Addressing the challenge of a “common” Future: The French contemporary mobilizations against injustice in face of the ecological and social emergencies

Abstract

In face of the ecological and social emergencies, how the French contemporary mobilizations against injustices does address the issue of a fair and sustainable future? We will answer this question from a qualitative survey conducted in 2019–2020 of 130 association officials and activists on social and environmental justice, fight against racism, sexism, and /or speciesism. These mobilisations combine a radical denunciation of inequalities that goes back to their root causes with an attachment to fluidity concerning the “who”, the “what”, the “how” and the “when” of emancipation. We will examine in particular the way in which the emancipated common is part of a radical and fluid renewal of the relation to utopia by promoting both the diversity of tactics (advocacy, civil disobedience, border violence/non-violence) and the making (in) common. The activists interviewed address the link between local alternatives and the advent of a new global order in an elliptical, even enigmatic way, through metaphorical statements – “no big night, but shared gardens”, “the islets will make the archipelagos”.