"We are the right intersectional feminists, the margins in the margins" : Feminist activism from the urban margins / quartiers populaires in France and Denmark

This paper aims to provide a reflection on the centre-margin dichotomy in urban context through the study of French and Danish feminist activism in working-class neighbourhoods. How do the protest practices in the quartiers populaires reconfigure the centre-margin devide ? I have been working on this emerging activism through two case studies : two feminist groups who organised alternative 8th of March demonstrations in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, Saint-Denis, in the suburbs of Paris since 2021. The data presented is derived from my four years of doctoral research. I conducted an ethnography between 2024 and 2025 in Saint-Denis, France, joining the volunteer committee of Marche Féministe Antiracisteand 2025 and 2026 in Nørrebro, Copenhagen,. This enabled me to have access to internal documents and observe the decision-making process. I also conducted eleven interviews with people volunteering for the groups and who joined the organisation. Textual and oral sources (political statements, calls for demonstration, chants, and political demands) were also used. Starting from the framework of femonationalism (Farris, 2017) and its spatialisation, this work dwells on the creolisation of feminist mouvements in the urban margins by exploring the centre/margins division in feminist urban activism.The groups advocate for politisation of feminism with “protest marches” and criticise the central 8th of March demonstrations of Paris and Copenhagen. They support the creation of their own representation spaces. I analyse the shared features of these two alternative organisations located in the periphery compared to the central ones. They "practice" intersectionality (Lepinard, 2015), emphasise on anti-racist claims, use new symbolisms and refer to different historical events. Finally, I show how organising in the urban margin is a strategic choice (hooks, 1989) to gain radical legitimacy and how the space is a resource for the groups (Hmed, 2020). In Saint-Denis, the movement operates outside of the margin/centrality dichotomy: the activists plan to represent urban margins nationally and to expand geographically, building a new polycentric model. In Nørrebro, there is an inward movement towards the margins and community development: the attention of the centre is not sought, the target audience is more focused, without spatial constraints.