Quiet resistance to institutional categorizations in participatory measures in Neukölln – Berlin

Special report—Analyzing the social categorization of minority populations
By Thomas Chevallier
English

This article focuses on three participatory measures implemented in the same neighborhood of Berlin: a parents’ café set up by a community of educational actors, a cookery workshop run by a charity offering literacy classes, and a “neighborhood mothers” project that employs women with an immigrant background to help them integrate. Adopting an ethnographic and interactionist approach, the article seeks to determine the ways in which the categorizations of “immigrants,” “parents,” and “mothers” through which populations are targeted are appropriated by the participants (exclusively women). First, it looks at the categorizations, the sociopolitical context in which they take place, and the activation and integration objectives they pursue. Then, it studies the practices and processes by which the participants, supported by supervisors, build a form of social enclave based on resistance to these assignments and prescriptions that are attached to them.

  • citizen participation
  • population
  • categorization
  • minority groups
  • neighborhood politics
  • Germany
  • resistance
  • social enclave
Go to the article on Cairn-int.info