Social Movements in France

Contemporary France has witnessed a rise of new forms of social movement, mobilizing around new causes and articulating changing demands. Sarah Waters examines the new generation of movements since the 1990s, from anti-racism and the movement of the unemployed, to solidarity or the associations of the "Sans". She argues that emerging movements share a profoundly civic dimension: these are movements about rights and are concerned with who has rights and what those rights are. They manifest a desire to reinvent citizenship in the present day in relation to a new set of social struggles and conflicts.