Québec et la géographie sociale en questions

Abstract

La vie se déroule, bien sûr, comme un film, mais l'observateur ne peut rien saisir sous cette forme, il doit disposer d'images fixes dont la juxtaposition lui donne l'illusion du mouvement par reconstitution. (Raffestin 2007, 157)

Refractions and recombinations of the ‘economic’ and the ‘social’: a personalized reflection on challenges by—and to—feminist urban geographies

“…The concept was deeply rooted in its time and place, with a key contextual element being the deep recession and associated soft housing market. I was also in the process of discovering work in francophone Québécois urban social geography and urban sociology that employed concepts such as ‘ chômeurs instruits ’ 5 and neighbourhood‐scale ‘ modes de vie ’ and ‘ genres de vie ’ (much richer notions than that of ‘lifestyle’) in their examinations of the social, cultural and political experimentations of ‘new social movements’ actors in some of Montréal and Québec City's inner‐city neighbourhoods—including converting private rental housing to coops, developing parent‐run daycare centres, and in the process, seemingly creating space for more equitable gender practices (Séguin and Villeneuve 1987; Villeneuve 2009). 6…”

“…Subsequently, a research endeavour with Paul Villeneuve over a number of years enabled empirical demonstration of this for the Montréal and Québec City cases. Our work involved using custom tabulations of census data to examine changes in the occupational profile of individuals, placing them in their household context (living alone, two‐earner couple, lone parent…), and relating these changes to employment change and industrial restructuring processes underway in these cities (see Villeneuve 2009). The marginal gentrifier concept was above all a heuristic device, to raise the question of potentially compatible interests around issues of reproduction (nonprofit housing, good quality public services, supportive networks for lone parents … , and more abstractly, an inclusive and tolerant atmosphere) between these early gentrifiers and existing residents.…”