Taking Sides: To School or Not to School Squatters' Children

Abstract

Families of squatters who had settled in a quiet neighborhood of Paris wished to send their children to the local school. Our ethnohistorical inquiry explores how the mobilization in favor of schooling the children was embedded in other controversies and mobilizations that arose from the squatters' presence in the occupied building. Many collective social actors (associations, unions, administrations, and politicians) were involved in conflicting mobilizations in an ongoing struggle of competing arguments. The contemporary crisis of the French model of political representation has enabled the emergence of new forms of collective protest: new ways of defining social problems and a new repertory of civil actions, that is, the "mediatization" of social action and the recourse to litigation. Our study suggests some of the possible extensions and limitations of this movement, especially in the context of action taken by teachers' unions and parents' associations. [judicialization, mobilization, parents, schooling, social movement] The right to housing, the right to a peaceful existence and to personal safety, and the right to education were the most outstanding demands made by the mobilizations and controversies that arose from the takeover of an unoccupied building in a residential area of Paris by inadequately housed families who were assisted by a housing rights association. These families wanted to send their children to the school in the vicinity of the building they were occupying. Their occupation of the building and their attempts to enroll their children generated a variety of demonstrations, both in support of and in opposition to the families' wishes, which our case study tracked historically on a day-today basis. We were particularly interested in studying the fight led by a series of associations and unions to coerce public authorities to recognize and fulfill their educational responsibility. We soon realized that the mobilization that occurred over a child's right to schooling closely overlapped with other mobilizations and controversies that focused on specific claims regarding housing rights, the legitimacy of a squatter's home, and the risks and dangers of the occupied building. These controversies were sustained and resolved by legal recourse, in a way that repositions it within the French legal system. The French state has made the regulation of social and political order its own administrative responsibility. Today it is increasingly difficult for the state administration to set universally operative rules, especially regarding schooling and its relationship with the parents of schoolchildren. In the

Social Movement Knowledge and Anthropology of Education

“…It is worth noting that Paulston, O’Cadiz and Torres, and Macias all combined ethnographic work with historical narratives of the movements in question, as did Murillo () in her more recent study of the century‐long struggle of the Ahurco of Columbia to decolonize schooling in the context of a broader resistance movement. Standing alone in their exploration of contemporary social movement activity, Dutercq and Lafaye () offered an analysis of coalition building, collective actions, and local controversies in a campaign to school squatters’ children in Paris.…”

Social Movements and Educational Research: Toward a United Field of Scholarship

“…Contemporary and historical studies addressing the influence of social movements on schooling and higher education range from those focusing on large-scale national or transnational movements, such as the civil rights movement, women's movements, antiglobalization movements, and so forth, to smaller-scale local movements, such as a movement to educate squatters' children in Paris (Dutercq & Lafaye, 2007) and university-specific campus campaigns for multicultural education (Rhoads, 1998a(Rhoads, , 1998b.…”

Se mobiliser pour soi et pour les autres

“…La grammaire de l'engagement en public s'impose à chacune des trois mobilisations. Le suivi des autres mobilisations montre que, lorsqu'elles n'obéissent pas à cette grammaire de l'engagement en public elles ne peuvent trouver reconnaissance : ainsi, lorsque des riverains et des parents d'élèves, se mobilisent contre la présence d'un squat de l'association Droit au logement (DAL) et la demande de scolarisation des enfants des squatters dans l'école voisine, leurs revendications deviennent rapidement vulnérables au soupçon et à la critique de rejet d'autrui et de xénophobie (Dutercq & Lafaye 2007).…”

“…Recherche Pédagogique (INRP), une enquête portant sur un ensemble diversifié de six mobilisations autour d'écoles parisiennes dont l'intensité fut suffisante pour leur permettre d'être reconnues et, par voie de conséquence, d'éveiller l'attention du chercheur de terrain : la lutte pour le maintien en ZEP d'écoles maternelles (Dutercq & Lafaye 2003), une protestation liée à la présence d'un squat à proximité d'une école primaire, une mobilisation en faveur de la scolarisation des enfants résidant dans ce même squat (Dutercq & Lafaye 2007), un combat exigeant l'intégration dans des classes ordinaires de cinq enfants handicapés, des interpellations autour d'une école communautarisée, une mobilisation revendiquant des moyens supplémentaires pour des écoles situées dans un quartier défavorisé. Cet article se limite à la mise en perspective de trois d'entre elles -la mobilisation centrée sur le maintien en ZEP d'écoles maternelles, celle dénonçant la communautarisation d'une école élémentaire et celle revendiquant des moyens supplémentaires pour faire face aux perturbations menaçant le fonctionnement de l'école -en montrant qu'elles ont en commun d'interroger la capacité des politiques éducatives à garantir un monde commun scolaire acceptable.…”