretion makes it possible to renew the approach to public participation and to understand the conditions under which participatory mechanisms create a space for manoeuvre for a subaltern public. This step aside allows us to extend the work on participation, which has largely demonstrated the depoliticising and stigmatising effects of participatory mechanisms on ethno-racial minorities in the French case (Carrel & Talpin, 2012; Palomares & Rabaud, 2006) and, ultimately, the impossibility of denouncing institutional racism. The approach through discretion does not invalidate these results, but rather adds nuance by showing how, despite these structural obstacles, ethno-racial minorities can develop room for manoeuvre within participation. Various studies have emphasised the discreet, ordinary or informal nature of the modes of engagement of the subaltern (Eliasoph, 1998; Neveu & Vanhoenacker, 2017; Scott, 1990). As James Scott points out, the subaltern use modes of resistance to domination that are part of the ordinary routine of daily life (Scott, 1990). Work on participation has shown how, faced with participatory norms that limit their possibilities of engagement (Carrel, 2013; Talpin, 2006), the dominated do not resign themselves but find other, more discreet ways of asserting their interests (Buton et al., 2016). This article aims to extend this work on discreet modes of participation by specifically questioning the possibilities of non-mixed organisation permitted by its discreet dimension. How and under what conditions can discretion be a tool for politicisation and scope for manoeuvre for ethno-racial minority women in working-class neighbourhoods?

The sociology of collective action has been particularly interested in the concept of modes of organisation (Clemens, 1993). From the perspective of collective action frames (Benford & Snow, 2000) Clemens shows that organisational models are far from fixed, and in practice depend on the resources available to individuals in organising themselves (Clemens, 1996). The question of the resources required in order to take action is particularly salient for the working class and racial minorities. In contrast to functionalist approaches, where these groups are characterised by a lack of resources (McCarthy & Zald, 1977) the relational perspective highlights the specific resources they do have at their disposal, and how they are transformed as part of social movements (Pierru, 2010). Drawing on this perspective, Polletta traces the distancing of the Black American movement from participatory democracy and its confiscation by White activists (Polletta, 2006). In this line, I approach discreet non-mixed spaces as a specific organisational model for ethnoracial minorities in French working-class neighbourhoods.

The hypothesis put forward is that discretion allows the mobilisation of minority women from working-class neighbourhoods in a French political context that usually restricts the scope for organising in an ethnically and gender-neutral way. However, this undeclared non-mixed organisation struggles to challenge the institutional stereotypes and categorisations that weigh on the protagonists.

I first analyse the social workers’ discreet construction of the non-mixed group of attendees at the NRT. Secondly, I study the effects of this organisational model, showing that, more than non-mixed, separated organisation per se, discretion has empowering effects on the participants and partial transformations of institutional representations of the capacities of action of women from ethnic minorities.

This article is based on an ethnographic survey carried out in a working-class neighbourhood of Marseille called Malpassé. Located on the outskirts of the city, this neighbourhood of some 13,000 people is home to large social housing complexes built in the 1960s, and is currently undergoing renovation as part of the French national urban renewal policy. Marseille’s working-class neighbourhoods are particularly segregated spaces in social and ethnic terms (Anselme, 1989; Mattina, 2016; Peraldi et al., 2015). In Malpassé, 12% of the inhabitants were non-French citizens and 19% were not born in France in 2016.³ The ethnoracial minority inhabitants are mainly North Africans (Algerians and Moroccans) and Comorians, most of whom are Muslim. Like the other peripheral working-class neighbourhoods of Marseille, the Malpassé neighbourhood is marked by a high level of precariousness among its population, since the unemployment rate was 24% in 2016 (compared with 10% at national level), as well as by obstacles to mobility (limited access to public transport). Public institutions are present in the neighbourhood mainly through the local associations such as the social centre, where social services officers offer attendance hours several days a week. In addition to providing local public services, the social centre plays a central role in the organisation of community life by offering extracurricular activities for children, hosting small neighbourhood associations and taking charge of the organisation of participatory mechanisms such as the NRT (neighbourhood round table).

In Malpassé, I conducted an ethnographic investigation between 2015 and 2018. First, I did a six-month internship at the neighbourhood social centre around the NRT mechanism studied here. I was able to witness on a daily basis the creation of the mechanism by the facilitator, the mobilisation of the inhabitants and the first meetings and actions undertaken. Then, from 2016 to 2018, I continued this work as a volunteer at the social centre and more specifically with the NRT. This volunteer commitment led me to be present several times a week at the social centre. In particular, I took part in the preparation meetings with the facilitators, in the work of mobilising the participants, in the public meetings among residents and with the institutions, and in the various actions undertaken. In total, I spent more than 600 hours observing the NRT, but also, more broadly, the consultation bodies and the main associations present in the Malpassé neighbourhood. In addition, I conducted 41 ethnographic interviews with various protagonists of participation policies in the neighbourhood. On the one hand, I met with the facilitators who implement the NRT mechanism, as well as with the social workers and members of the board of directors of the social centre. I met with various other associations in the neighbourhood, as well as with municipal officials and the social landlord, who are the main institutional contacts for local associations. I conducted biographical interviews with the women involved in the NRT. I also went through all the working documents of the participatory NRT experiment and the minutes of the meetings written by the facilitators. All in all, the collection of this material enabled me to gain a detailed understanding of the functioning of the neighbourhood’s participatory bodies, of the logics of the inhabitants’ involvement in them and of their effects in terms of social organisation in working-class neighbourhoods and their relationship to institutions.

The attendees and facilitators of the NRT experiment are involved in other activities developed by the local social centre. In order to understand how the organisation of the NRT as a non-mixing model is possible, it is relevant to explore the context of organisation of the social centre. In particular, the ‘social mixing’ norm has become central within the activities developed by such local social work organisations (Bresson, 2002; Leclercq, 2017). Yet the case of Malpassé’s centre illustrates possibilities of negotiation of this norm which leave room for a discreet non-mixing organisational model within the NRT.

‘Social mixing’ has been the political injunction of the urban policy ‘Politique de la ville’ in France – the national, cross-cutting policy for working-class neighbourhoods – since its creation in the 1980s. Based on Alain Touraine’s theory of exclusion, the residents of working-class neighbourhoods are considered in terms of their lack of social, economic, and cultural resources. Above all, these groups, with diverse social status and ethnic backgrounds, are combined under the single colourblind category of ‘residents’, used to refer to the social groups that reside in these spaces (Tissot, 2007). This term is used to describe the working classes and racial minorities without referring to their social or ethnoracial affiliations. To avoid ‘ghettoisation’, in the last 20 years the central government has financed major urban renewal projects, justified by social mix and aimed at avoiding the spatial concentration of poor people and racial minorities (Epstein, 2013). The categories of ‘residents’ and ‘social mix’ can be found in social work practices too. Community social centres act as public policy intermediaries in areas which are lacking in public services. Social workers have appropriated these categories in their discourse and daily practice. In Malpassé, the notion of ‘social mixing’ is the subject of specific considerations by the social centre’s director:

The director’s comments are an example of the appropriation of the notion of ‘social mixing’, which is not questioned. Here, it is understood in terms of generation, but also in social and territorial terms. The question of social and ethnoracial mixing is also the subject of reflections on the composition of the social centre’s Board of Directors. It is made up exclusively of elderly white people who no longer live in the area. One of them, Catherine, a 72-year-old retired teacher in the district, is now living in downtown Marseille. Deeply involved in the social centre’s activities, she has been a member of the board for 15 years and had even served as its chairwoman. During our interview, she indicated that she was aware of the discrepancy between the composition of the board and that of the community, which mainly comprises ethnic minorities. Here, we see a critique of the make-up of the social centre’s Board of Directors, deemed to be too different from the neighbourhood’s population. While the ethnoracial aspect is not clearly expressed – testifying to the difficulties or discomfort of talking about race in France – the use of the terms ‘them/us’ reflects an opposition between two groups: the white directors who live outside the neighbourhood, and the racialised residents who frequent the centre. Beyond the paternalistic dimension of Catherine’s critique, which can be found in other empowerment projects (Eliasoph, 2011), her comments demonstrate the prevalence of the notion of ‘mixing’ when reflecting on relations between social groups.

And while social workers value ‘social mixing’, in a context of considerable stigmatisation of race and gender-separated spaces, the practices actually observed at the social centre show that there is room for manoeuvre. Temps des femmes (‘women’s time’) is a workshop offered by female social workers to women who visit the centre. It prefigures the composition of the NRT. This kind of workshop is characteristic of the activities offered by social action entities like social centres. Within these organisations, women are the easiest adult group to reach, as their presence goes hand in hand with activities organised for children (Collectif Rosa Bonheur, 2019; Faure & Thin, 2007). Taking place on two Thursday afternoons per month, it attracts a dozen or so attendees who meet to discuss a specific topic, sometimes with a guest speaker, but more often amongst themselves.

The ‘women’s time’ workshops take the form of race- and gender-separated meetings. However, the attendees’ gender is the only dimension that is emphasised at the social centre. This workshop is made possible by the essentialisation of care-related activities⁴ in social work. As evidenced by the main discussion, focusing on children or housework, in this space women are restricted to their role as mothers. The social workers tend to categorise the women who take part in activities as ‘mums’. This categorisation of women through the prism of their role as mothers is not uncommon in social work: due to their central role in the family, women who are mothers are often seen as preferred contacts by social workers, which feeds gender inequalities (Chevallier, 2019). As such, this gender-separated space is not called into question, as it is part of the ordinary functioning of the social centre, which reproduces patriarchal norms. Here, the non-mixed, gender-separated space is accepted, within the framework of an occupational activity offered by social workers. This room for manoeuvre in relation to the ‘social mixing’ standard leaves space for the construction of a discreet non-mixed organisational model at the NRT.

An NRT is a civic engagement initiative that aims to encourage participation by residents and associations in working-class neighbourhoods, partly inspired by the ‘community organising’ tradition. Based on a Canadian experience (Sénécal et al., 2008), it was part of a proposal of a report submitted to the French government in 2013 aimed at renewing participation in working-class neighbourhoods (Bacqué & Mechmache, 2013). In 2014, fourteen local non-profits across France were selected to launch the experiment, including Malpassé’s social centre. Analysing the conditions of mobilisation of participants enables one to understand the reasons which lead to the creation of a race- and gender-separated space.

In Malpassé, attracting a group of participants for this new initiative is a task undertaken by two employees at the social centre. Najet and Imane are two North African women, one 48 and the other 26 at the time of the research. Both come from the northern suburbs of Marseille, and are employees at the social centre. Najet was hired specially by the centre’s director to run the NRT. Her professional background is not typical of social work: before coming to Malpassé, she had had just one short experience as a street social worker, and had worked mostly in the service sector. It was her activist background that helped her secure the job running the NRT. Najet was particularly involved in a campaign organised to protest against the urban renewal project in her home district, bordering Malpassé. She set up and ran a tenants’ association, and managed to get residents engaged in the issue of housing, amid rising rents. Her work has taken her outside her neighbourhood, too, sharing her experiences in other areas on the outskirts of Marseille. As for Imane, the second facilitator, she was already an employee at the social centre in the ‘families’ sector. Her background includes participation in local groups (parents’ associations), and although she has less activist capital than Najet, she shares her view of the capacity for social movement in working-class neighbourhoods.

The two social workers embarked on this project with the aim of engaging a large group of people from the entire neighbourhood. In accordance with the national guide for the experiment, they begin by first presenting the NRT to local associations (cultural associations, sports clubs, tenants’ associations), although the involvement of these groups is not especially noteworthy. Their leaders tend to take part in the initial meetings and then withdraw, seeing no interest in them due to the unpredictability of their impacts. Najet and Imane also hand out leaflets around the neighbourhood: at school gates, in front of the mosque on Fridays, but these efforts do not tend to attract long-term participants. A few months after the programme was launched, the failure to attract attendees and lack of support from other associations in the neighbourhood prompted the facilitators to refocus their work on the social centre and its existing users.

As Najet states, given the challenges of getting a broad group of people involved, the facilitators focus on women who already attend the centre. In particular, they invited North African women with children, especially those who attend the ‘women’s time’ workshop. After a few meetings, the core group of NRT attendees consisted of around ten North African women living in the neighbourhood. They are stay-at-home mothers between the ages of 35 and 50, and regularly take part in the social centre’s family outings in summer or bring their children to the activity centre. Used to taking part in ‘women’s time’ workshops, they are comfortable expressing themselves. One participant is Myriam, aged 37, of Algerian origin, who arrived in France in the late 1990s. She has always lived in the neighbourhood, and stopped working when her children were born. Deeply involved in their schooling, she is a member of a number of local organisations and parents’ associations. The facilitators and female participants therefore have similar social profiles, and are both representative of working-class neighbourhoods. The engagement of this participant group can therefore be explained by the social, activist and local resources (Retière, 2003) available to the facilitators, but also by the constraints of the local context. Furthermore, Imane’s presence at the NRT, where she also runs some of the ‘women’s time’ workshops, gives participants the confidence to get involved in this new initiative. This work is a relational process: the facilitators focus on these women with whom they had already created relations, but the women of the NRT probably identify with the social workers. It creates a bonding social capital (Putnam, 2001) between facilitators and participants, who not only have in common being ethnic minorities from working-class neighbourhood but have also created social trust from previous activities within the social centre.

The NRT was not designed as a race- and gender-separated organisation. The non-mixed dimension of the NRT is not intentional; rather, it is the result of the constraints surrounding the effort to get the public involved. The difficulties of implementation in Malpassé led the two social workers to rely on their existing networks, namely the Maghrebi women mobilised in the ‘women’s time’ workshop.

The non-mixed dimension of the NRT is never presented as such. On the contrary, the facilitators strive to hide it and present the participatory mechanism as consistent with the ‘social mix’ norm and the French colourblind political context. The facilitators and participants tend to invisibilise or keep discreet the non-mixed public of the NRT through the official categorisation of the participatory experiment as a device for ‘residents’.

The NRT experiment belongs to a shift in French social policies which seeks to adapt the notion of ‘empowerment’ to the French colourblind political context. Since the 2000s, the notion of ‘empowerment’ (Bacqué & Biewener, 2013) has been adopted in social work in France, particularly by community social centres. Their 2014 national charter makes empowerment one of the central pillars of the centres’ work with communities (Fédération des Centres Sociaux et Socioculturels de France, 2014). This new trend can be seen in the launch of an experimental participation initiative, the NRTs. The acculturation in France of the notions of empowerment and community organising involves specific models for categorising the public. The stigmatisation of the term ‘community’ in France, still viewed from a perspective of isolation and the ‘communitarian’ threat, means that this has been ruled out in favour of categories such as ‘residents’. In the experiment’s guide to practices, this term is used to refer to the expected participants of the NRTs:

The categorisation of participants’ in the initiative as ‘residents’ significantly limits the possibilities of a non-mixed model or at least only allow a territorial non-mixity which is never presented as such. In a French institutional context reluctant to embrace non-mixed models and unfamiliar with empowerment approaches, the use of the category ‘resident’ makes it possible to acculturate a foreign system to existing institutional practices.

In Malpassé, the facilitators follow this mode of categorisation. The NRTs therefore end up being a de facto race- and gender-separated space, without being designated as such by either the attendees or facilitators. On the contrary, during official presentations of the scheme, they make use of the dominant institutional categorisation, i.e. ‘residents’:

Similarly, during the interview, Imane uses this term to describe the participants’ profiles: As such, the two facilitators present the participants using the ‘residents’ category without asserting the specificities of their gender and ethnoracial backgrounds. Here we note the social workers’ internalisation of the dominant categorisation models, even though their experiences might encourage them to question these categories in other spaces. Also, this use of the ‘residents’ category can be understood as a form of generalisation of the demands made by the NRT. Behind the term ‘residents’ they do not appear as related to the concerns of a small group of Maghrebi women but to be a larger topic which affects the neighbourhood community.

Thus, the setting up of the NRT in Malpassé is based on local constraints on mobilising the public. Ethnic minority women were the most easily mobilised by the two facilitators. The non-mixed organisation that results from these constraints does not lead to the search for other types of participants (men or whites, for example) but to the implementation of strategies aimed at making this organisation discreet by referring to these participants only with the term ‘residents’. This is especially true since, unlike the ‘women’s time’ workshop, the NRT is not an occupational activity of the social centre, rather, it is a participatory mechanism which aims at fostering collective action by inhabitants towards local institutions. Thus, discretion appears even more as an indispensable condition to avoid the disqualification of its actions by political institutions.

Some studies on participation have highlighted the possibilities of politicisation or empowerment of the subaltern, particularly in working-class neighbourhoods, made possible by the experience of participatory mechanisms (Carrel, 2015; Fung, 2004; Fung & Wright, 2003). These studies focus on the functioning of the mechanisms and the trajectories of the people mobilised, but rarely examine the effects on institutional modes of categorisation of audiences. It is as if the politicisation trajectories identified by participation were exceptional and did not transform institutional representations of the inhabitants of working-class neighbourhoods. The case of the Malpassé NRT makes it possible to link these two aspects. In particular, it is because the mechanism is implemented through a discreet non-mixed mode of organisation that it produces personal transformations. In our case, the experience within the system not only has empowering effects on the participants but also contributes to modifying the institutional representations of ethnic minority women in working-class neighbourhoods, even though they remain marked by a form of essentialisation of care.

The organisational model of the NRT provides a ‘safe space’ (Taylor, 1999) for individual empowerment and socialisation towards collective action. To assess the possibilities of empowerment, we will focus on three elements: first, the relations established among women within the NRT and hence its specific group style (Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003); secondly, socialisation to collective action and more particularly the learning of repertoires (Tilly, 1993); and thirdly the specific trajectories of civic engagement of two participants.

Work on feminist discussion groups has shown that these spaces are ‘places of self-education, where activists can express themselves freely, obtain knowledge about themselves and politicise it through contact with others’ (Charpenel, 2016). The literature on deliberative democracy also examines the role of civic ‘enclaves’, i.e. separated spaces, to foster the participation of the disempowered (Karpowitz et al., 2009). The NRT differs from support groups since its participants face strong injunctions to get involved in the social centre and in participatory devices because of their social, racial, and gender status. In fact, as we have shown, only discretion allows the race-and-gender separated organisation of the NRT, when this mode of organisation is much more legitimate in feminist movements. Nevertheless, the NRT, as a space where participants can express themselves freely, has similar effects as support groups, as this observation of a meeting illustrates:

We can see in this excerpt norms already observed in non-mixed discussion groups of the feminist movement. For Taylor, support groups are ‘a space where women c[an] express solidarity, put forward their own experiential-based views of their problems, and create changes in their lives’ (Taylor, 1999, p. 17). Here we can clearly see the mobilisation of the women’s experiential register, but also a politicisation of their individual experiences, evident in the collective dimension (Duchesne & Haegel, 2010) they give to the problems they and their children face. This politicisation is also evidenced by the reference to the lack of consideration by institutions and elected officials. Much like support groups, the NRT gives these women an opportunity to acquire resources, share their experiences and become politicised. It helps shape a women’s collective, as Naïma highlights: As such, the race and gender-separated NRT plays a role in forming a collective whose members share similar social experiences, which they question and critique in similar ways. As the excerpt above show, the participants make frequent use of ‘we’ to define the group, in opposition to a ‘they’ which refers mainly to the local institutions’ officials. Within the NRT, participants develop a group style (Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003) based on a strong collective identification among the women involved and also a deep relation to the local environment, as shown by the previous observation of a meeting. Despite the closeness of the participants, the speech norms do not lapse into familiarity, but remain a distant courtesy where everyone’s opinion is welcomed as in other deliberative models. The group style that develops at the NRT is thus characterised both by a mutual recognition among participants similar to non-mixed feminist meetings and a distance in speech norms (politeness, mutual respect) found in deliberative devices (Lichterman, 2005).

In addition, the activities of the NRT, overseen by the facilitators, enable the appropriation of repertoires of collective action (Tilly, 1993). The sociology of social movements has shown that not all groups have the same relationship to registers of action, depending on the resources available to them (Fillieule, 2010; Pierru, 2010): Mathieu, on movements of female prostitutes in Lyon, shows that demonstrations in the public sphere often prove counterproductive for these women (Mathieu, 1999). In Malpassé, the NRT plays a role in the participants’ socialisation into legitimate repertoires of action. The trusting relationships established between participants and facilitators enable these women to adopt repertoires of action deemed legitimate by public opinion and institutions, such as protests. In 2015, they rallied against the deterioration of public spaces in the neighbourhood by organising a march through the city. During this march, which I was able to attend, a group of eight women accompanied by the two facilitators went around the neighbourhood with paint cans and stencils, spraying messages like ‘to be repaired’ or ‘danger’ on the spaces or street furniture they wanted to draw attention to. The following month, they submitted a report to town planning and policy officers and local civil servants, including a slide show of photos of their march. This was made possible by the facilitators’ socialisation towards collective action, and particularly Najet, who had already carried out a similar campaign in another working-class neighbourhood where she used to live. The observation of a workshop prior to this event highlights the role the close relationship between the facilitators and participants played in organising this event:

During this meeting, Najet’s experience as an activist, as well as her detailed knowledge of the problems the group of women face (because she faces them herself) made it possible to organise this event. Although most of them have never taken part in a movement like this before, the relationship of trust between the facilitators and the women makes it possible for them to participate, as Karima explains: The organisation of a march in the neighbourhood demonstrates the women’s group’s appropriation of the activist presence in the public space. This is made possible by the non-mixed nature of the NRT, which fosters relationships of trust and provides a space to pass on repertoires of action. The acquisition of these resources gives these women a legitimate voice vis-à-vis the public authorities, as illustrated below.

Finally, for some participants, the NRT acts as a springboard to autonomy. For example, following their involvement in the NRT, Anissa and Karima, two North African women aged 28 and 35, set up a parents’ association at the local school, with support from Najet. Anissa and Karima were among the youngest participants in the project, and the most recently arrived in the neighbourhood. They have taken part in several NRT meetings and actions, and it was partly their encounter with Najet that encouraged them to set up this association:

Although Anissa and Karima subsequently left the NRT, their participation developed into a more official involvement with associations. Their close relationship with the facilitators, especially Najet, therefore seems to be the source of this new form of engagement.

The NRT’s discreet non-mixed mode of organisation allows for individual changes and the development of new associative initiatives in a neighbourhood where collective commitment is considered difficult. The empowerment and politicisation effects visible at the NRT are convergent with the results of research on the effects of non-mixed meetings in feminist movements. What is more surprising, however, is the maintenance of deliberative norms that are often marked by a courteous distance between the participants. We can thus hypothesise that the maintenance of deliberative norms, often presented as excluding the working classes (Talpin, 2006) is made possible by the unclaimed dimension of non-mixity.

The organisational model of the NRT has effects not only on the participants but also on the institutional representation of these women. A number of participation requirements are placed on women from racial minorities, including veiled Muslim women who are seen only from a perspective of social and gender domination (Manier, 2009). As a result, minority women’s collective movements are perceived in a positive light, whereas men’s movements are seen as threats (Guénif Souilamas & Macé, 2006; Hamel & Siméant, 2006). The engagement of this group of women at the NRT helps to partially transform these stereotypical representations of the authorities. But while North African women are becoming a legitimate participant group in working-class neighbourhoods, categorisations linked to ‘care’ remain prevalent.

The actions carried out by the NRT and a strong connection to the social centre have resulted in the women being considered the ‘dominant’ group in the representations of local institutional actors. The urban renewal project coordinator in the neighbourhood talks about the participants engaged in the NRT:

His analysis highlights the non-mixed nature of the participants at the NRT, and sees women as the predominant group in participation initiatives. It thus gives them some credit as a participatory audience and contributes to the legitimation of this group towards local institutions. The acknowledgment of this group allows them to become key interlocutors towards local civil servants. This analysis is consistent with gender relations in working-class neighbourhoods, where men are often seen by institutions as a threat and a risk of delinquency, while women are perceived as subordinate, and their participation or involvement in associations is welcomed and encouraged (Anderson, 1990; Lamont, 2000; Truc & Truong, 2017). As such, following the neighbourhood march, the women were invited to attend a meeting with local civil servants usually closed to residents: The discreet dimension allows this group to bypass the stigma attached to the non-mixed organisational model and, as such, becomes legitimate vis-à-vis the public authorities. However, this cannot be considered a complete overturning of racial, social, and gender domination for, at least, two reasons. First, in this excerpt, the coordinator delegitimise the professional status of Najet by considering her as belonging to the public (with whom she shares age, gender and ethnoracial status). The delegitimisation of professionals from ethnic minorities in social work (Manier, 2013; Scheepers, 2019) contributes here to the reinforcement of the social and racial domination of participation professionals over working-class neighbourhood’s residents who are denied expert status and professional skills within this field. Secondly, the legitimation of women from racial minorities is always embedded in an essentialising and gendered categorisation. These women are categorised as ‘mums’ by social workers and some street-level bureaucrats. This is the case with the social centre’s director: The director’s frequent use of the term ‘mother’ stems from his professional background at social centres, where women are a privileged and highly essentialised audience (Olivier, 2010), particularly in relation to stereotypes of motherhood and care. The application of this category tends to confine the women engaged in the movement to their role as mothers. Although this group is acknowledged among institutional players, it continues to carry an unfortunate stigma.

Through the case of the Malpassé NRT (neighbourhood round table), we have discussed the role of the discreet dimension of the non-mixed organisation of a participatory device. In a colourblind French political context that stigmatises ethnic minorities, and Muslims in particular, non-mixed organisation for the inhabitants of working-class neighbourhoods is not self-evident. The norm of social and ethno-racial mix strongly structures social policies and participatory mechanisms. However, in the social centre that set up the NRT, we saw how social workers and users negotiate with this norm to create non-mixed spaces where women from ethnic minorities living in the neighbourhood are involved. The facilitators of the NRT thus rely on these existing negotiations with the norm of ‘social mix’ to create a system that favours the involvement of ethnic minority women from working-class neighbourhoods. As soon as the NRT was set up, the non-gender organisation was made invisible by the facilitators, who exclusively used the term ‘residents’ to refer to the actually gender-separated public and thus conform to the institutional expectations of participatory mechanisms.

However, the discretion of the NRT’s organisational structure has proved to be a resource both within the NRT and with regard to external institutional actors. Within the NRT, empowerment and socialisation to collective action took place due to the non-mixed framework that has never been questioned. As far as institutional representations are concerned, the legitimacy acquired by the NRT leads to a partial questioning of stereotypes about women from working-class neighbourhoods, who are perceived as the actors of mobilisations in those areas but remain locked in gendered roles linked to ‘care’.

The use of the notion of discretion thus appears particularly useful for questioning the implementation of the participation of stigmatised groups, in two regards. First, it makes it possible to re-examine the logic of the constitution of participatory mechanisms. We stress here the scope for manoeuvre of field operators with respect to institutional norms by showing how they manage to position themselves both in accordance with the expectations of local institutions (in this case, social diversity) and to deal with the reality of the field (women are the most easily mobilised). Secondly, it allows highlighting the circulation of political transformations between the individual level of the participants and the institutional representations. While work on the effects of empowerment through participation focuses on the individual dimension (Bacqué & Biewener, 2013), the use of the notion of discretion makes it possible to show the circulation of transformations between the individual and institutional levels. It is thanks to the socialisation to collective action that takes place within the NRT that the actions carried out lead to the acquisition of legitimacy with local institutions. Re-examining the modes of organisation of participation in the light of discretion thus makes it possible to go beyond the idea of failures of participation in working-class neighbourhoods, in order to understand in detail how stigmatised groups seize institutional participatory mechanisms and what they do with them.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).