Extract
[...] Through the microhistories of militants, this dossier questions the structuring effects of forced exiles of 'militants in motion' on individual biographies, militant careers and reconversions, and on the transformations of militant capitals.' But as for Ennahda, one cannot forget that the exile of the moment of the dictatorship does not prevent the reproduction of the partisan functioning in France (for example, its organizational chart). II. Militant recompositions: when war and exile determine the forms of engagement As announced in the notion of militant careers, these articles invite us to think about the biographical consequences of engagement through the prism of social structures as well as biographical trajectory. It is now the details of these recompositions that are the focus of the second part. 1. [...]
[...] This epistemology is shared by Mathilde Zederman, who poses the same question: 'the very existence of foreign political parties and their partisan experience are subject to the legal, institutional, political constraints not only of the country of residence (in our case, France), but also of the country of origin (here, Tunisia).' It is then an opportunity for the latter to rehabilitate the concept of 'structures of political opportunity', developed by Doug McAdam, McCarthy and Zald. In terms of political engagement, we learn from Mathilde Zederman's text that one must declare oneself to the Ministry of the Interior, but that it is also subject to a 'duty of reserve', imposed on foreigners. The Tunisian Islamist party is stigmatized, in contrast to the RCD valued. Finally, the predominance of the security framework in surveillance policies but also the monopoly of penal responses to social deviance determines militant practices. [...]
[...] This ambiguity overlaps, in a second time, in militant practices. The issue is to describe the situation of war, what Marie-Noëlle Abiyaghi and Ermina Chiara Calabrese mean by "the circulation of languages", as "scientific" or "militant". It is indeed the militant engagement that is linked to both the definitional production, but also to the" quality of engagement, that is to say in its justifications and, through that, in its maintenance to engage. The concept of "circulation of languages" is quite happy in Mathilde Zederman's article. [...]
[...] Although this is not in a context of war, it allows to insist on the tensions that there are between the two Tunisian parties and the pro- anti- regime oppositions of Ben Ali. When one wants to discredit and stigmatize, the other tries to impose a language of denunciation ("the militants, writes Zederman, deploy different strategies, such as a recourse to the universalist register of human rights")." 2. Risking one's engagement, risking one's life The article by Mathilde Zederman allows us to measure the concrete effects of a repressive SOP on the sustainability of protest practices: they face, in the case of a socially institutionalized world, repression, delegitimization, and finally infiltration. [...]
[...] According to her, 'war can be a political resource and contribute to reviving established causes and political enterprises ( . ) It can revive moribund ideologies and ancient networks.' That is why it seems judicious to question militant practices during wartime, at the invitation of sociologists. Because war ultimately renews contestations and social movements; Mathilde Zederman shows how 'being part' at a distance exists through the exiled members of the Islamist party Ennahda seeking refuge in France. This is a decisive point of convergence between these two articles. [...]
