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For about fifteen years now, so-called leaderless movements, often stemming from appeals via social networks and having recourse to lasting or episodic occupations of public spaces have flourished. This has had the effect of calling into question the usual toolkit used by social movement scholars to study them. More precisely, it is a question of which levels, dimensions and units of analysis are relevant, especially when it comes to describe movements’ social base and worldviews. In this paper, based on a localized and a long-term collective undertaking, begun from the very beginning of the Yellow Vests movement in November 2018, we discuss those shortcomings and suggest avenues for analysis. We rely on three sets of data in a concomitant manner: life history calendars, social media data (mainly Facebook) and field research (participant observation and biographical interviews). By considering time and place as key variables, we offer an innovative way to describe how the YVs movement has been constructed in a constant flux of change.

The Yellow Vest (YV) movement originated in a Facebook group launched in January 2018 and took off in November of the same year. Since then, more than 50,000 demonstrations and gatherings have been counted, either in the form of occupying and blocking roundabouts, or in street demonstrations. Protests have spread all over the region, giving rise to riotous scenes, unprecedented in the police repression they triggered. This has led to a mobilization, considerable and hitherto unseen in many respects: this movement sprang from calls on the internet, with no external support. It was noteworthy in its duration, its territorial scope, its occurrence in urban, suburban, and rural areas, and its blunt refusal of all leadership. While the participants were in a variety of socioeconomic positions, the vast majority of them had, until that point, been uninvolved in any political, union, or group activity, including voting.

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No abstract