How institutionalisation of a movement fosters protest: The case of student protests in France

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explains how institutionalisation can go hand in hand with the use of more disruptive tactics by social actors. Inspired by a feminist conceptualisation of the social movement institutionalisation process, we adopt a fluid definition of the state-society division and attend to show how institutional actors and groups negotiate their relationships at different scales of protest. To illustrate our argument, we take a closer look at the student movement in France. Based on the analysis of higher education policies between 2005 and 2016, and 16 semi-structured interviews conducted with key actors, we identify a process of partial institutionalisation whereby student organisations are regulated by different material conditions depending on the scale of protest. These material conditions, translated trough institutional arrangements, shape the ways in which student organisations build identity boundaries among them, thereby leading to the use of different tactics of protest.