“Counter-Emergencies”: Framing Protest and Repression in Times of States of Emergency in France

In this paper, I approach emerging dynamics in social movements by focusing on activists’ frames of protest and repression in the context of states of emergency in France. French politics have been shaped by the ‘anti-terrorist’ state of emergency (2015-17) declared after the ‘Paris attacks’ and the ‘sanitary’ state of emergency (2020-21) in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. Both states of emergency have had severe effects on political participation and social movements, as they restricted basic rights and freedoms. These politics have not only resulted in a “permanent state of emergency” (Hennette-Vauchez 2022) but have also favored a rise of far-right politics. Against this backdrop, I analyze protest and repression based on problem-centered interviews with activists from environmental, anti-racist and social justice movements (yellow vests, anti-gentrification) in France, with a focus on Marseille, and activist media (blog articles, social media content, flyers) related with these movements. Following a Critical Frame Analysis (Bacchi 2009), I take the anti-terrorist state of emergency as a starting point and analyze protest actors' perceptions of protest and repression since this period. I show how activists problematize anti-movement framing in terms of experiences of an extensive othering of protesters as ‘criminals’, ‘violent’ and ‘terrorists’, (e.g. “eco-terrorism”). I then analyze framing strategies to counter such othering (e.g. “movement alliances”). The activists’ problematizations of repression allow for an understanding of how contexts of states of emergency shape protest repression, but also how they result in re-framings of contexts and ‘emergencies’ on the part of different movements. My research contributes to current debates on the shifting dynamics between protest and state repression during times of multiple crises in Western liberal democracies and a rise of authoritarian politics.