Clair Hancock - Gender, Sexual Identities and Spatial Justice

justice spatiale | spatial justice
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Gender, Sexual Identities and Spatial Justice

Claire Hancock, universit Paris-Est Crteil Gender, Sexual Identities and Spatial Justice Claire Hancock, universit Paris-Est Crteil
Gender inequalities and discriminations on the basis of sexual preference are two obvious aspects of injustice. The burden of poverty falls disproportionately on the female part of the population in all societies, however rich. Reproductive and care work are also unequally divided between men and women, while salaried work for women is often devalued, sometimes denied. The continued physical and systemic violence against gay people and gay activists in many countries is a reminder that sexual identity is a crucial question for geographers concerned with social justice. The aim of this special issue is to explore how gender and sexual identity are articulated in and through space.
From violence to the denial of a "place" It is only too well known that sexual preferences can, in some parts of the world, expose to various forms of violence, from insult to murder1, not to forget institutional violence,
As the killing, on January 26th, 2011, in Uganda, of LGBT activist David Kato, reminded the
world all too cruelly.

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ranging from discrimination to the death penalty. One of our concerns as geographers, however, is to show that those "parts of the world" are not easy to map, despite the impression given by maps such as the one below, which we borrow from Wikipedia.
Legislation on homosexuality, map downloaded from Wikipedia (article on homosexuality) March 16th, 2011 Homophobia is to be found everywhere, in the West as in the rest, in large cities as well as backwaters, and imagining that it is vanquished by the "inclusiveness" of some particular places is an illusion. Inhabiting one of those "blue countries" that are supposedly havens of tolerance by no means protects against discrimination and violence.

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The second reason we, as geographers who care for justice, are interested in the issue of sexual preferences, is that we are more than other social scientists concerned by the claim formulated by LGBT activists for a "place", a "visibility", a "right to the city", that are not purely metaphorical: for them, this refers to the possibility of living without having to hide an aspect of their identities and practices, of being recognized as legitimate in public space, without being threatened with violence. Anglophone geographers have shown how cities, from their housing markets to their offer of entertainment, embody the heterosexual privilege, analyzed in terms of "heteronormativity" (see for instance Hubbard, 2000). In many of the papers in this special edition the authors struggle with how women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people grapple with everyday exclusion in the city. Where LGBTQ groups and feminists converge is on a refusal to be "rendered invisible" in public space which remains dominated, as it has long been, by white, able-bodied, male heterosexuals, who historically constituted as deviant or anecdotal "Others" all those who did not conform to the norm, did not resemble them or share their sexual preferences. While proclaiming "universal" human rights, they remained impervious to the discriminations encountered by those who did not conform to their understanding of the ideal-typical subject "Man". Several of the texts gathered in this issue address these questions, and "locate" them very clearly in French society, and particularly in Paris. Nadine Cattan and Anne Clerval are among the first French geographers to deal with the troubling question of the lesser visibility, in this city, of female homosexuality, though it is necessarily not numerically less significant than male homosexuality. They challenge the idea that there is a lesser tendency on the part of lesbians to "territorialize" their identity, and show mechanisms which determined the emergence, ebb and flow of lesbian businesses in the French capital, their complex relationship with the so-called "homosexual haven" (in fact mostly male), the Marais, and the resources found online to organize parties. To those who might challenge the use of "spatial justice" applied to the claim for places to meet and party, they remind of the crucial role, for a minority that is otherwise all but made invisible, of these places as part of the resistance to minorization, as well as personal fulfilment though of course the degree

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of social openness of such places, essentially commercial in nature, might be questioned. The spatial forms of gay identity have been more commonly addressed, and have led to a questioning of the "commercialization" of identities, as both Marianne Blidon and Renaud Boivin show in their respective papers. Marianne Blidon uses the concept of "recognition", as theorized by Taylor and Fraser, to show that the spatial recognition gained by gays and lesbians takes place in a neo-liberal mode that implies multiple exclusions based on class and race. In a similar vein, Renaud Boivin explores how spatial "aggregation" of gays in central Paris goes along with forms of gentrification, segregation and exclusion of those who do not subscribe to the gay model prevalent in the Marais: he outlines individual strategies that vary from distanciation to adhesion, and as a function of social positions. By so doing, he constructs a critique of gay normalization that converges with Lisa Duggan's idea of "homonormativity", and emphasizes the spatial components of the evolution. Both these papers therefore contribute to the ongoing debate on intersectionality, by illuminating ways in which different forms of domination are likely to cumulate, intersect, or go in opposite directions, and they show what a specifically spatial reading of intersectionality could be: spaces that manifest and host one form of minority difference (sexual orientation, for instance) may however exclude other forms of difference, to do with class, means, the fact one is a woman or a transsexual, or a member of a racialized group. The paper by Bettina Van Hoven discusses mainly heterosexual constructions of masculinity, in terms of spatial injustice: in all countries, a large majority of prisoners is male, and for similar crimes women are much less likely than men to be sentenced to imprisonment. Confronted with this gendered injustice, how are imprisoned masculinities constituted, and what roles enable inmates to put up with detention? This paper on the negotiations of masculinity in prisons interrogates the gendered and sexual identities available to a generally marginalized and systemically excluded population in an environment where a sense of citizenship and belonging is entirely circumscribed. For Van Hoven prison brings into question the conventional wisdoms concerning masculinity as they are expressed in everyday culture. It is an important article in this collection because it brings into relief the norms associated with

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masculinity and presents a tool for laying open the construction of this ideal-typical subject Man in the city. The recognition/redistribution dilemma runs through most of the papers presented here. Monique Bertrand's research on women's roles in African cities shows concern both for the discrimination they suffer in terms of land property, a redistributive issue, but primarily challenges the way women, in the discourse of NGOs and international agencies, are cast as "local" agents, assigned a role in a space that is confined to proximity, but never thought of as agents of change at the national levelclearly a case of misrecognition. Two of the papers presented here explicitly engage theories of recognition, one of which deals with gay and lesbian rights in France, the other with poor migrant women in Southern Spain. Blidon's paper shows how the physical settings offered same-sex couples contracting civil partnerships either grant them full recognition, or make them second-class citizens, excluded from the social and political ritualization of marriage. Zeneidi argues that migrant women are able to cope with the hardships of discrimination on the workplace thanks to the recognition they gain as providers for their families, much as they put up with being housed in guarded barracks provided they are given the freedom to cross borders and access to Europe. Despite these theoretical convergences, we regret that, as texts came in, a form of segregation occurred between, on the one hand, articles dealing with women's issues, and the spatial injustices they encounter, mostly in countries of the global South, and on the other hand, the injustices suffered by members of "sexual minorities", mostly in the global North (though Renaud Boivin's doctoral dissertation, that also includes work in Mexico, may in the future overcome this divide). This segregation might give the erroneous impression that in France, all issues of sexism have been overcome, and that struggles only concern the recognition and visibility of sexual minoritiesor maybe even, that such struggles are "luxuries" that poorer countries cannot afford. We want to caution against this impression, and the extremely dangerous smugness with which many European countries nowadays locate whatever forms of sexism they identify on their territories with racial minorities (Muslim in particular), as though it were a form of import brought in from the South by immigrants.

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In a geographical perspective, this reminds us that a scientific approach consists, not in going to verify that sexism or homophobia are actually to be found where we suppose they are (and where the hysterical demonization of Islam would have us look for it), but in teasing them out from where they are hiding (perhaps not all that well), in national institutions, strongholds of power, in the so-called "national representation" that fails dismally at representing French diversity. A conference held in January 2011 in Amsterdam settled on the phrase "sexual nationalisms" to speak of the tendency, in many European countries, to give a sexual content to European "values" used to lambast immigrant populations2. One of the conclusions was that, whether nationalism is formulated in terms that are essentially heterosexual, as is the case in France, or stresses the rights of homosexuals, as in the Netherlands, a common tendency is to blame on a racialized Other, more and more systematically a Muslim Other, forms of sexism or homophobia of which Christian Europeans considered themselves exempt. It is useful here to record scholar of secularism Jean Baubrot's retort, during his hearing by the French parliamentary commission given the task of gathering evidence and reporting on the issue of "full veils" or burqas in France, that "it is a paradox that an Assembly constituted by 80% of men, from parties that pay not to comply with the laws instituting parity, is giving lessons to Islam" (quoted on p. 428 of the commission's report, made public on January 26th, 2010). "The personal is political": opening spaces of political subjectivation One might expect feminist groups to be alert to such facts. In fact, as Susan Faludi points out in a recent preface to her 1991 classic Backlash, Western feminism seems to have lost its compass, and fallen victim to the same sort of commercialization that some papers in this issue describe in the LGBT minorities: In the years since feminism's revival in the early 1970s, American women have sped across so much ground that we can scarcely recognize the lives our grandmothers lived. We have won so many contests, leveled so many barriers, that the changes wrought by the women's movement are widely viewed as irreversible, even by feminist's most committed antagonists. Yet, as women near the finish line, we are distracted. We have stopped to gather
2
See http://www.sexualnationalisms.org/eric-fassin---introductory-remarks.php

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glittery trinkets from an apparent admirer. The admirer is the marketplace, and the trinkets are the bounty of a commercial culture, which has deployed the language of liberation as a new and powerful tool of subjugation. () We live in a time when the very fundaments of feminism have been recast in commercial terms. (Faludi, 2006: XIV) It is important, obviously, not to make light of what financial independance may have meant and means for many women. In her text about Moroccan migrants, Djemila Zeneidi points out that for those women, acquiring material goods such as a mobile phone and a handbag, having their own bank account, function as potent symbols of autonomy and contribute to their sense of self-esteem. However, waving a credit card about in fashion stores is surely not the acme of female emancipation magazines would have us believe. Another shortcoming of some feminist groups, in France in particular, is the way they have allowed themselves to be enlisted by the current government in the crusade against Muslim headscarves. By so doing, they are forgetful of early struggles against the bra or high-heeled shoes as symbols of female subordination, and the fact that it has now become widely accepted that these symbols may actually be reclaimed as empowering by some women who choose to wear them. Images of the popular uprisings which have taken place in the Arab countries and in Iran during the first months of 2011 showed that in the crowds, veiled women were demonstrating alongside men, which should help us to rethink stereotypes of "Muslim women" as victims, unable to act or speak. The text by Lucia Direnberger, in our Public Space section, discusses women's place in Iranian public space, generally, and questions the iconic status given to the young "martyr" Neda during the 2009 demonstrations: why was the image of a young woman as victim, silenced, and probably not an active participant in the movement, picked rather than one of the many active female demonstrators? Not only were there many of them, but they were also articulate, and this paper gives a voice to many Muslim feminists of whom many, in Western Europe, believe their veil talks for them, and they have nothing audible to say. Safaa Monqid gives a say to women from deprived neighbourhoods of Rabat, Morocco, who have much to tell of the constraints on their daily mobility outside the home and the difficulties they face in asserting their right to the city (difficulties that are both economic

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and to do with social norms that confine them to their local area). However, the paper also shows how strongly these women engage with their neighbourhood, which they use as a preeminent social resource, and the strategies deployed by the younger women in particular to gain access to the centre of the city. Djemila Zeneidi also met Moroccan women, among those who are used as guinea pigs in a much vaunted policy of "chosen immigration" on the part of the European Union, the "contracts in origin" which bring to the South of Europe, as disposable agricultural labour, mostly women, considered more docile, and with family responsibilities (betting on the fact a woman would not abandon her children in her country). While the scholar is appalled by the conditions in which these women are made to live and work, what they themselves consider a major injustice is not being hired again for the subsequent harvest, since this deprived them of a migratory experience they find gratifying despite everything. As we pointed out above, several of the texts presented here use theories of recognition, either Taylor's or Honneth's, understandably so, since sexual minorities have historically been, in the US in particular, active in "identity politics", along with racial minorities, clamouring for "recognition". Nancy Fraser has underlined the dangers of the "identity model", which displaces economic inequalities, and tends to essentialize identities fraught with internal tensions (as shown by the Black Feminists, or the Queer movements). She argued that theories of identity, based on psychological analysis that are fully functional at the individual level, are problematic when applied to groups. She also saw a way of overcoming this difficulty and avoiding these pitfalls by making recognition an institutional issue, and considering it as a question of equal status, not identity: i.e., parity of political participation, and institutional equality, in society. The example she uses to illustrate this point is relevant here: she says that without a right to same-sex marriage, there is an institutional inequality between homosexual and heterosexual couples, that is an injustice and needs to be addressed. What is at stake here is not the recognition of specific rights linked to a specific identity, but the recognition of equality, as fully-fledged members of society and of the body politic. The idea that the recognition of diverse "communities" in society is actually detrimental to social justice rather than an integral part of it is extremely popular in universalist

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France. It is telling, for instance, that a book by US scholar Walter Benn Michaels entitled The Trouble with Diversity (2006) in the original was translated into French under the title La diversit contre l'galit (Diversity against equality). This is typical of a French tendency to pit forms of domination against each other, and to see minorities as competing against each other. In France, as has been shown by the Fassin brothers, it is not so much "identities" that are clamouring for recognition as forms of discrimination ; hence a definition of minorities as groups based on "the shared experience of discrimination" (Fassin and Fassin, 2006, p. 251). Hence also what has been termed the "minoritarian paradox", the obligation to "speak up as in order to refuse being treated as" (p. 253), or in the terms of Joan Wallach Scott, "the need to assert and to refuse difference at the same time" (Scott, 1996, quoted in Fassin et Fassin, 2006, p. 252). Jacques Rancire provides an elegant way out of this very French conundrum, the "endless debate between identity and universality", by emphasizing that "the only political universal is equality" (1998, p. 116). He writes: When groups who are victims of injustice seek redress for a wrong, they usually refer to humanity and its rights. But universality does not reside in those concepts. It resides in the argumentative process which demonstrates their consequences, that says what results from the fact that the worker is a citizen, that the Black is a human being, etc. (1998, p. 116). Rancire argues convincingly that the "construction of cases of equality is not the result of an identity or the demonstration of the specific values of a group", but "a process of subjectivation" (p. 118). The claim is not for specific rights for women or sexual or racial minorities based on their identity or their specificity, but for a recognition of equality, and equal status as subject of the political, for each member of these groups. Rancire calls the logics of political subjectivation "heterology" or "logics of the other", because "it is never the mere assertion of an identity, it is always also the refusal of an identity imposed by another" (p. 121). These thinkers' contributions seem highly relevant to spatial justice for several reasons. First, it seems to us that one of the criteria of "parity of participation" is visibility in public space, as claimed by women and LGBTQ groups, and that spatial strategies are crucial to the assertion of equality, as well as the articulation of wrongs. Secondly, in the terms of Rancire, what is at stake is the construction of a "space of subjectivation", a space

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to exist politically and be heard as an equal, that is not a mere metaphor but actually, as all the papers in this issue show, implies a physical access to public space, a "place of one's own" in the city. Acknowledgements I wish to thank Teresa Dirsuweit for her assistance in editing this special issue. Thank you also to Philippe Gervais-Lambony for promoting the idea, and to all those who helped to make it, in different ways: Laurent Chauvet, Melanie Mauthner and Muriel Froment-Meurice for their translations, Lynda Amara, Aurlie Quentin, Karine Ginisty and Frdric Dufaux for their help preparing the texts and their invaluable expertise for putting them online.
References
FALUDI Susan, Preface to the 15th anniversary edition of Backlash. The Undeclared War on American Women, Three Rivers Press (CA), 2006. FASSIN Didier, FASSIN Eric (dir.), De la question sociale la question raciale ? Reprsenter la socit franaise, Paris : La Dcouverte, Cahiers libres, 2006. FRASER Nancy, "Rethinking Recognition", New Left Review, n3, pp. 107-120, MayJune, 2000. HUBBARD Phil, "Desire/disgust: mapping the moral contours of heterosexuality", in Progress in Human Geography, vol. 24, n2, pp. 191-217, 2000. RANCIERE Jacques, Aux bords du politique, Paris : Gallimard, Folio Essais,1998. (First edition 1992, translated as On the Shores of Politics, London ; New York: Verso, 1995.) SCOTT Joan Wallach, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man, Cambridge ; London: Harvard University Press, 1996. SCOTT Joan Wallach, Sexularism, The Robert Schuman Centre Distinguished Lecture, European University Institute, Florence, Italy, 23 April 2009.

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A right to the city? Virtual networks and ephemeral centralities for lesbians in Paris
Nadine Cattan, DR CNRS Anne Clerval, MCF Paris-Est Marne-la-Valle Traductrice : Claire Hancock, Paris-Est-Crteil
A right to the city ? Virtual networks and ephemeral centralities for lesbians in Paris Nadine Cattan, directrice de recherches en gographie au CNRS Anne Clerval, matresse de confrences en gographie lUniversit Paris -Est Marne-la-Valle. UMR Gographie-cits, CNRS, Universits Paris 1 et Paris Diderot, 13 rue du Four, 75006 Paris Traductrice : Claire Hancock, universit Paris-Est-Crteil
Rsum A large body of literature, mostly in English, now documents male homosexuals' ability to appropriate parts of the city to gain both urban and social visibility. Conversely, most work on lesbians points at their relative invisibility. This article looks at places that, since the 70s, have been opened for parties and outings for lesbians. Though these may be few in number and frequently instable, a degree of social and online networking establishes other geographies for lesbians' "right to the city". Though invisible to mainstream society, they testify to lesbians' ability to overcome spatial injustice.
Keywords : homosexuality, lesbian, territory, city, network.

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Diverse cities, and in particular the largest, have long been considered as places where relations are anonymous and which allow for encounters with Otherness. City life allows for freer expression of difference, in terms of behaviour and identities.
In the past two decades, in particular in the Anglophone world, the role of urban spaces as allowing for homosexual visibility, and as locus of construction of gay and lesbian cultures has been amply documented. Work has shown how homosexuals' "right to the city" has been established by the development of gay neighbourhoods in a number of large cities, and how this has also led to flourishing commercial activities (restaurants, bars, clubs). The importance of these businesses in providing places of s ociability and identity construction cannot be overstated, and we will discuss it further in the instance of lesbians. However, forms of appropriation of urban areas remain dominated by male homosexuals and leave lesbians in relative invisibility. Reasons for this range from the re-doubling of discrimination lesbians endure (both as women and as homosexual) to economic unequalities which imply they have a lower purchasing power, as well as their household formation (they have children in their care more often than gay men). This points to a greater degree of spatial injustice, since lesbians are rendered largely invisible in cities. According to some interpretations, this reflects a lesser tendency to claim visibility and public exposure, which tends to reiterate gender stereotypes and fails to show how this tendency results from oppression. Following Delphy (1998), we interpret lesbians' lesser visibility in urban space as a result of their position as "doubly dominated" within the patriarcal system.
There is however a huge diversity of places to express one's homosexual identity in cities, and it appears necessary to work beyond the dualism of classical spatial categorizations (private/public, visible/invisible, ephemeral/enduring). This is the direction taken in this paper, which looks at lesbian "territorial" appropriations in Paris, and their evolution in the last four decades. While it registers the reduction of visible lesbian presence on the Parisian "scene", it also tries to show the wide range of alternative practices used by lesbians to invent places to meet and interact. Its major aim is to map the places where sexuality and sexual identities are played out in the city. According to Binnie and Valentine (1999), that is the main contribution made by

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geography to gender studies and gay and lesbian studies1. We argue that to understand lesbians' engagement with the city by considering only the visible and permanent places would be mistaken.
We relie on a retrospective survey of lesbian businesses in Paris, and of lesbian parties organized in various Parisian venues in the last decade. Much of the material comes from interviews carried out with managers of lesbian businesses, and the organizers of events2.
1. Lesbian visibility in cities A number of publications, in the 1970s and 1980s, especially in the Anglophone world, addressed the geography of homosexualities. The Stonewall riots which took place in New York City in 1969 were probably among the events which contributed to the rise of a new academic field, in social sciences, now known as "gay and lesbian studies" (Tamagne, 2006).
Geography started contributing significantly to the field in the 1990s, within various disciplinary sub-fields, but particularly in urban geography (Binnie et Valentine, 1999), probably because homosexuality had by then gained a "right to the city" in many Western cities. This was particularly exemplified in gay neighbourhoods such as the Castro in San Francisco, the Marais in Paris, Checa in Madrid, Schneberg in Berlin, the Village in Montreal, Greenwich Village in New York City, which were not only visible but also central. A large body of work has looked at these in terms of place, access and visibility of sexual minorities in urban space, but the issue of spatial justice is rarely raised. Two major approaches have been used : one considers the nature of "homosocial" spaces, as commercial spaces which, in the same way as other cultural or community spaces, allow for the assertion of a collective identity (Sibalis, 2004 ; Leroy, 2005 ; Deligne et al., 2006 ; Blidon, 2007). A second approach has emphasized the role
1
"[] how sexualities are lived out in particular places and spaces. This is the major
contribution that geographers can therefore offer other disciplines concerned with sexuality." (Binnie and Valentine, 1999).
2
We wish to thank all the people who shared their experiences with us.

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played by gays in the social and spatial transformations of cities and their participation in gentrification processes (Knopp, 1990 ; Forest, 1995 ; Rothenberg, 1995 ; Podmore, 2006).
1.1 The assumption that lesbians are not "territorial" Most research is centered on gay men's behaviours in cities, and very little has been written bout lesbians' spatial practices. One exception is Manuel Castells' The city and the grassroots (1983), which kicked off research on lesbian communities. In this book, Castells contrasts the spatial behaviour of gay men (highly territorial and visible in places of consumption), and the more typically "female" behaviour of lesbians, less territorial, based on informal networks, and more politicized. He accounts for the lack of "lesbian territories" by differences in income, and behavioural differences are accounted for by gender differences, rather than differences to do with sexuality. This pioneering work did much to demonstrate that homosexual identity is strongly spatialized (Binnie and Valentine, 1999). However, the contrast between gay and lesbian practices does seem rather rough, and numerous papers have since then pointed out the greater complexity of the matter, and argued for the need to further unravel the gender/sexuality/space nexus (Knopp, 1990 ; Adler et Brenner, 1992 ; Forest, 1995 ; Valentine, 1997).
Further research on lesbians in Western cities has developed the critique and challenged stereotyped understadings of lesbian identity and behaviour (Binnie et Valentine, 1999 ; Adler et Brenner, 1992 ; Podmore, 2006). Case study after case study has shown that lesbian space is excluded from gay neighbourhoods, but lesbian places and spaces are nonetheless there, relying on often informal, invisible networks, and with inventive, flexible uses of urban resources.
1.2 Looking harder for alternative "territorialities" In their study of Manchester, Pritchard et al. (2002) show how sexuality and gender contribute to the exclusion of women from public places and how, in the gay "village", hetero-patriarchy and homo-patriarchy join forces to prevent the appropriation by lesbians of this homosexual space. Those emotionally and psychologically crucial

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spaces play a major part in the empowerment of homosexual people in a heteronormative society, but it seems that lesbians are denied this form of empowerment, in part because of the large heterosexual presence. A study of Philadelphia yields much the same result: central, commercial gay areas do not appear to be lesbian-friendly (Cieri, 2003). But beyond this result, Cieri points out the limits of the methods and sources traditionally used to study urban societies, and calls for alternative methods to collect and analyze data. From her own experience as a lesbian tourist in Philadelphia and information gathered from lesbian and bisexual women, she shows that queer and lesbian communities are constructed less around shopping areas than around places of residence, and areas outside the city centre. In Los Angeles, Yolanda Retter (1997) comes to similar conclusions: lesbian "territories" arise in ways that differ from gay ones, if only because "territory" is a deeply masculine notion. Hence the need to construct new methods to fathom lesbian uses of space, and to challenge binary categories of the temporary and the permanent to characterize lesbian places.
Rothenberg's study of lesbian communities in Park Slope (Brooklyn, New York City) constitutes a major milestone in the understanding of lesbian neighbourhoods (Rothenberg, 1995). Her work analyzes economic factors, in particular the availability of affordable housing, but also the symbolic forces which made Park Slope the largest concentration of lesbians in United States. A major attraction, when the relative cheapness of the place wore off, was the sense of security lesbians experienced there. Word of mouth spread the fame of the area within lesbian social networks. Typically, it was first identifiable as a lesbian haven by lesbians themselves, and has now become identified as such by the population at large.
So territoriality is not as devoid of interest for lesbians as Castells had assumed. It seems highly significant both in terms of identity construction and as a political act to claim residential spaces free from male infringement (Peake, 1993). This happens outside of gay neighbourhoods. Recent research on Paris and Montreal however indicates that the relations with gay, central areas are complex and ambiguous. Julie Podmore (2006) considers lesbian visibility in Montreal since 1950 by looking at businesses. She shows how local dynamics and political and social alliances influence lesbian visibility, and suggests that the identification of the community to queer

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movements, located in the gay Village, played a part. In Paris, the contrast between a dominant, visible gay city, and more diffuse and less easily identifiable lesbian places, shows up in mental maps drawn by gays and lesbians (Provencher, 2007). However, all the lesbians drew the Marais as a space of expression of the homosexual community. This confirms a study on gay and lesbian practices in public places in Paris, which shows that it is only in the Marais that a lesbian couple feels comfortable to hold hands or kiss in public (Cattan, Leroy, 2010). If gay neighbourhoods do not contribute to lesbians "spatial capital", at least they provide a sense of security.
In the rest of this paper, we look at lesbian "territorialities" in Paris and how they have changed in the last decades. First we look at the geography of lesbian businesses since the 1970s, and then we explore the alternative and ephemeral places constructed by parties held in the last decade. Lastly, we discuss the location of both businesses and parties with respect to the Marais.
2. Lesbian businesses in Paris
Paris is a major centre of homosexual sociability and visibility in Europe, ranking after London but before Berlin in terms of gay and lesbian businesses (Leroy, 2005). Worldwide, it is not far behind New York. It has a long tradition in this respect (Tamagne, 2006). In the late 19th century, Paris became one of the major cities of lesbianism (Albert, 2006). However, do lesbians enjoy similar levels of visibility as gay men ?
2.1 What is a lesbian place ? In Paris, as is the case in other large Western cities, commercial places, businesses, are the main locus of lesbian social interaction. For a minority which suffers two forms of discrimination, as women and as homosexual, these places are highly significant: they are of course places to go out and party, but they also offer the opportunity to meet other lesbians and socialize with them, and guarantee some degree of visibility in a patriarcal, heteronormative society that generally denies lesbian sexuality. This makes these places far more important to lesbians than they are for the general population. It

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does, of course, raise the issue of the commercialisation of sexual identities, but these places nonetheless have an emancipatory value since they provide a place to be oneself without risking violence or discrimination, and constitute places of resistance against an oppressive society. We shall therefore consider these places as tests of the place and visibility granted to lesbians in large cities, an issue of spatial justice and social fairness.
In a recent survey conducted among lesbians in the cities of Toulouse and Paris, Natacha Chetcuti (2010) analyzed lesbian self-identification and shows it is constructed gradually, against a heterosexual and patriarcal norm which assigns women a subordinate role to men. In this process, lesbian places play a major role, both to meet women who define themselves as lesbian, and to experience one's life as lesbian, outside of the heterosexual and patriarcal norm :
"Thus, Catherine recalls her satisfaction in discovering, after her first sexual encounter with a woman, the existence of a lesbian bar. The enthusiasm she felt in going to that bar comes from the shared enjoyment of leisure time, free from the fear of being judged for her non-conformity to heterosexual standards." (Chetcuti, 2010, p. 48)
More than the mere venue for an outing, as for the rest of the population, a lesbian bar, night-club or party can be experienced as a "counter-space" (Chetcuti, 2010, p. 49), a place of emancipation, free from majority rule, and a haven free from the insults or aggressions lesbians are likely to suffer in public space. They are a place to meet and share experiences. However, the fact that they are private businesses raises the issue of accessibility to all.
Surveying these businesses in Paris is by no means easy. A first difficulty arises merely to define what is meant by "lesbian business". Then there is the lack of archives recording their opening and closure. For the purposes of this study, we shall consider that a business can be categorized as lesbian when it is managed by one or several lesbians (often staffed exclusively by women) and patronized only or mostly by lesbians.

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These are the places identified as lesbian by lesbians themselves 3 (as well as the general public).
Several sources were used in this survey. We used lula Perrin's autobiography (2000), which records her experience as manager of three lesbian night-clubs in Paris between 1969 and 1997, and "godmother" of the only one still open today, as well as historical works (Albert, 2006 ; Tamagne, 2000). We carried out fieldwork by trawling the internet for mentions of bars, clubs and parties for lesbians, and interviewed five managers or organizers4, who have a privileged viewpoint on lesbian nightlife. We also carried out direct observations.
2.2 Lesbian businesses in Paris since 1970
[Figure 1. Lesbian businesses in Paris in 2010]
The inclusion of places also frequented by men and heterosexuals is problematic. However,
there are very few strictly lesbian places, and the former are also places where lesbians can meet, so we include them in the study.
4
In the past two decades, three of them have managed five businesses that still operate in
2010 or remained open for at least five years. The other two have been active in organizing parties in different venues, several times a month, for several years.

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When this article was being written, in March 2010, there were nine lesbian bars and one lesbian night-clubs operating in Paris (figure 1). Among the bars, one had very few clients, three were quite recent creations and two were frequented by men and heterosexuals as well5. The only enduring night-club, the Rive Gauche (in the 6th arrondissement), was open on a women-only basis only on Saturday nights. Therefore, possible outings for lesbians remained limited and the virtual absence of any lesbian night-club was in sharp contrast with the large supply available to gay men (Leroy, 2005).
The recent history of lesbian places in Paris can be dated back to the opening of a women-only night-club in the early 1970s, the Katmandou, which was managed by lula Perrin and Aime Mori, and dominated lesbian nightlife until the 1990s. The exclusion of men, even if it was never strictly enforced, allowed for a degree of lesbian visibility. Located on the Left Bank, close to famous night-clubs of the 1960s such as Chez Rgine and Chez Castel, it was a sophisticated place, patronized by relatively wellheeled women and celebrities, whether lesbian or not: the place was therefore quite exclusive socially. Despite spotless management, as the police itself was forced to acknowledge, the club was harassed by neighbours who found the presence of a lesbian night-club at the foot of their building unacceptable. New occupants of the building in the 1990s became even more hostile, and managed to have the place shut down by complaining of the "noise" (according to lula Perrin, these new neighbours were close to political spheres of power). "Parents can now let their little darlings walk past the 21 rue du Vieux-Colombier, it has become a luxury leather goods shop. Middleclass, sleep soundly" (Perrin, 2000, p. 193).
The Privilge (1991-1995) opened in the basement of the Palace, a well-known gay night-club on the Grands Boulevards, and L'Entracte, another lesbian night-club, was created the same year. In this sort of "golden age" of lesbian night-life, there were therefore two night-clubs, relatively close to each other, and between which it was possible to walk backwards and forwards, which transformed that patch of the Boulevards into a sort of lesbian micro-territory. Several lesbian bars also opened
Le Troisime lieu, 4th arrondissement, and OKubi Caff, 10th arrondissement.

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around the same time, in the Bastille area and on the outskirts of the Marais (which had taken on a markedly gay character during the 1980s). The bar managers interviewed insisted that their aim was to create a haven for lesbians rather than a profitable business: they kept prices low and did not pressure patrons to consume, which meant lesbians from quite a wide range of social backgrounds could hang out there.
[Figures 2 and 3. Two lesbian bars to the West of the gay section of the Marais (photo by A. Clerval, May 2009)]

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During the 2000 decade, nine bars and three night-clubs were operating, though one of the bars, in the 4th arrondissement, changed names and management three times 6. The changes sometimes brought about a greater diversity of patrons 7. Other bars, all of them located in the 3rd arrondissement, west of the Marais, remained open only a couple of years.
Two very different night-clubs had a few women-only nights a week. The Rive gauche played a variety of music styles and attracted very diverse crowds of lesbians. By contrast, the Pulp, located on the Right Bank, played a very narrow selection of electronic music, also attractive to non-lesbian publics. It eventually lost its distinctively lesbian character8, and even had nights when it was open to all, free of charge. The third night-club, Chez Moune, was a women-only cabaret opened in 1936, which became a night-club in the 1970s and also lost its lesbian exclusivity9. So, of a Saturday night in the 2000s, lesbians could pick one of four to six bars, and two night-clubs to go out, meet and enjoy themselves. Not only was this supply puny, it was also broken down along social lines, with contrasts in terms of prices and types of music which further divided the community.
The Alcantara, between 2000 and 2002 then became Le Bliss Kf from 2002 to 2006 and then
Le Nix between 2006 and 2009.

7
Exclusively lesbian in the early 2000s, it later became more and more open to gay men and
heterosexuals, before closing in 2009. It later re-opened to become the So What!, with lesbians in their 30s and 40s, and men, as patrons.
8
The Pulp closed in May 2007 when the building where it was located was sold to a property
developer, which deprived a section of Parisian lesbians of a place that had become mythical and has not been replaced. Its patrons were not the same as those of the Rive Gauche and they have not transferred to it.
9
In the 2000s, one of the managers, a woman, had started women-only evenings again, but
new management in 2008 stopped these, despite a mobilization of lesbian groups arguing they had to be preserved.

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[Figure 4. Chez Moune, which opened in 1936 as a women-only cabaret (photo by A. Clerval, May 2009)]
[Figure 5. Lesbian night-clubs in Paris since 1970 : opening, closure and duration]

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[Figure 6. Lesbian bars in Paris since 1970 : opening, closure and duration]
2.3 Lesbian places: shifts from clubs to bars, from the Left to the Right Bank Night-clubs were most important until the 1980s and 1990s, since it used to be possible to drink and chat there until music volumes were raised. Since the 1990s, bars have taken over, probably because opening one is easier with increasingly restrictive legislation on clubs. Very few places remain open for more than a few years, as their continuity relies on the determination of a handful of people10 often confronted with hostility from landlords (mostly men, gay or straight), the police, or neighbours. Bar managers complain of a hostile environment, which, using noise as an excuse, pressures lesbian businesses much harder than neighbouring bars or restaurants, in a generally lesbophobic context11. Though the bars usually make a profit, managers encounter economic difficulties to maintain women-only businesses in the long term, with shifts in fashion. Under pressure from landlords and the need to remain profitable,
10
Four bars, le Caveau de la Bastille, El Scandalo, Les Scandaleuses, Le Boobsbourg, were
managed in succession by the same person.

11
A survey by SOS Homophobie on lesbophobia, published in 2008, relies on approximately
1800 questionnaires answered by lesbians or bisexual women: see www.sos-homophobie.org.

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many lesbian businesses abandon their women-only policy, though some never had such a policy, which some managers considered old-fashioned. There is an issue of lesbian visibility at play here: women-only businesses created specifically lesbian places, places for lesbians to meet, and fostered a degree of visibility. Closing down such places or abandoning their specificity carries the risk of diminishing visibility. For lesbians themselves, places become less easily identifiable, and their sociability is threatened. There is a lack of interest from the authorities in the existence of lesbian places: when associations are publicly subsidized to manage places, they are never meant for lesbians only. The LGBT centre in Paris (3rd arrondissement) is designed for both men and women and the Maison des femmes (12th arrondissement) was only partly destined to lesbians.
[Figure 7. Lesbian places in Paris since the 1970s]
The geography of the places is initially scattered, but bars gradually seem to congregate on the outskirts of the gay section of the Marais (figure 7). Historically, there is a degree of continuity with earlier homosexual centres such as Pigalle, Montparnasse or rue Sainte-Anne (2nd arrondissement), but also a proximity with posh heterosexual clubs in areas like Saint-Germain. That's why the Left Bank plays a significant part in the historical geography of lesbian places, in particular for night-clubs, that it did not have for male homosexuals (Leroy, 2005). Bars, on the other hand, tended to open nearly

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exclusively on the Right Bank, often in former working-class areas undergoing gentrification, as was the case with the Marais in the 1980s, Bastille in the 1990s or the Sainte-Marthe area (10th arrondissement) in the 2000s.
The spatial closeness of several lesbian businesses occasionally allows for the emergence of lesbian "micro-territories", identifiable as such at week-ends and also, once a year, during the Marche des fierts LGBT12. This occurred on the Grands Boulevards with the two clubs in the 1990s, and subsequently in the rue des couffes, east of the gay section of the Marais, in the 2000s. The time-space of lesbian territories remains very limited, especially compared to the extent and durability of the Marais.
It is probably not excessive to analyze the relative fragility of lesbian places in terms of spatial injustice. However, other strategies have been developed by Parisian lesbians to meet and live openly as lesbians, in particular the organization of parties in a variety of venues.
3. Alternative lesbian territorialities in Paris: social networks and ephemeral centres Since 2000, a new type of lesbian party has flourished in Paris. A combination of factors seems to be at work here: a more general tendency for night-life to become structured around one-off events with a specific theme or a specific style of music, the increasing difficulty of opening a club (beyond the prohibitive rents, official authorizations for nighttime operation are granted very restrictively) and the short supply of lesbian partying venues. Obviously, the development of the internet also played a part, though in contradictory ways. On the one hand, websites make it easier to meet and chat online, and therefore physical places to meet become less essential. But on the other hand, electronic mailing lists make it easier to network. A large part of lesbian spatiality is now organized around the parties that result from online networking.
12
Though "Gay Pride" is still commonly used, that is now the official name of this yearly event.

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3.1 Lesbian parties Broadly speaking, there are two types of parties: itinerant parties that shift from one commercial venue to another, and parties that take place regularly in a single venue. Both fall within the wider genre of parties organized around a theme, which started growing in number from the 1990s onwards. They can be characterized by a specific style of music, or by a specific time of day (tea dances, early evening parties). Everything tends to indicate these have multiplied, and drawn increasing crowds, since 2000.
In 2010, there were five itinerant parties for lesbians in Paris (figure 8). Two of them, which appeared first, are women-only, Primanotte and Pinkyboat. The three others are meant for more diverse groups : Samesex for gays as well as lesbians, Babydoll and Barbi(e)turix for all. All are very successful. Primanotte started in 2003 and organizes more than one party per month (approx. 18 in 2008, for instance). Pinkyboat parties have taken place less regularly for the past six years. The parties are advertized via social networks, both informal and structured. To attend a Primanotte party, you have to be registered on a mailing list, which requires being sponsored by a member. The parties are therefore halfway between private and public, and organizers take care to keep it that way, by filtering access carefully. Several thousands of people are on the list according to one of the organizers, and members are not only Parisians (not only are there provincials, but also residents of Belgium, Switzerland, Italy or England).
Parties that take place in a single venue on a regular basis are generally older. We counted nine in 2010, of which six are women-only, one is gay and lesbian and the others open to all. They also rely on the internet and network advertizing, though there is no formal registration list for them.
Different profiles of party-goers attend the various parties. Some women-only parties have a broad selection of styles of music in order to attract lesbians from different agegroups and with different musical tastes, while others favour the latest electronic style

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and don't attract only lesbians13. The two types of parties, along the lines of the divide between the Rive Gauche and the Pulp, have socially distinct publics. The former are more expensive, the latter much less, and there is sometimes no charge at all. So though there may seem to be a large number of parties, each has its own specific target group and the choice for members of each group remains limited.
[Figure 8. Geography of lesbian parties in Paris since 2000]
3.2 Lesbian parties criss-cross Paris Itinerant parties use two types of venues (figure 8): on the one hand, "posh" places in wealthy areas such as the Coupole (14th arrondissement), the Qin lyse (8th), the Bains Douches (4th), Chez Maxims, the Concorde Atlantique barge (7th) and the Back up (15th), and on the other hand, "trendy" places, often in the process of being gentrified, as with the Social Club (9th) or la Flche dOr (20th). Most parties that take place regularly take place in gentrified areas such as Bastille or the newly developed ZAC Rive gauche (13th). Some take place close to the Marais, sometimes in a gay night-club (Le Tango, les Bains Douches)14, and several seem driven by a desire to
13
Others are for even more specific groups, as for instance the Lickn Licious parties, aimed at
Black women and their friends.

14
The Babydoll series of parties has an interesting itinerary: it was first created in 2007, and
took place on a weekly basis at a venue in the rue Saint-Martin (4th arrondissement), west of the Marais, close to two lesbian bars. It was elected best LGBT party of the year in 2008 by the readers of the homosexual journal Ttu, and then given access in 2009 to the famous homosexual club les Bains Douches (3rd arrondissement). Subsequently, it became a monthly,

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access "posh" areas. The organizer of Primanotte emphasizes the quest for "beautiful venues" and argues that some women want to meet in exclusive settings that are not tainted by their association with homosexuality. This argument has multiple consequences, not least because its challenges pre-conceptions about urban spaces and spatial practices. Such parties contribute to defy lesbian spatial and social invisibility by allowing lesbian appropriation, even if it is only fleeting, of symbolic places of ostentatious consumption. This should prompt us to rethink assumptions about the nature of urban "territories", continuous, visible areas that conform to traditional theories of urban space, on the one hand, but also invisible networks, diffuse and ephemeral which criss-cross cities and displace traditional theories, on the other.
Itinerant and ephemeral though they may be, these parties can attract as many as 400 to 700 women, depending on the capacity of the venue, according to organizers. The great success encountered by these parties challenges assumptions frequently formulated about lesbians' tendency not to go out, either for financial reasons or because of their gendered dispositions. It shows that there is an unstoked demand for outings in Paris, and in particular for night-clubs, and that lesbians have the creative resources to compensate for the lack of commercial supply.
4. Female homosexuality and the Marais: location strategies
The location of lesbian businesses and parties is organized by networks and not by territories, therefore the territorial dimension of the Marais is not very influential. When considering the arguments of managers and organizers in the light of our own experiences and of the existing literature (Binnie et Valentine, 1999 ; Pritchard et al., 2002, Cieri, 2003 ; Podmore, 2006), three major aspects stand out.
4.1 A partial sharing of space in the Marais : close but no too close Being close to the Marais is often seen as an advantage for the location of a bar. it is a central area, and attractive given its association with homosexuality. This guarantees a
itinerant event, which occasionally takes place in prestigious places such as Rgine's close to the Champs-Elyses (8th).

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degree of safety: it is safer to open a lesbian bar, and homosexuals, both men and women, feel safer in the area (Cattan et Leroy, 2010). From a purely economic point of view, the specialization of the Marais guarantees the business will benefit from economies of agglomeration.
However, according to the women we interviewed, masculine hegemony on the Marais is an incentive to stay on the margins. A location that is in-between, neither central nor external, allows lesbian bars to exist while not being too exposed. In the Bastille area, the Scandalo was located next to a gay club, rue Keller, during the 1990s. Its manager subsequently moved to the Marais with Les Scandaleuses, rue des Ecouffes. In both these streets, the bar took part in a broader process of commercial renewal and of gentrification of the area.
The partial coexistence of lesbians and gays in the Marais is particularly visible during the evening that follows the Marche des fierts LGBT. On that evening, a crowd of male and female homosexuals moves around the streets of the Marais, overflowing from the bars. However, its distribution is all but haphazard. Men occupy the central streets, rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie and streets nearby, while women remain in peripheral rue des couffes and streets nearby, where thousands of women, and practically no men, are to be seen. Lesbians are present in bars open to all. But that visibility is fleeting, very localized and peripheral, compared to what gay men are likely to find in the Marais all year long.
4.2 Avoidance If lesbians bars seem attracted by the Marais, parties have more flexibility for their venues and organizers often say they avoid the Marais. Several reasons are given for avoiding it. While central for homosexuals, the Marais attracts a variety of people, families or tourists, which implies there is a risk for lesbians to be spotted there by their colleagues or their boss. Personal visibility is not always desirable, as it is difficult to come out as a lesbian, and there may be a degree of interiorization of lesbophobia by lesbians themselves, who would rather not be identified as lesbian. The Marais is also avoided because it is perceived as too gay, and too masculine. Women-only parties tend to take place elsewhere. The very image of a

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homosexual territory can be evocative of a "ghetto" and be rejected. As is the case for gay men, some lesbians claim to be "outside the ghetto" or "outside the milieu" and party organizers who want to attract them take care to distance their image from the Marais. According to the 2008 survey on lesbophobia (mentioned above, note 11), this distance from the "milieu" (or "in-group"), which is common, up to a point, to any social group, can be interpreted in several ways: it could result from interiorized lesbophobia, or from a rejection of the caricatural images of lesbians (butch lesbians or "dykes") and of the Marais.
4.3 Ignoring the Marais But rather than an actual rejection of the Marais, it may be that the distance taken by lesbian parties merely reflects an ability to penetrate a diversity of places, throughout the city, and in particular the most valued in symbolic terms. Organizers emphasize the quality of the venues and the areas in which the parties take place: "I believe in securing beautiful venues for women", one of them told us, "the aim is for women to be proud of being in a nice place where they will be lavishly received". There are two possible interpretations to this: it may be a bourgeois perspective, clearly different from the counter-culture of night-life and electronic music, or it could be a transgressive way of ensuring lesbians, regardless of their background, have access to bourgeois venues they would normally be excluded from.
There is a long tradition of lesbian partying in famous and exclusive bars and clubs, in particular on the Left Bank. While historically, in the late 19th century, Pigalle was the first area associated with lesbian and homosexual visibility generally (Albert, 2006), close to places of prostitution as in many large cities, society lesbians would meet in salons of the Left Bank, as for instance that of Nathalie Clifford Barney, an American known as "lAmazone": writers such as Rene Vivien, Colette and Mathilde de Morny would meet there in the early 20th century, before Djuna Barnes in the 1920s, Radclyffe Hall and Gertrude Stein in the 1930s. The persistence of lesbian parties on the Left Bank, and more generally in posh areas of the city, testifies to autonomous spatial dynamics which differentiate lesbians from gays, and within which the Marais has no part.

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Conclusion : lesbian invisibility and right to the city
The specific point at which spatial justice meets lesbian partying is the issue of right to the city, defined by Henri Lefebvre as a right to urban centrality (Lefebvre, 1968). The existence of places for lesbians to meet and party is both of material and symbolic importance, as a condition to experience fully one's sexual identity, by meeting peers, but also as a condition to be visible in the city, and therefore in society.
Based on a survey and mapping of lesbian businesses and parties since the 1970s, this paper tends to show that lesbian centralities are either ephemeral or invisible, and sometimes both. Their precarious existence relies on the will of a small number of people. They are also rendered more precarious by the fact that many lesbian parties cease to be women-only.
Lesbians' visibility in the city does not match gay men's, but they can boast of alternative territorialities, as exemplified in particular by itinerant parties. Ephemeral centralities, for one night, or a series of one-off events, nevertheless contribute to specific forms of urbanity. They give places of reference for lesbians and allow for the construction of lesbian identities, thus contributing to the creation of a lesbian "community" of sorts, fragmented and complex as it may be. Though they are not identifiable on the phone-book or on a map of Paris, lesbian parties construct a network of places through which lesbians can negotiate their access to the city, both in posh areas of the West of Paris and on the frontline of gentrification, extending way beyond the homosexual "territory" of the Marais.
Lesbian businesses are merely the emerged part of an iceberg that, at least in the case of Paris, remains largely unexplored: we have attempted to start this exploration and hope it will result in further research on lesbian visibility in the city.
References ADLER Sy, BRENNER Johanna, Gender and space: lesbians and gay men in the city, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 16 (1), 24-34, 1992.

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ALBERT Nicole G., De la topographie invisible lespace public et littraire : les lieux de plaisir lesbien dans le Paris de la Belle poque , Revue dhistoire moderne et contemporaine, 53 (4), 87-105, 2006. BINNIE John, VALENTINE Gill, Geographies of sexuality a review of progress, Progress in Human Geography, 23 (2), 175-187, 1999. BLIDON Marianne, Distances et rencontre. lments pour une gographie des homosexualits, Thse de doctorat en gographie, Paris 7, 2007. BROWNE Kath, Lesbian geographies, Social and Cultural Geography, 8 (1), 1-7, 2007. CASTELLS Manuel, The city and the grassroots, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. CATTAN Nadine, LEROY Stphane, La ville ngocie : les homosexuel(le)s dans lespace public parisien , Cahiers de gographie du Qubec, 54 (151), 9-24, 2010. Chetcuti Natacha, Se dire lesbienne. Vie de couple, sexualit, reprsentation de soi, Paris : ditions Payot & Rivages, 2010. CIERI Marie, Between Being and Looking. Queer Tourism Promotion and Lesbian Social Space in Greater Philadelphia, ACME, An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 2 (2), 147-166, 2003. DELIGNE Chlo, GABIAM Koessan, VAN CRIEKINGEN Mathieu, DECROLY Jean-Michel, Les territoires de lhomosexualit Bruxelles : visibles et invisibles , Cahiers de Gographie du Qubec, 50 (140), 135-150, 2006. DELPHY Christine, LEnnemi principal. 1. conomie politique du patriarcat , Paris : Syllepse, 1998. FOREST Benjamin, West Hollywood as symbol: the significance of place in the construction of a gay identity, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 13 (2), 133-157, 1995. GRESILLON Boris, Faces caches de lurbain ou lments dune nouvelle centralit ? Les lieux de la culture homosexuelle Berlin , LEspace gographique, 4, 301-313, 2000. KNOPP Lawrence, Some theoretical implications of gay involvement in an urban land market, Political Geography Quarterly, 9, 337-352, 1990.

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LEFEBVRE Henri, Le Droit la ville, Paris, Economica, Anthropos, 2009 (premire dition en 1968). LEROY Stphane, Le Paris gay. lments pour une gographie de lhomosexualit , Annales de gographie, 114 (646), 579-601, 2005. MEREAU Julien, Les Originales, un bar de femmes , Socio-anthropologie, 11, 2002 [mis en ligne le 15 novembre 2003: http://socioanthropologie.revues.org/index138.html]. PERRIN lula, Bulles et noctambules, histoire de la nuit au fminin, Paris : ditions double interligne, 2000. PODMORE Julie A, Gone underground? Lesbian visibility and the consolidation of queer space in Montral, Social and Cultural Geography, 7 (4), 595-625, 2006. PRITCHARD Annette, MORGAN Nigel, SEDGLEY Diane, In search of lesbian space? The experience of Manchesters gay village, Leisure Studies, 21 (2), 105-123, 2002. PROVENCHER Denis M., Queer French. Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship in France, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. RETTER Yolanda, Lesbian spaces in Los Angeles, 1970-1990 in Queer in space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance, edited by Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette and Yolanda Retter, 325-337, Seattle: Bay Press, 1997. ROTHENBERG Tamar, And she told two friends: lesbians creating urban social space in Mapping desire. Geographies of sexualities, edited by David Bell and Gill Valentine, 165-181, London: Routledge, 1995. SIBALIS Michael, Urban space and homosexuality: the example of the Marais, Paris Gay Ghetto , Urban Studies, 41 (9), 1739-1758, 2004. TAMAGNE Florence, Histoire de lhomosexualit en Europe. Berlin, Londres, Paris. 1919-1939, Paris : Seuil, 2000. TAMAGNE Florence, Histoire des homosexualits en Europe : un tat des lieux , Revue dhistoire moderne et contemporaine, 53 (4), 7-31, 2006. VALENTINE Gill, (Hetero)sexing space: lesbian perceptions and experiences of everyday spaces, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space , 11 (4), 395-413, 1993.

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VALENTINE Gill, Making Space: lesbian separatist communities in the United States in Contested countryside cultures, edited by Paul Cloke and Jo Little, 109-122 London: Routledge, 1997.

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Seeking recognition: spatial justice versus heteronormativity

Marianne Blidon, Universit Paris 1-Panthon Sorbonne Translator: Melanie Mauthner, London, Claire Hancock, UPEC
Seeking recognition. Spatial justice vs heteronormativity Marianne Blidon, MCF, Paris1-Panthon Sorbonne/CRIDUP. Translator: Melanie Mauthner, London, Claire Hancock, UPEC
Abstract This article examines spatial justice on the basis of theories of recognition inspired by Iris Marion Young and Nancy Fraser and the place of gays and lesbians in the French society. Its starting point is the idea that this group is being denied recognition (Fraser, 2005) as a result of the primacy of the heterosexual norm or heteronormativity, which affects them and gives them a place of second-class citizens. This article highlights the need for recognition in the face of the violencewhich renders gays and lesbians invisible and constitutes them as minority or other subjects. It then examines this recognition with regard to access to public space, in terms of visibility regime and in terms of parity of treatment in law. Finally, it shows how this spatial recognition was predominantly based on a neoliberal model that implies consumption, normalization and the exclusion of gays and lesbians subjects according to criteria of class and race.
Keywords Recognition, heteronormativity, minority, gay marriage, gays and lesbians.

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'Recognition is not about being polite to people: it is a vital necessity' Charles Taylor (1992) Preliminaries As was shown by Foucault (1976), the nineteenth century was when a system to identify people based on their sexual practices was established, which led to constituting gays and lesbians as a minority group; minority both numerically and as 'those with the least social power' (Guillaumin, 1985, 19). Homosexuality went against the dominant norm and put the person in a position where s/he was always discreditable (Goffman 1975), or excluded (Becker, 1963 ; ribon, 1999). Rommel Mends Leite (2000) sees homosexuality as a problematic otherness for our Western society, while Adrienne Rich (1986) discussed 'compulsory heterosexuality', implying that heterosexuality is an institution before being a choice about whom we desire. In this context, the injustice stems less from relations of exploitation than from what Nancy Fraser (1998) terms 'cultural domination'1 and Iris Marion Young (1990), 'cultural imperialism', making one social group invisible by establishing a supposedly universal norm, or even a naturalone in the case of heterosexuality. This imperialism constitutes lesbians and gays as 'other'. As Gervais-Lambony and Dufaux (2009, 11) explain: 'the oppressed social group is thus defined from the outside, even as it is rendered invisible and stereotyped.' Homosexuality is therefore a form of constant resistance, fragile and ever contested by the 'heterosexual epistemological privilege' (Sedgwick, 2008 ; Perreau, 2009). Moreover, to be gay also means confronting violence and verbal abuse in addition to having to fit into a social order and to conform to behaviours that continually remind us how marginalised and oppressed we are.
The second kind of injustice is cultural or symbolic. It is rooted in social patterns of
representation, interpretation and communication. Examples include cultural domination (being subjected to patterns of interpretation and communication that are associated with another culture and are alien and/or hostile to ones own); non-recognition (being rendered invisible via the authoritative representational, communicative and interpretative practices of ones culture); and disrespect (being routinely maligned or disparaged in stereotypic public cultural representations and/or in everyday life interactions)(Fraser, 1998, 22).

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If a just politics is, as Iris Marion Young (1990) has it, one that ends all forms of oppression, then social justice implies recognising and accepting otherness. For Young, this mainly means recognising specific oppressed groups; and Nancy Fraser builds on this noting, 'overcoming homophobia and heterosexism requires changing the cultural valuations (as well as their legal and practical expressions) that privilege heterosexuality, deny equal respect to gays and lesbians, and refuse to recognize homosexuality as a legitimate way of being sexual' (Fraser, 1998, 27). However in France, this approach comes up against the problematic status of 'difference' (Hancock, 2009) and the difficulty there is to adopt a strategy based on a notion of collective identity (homosexuals vs heterosexuals). Social movements as well as individuals face dilemmas about strategies to counter domination and priorities: claim a right to difference or to indifference, claim visibility or invisibility, assert or conceal gay or lesbian identity. So many options that prove inadequate when trying to face up to the 'identity paradox', outlined here by David Halperin:
'gay identity is both politically necessary and disastrous at the same time. Vital, essential, indispensable because it is in constant danger of extinction and erasure. It must be fought for at all costs, tirelessly and all the more so because it is still seen as something deviant, pathological, to be ashamed of. Yet it remains a risky, treacherous identity that has to be rejected and resisted, because it plays a normalizing and even policing role in gay society and culture. It is politically disastrous because it is a handy way for society to keep tabs on sexual difference while at the same time stabilizing heterosexual identity. Gay identity is therefore both a homophobic identity in its broad aim to socialise and normalise and yet, to deny and reject this identity is clearly to comply with a homophobic stance' (1998, 117-118). This article does not aim to solve this dilemma, but takes it as a starting point and an opportunity to develop a critical approach centred on space, rather than on a reified gay identity. This approach both uncovers the spatial dimensions of injustice and allows to rethink social relations in all their complexity and their articulations in daily life. Drawing on empirical data collected since 20032 and a review of the relevant literature in social
2
In 2003 I began my research with a detailed analysis of the lesbian and gay press, tourist
guides and audio-visual archive material at the INA (Institut National de lAudiovisuel) before conducting seventy semi-structured interviews as well as observation work mainly in Paris, Le Mans and Marseille. In addition, I ran an online survey via ttu.com with 3,587 respondents

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science, I will try to see whether what Nancy Fraser (2005) terms 'the remedy to cultural injustices linked to recognition' is likely to get us closer to an ideal of social justice. So firstly, I shall give an overview of the main issues facing lesbians and gays, in particular violence and how it affects their experience of proximity or physical distance. Secondly, I look at the the PACS (Pacte civil de solidarit or civil partnership) to see how spatial differentiation entrenches unequalities between couples and institutionalizes a hierarchy of sexualities. Lastly, I shall illustrate how rooted in neo-liberalism this spatial recognition is, how reliant it has become on consumption, and on forms of normalization and exclusion of some gay and lesbian subjects on grounds of their class or race.
1 -1 Experience, practice and relations to the world under constraint In the introduction above, I emphasized the importance of norms: these are enforced with the injunction of violence.
In the beginning, there was violence Lesbians and gays experience different degrees of homophobic threat, in the forms of verbal abuse or physical violence. For Didier ribon, insults form a key part of gay experiences: 'in the beginning, there is the isult, the one that any gay person is likely to hear at any moment of his life, and which signals his psychological and social vulnerability [...] Insults, in the way they frame and mediate the way we relate to the world, leave children and teenagers feeling they have transgressed the social order, it gives an enduring sense of insecurity and anxiety, often even of terror and panic' (ribon, 1999, 29 and 99). It is precisely this entrenched fear that leaps out from Tom's account, an American who has been living in Paris since the 1990s:
'As a gay man I'm scared that I'm about to get a brick in my face but I never know where it's going to come from. [Turning to face his partner] If I touch you in public or kiss you, I don't know where that brick's going to come from that will crack my head open and me, I'm not convinced it's guys from the banlieues who'll be holding that brick, it can come from anywhere. [...] When I was studying in the US, on campus, there was a student with a megaphone
including follow-up questionnaires that I distributed to a hundred of them. Some of the results appeared in my PhD thesis in 2007.

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screaming homophobic abuse from his window at people walking by. I complained [...] and because I did that, afterwards on my door there was a lot of abuse, 'gay jerk' and all that... I was young then but my whole life, the whole time, that's what it's like. [...] I just live with this fear' (interview, 2007). Tom's comment reveals how wrong it would be to locate homophobia in a specific setting and link it either to provincial and rural area or a peripheral one like the notorious banlieues, often contrasted with central areas of large cities, assumed to be open and tolerant of difference. Tom, who lives in Paris' sixteenth arrondissement, a very bourgeois district, has experienced all kinds of homophobia both among educated people among his peers at university as well as on the part of working-class people (he mentions a plumber who peppered his conversation with homophobic insults). ric Fassin (2010) classifies homophobia according to three types: 'old style' homophobia or 'Daddy homophobia'; 'threatening homophobia' that is politically instrumentalized and depicted as essentially working-class and associated with immigrant communities; and a 'society homophobia', more shadowy, which uses essentialist and psychoanalytic rhetoric to defend the 'symbolic order'. On e of the consequences of this hovering shadow and pervasive threat is the constitution of specific places and networks that provide a protection3, as opposed to others, especially public spaces, in which it is always necessary to watch ones self-presentation.
Right to the city and regimes of in/visibility Space shapes our life experiences and social interactions. Lesbians and gays relations with public space are best summed up by invisibility, apart from a few exceptions in specific locations and at particular times of the year such as annual Gay Pride marches. This invisibility clearly affects representations of lesbians and gays in public, indeed images of homosexuality are routinely censored (photos 1 et 3) or regularly defaced (photo 2) (Blidon, 2008c). Yet it is precisely these public spaces that should allow for the expression, performance and assertion of social identities. 'Public discursive arenas are among the most important and underrecognized sites in which social identities are
3
Gilbert Herdt and Andrew Boxer's work (1996) on Chicago showed how collective visibility, for
example in the context of shops, bars, clubs and other businesses, enabled teenagers to come out and accept their sexuality at an increasingly younger age.

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constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed (Fraser, 1992, 140). Clearly, the limitations of what can and cannot be represented has crucial consequences for lesbians and gays.
Photographs 1 to 3 - Transgressive bodies
Poster (2005) (source : M. Blidon)
Porte des Lilas Metro Station (2005) (source : M. Blidon)
Poster INPES (2007) (source :www.france.qrd.org)
Norms apply first to self-presentation and how one handles intimate gestures in public. Holding hands or kissing in public are simple gestures gay and lesbian people do not allow themselves, in particular near the places where they live (see table 1) or which are carefully assessed by a sort of casuistry (at night, in dark deserted streets or else in the midst of a frenetic crowd, in the Marais or miles away in the countryside) that says a lot of the threat of symbolic violence (Blidon, 2008a, 2008b).
Size of urban unit (INSEE, 1990) Rural Respondents who claim to (n= 2 642*) hold hands (in) hold hands (out) kiss (in) kiss (out) 41% 70% 36% 62%
<10 000 inhabs.
10 to 50 000 inhabs. 42% 66% 35% 62%
50 100 000 hbts 32% 52% 31% 50%
100 to 200 000 inhabs. 39% 66% 34% 58%
200 to 2 million inhabs. 39% 63% 34% 53%
Paris
Outskirts of Paris
27% 63% 18% 49%
42% 63% 38% 52%
35% 61% 35% 58%
Questions asked : In the place where you live (in), would you hold hands with your partner? yes/no Elsewhere (out), would you hold hands with your partner? yes/no Same questions with would you kiss your partner in public Source : 2007 online survey (Blidon/tetu.com, 2007)

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Table 1 Allowed gestures in different environments
This self-censorship and these precautions taken by lesbians and gays raise the issue of access to public space and beyond, the question of their right to the city (Lefebvre, 1991). Pierre Bourdieu, regarding the social status of lesbigays, talks about 'a denial of public existence' (1998b, 45) and Judith Butler, of an ontologically suspended mode' (2004, 160). For Butler these normative restrictions not only render certain social groups invisible, they remain visible, but their presence is contained by a discourse of erasure that 'condemns one part of the population to live in a liminal place where they are both human and inhuman' (2005, 50). Thus we should pay attention to what shapes our cities, the product of heteronormative discourse and the effect of this discourse on people. Issues of access to public space, how and where we access it need rethinking in light of these mechanisms of categorization, normative injunctions and bodily discipline. This is indispensable if we are to re-imagine the metropolis as a space of freedom and possibility for all.
2- Which spaces does recognition take place in? In this context a new politics giving lesbians and gays due recognition would lead to greater visibility and civil rights. Their experience of urban spaces is not characterized by segregation or exclusion but rather by a constant injunction to remain invisible, which relegates homosexuality to the private sphere or the closet.
Coming out of the closet: from theory to practice The term closet refers to the concealment of gay identities (to remain in the closet) as opposed to coming out of the closet. This act of emerging, switching from hidden homosexuality to exposed homosexuality, has to do with a rejection of shame, silence and discretion. It is part of an individual quest for recognition (coming out) or a collective action, in Gay Pride marches (Fassin, 2005). As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1991) made clear, the closet does not define an inside or outside in any fixed way. An individual is never fully out because coming out, as ribon (2003, 365) says is 'an act we must continually perform'. Also, as Mangeot (2003, 131) reminds us, 'to reveal ones homosexuality assigns one to a place and closes one up in an identity through which everything is to make sense'. On the other hand, social means

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of controlling information 'that attempt to conceal, even erase any sign that happens to symbolize the stigma' (Goffman, 1963) cannot be guaranteed to work. Gays and lesbians who hide their identities never really know how much others know about them. Neither concealment nor disclosure can ever be total, and one is never really completely closeted. As Fassin (2005) suggests, the closet remains makeshift and mobile and heterosexuals remain in control of it by virtue of their epistemic privilege. For heterosexuality remains the norm that lesbigays continue to be defined against. 'In other words,' As Fassin says (Ibid, 131), 'coming out of the closet, rather than putting an end to homophobia actually transfers it to other spheres: it endlessly reasserts categories and legitimizes a hierarchy of sexualities over which only heterosexuals have actual and symbolic mastery'. This same reassertion of norms takes place at the collective level. The Gay Pride marches, the first of which took place in 1970 in New York with come out! as motto, have unfolded in so many cities, from Cape Town to Sydney via Tel Aviv, that they have now become a tourist attraction (Johnston, 2005). Often compared with Carnival because they occur once a year as a public urban celebration with floats, music and dancing, these marches do embody a sort of public pagan rejoicing, an annual ritual that gives voice to a shared frustration with lingering sexual discrimination, that tolerates sexual carousing and exuberance, a certain licentiousness, transgresses norms through a parody of traditional sex and gender norms, vent our anguish and appetite for revenge whether personal or against the social order... Indeed, the latter dimension, which as Butler (1990) says, troubles gender, tends to be overlooked, while the former, which makes the Gay Pride a massive street party which federates for one day diverse people who do not necessarily subscribe to the underlying political claims, has become dominant (Blidon, 2009). In Berlin during the Gay Pride march of June 2010, Judith Butler took a stand and publicly refused the Zivilcourage that she was awarded in protest at what she saw to be a 'commercial and superficial' demonstration. Gay Pride marches can be seen as an interrupted project of collective coming out that has been trivialised and hijacked so that far from challenging the established order, it can be seen as reasserting and reproducing it. Thus, during Manchester's three-day Gay Pride the gay area is practically sealed off, the only way to take part in the celebration is to pay a fee: fifteen pounds for a day ticket or twenty-five pounds for a three-day pass in 2008. So what began as a collective display of strength, a collective take over of public space

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has turned into a commercial event, a closely monitored festival with security staff; in effect a mass rally stripped of its original political substance. Gay pride marches as well as individual acts of coming out clearly are not a sound basis on which to build a politics of recognition; especially when this takes the form of an injunction, a new imperative of truth (Fassin, 2005), or a performance that ends up 'being domesticated and circulated again as instrument of cultural domination (in this instance, neo-liberalism)' (Butler, 1990). One could then expect recognition to come from lawmakers.
Space and institutionalization of sexual hierarchy
'What next, soon they'll have us hold our civil partnership ceremony at the police station!' Pascal, 43 years old
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees equal treatment - all human beings are 'equal in dignity and rights' (article 1) and safety - 'every individual has the right to life, liberty and security of person' (article 3). No society could be considered just that did not apply these two principles. Yet, in many parts of the world these rights are denied to lesbians and gays and in several countries, they face harsh reprisals for being gay including the death penalty4. Violence, and the denial of recognition, here comes from institutions and the state. This led Boris Dittrich, Human Rights Watch programme director of lesbigay, bisexual and transgendered rights to say that 'universal means universal with no exceptions'. Homosexuality was removed from the WHO's list of mental illnesses as late as 1993. French law only moved forward in the early 1980s with the repeal of the Mirguet amendment (1960), a piece of legislation aimed at purging certain 'social scourges', and the repeal of the Penal Code's article 331-2, which set the universal age of consent at the age of fifteen. So the legal landscape has evolved in a way that gradually grants recognitions to lesbians and gays, though it remains
On this issue, see the work of the International Commission on Human Rights on lesbians and
gays (IGLHRC - www.iglhrc.org) and reports from international organisations such as Amnesty International (www.amnesty.org) and Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org).

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profoundly unequal. Indeed, as far as marriage and parental rights are concerned French lags behind both European counterparts and social practices. This legal discrimination really came to the fore in the context of the PACS, a legal framework offering some form of recognition to same-sex couples, who until then has no form of legal recognition. This injustice became obvious during the AIDS crisis when many were evicted from their homes, barred from attending their loved one's funeral, often with no inheritance rights. However, the PACS does not promise marriage rights, nor does it guarantee parental rights (including adoption, fertility treatment or custody rights to gay parents5), yet neither does it grant gays and lesbians specific rights6. This attitude according to Wilfried Rault is 'typical of the law's ambivalence to the social status of homosexuality. Indeed, on the one hand, the law takes account of discrimination, but by so doing it organizes the lesser visibility, entrenches a difference in status and treatment with opposite-sex couples. The PACS is not recorded by the registry office, "the individual as seen and legitimized by the state", which means the heterosexual relationship is privileged over the homosexual one' (2007, 197). In this context, making the district court the place for registering these partnerships clearly demarcates this ceremony from that of marriage (which takes place at the mairie or town hall) (photos 4 and 5). This distinction between the two sites selected for each ceremony makes the PACS appear as a 'sub-marriage' as Alain Piriou, the Inter-LGBT spokesperson sees it (14 November 2007).
See in particular the volume edited by Anne Cadoret, Martine Gross, Caroline Mcary and
Bruno Perreau (2006) Homoparentalits. Approches scientifiques et politiques. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
6
In this regard the PACS is not a 'positive action' although it could have led in theory to greater
equality. See Bruno Perreau who analyzes it as 'simultaneously a politics of recognition and a politics of redistribution" (Perreau, 2004, 42).

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Photo 4 - Mairie/Town Hall (Paris, XVe, 2005) Photo 5 - Tribunal dinstance/Court of first instance (Paris, XVe, 2005)
(source : M. Blidon)
Striving to avoid the parallel with marriage, lawmakers settled on the district court, tribunal d'instance, a court that usually deals with petty claims and neighbourly conflicts. In addition, the PACS is recorded by a court clerk, a civil servant, and not by an elected representative of the people; not exactly a promising venue for enshrining a couple's rite of passage. With nothing to mark the event as a celebration or even a collective ritual, the way that the PACS is implemented smacks of bureaucracy, a far cry from the hopes and aspirations of couples who want to pledge their commitment to each other surrounded by their kin. The CRSH [Committee for the Social Recognition of Lesbians and Gays] in a statement declared itself to be 'very committed to seeing that the PACS be signed in the town hall as a symbol of people's participation in city life and citizenship. It is really not suitable for the partnership to be registered by the clerk of the court as planned. The court is the place for settling family disputes, it is an unsuitable venue to celebrate a partnership based on ties of affection. The place will give meaning to the PACS. It is inconceivable for it not to be recorded at the town hall where certificates of cohabitation are delivered.'

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Box 1 District court or town hall?

This question is a hotly debated. Practices differ widely from one borough to another. So in the second arrondissement the mayor's suggestions for PACS ceremonies at the town hall included these comments: 'As mayor of Paris' second arrondissement I am thrilled to welcome you and your friends and families to the town hall. [] The reason I wanted to welcome you here in the town hall for this ceremony is to remind you that this building is your building, open to all of you without exception. Gathering here today for this event is, to my mind, part and parcel of my duty as your elected representative. This ceremony enshrined by our republic is an opportunity to share and celebrate this special occasion with your loved ones [] I wanted this to be something more than just a formal official document that you sign before the clerk of the court. [] And to crown the day, let's heed the words of Ren Char, illustrious poet and fighter of the Resistance: Imposez votre chance ! Serrez votre bonheur !/Allez ensemble prendre vos risques !/ A vous regarder, ils s'habitueront ! Be fully happy together. One of the Republic's missions is to give all its citizens freedom of choice. So in the name of the Republic I wish you all the very best for a lifetime of happiness. We shall now sign the documents, with your witnesses, as a sign of the commitment you're taking here at the town hall (http://mairie2.paris.fr). Conversely, during the local council meeting in Vincennes on 22 February 2006, when Pierre Verne speaking on behalf of the Green councillors asked the UDF (Union pour la Dmocratie Franaise, a center-right party) mayor about the possibility of holding PACS ceremonies in the town hall, the latter replied: 'signing the PACS as a private contract at the town hall would conform neither to the letter nor the spirit of the document as its legal status relies on it being signed and ratified by the court of first instance' (Response from mayor Laurent Lafon).
As Wilfried Rault notes, 'although meant as an official sanction of new partnerships, the way they are registered actually emphasizes their confidentiality and denies their symbolic value' (2007, 201). In this way the PACS appears as another 'denial of recognition' rather than as a 'social innovation'7 for lesbians and gays. To address the injustice would imply opening up marriage and parental rights to same-sex couples or chipping away at marriage as an institution with specific rights (fiscal, social) conditioned by marital status (Fraser, 1998). So, for example, opening up marriage and parental rights to all couples would be one step towards recognition. Nevertheless, this basic measure seems inadequate, since it does not address cultural domination, and it is likely to worsen economic domination.8 In addition, this form of recognition would clearly be modelled on straight notions of
'An innovative legal measure, the PACS can be seen as a social innovation when we consider
that by 31st December 2005 this new social practice had lured more than 400,000 people' (Jaurand, Leroy, 2009). This view has to be qualified, since a large majority of PACS are opposite-sex unions (94% in 2009 according to the INSEE), and among those that are not the rate of dissolution is high ('at the beginning of 2004, only 5000 people were still engaged in a PACS with a person of the same sex', INSEE survey "Revenus fiscaux et sociaux").
8
See Browne, 2011, for a discussion of the economic issues associated with gay marriage.

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coupledom and family life that are not shared by all. And lastly, means and resources to access rights and organize resistance are not equally distributed (Browne, 2011)9.
3- What type of recognition?
'When you come out of hiding, you're not suddenly going to shout from the rooftops!' Jean Le Bitoux (2003) As David Halperin emphasized, treating lesbians and gays as a homogenous social group suffering only from a denial of recognition would spell political disaster. 'The overall effect is to impose a single, drastically simplified group-identity which denies the complexity of peoples lives, the multiplicity of their identifications and the cross-pulls of their various affiliations. Ironically, then, the identity model serves as a vehicle for misrecognition' (Fraser, 2000, 112). This is one reason why in this power/knowledge dynamic, it is crucial to listen to those dissident voices that clamour against this model of identity politics and to give them a platform.
Consumerism: the road to recognition?
'Urbanization has always been, therefore, a class phenomenon [... ] The postmodernist penchant for encouraging the formation of market nichesin both consumer habits and cultural formssurrounds the contemporary urban experience with an aura of freedom of choice, provided you have the money.' (Harvey, 2008, 24-31) David Harvey's reminder sounds a cautionary note regarding Richard Florida's popular notion of a creative class whose ability to decide where they want to live tends to favour areas known for their tolerance and creative potential, spaces identifiable in terms of their ranking by the diversity index or gay index. These indexes reflect the implication of white, upper middle-class gays, the archetypical dinkies (double income no kids), which are by no means representative of the average gay man let alone lesbian. These are the main gentrifiers of downtown neighbourhoods, whether the Marais in Paris or Castro
9
'money, materialities and engagements with the state continue to define everyday lives for
often the most vulnerable lesbians, gay men, bisexual and trans people' (Browne, 2011, 102)

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in San Francisco. These neighbourhoods experienced as places to be free, to emancipate and come out are a product of neoliberal capitalism. There is a price-tag on this sort of recognition. Ever since the 1990s gay activists have raised their voices in protest at this economic exploitation of gay identities. As Jean Le Bitoux explains: 'the first hangouts in the Marais like Duplex, Piano Zinc or Les Mots la Bouche bookshop were set up by pioneers who were convinced that it was necessary to turn our backs on gay snobbery, gay mafia and shame. These places that became landmarks are now paradoxically those that remain most open and diverse. They knew that the most important was not to render visible realities that had been concealed for too long, and that going too far could create social allergies and a loss of meaning. Other were more cynical and went for, more than mere visibility, all-out publicity of this social modernity.'10 Present-day Marais has undergone socio-economic shifts which are visible in the shopping environment. So some of the Jewish bookshops, galleries delicatessens such as the well-established Goldenberg's on rue des Rosiers, or the gay shops on rue du Bourg Tibourg have closed down to make way for shops selling clothes or accessories to tourists or well-off shoppers, reinforcing the 'loss of the neighbourhood's identity,'11 which benefits a new cosmopolitan and homogenous social elite. This kind of recognition rooted in class-connoted behaviours and patterns of consumption has gradually ended the area's reputation for tolerance, openness and social inclusiveness. While this may still be the case for sex clubs such as le Dpt, social mingling has declined, as Hadrien comments: 'You can't help but notice that guys out cruising in gay dives are slightly intolerant about your job or your bank account. All of us have come across those 'credit card babes' who only cosy up to you if you can order two bottles at seventy euros a pop without flinching. You know, those really sassy queens who just give you the once over and know how much your kit costs... Prada-Dior-Saint Laurent? You have a PACS offer coming your way. CelioBata-Clockhouse? She won't even look at you. But there is even worse than that. When the one you fancy comes out with this killer question, then you
10 11
Jean Le Bitoux, 1996: 'Strolling through gay Marais'. La Revue h, number 1, 49. As Colin Giraud writes: 'as if opening up to others, getting involved in a local setting went
hand in hand with a loss of one's identity in the spirit of the place. Apart from a few strongholds in the gay business community, this model of loss seems to lie at the heart of the Marais today' (Giraud, 2009, 43).

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really know you're doomed: 'so what line of work are you in?' What do you say to a banker when you're a driver/delivery man? What do you say to a law professor on the international circuit when you're struggling performing artist? It has to be awful to drag your banker to your migrant's hostel. The eternal love/savings account dilemma has been a real damp squib for any lingering illusions we may still have about love transcending social class. Believe you me, I'm talking to you as a lowly fast-food waiter.'12 These social relations plagued by unequal status both financial and social are indicative of forms of oppression that Philippe Gervais-Lambony and Frdric Dufaux see as exploitation, 'linked to capitalism, this is a form of oppression of the lower income groups, who not only do not receive a fair share of the proceeds of their work, but who also remain excluded from decision-making processes, have less freedom to make choices and whose their collective identity often goes unrecognised' (Gervais, Dufaux, 2009, 7) Not only is there a price-tag on recognition, but there are other selection criteria.
Recognition, exclusion and normalisation 'All women are white, all Blacks are men but some of us are brave' Black Feminist Collective (1982) Apart from a handful of bars and clubs, Black lesbians and gays also find it hard to feel comfortable in the gay milieu. The 'racaille' (racialised thug) fugures prominently in gay pornographic and erotic imagination (Cervulle, Rees-Roberts, 2010). And yet at the same time, there is a marked tendency to reduce gays from immigrant backgrounds to
12
'Readers' Letters,' Ttu, number 79, June 2003, p.12. The broadsheet press, especially
letters from readers, is a treasure trove for exploring these kinds of issues. See also Patrick Awondo's research (EHESS, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) that tackles this topic. Social researchers have tended to focus on gay men rather than lesbians but this is starting to change, see in particular the 2009 'Lesbians, migration, exile and racism: when minorities get involved' conference organised at Paris 8 University by Salima Amari, Jules Falquet, Jane Freedman, Dalila Kadri, Claudie Lesselier, Amazighe Tilila and Anna Pak.

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prevailing stereotypes, to see them as homophobic, or as potential trouble-makers. Yacine (24 years-old, from la Courneuve) talks about this ambivalence: 'I'm a guy people are wary of, flirt with...but they're scared of me...yeah, I get propositioned because they're scared of me'13. Edith echoes Yacine's bitterness, 'they want to sleep with you sure, but they're not going to take a dark face out to dinner'14. One Ttu journalist made a similar point: 'the space Black gays hold in the realm of fantasy is in inverse proportion to the social space and recognition that they are denied, in their everyday lives'15. Thus these types of perceptions and assumptions make it difficult for these men, a fortiori as a group, to be accepted. Rachid (editor aged 34, from SaintOuen, from an Egyptian background) explains: 'yeah, they put up with us in nightclubs, as long as we're effeminate, dressed up and we fit in. One night, I was in quite a mellow dive in the Marais with a buddy, the waiter comes up to us and says: 'you know, you're in a gay bar here.' We realised we were out of place.'16 This explains why other spots in the Pigalle area, for instance, have started to take over as meeting places. So for some, the Marais has turned into a rather exclusive neighbourhood 'lacking in social diversity' and really aimed at a 'white moneyed majority who want to flaunt it.' These examples help illustrate just how hard it is to think of 'the other' as a subject, especially when 'this other' has been constructed in our collective imaginary as dangerous, reduced to certain traits without taking into account other differences such as age, class, life journey or lifestyle... Hence the emphasis put on nomadism by the 6th of November Group: lesbian daughters of colonialism, slavery and immigration. They reject normative assignations to traditional roles as mother, wife, symbol of post-colonial culture and 'enslaved woman' (Bacchetta, 2009). One of this group's slogans was 'We exist', a claim for visbility, a protest against erasure from the lesbian scene and a challenge to the French WASPS who overlook the wounds of colonialism and racism. As Hanan Kaddour puts it:
13 14 15 16
Ttu, number 9, December 1996, p. 26. Illico Magazine, number 14, January 1992, p. 15. Ttu, number 9, December 1996, p. 25. Ttu, number 9, December 1996, p. 25.

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'the barriers between us and them are historical and political, they can't be dismantled just by virtue of these French WASPS pretending to be womenlovers. Whether they choose to love women, bees or poppies dones't make them any closer to us lesbians from migrant and working-class backgrounds' (2001). This 6th of November Group holds its meetings not in the usual lesbian venues they tend to feel excluded from but in a Caribbean restaurant owned by two women in the centre of Paris. This decision illustrates their refusal to be consigned to the margins, the periphery they are relegated to, and the tension between lesbian identity and ties to postcolonial countries. This tension was exposed by their presence, some of them wearing the veil, in the national march organised in 2004 by collective Une Ecole pour tous/tes. 'In this context, with the French state and public opinion claiming they are feminist and pro-gay and that it is a sign of the civilizational superiority of France (as opoosed to the so-called inferiority of colonized and postcolonial countries) lesbians who wear the veil are deeply problematic citizens. They do not conform to the stereotype of "the" Muslim woman, the victim of Muslim men and Islam's inherent sexism or as left out of French sexual equality. Neither can they be allowed to embody the liberated queer, this position remains a prerogative of franco-French lesbians in the context of the dominant sexual and social paradigm' (Bacchetta, 2009, 57). As Paola Bacchetta goes on to say, 'as long as the dominant powers that be continue to display binary and separatist thinking, then the 6th of November Group, its members, associates and protests will remain undecipherable to many' (2009, 60).
One effect of this politics of recognition initiated in the early 1980s, and of the commercialisation of gay identity in the 1990s, is the erasure of relations of class and domination that were replaced by 'a political handling of division' (Prearo, 2010). This makes it all the more urgent to work towards building a social movement that does not fragment or rank struggles for recognition but which admit that gender, sexuality, race, class all produce forms of domination.
Epilogue

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Sites of resistance to domination have come into existence in the form of groups, organisations, single-sex or mixed squats, separatist communes, housing cooperatives such as the Women's Haven in the south of France... a host of spaces that challenge traditional viewpoints and provide forms of support for lesbian or queer 'constellations' (Gieseking, 2009). Many of these associations are not primarily motivated by individual or collective visibility, for in the words of Lo Bersani, 'accepting to be seen is accepting to be controled' (1995, 34), thus demonstrating that recognition does not imply transparency. What they are looking for, primarily, is a place of their own, a visible one. This implies what Natacha Chetcuti (2009) refers to as 'seeking a human status for beings in the process of becoming', taking shape in a number of ways, for example, 'steering clear from constructions of femininity or new definitions of otherness in order to newly interrogate links between sex and gender'. It also implies challenging social injustices that enable some to be seen as individuals, while others are constantly referred to a group they are seen as being part of. This also calls for what Soja (2009) calls the 'equitable and fair distribution in space of socially valued resources and of the possibility of exploiting them', which means some of those spaces operate as autonomous cooperatives with a pooling of resources. Although these alternative spaces are unlikely to generalize, they clearly embody a new politics of recognition and redistribution, a starting point in the constitution of just spaces.
References
BACCHETTA Paola, Co-Formations : des spatialits de rsistance dcoloniales chez les lesbiennes of color en France , Genre, sexualit & socit, n1, 2009. (http://gss.revues.org/index810.html). BECKER Howard, Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, New York : The Free Press, 1963. BERSANI Lo, Homos. Repenser lidentit, Paris : Odile Jacob, 1995. BLIDON Marianne, La Gay Pride entre subversion et banalisation , Espace, populations, socits, n2, 305-318, 2009. BLIDON Marianne, Jalons pour une gographie des homosexualits , LEspace gographique, n2, 175-189, 2008a.

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BLIDON Marianne, La casuistique du baiser. Lespace public, un espace htronormatif , Echogo, n5, 2008b. (http://echogeo.revues.org/index5383.html). BLIDON Marianne, Un espace pas si public ? Quand les gays se tiennent par la main , Vox geographi, 2008c. (http://www.cafe-geo.net/article.php3?id_article=1309). BLIDON Marianne, Distance et rencontre. lments pour une gographie des homosexualits, sous la direction de Christian Grataloup, Paris : Universit Paris 7Denis Diderot, 2007. BOXER Andrew, HERDT Gilbert, Children of Horizon. How Gay and Lesbian Teens Are Leading a New Way Out of the Closet, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. BROWNE, Kath, 'By partner we mean...' Alternative geographies of 'gay marriage' , Sexualities, vol 14, n1, 100-122, 2011. BUTLER Judith, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the subversion of identity , New Yrok, Routledge, 1990. BUTLER Judith, Undoing Gender. Routledge, 2004. CADORET Anne, GROSS Martine, MCARY Caroline, PERREAU Bruno (dir.), Homoparentalits. Approches scientifiques et politiques, Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 2006. CERVULLE Maxime, REES-ROBERTS Nick, Homos exoticus. Race, classe et critique queer, Paris : Armand Colin, 2010. CHETCUTI Natacha, De On ne nat pas femme On nest pas femme. De Simone de Beauvoir Monique Wittig , Genre, sexualit & socit, n1, 2009.
(http://gss.revues.org/index477.html). RIBON Didier, Rflexion sur la question gay, Paris : Fayard, 1999. RIBON Didier, Placard , in Dictionnaire des cultures gays et lesbiennes, edited by Didier ribon, Paris : Larousse, 365-366, 2003. FASSIN ric, Linversion de la question homosexuelle, Paris : ditions Amsterdam, 2005. FASSIN ric, Les trois figures de lhomophobie , Rapport annuel SOS homophobie, Paris : KTM, 13, 2010. FRASER Nancy, Rethinking Recognition , New Left Review, May June 2000, 107-120 FRASER Nancy, From Redistribution to Recognition ? Dilemmas of Justice in a PostSocialist Age , 19-49 in C. Willett (ed), Theorizing Multiculturalism. A guide to the current debate. Oxford, Blackwell, 1998.

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FRASER Nancy, Rethinking the Public Sphere : A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy , 109-142 in C. Calhoun (ed), Habermas and the Public Sphere. MIT Press, 1992. FOUCAULT Michel, Histoire de la sexualit. La volont de savoir, Paris : Gallimard, 1976. GERVAIS-LAMBONY Philippe, DUFAUX Frdric, Justice... spatiale ! , Annales de gographie, 665-666, n1, 3-15, 2009. GIESEKING Jen, Hey, Gay, Going My Way?: Theorizing Lesbians and Queer Womens Urban Productions of Space as Constellations (1983-2008), Association of American Geographers, Las Vegas, 2009 (non publi). GIRAUD Colin, Les commerces gays et le processus de gentrification , Mtropoles, 5, 2009 (http://metropoles.revues.org/document3858.html). GOFFMAN Erving, Stigma, notes on the management of spoiled identity, Prentice Hall, 1963. GUILLAUMIN Colette, Femmes et thories de la socit: remarques sur les effets thoriques de la colre des opprims , Sociologie et socits, Vol. XIII, n2, 19-31, 1985. HALPERIN David, Lidentit gay aprs Foucault , Les tudes gay et lesbiennes, Paris : CGP, 117-121, 1998. HANCOCK Claire, La justice au risque de la diffrence : faire une juste place lAutre , Annales de gographie, 665-666, n1, 61-75, 2009. HARVEY David, The Right to the City , New Left Review 53, September October 2008, 23-40 JAURAND Emmanuel, LEROY, Stphane, Espaces de pacs. Gographie dune innovation sociale , Annales de Gographie, n667, 179-203, 2009. JOHNSTON Lynda, Queering Tourism: Paradoxical Performances of Gay Pride Parades, London: Routledge, 2005. KADDOUR Hanan, La continuit de la vision coloniale dans la pense et analyse de lesbiennes francaises , in Warrior/Guerrires, Paris : NomadesLangues, 33-36, 2001. LE BITOUX Jean, Marcher dans le gai Marais , La Revue h, n1, 47-51, 1996. LEFEBVRE Henri, The production of space, Blackwell, 1991. LUSSAULT Michel, De la lutte des classes la lutte des places, Paris : Grasset, 2009. MANGEOT Philippe, Discrtion/placard , in Dictionnaire de lhomophobie, edited by Louis-Georges Tin, Paris : PUF, 130-133, 2003.

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MENDES-LEITE Rommel, Le sens de laltrit. Penser les (homo)sexualits, Paris : LHarmattan, 2000. PERREAU Bruno, Linvention rpublicaine. lment dune hermneutique
minoritaire , Pouvoirs, n111, 41-53, 2004. PERREAU Bruno, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick , Genre, sexualit & socit, n1, 2009 (http://gss.revues.org/index378.html). POLLAK Michael, Les homosexuels et le sida, Paris : Mtailli, 1988. PREARO Massimo, Figures contemporaines de lhomosexualit en mouvements : une approche topologique , in Workshop Mapping Desire: Where are the Critical Geographies of Sexualities?, Paris, 2010 (intervention non publie). RAULT Wilfried, L'enregistrement du Pacs au tribunal dinstance : entre assignation et rappropriation , in Le choix de lhomosexualit, edited by Bruno Perreau, Paris : EPEL, 195-207, 2007. RICH Adrienne, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence , Blood, Bread and Poetry, New York: Norton, 1986. KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK Eve, Epistemology of the Closet, University of California Press,1991. SOJA Edward W., The city and spatial justice , Justice spatiale/Spatial Justice, n1, 2009. (http/ www.jssj.org). TAYLOR Charles, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition, Princeton University Press, 1992. YOUNG Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

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Aggregation and segregation: gays in the Paris urban area

Renaud Boivin, UPEMLV / Lab'Urba Translator: Claire Hancock, UPEC Aggregation and segregation: gays in the Paris urban area Boivin Renaud, Universit Paris-Est Marne-La-Valle / Lab'Urba Translator: Claire Hancock, UPEC
"The right to the city manifests itself as a superior form of rights: right to freedom, to individualization in socialization, to habitat and to inhabit. The right to the uvre, to participation and appropriation", Lefebvre [1967].
To deal with the intersection between spatial justice and sexuality is a daunting task. In France, until recently, the question of gays'1 relation to space was ignored in cultural geography (Blidon, 2008a) and there was little interest for it in sociology, where most work focussed on ways of life and the major change in health issues related to AIDS. This lack of interest probably has to do with academia's heterosexism and unease in the face of any challenge to boundaries between private and public, homo- and heterosexual, female and male. Serious research also encounters methodological
The word gay has a specific history in France: it started being used in a context in which the
stigma started being reversed, as part of efforts on the part of the homosexual movement, which was attempting to challenge traditional dichotomies (passive/active). It has to do with a middleclass homosexual culture (Pollak, 1982). What I call homosexual here are men who engage in sexual activity with other men, but who do not necessarily take part in gay sociability.

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difficulties: since there are no data on homosexual people's places of residence, research tends to focus on businesses, and follow the example of gay residential enclaves in North America. These however differ greatly from European "gay neighbourhoods", which hardly allow for the sort of "community inscription" that they are defined by. The study of homosexual spatialities also tends to omit the social dimension of sexuality, with the dominant model of gay sociability being seen as the only way of experiencing homosexuality. In this perspective, the tensions and contradictions that spaces of gay encounters produce or reproduce remain hidden. Lastly, the striking visibility of central neighbourhoods such as the Marais overshadows the persistence of other, less visible, forms of homosexual spatial production, and thus renders invisible some situations of spatial injustice. Taking all this into account, I chose to consider the question from a different perspective: rather than assume that gay commercial or residential neighbourhoods signal to "empowerment" or "liberation" of sexual minorities, I start from the opposite assumption. The territorial huddling together of gays, in the case of Paris, can be interpreted as a result of social and spatial exclusions suffered elsewhere. I see this spatial strategy not as an instance of "communitarianism", but as an effect of heterosexual normativity inscribed in space. The success of a neighbourhood like the Marais reflects a process of "aggregation", in the quest for common places in which to meet as well as a consequence of forms of segregation of practices and self-expression found outside the gay milieu. This paper is organized in two sections, the first of which reviews the evolution of the Marais since the first gay bars opened there, in order to show that commercial specialization and gentrification have produced new forms of exclusion, stronger inequalities, and decreased pluralism. The second section is based on interviews with gay residents and users of the Marais2, and discusses regimes of engagement in their experiences, both intimate and public, of the system of place assignation active in the cit3. The aim is to show that relations to the gay milieu and individual strategies for
Twelve interviews, averaging more than three hours, were carried out. Respondents were
recruited from various places in the Marais, and answered questions about their residential and professional experiences, their love lives and relation to the neighbourhood.
3
I refer to Abel's definition (1995), as quoted in Pattarroni (2009, 286) : "The cit is the city as
institution of space and the political and social distribution of "places", locations, roles. And this

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exposing sexual orientation are diverse, and dependent on the social characteristics of the agent..
The gay neighbourhood, from aggregation to gentrification
An ecological definition Gay commercial concentration in the Marais4 started in 1978 with the opening of the bar Le Village, and developed throughout the 80s. It results from a threefold transformation. First, a social displacement, with a claim for different ways of living homosexuality from that promoted on the very commercial cruising area of the rue Sainte-Anne, which came under severe criticism of activists at the time. The move to the Marais was related to the desire, on the part of some homosexual people, to establish places both open and visible to all (Sibalis, 2004), at a distance from what was seen as a "commercial ghetto", with its associated limited accessibility and openness. Secondly, the move to the Marais of pioneering entrepreneurs and activists went hand-in-hand with a political or symbolic shift. It had to do with a vision of homosexuality as more marginal, and working-class, as well as with the shift of the gay movement to pragmatism. In the eighties, revolutionary ambitions were sidelined by a different activism, centring on the development of a gay culture. Activism and business concerns came together around health issues, as evidenced in the creation of the National Syndicate of Gay Businesses (Syndicat National des Entreprises Gaies, SNEG), in 19905.
distribution has to be justified by a principle of allocation of space, which both gives a rule for community space, and a rule of differentiation accepted by subjects".
4 5
The Marais is located in part of the 3rd and 4th arrondissements, in central Paris. I can only outline very briefly the complex change in homosexual discourse between 1970 and
1985. The group Arcadie (1953-1982) promoted a discrete and respectable image of homosexuals (rejecting more effeminate, subversive, images of the ostentatious queen) which was challenged as early as the 1970s with the creation of the Front Homosexuel d'Action Rvolutionnaire (Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Liberation), and new mores (Jackson, 2006). The FHAR was dissolved in 1974 and the Groupe de Libration Rvolutionnaire took over, then the Comit d'urgence anti-rpression homosexuelle (CUARH, 1979-1987), which

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But this gay commercial specialization also resulted from the gradual consolidation of barriers between spaces of sociability for men having sex with other men, according to gender and social class6. As was demonstrated by Chauncey (2003), the construction of homosexual identity relies on a spatial construction. This means, 1) that spaces of sociability and for sexual activity between men existed well before the collective coming out in the 70s; 2) that spaces were specified as new categories were invented to define identifiable forms of sexuality; 3) the view in terms of liberation/repression, as apparent is the discourse of gay movements, is inadequate to account for the changes in these spaces and their sociological meaning. In the late seventies, the growing success of the rue Sainte-Anne caused a greater social differentiation, as prices became prohibitive, and women were denied access. The ambiguity which spiced up homosexual cruising in these original places disappeared. Homosexuality underwent a process of re-definition, exemplified by the spread of the use of the term "gay". AIDS also played a part in redefining agents, their behaviours, and representations of homosexuality. The Marais as we know it today is the result of these generational changes, and its history as gay neighbourhood is caught up in the consolidation of a unified discourse, in culture and specialized media, for a gay audience. The phrase "gay neighbourhood", which gained pride of place in the 90s, as opposed to "ghetto" which was used by radical homosexual groups, is the result of social, and discursive, rather than a mere description of a spatial concentration of gay businesses. It signals other changes in ways of life and representations of homosexuality, about which I shall say more later. It is therefore possible to read the gay neighbourhood in an "ecologic" perspective, that goes beyond mere "visibility". Reading gay spaces from this perspective is all the more relevant since, by becoming a symbol of gay success and liberation, the neighbourhood was also established as a place of recognition for some homosexual people, a sort of "moral region" (Park, 1929). Proth (2002, 127) rightly pointed out that "the inscription in space and the stabilization of a minority in a neighbourhood is tantamount to the installation in a deliberately chosen, and consented, segregation, whilst also simultaneously laying a claim to recognitionevery homosexual living in, or going to,
carried a more communitarian discourse during the move away from political action in the early 80s (Marchant, 2005).
6
See depictions quoted by Martel (2001, 118-136)

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the Marais neighbourhood, is substituting new forms of sociability to other, commonly accepted ways of being in a large city". This is how the dialectics of aggregation and segregation can be read in the evolution of areas such as the Marais, or Chueca in Madrid: rather than see gay neighbourhoods as "spaces of resistance" (Leroy, 2005), I propose to see them as spaces of recognition7. Gentrification: homosexuality rehabilitated Various studies have established the contribution of gay presence, both residential and commercial, to processes of gentrification of central working-class areas (Castells, 1983; Knopp, 1990; Bouthillette, 1994). In the case of the Marais, gentrification occurred with the arrival of professionals and the departure of workers, as early as the 1980s (Carpenter, Lees, 1995). Gays were attracted both by the centrality of the area and the lost cost of housing, and they were active in the private rehabilitation of it. Djirikian (2004) has shown how in studio flats, working-class families were replaced by students and one-person households, usually men of the middle or upper-middle class. This is the type of housing gay men took over. Giraud (2009) underlines the convergences between the renewed social profile of residents and the commercial evolution of the gay Marais, i.e., between residential gentrification and consumption gentrification (Beauregard, 2003). In recent decades, only certain types of gay businesses have chosen the Marais: shops and services are on the increase, whereas they are shrinking in Paris overall. Conversely, businesses with a strong sexual connotation (backrooms and saunas), of which there are relatively few in the Marais, are more dispersed throughout Paris. Former gay bars tend to be replaced by clothing shops and hairdressing salons, and the cheaper, more affordable, bars are becoming rarer. Leroy (2005) has shown that this reflects the increase in prices for leases, and that the gay businesses that made the Marais attractive and consolidated rent values are victims of their own success. For gay people, access to places of sociability has become economically selective.
I refer here to recognition in another (identification) and by others (acceptance and respect).
According to Honneth (2000), all social relations imply a quest for recognition: its denial, and social contempt, are fundamental in the experience of injustice. Nancy Fraser (2005) has shown that struggles for recognition of cultural difference have gained over class struggle and the quest for redistributive justice.

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Gay normalization of the Marais This commercial gentrification also results from profound changes in modes of being, thinking of oneself as, and showing oneself to be homosexual. Some have pointed out the "over-visibility" of gay neighbourhoods, in Europe, tends to render invisible other practices, less well accepted and which take place in more peripheral areas (Grsillon, 2000; Redoutey, 2002). In fieldwork carried out in Chueca, Madrid, I found that gentrification contributes to more positive representations of homosexuals, by facilitating forms of normalization8. Very visible lifestyles, considered more acceptable, take form in the gay neighbourhood, which tends to reproduce exemplary images in specifically gay institutions. These rely on a manly, hyper-masculine representation, of the homosexual, as both well-heeled and full of entrepreneurial spirit: the gay in bow-tie and tuxedo as seen in Ttu9. This normalization seems to have taken place during the eighties, as a response to the stigmatization linked to AIDS, in a period of dissociation between sex and homosexuality, as perceived by some of my interviewees: "Obviously AIDS cut things short (). Perhaps there was this underlying, unconscious desire on the part of the population to appear squeaky clean, and therefore, that's it, more normalized. I think that was what drove the homosexual community, but it was probably also a political will from the outside, and probably, most probably, a necessity." (Pierre, 46 years old, middle-ranking executive in civil service). The adaptation of homosexual lifestyles, its shift to couples and safer sex, brings about a stereotypification of gay "married life"10, in opposition to the lifestyle of the unattached male who uses backrooms (Broqua; De Busscher, 2003), and cruises in places "of egalitarian and gregarious character (...) which set themselves apart from the ordinary
In the double sense of becoming more banal in relation to heterosexual majority, and gay
normativity, in reference to a number of behaviours, lifestyles and fashions (translator note: this seems very close to what has been described by Lisa Duggan, in English, as homonormativity).
9
Ttu, which started appearing in 1995, is one of France's best known magazines aimed at the
gay readership (translator's note).

10
Normalization and couples go hand in hand: "The homosexual couple functions as a factor of
social integration when it is perceived by others as "conform" to the model of the heterosexual couple", says Adam (1999, 60).

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world of hierarchies and social conventions and its imperative of respectability " (Pollak; Schiltz, 1987, 88). In the nineties, gays started articulating their sociability on the basis of the couple and multiple partners became less common: "the quest for happiness in private life nowadays combines the desire to be in a stable couple, with a life project, with a different relation to cruising () seen more as recreational than as part of one's identity" (Adam, 1999, 62). This normalization sees pluralism reduced, transphobia has become more common, along with the rejection of the "queen" and anything or anybody likely to discredit homosexuals. Non-conventional expressions of sexuality are sidelined and earlier dichotomies, passive/active, feminine/masculine have resurfaced in discourse and in practice. There are dual processes of uniformization and differentiation: "With the move there was a gradual uniformization, because that's when we started having a gay fashion, and racism too. There were so few places in Opra11 that people preferred to be all together (...) there was 25%, or say, a third of girls (...) In the Marais (...) things got ugly for fat guys (...), for hairy guys, so gradually we got the caf for hairy guys (), and places opened for lesbians." (Jacques, 48 years old, white-collar worker). Hence a paradoxical change: while the first gay bars that opened in the Marais were meant to promote democratization, the success encountered by the neighbourhood has fostered new exclusions, based on appearance, age, gender, and increasingly, on income. The Marais has become a male, exclusive space, that renders invisible and discriminates against categories designated as marginal, in particular transsexuals and effeminate homosexuals. It has become a meeting-place, representation and stage for homosexuals who subscribe to a specific gay social and spatial organization, which can be characterized, if somewhat simplistically, in a worldly
12
and
respectable
homosexuality, opposed to the so-called "black homosexuality"
perceived as working-
class, ambiguous and excessive. Aggregation also operates a deliberate segregation.

11
Translator's note: the area around the rue Sainte-Anne referred to above as the earlier
concentration of gay bars.

12
The phrase refers to practices of cruising in anonymous public spaces, picking up people of
another race or class, and to images of the sordid and transgression (see Marchant, 2005). It was used by Hocquenghem, a FHAR activist, in the 70s, about the "cruising vagrancy that made the homosexual a short-circuit in the class system" (quoted in Marchant, 2005, 95).

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As Pollak and Schiltz (1987, 81) point out: "The conquest of sexual liberties was gained by reinforcing a specific sociability and, indirectly, the segregation implied in the term "ghetto" which refers to its most ostentatious manifestations" and "this is representative of a minority of all homosexuals", the transformation taking place "at different times in different social classes", with the middle-class coming first.
Gay socialization and segregation The previous sections of this paper centred on the evolution of spaces of gay sociability, and showed how they are produced by a specific, dominant way of living homosexuality. Furthermore, these places express a differential emancipation. Shifting now to a different scale of analysis, the following sections will attempt to delineate segregation on the basis of individual strategies of exposure of sexual preference, which also influence relations with metropolitan space and the gay neighbourhood of homosexual populations. I rely here on Prteceille's (2006) definition of segregation as the unequal spatial distribution of social groups.
Homosexual places of residence A geographic analysis of the distribution of the Pacte Civil de Solidarit 13 (Ruelland, 2005) shows a concentration in central Paris, in the 2 nd, 3rd, 4th and 10th arrondissements14. This distribution conforms with that of gay businesses, which become much rarer in peripheral arrondissements. It appears from this research that gay sociability also determines residential choices to some extent, as "one stop in quite complex social and spatial itineraries" (Leroy, 2005, 591), allowing for the coming out of younger men (Schiltz, 1998). This concentration, both residential and commercial, points to the importance of the gay neighbourhood in strategies, choices, and gay lifestyles. Areas occupied by gay couples
13
Translator's note: the Pacte Civil de Solidarit, or PACS, is a form of civil union (created in
1999) which concerns either same-sex or opposite sex couples (with the former a small minority).
14
The analysis of data on people registered with a dating site that I am currently carrying out
confirms this, with the 1st arrondissement, where many young workers live, added to the list.

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are also the ones undergoing processes of gentrification, which indicates a double deliberate segregation, linked to social and sexual preferences. Access to this place of residence is restricted to a small number of young people with independent means, and to older gay couples. It is likely that geographic distance reinforces social isolation for young homosexuals in the banlieue, both more deprived and physically remote from the gay centre of the metropolis, and "who still endure the constraint of "hiding", conforming to dominant rules, all the more as they often live with their family, who knows nothing or does not want to know of their homosexual proclivities" (Pollak, Schiltz, 1987, 80). Consequently, over and above the micro-segregation of the "closet" (the need to hide and pretend) they are the victims of both economic and geographic exclusions from the space of recognition granted by the gay neighbourhood. Segregation of homosexual love is therefore related to residential and commercial gay segregation.
The closet's socio-economic determinations In a recent analysis of a survey conducted among readers of ttu.com, Blidon (2008b) has shown that, contrary to a commonly held assumption, the size of cities does not systematically have an influence on public displays of affection on the part of homosexuals: kissing or holding hands vary more in accordance with the distance from places where one is known than in accordance with city size. The determinations at play here seem to be social in nature rather than geographic. Therefore, injustices faced by homosexuals are not felt equally by all, they vary according to economic means and individual competences, which in turn have effects on motility15, as some have no access to the gay neighbourhood. The process of coming out, which can be interpreted as both an "integration" in a gay milieu, and an assertion towards others, requires a degree of identification with a communitarian lifestyle. Degrees in one's coming out, or public exposure of one's homosexuality, vary according to one's age, and on whether one is part of a couple, and how stable the partnership is (Blidon, 2008b), as well as other factors such a education, social position and background. The relation to the gay
15
This notion developed by Vincent Kaufmann (2007, 179) refers to different forms of mobility
(spatial, social, professional, residential, daily commutes as well as migrations). Motility is defined as "an agent's ability to be mobile, spatially or virtually" and depends on the context, on accessibility, on an agent's competences and on appropriation.

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milieu is correlated to the degree of acceptance in one's professional or family environment. Pollak and Schiltz (1987, 80) described three broad categories of homosexuals: different in terms of professional backgrounds;, in terms of degree of implication in gay sociability; and of the ability, or not, to assert their sexual preferences outside the "ghetto". They considered "social acceptance and the chances of being able to comes to terms with homosexual dispositions are correlated with cultural capital more than with economic capital". In the middle classes, as defined in terms of their educational achievements, homosexuality would therefore be better accepted and more assertive. The degree of attachment to the gay milieu appears stronger in those from a modest background and from outside Paris, who often experienced rejection in their place of origin, with social stigmatization reinforcing communitarian forms of withdrawal (Adam, 1999). My own observations suggest that the distance between the two ways of life, the couple ideal, on the one hand, and the gay ghetto, on the other, is in fact a function of a process of social distinction, which on the ground takes shape in the division between a normalized lifestyle (more widely acceptable and considered respectable) in gentrified central areas, and more "peripheral" lifestyles outside these areas.
Regimes of engagement with the Marais The relationship of individuals to the gay milieu and gay spaces appear to be becoming more diverse and complex. To account for ways in which gays engage with the Marais area, two types of notions appear useful. A first subset, based on research conducted in urban sociology in the 1980s, sees social identity as dually constructed between residential and professional contexts, and identifies different modes of compensation through territorial inscription (Collet, 2008). By extending them to all modes of habitation, these analytical categories can be used to understand the different regimes of engagement that homosexuals can have with their environment and the symbolic reference area of the Marais. The notion of regime of engagement (or suitable action) enables one to work beyond rigid, a priori sociological categories, and to account for the diversity and individual flexibility of action16 : "Pluralism cannot boil down to a spatial
16
Thvenot analyzes the adjustments made by individuals in the execution and coordination of
their actions, in order to move beyond Bourdieu's sociology of distinction. His is a pragmatic

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division of public and private places, or to a differentiation in identities conceived as suits that can be worn whenever. By circulating from a relation to another, consequences are more weighty than those from just switching hats. There is a constant tension between the close and the public, with a variable geometry" (Thvenot, 2006, 54). In my research I attempt to work out the meaning of people's relation to the world, and more precisely, how gays "invest in" the cit. I focus here on the life experiences of younger men, in order to concentrate on factors other than age that are likely to influence ways of living, expressing and exposing one's homosexuality.
Thee Marais: a desire for upward mobility "I had to find a solution (), I stopped in this bar that was called the Amnsia, that I instantly liked, a lot (). I met journalists, I met a singer who wanted me to go with him (...), lawyers (), fantastic people with good positions, who loved me, and that I loved too, incidentally, it was mutual. I took that as a sign. To make it, I had to stay in the Marais. All my life I believed in signs (). And I took that as a sign, so I started looking for a job in the Marais". Alex arrived in Paris with a couple of hundreds of euros, found a job as waiter in the 1st arrondissement and stayed with a friend in the Marais. A few months later, he went back to his parents' home, before returning two years later, with a qualification that meant he didn't have to wait tables any more. For Alex, 23 years old, from a provincial town, who became a salesman and lives in the banlieue, sexual emancipation is strongly related to a desire for social mobility: he has had a large number of platonic relations with well-heeled older men, which gave him access to a gay lifestyle: "The atmosphere, the encounters, the interesting people () as it happens interesting people usually have good jobs (). We play the seduction game: they invite me to good restaurants, we drink a lot, they like wine, we go to bars (...) I enjoy myself, we have fun together. Their objective is to get me drunk enough to get me to bed with them. So we sleep together, we kiss and
sociology, particularly apt to integrate a discussion of spatial justice, since it insists on specific moves to put things in common or coordination, a notion which emphasizes an agent's relation to his/her environment, and which has to do with his/her relation to him/herself: "The relation to the environment is crucial to comprehend a behaviour, and to guide one's own, on the basis of relevant elements of the situation, and to make sure of others'" (Thvenot, 2006, 13).

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after two weeks, usually, I go off and find someone else. (I'm) not a gigolo, I never ever ask for money". Alex is not openly bisexual with his friends or colleagues. His strategy is to preserve appearances: "I've never had any trouble because I'm your average guy, and even if I wear tight clothes, it doesnt prevent you f rom acting like a guy () People see me, they see me as open, respectable, which allows you to have an image, err, you fit in everywhere!". Respect for the norms and boundaries between the gay and heterosexual milieus, and the impossibility of being openly gay outside the Marais, are totally interiorized by Alex: "It doesn't have to do with shame, it's a matter of education, it's a matter of respect, it's like when you're invited to someone's place (). You have to be respectful of the place you're in and to integrate. Me, I think in a heterosexual environment, you have to act straight even if you aren't: two men don't hold hands, you respect that ()". Hiding therefore makes one worthy of others' respect, and it is also to appear masculine.
At home in public17 : the familiar mode Fabien, 27 years old, from a tourist village, arrived in Paris aged 17. He left home very early and started working at a young age to finish his secondary schooling. His parents were employed in a football club, and he broke away from his traditional family for years, feeling he couldn't admit his homosexuality to them: "All around me there were these tough playboys, so you had to show you were a real man, you see, no way you could, err then after a while, well, I asserted myself". He went off to Paris "on impulse" and found a refuge at the Tropic Caf. He quickly became friendly with waiters and regulars, who took charge of him and helped him find a job as waiter in a gay restaurant, and then a flat right opposite his workplace. He rapidly became integrated in local life and enjoys its tight-knit character:
17
The phrase is from Brawley (2009). Thvenot's theorization of the familiar engagement
regime is very close.

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"You're in the Marais, you work in the gay milieu, you meet lots of people, you go out often, there you are, and then () you have lots of acquaintances, say. Because they're not really friends before a while". He's also familiar with gay night-life, the "debauchery and bad trips". His current friends and outings are all within the gay milieu, and his boyfriend is a waiter in the Marais. He prefers the cheaper gay bars that have been open for a while, as well as the backrooms and saunas, all of which are gradually disappearing. With slight nostalgia, Fabien explains that the Marais has changed: youngsters have overrun the neighbourhood and "heterosexuals have fucked it all up". He experiences these changes as a denial of recognition: "I have to laugh when I hear what the young managers of new bars will say () You put your hand on their shoulder and say "do you have any idea who you're talking to". Take for instance (some newly opened bar), I met some pals there and the manager looks me up and down and says "who the hell are you? () You just shut up, you're in my place, this is my bar". Says I: "I didn't come here for your bar, I didn't come here for you, I came to see these guys I know". This may be just about a personal conflict, but it seems also to point to two different, or even competing, modes of appropriation. These refer to divergent principles: Fabien challenges the underlying social inequality ("the boss, or, well, the boss, the manager, 'cause this young 24-year old lad is only the manager") and invokes an undifferentiated, more egalitarian, homosexual culture: "We're all equal, don't you denigrate me". He then calls not on his social capital (his friends), but on his economic capital: he switches from being a member of the same homosexual minority, to anonymous customer, on a different note: "I'm going elsewhere to spend my money". Fabien feels threatened by the quick success of the new manager and takes on the language of social distinction vis--vis the newcomer. The time spent in the neighbourhood is what characterizes his relation to the gay milieu. He feels at ease in the Marais, in a relation of familiarity that is inherent to his sense of self and personal construction. Familiarity with others, gay sociability, grant him a degree of social recognition, coupled with his homosexual identity. The Marais is his home. He identifies with it, recognizes himself in it, in a singular relationship. Living there is his priority: "We're still looking for a place to live together, D. and me. We want to settle in the Marais but it's become impossible: way too expensive! But I've lived here for ten years, it's really the place where I feel best. It may not sound like much, but it is a big deal. You walk out, you go out shopping, you have a

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drink, and people say "Hi Fabien, how are you?", in the end everybody knows you () No way I'm leaving the Marais!". The Marais is other people: the detached mode Nicolas has lived in the Paris area for the past five years, in the banlieue. Aged 31 years, he manages a wine-bar. When he was eighteen, he left his parents' home in a rural area of southern France. He is from a humble background and his parents reluctantly "accepted" his homosexuality. He has little formal education and learned the cooking trade "on the job" in a number of places. He often finds seasonal employment, abroad in particular, and enjoys travelling. "I came to Paris because I'd wanted to try for a while () it came to a point where I said to myself, maybe I can set up a different way of life, unlike my parents', maybe a more "middle-class" lifestyle, so to speak () I figured in Paris it might work, I could make a good living. I was quite ambitious", he confides. He has a much more unstable lifestyle than he had imagined, "shacking up" with lovers, moving around, taking badly paid jobs, and often unemployed. Nicolas says he would have "enjoyed travelling regularly, having a job that calls for regular travel, like in relief work, something like that", but he also considers he has learnt a lot working in restaurants, enjoys the work and plans to open a bar some day. In professional contexts, he doesn't discuss his sexual orientation but "after a while, people catch on, gradually, I don't like to be placed in a category. I prefer to be judged on what I do". It's often through his relationships that he finds accommodation and jobs, in particular in a restaurant in the Marais. But when he discusses the neighbourhood, he's very detached. He never identified to the place, and only goes there to "pick up guys", a phrase also used in the context of drug use, which implies that his explorations in the neighbourhood are purely functional, in relation to his desire, a craving for casual sex. He goes out alone, to clubs, and meets partners there. He admits he wouldn't know how to meet them in other circumstances. His friends, even the gays, he met "outside the milieu" and he has more fun in environments that are not male-only. Even if he's had a job in the neighbourhood, he describes it only as a night place, not a day-time one, and sees it strictly as a "ghetto". The Marais, as far as he is concerned, is the others, their outlook, the lack of communication: "I don't find it all that fun. There's a sort of concrete screed () and the kind of fussy "yeah I so want to meet someone, but I pretend I'm not trying to meet anyone" () I just don't get it!".

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A place to circulate in: the distanced mode
For others, the Marais is a place they pass through, a sort of territoire circulatoire ("circulatory territory", Tarrius, 2007). For instance Adrien, a national of Luxembourg and 31-year old architect, the son of farmers, owns a flat in the Marais. He's in a stable relationship, but works in France frequently and likes to slum it in the Marais. I met him on a week night in a bar, where he was with two young provincials he'd just met, exhibiting with no perceptible embarrassment a piercing on his penis to the waiter. He invited all of us back to his place, to show off his best hospitality, and finally suggested we have an "orgy". He said that he enjoys the Marais for "partying and sex", and boasted, always in the active form ("I fucked him"), of his many conquests and his accumulated orgasms. His choice of the Marais as residence, however "has nothing to do with being gay! I don't give a shit for all those ! If I'm here, it's because it's the only place where I managed to buy a flat. Because in Paris, they won't sell easily to foreigners, they need guarantees", he explains. Adrien accounts for his choice by the good reputation of the Marais, its art galleries, the fact that it is an expensive area with a longer tradition of sales to foreigners than other Parisian neighbourhoods. His purchase is first and foremost an investment, a way of profiting from his economic capital. According to Adrien "to be happy, gays have to remain hidden. I find it absolutely devoid of interest to lock oneself up in a ghetto!". He claims homosexuals no longer encounter discriminations as used to be the case. The Marais, in his view, is an expression of what he calls "gayness", a place for those who have difficulties coming to terms with their homosexuality. He's very critical of the "vulgar camps in the 11th arrondissement" and says: "You have to accept who you are! I'm myself in every circumstance, in my work relationships, with my family, my friends, I have no problem with that. In my life, people know I'm gay. You either like me as I am or pack up". Adrien's relationship with the Marais is instrumental: when one of his young acquaintances praises the friendliness and cheapness of a bar in the area, he retorts "you have it wrong, I pay and I want to be treated accordingly". His social position allows him to dismiss economic constraints completely: "No, I just find the means. Of course, I do come from a well-off family, so today I'm well-off, because I have a good

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job, but you can always find means". It also allows him to take the upper hand in his sexual relations. Adrien absolutely doesn't identify with the gay milieu. His "indifferent ease" illustrates one way of experiencing homosexuality, between contempt and distance, already analyzed by Pollak and Schiltz (1987, 85) in professionals and the upper-middle class, from well-heeled and tolerant backgrounds, who in "setting themselves up as models for the others, are characterized by a common optimistic view of the homosexual condition, which they perceive less as a source of discrimination and marginality than as an asset allowing for a freer life".
The social distribution of the right to recognition Lefebvre saw the right to the city both as a right to difference and a right to appropriation. In this way, the right to the city is a function of access to space, either material or virtual, of recognition, which in turn depends on an individual's social position. These portraits show that recognition is by no means shared equally between all homosexuals who live in the Marais or spend time there, and that the injustice of heterosexism in public space is not experienced in the same way by all. Individuals can call on different forms of capital to relate to the gay milieu, which influences their relation to the neighbourhood. This relation can be either familiar or detached, or completely distanced. Adrien boasts of his economic capital and uses the Marais as a means to assert his status, Fabien compensates for the rejection experienced in his family with his friendly relations, experienced as rootedness, and finds a degree of symbolic compensation. Nicolas's position is intermediate, and stresses work life over the gay milieu: he constructs his social identity around the former, and its multiplicity. He is aware that going out in the Marais is the only way of meeting people like him, but he is critical of them and would like to detach himself from them. Alex, who keeps his sexual preferences secret, uses discretion as a strategy in social and professional mobility: respectability and respect for norms are central to his world-view, and the choice to remain silent has to do with the internalized obligation to adapt his behaviour according to the ruling principles of the spaces he finds himself in. Finally, the degree of engagement with the gay neighbourhood also depends on how the interviewee experiences his homosexuality in other contexts: for Fabien, there is a local convergence between his work and residence, and if he goes elsewhere to show off with his partner, it's because he wants to separate his work environment from his

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love life, in order to preserve it. The experience of discrimination has led him to emphasize community dimensions. Alex leads a double life, and his attachment to the Marais is related to his silence "outside". He constructs his identity by going out with people he finds interesting in terms of their social position, people he envies and wants to emulate. Gay sociability is a part of his social capital, that allows for both identification and recognition. For Nicolas, detachment has to do with fleeing the obligation to confess. In between two worlds, he juggles his professional and his personal lives, and goes back and forth between gay and straight spaces. Paradoxically, the person who materially is most invested in the territory is also the one who takes most distance from it, and most deftly, because he belongs to a flexible, mobile, professional elite.
Return to the gay ghetto Rather than challenge the heterosexual norm and assert homosexuals' right to the city, the gay neighbourhood appears as both a product and a producer of a specific gay sociability. It reinforces, through gentrification and normalization, the segregation of affective practices and self-expression for working-class groups, and displaces a culture of cruising that was more egalitarian and class-blind. Socio-economic and sexual hierarchies re-emerge, and polarize two homosexual cultures, even as they dominate sexual relations. The space of gay recognition, a crucial reference for a young homosexual, is steeped in social differences, which it reproduces by allowing only practices deemed acceptable; it excludes precisely the people who suffer most discrimination from their places of origin and who are likely to seek a refuge in community sociability. By projecting a representation of the gay as at peace with himself, well-off and proud, the gay neighbourhood ratifies the status quo, and renders invisible conflicts for spatial (the Marais) and social (homosexual identity) appropriation. Life stories show that for some homosexuals, the investment in the neighbourhood allows for symbolic compensation, a way of finding a place of one's own, a degree of social recognition that compensates for the rejection experienced in their work or family environment, and the constraint of having to hide in other places. For others, the spatial experience is recounted in a distant mode, as though it were mere recreation, and appearance mattered more than being. The possibility of mobilizing the gay milieu as a resource is shrinking for those who do not have the competences to access this place of gay sociability, while those who are

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accepted as they are by their family or colleagues have easier access and a more detached relation with it. For some, it is a crucial necessity, for others, it is a mere stage, a choice. Issues of accessibility and motility therefore deepen the injustices associated with being in the closet: some do not have the necessary means to leave their isolation and are obliged to remain within their assigned place. Paradoxically, aggregation, in the long run, leads to segregation. It ratifies an unfair situation (the need to hide) and doesn't challenge the city's inability to accommodate diversity.
References
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CASTELLS Manuel, The City and the Grassroots, Londres: E. Arnold, 1983. CHAUNCEY George, Gay New York: 1890-1944, Paris: Fayard, 2003. COLLET Anas, Les 'gentrifieurs' du Bas Montreuil: vie rsidentielle et vie professionnelle, Espaces et Socits, n132-133,125-141, 2008. DJIRIKIAN Alexandre, La gentrification du Marais: quarante ans dvolution de la population et des logements, Mmoire de Matrise de Gographie, Universit Paris I, 2004. FRASER Nancy, Qu'est-ce que la justice sociale ? Reconnaissance et redistribution, Paris: La Dcouverte, 2005. GIRAUD Colin, Les commerces gays et le processus de gentrification. L'exemple du quartier du Marais depuis le dbut des annes 80, Mtropoles, n5, 2009. GRSILLON Boris, Faces caches de lurbain ou lments dune nouvelle centralit? Les lieux de la culture homosexuelle Berlin, LEspace gographique, n4, 301-313, 2000. HONNETH Axel, La lutte pour la reconnaissance, Paris: Cerf, 2000. JACKSON Julian, Arcadie: sens et enjeux de l'homophilie en France, 1954-1982, Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, n53-4, 150-174, 2006. KAUFMANN Vincent, La motilit, une notion cl pour revisiter l'urbain ?, in Enjeux de la sociologie urbaine, BASSAND Michel, KAUFMANN Vincent, JOYE Dominique, 171-188, Lausanne: Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, 2007. KNOPP Laurence, Some theorical implications of gay involvement in an urban land market. Gender and political geography, Political geography quarterly, Vol.9, n4, 337352, 1990. LEFEBVRE Henri, Le droit la ville, Paris: Anthropos, 2009 [1967]. LEROY Stphane, Le Paris gay. lments pour une gographie de lhomosexualit, Annales de Gographie, n646, 579-601, 2005. MARCHANT Alexandre, Le discours militant sur l'homosexualit masculine en France (1952-1982) : de la discrtion la politisation, Mmoire de Matrise d'Histoire, Universit Paris X-Nanterre, 2005. MARCUSE Peter, La justice spatiale : la fois rsultante et cause de l'injustice sociale, Justice spatiale, n1, 58-67, 2009. MARTEL Frdric, La rose et le noir. Les homosexuels en France depuis 1968, Paris: Seuil, 2001.

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PARK R. Ezra, La Ville laboratoire social, in L'cole de Chicago, naissance de l'cologie urbaine, GRAFMEYER Yves, JOSEPH Isaac, 167-184, Paris: Flammarion, 2004 [1929]. PATTARONI Luca, La ville plurielle. Quand les squatters branlent l'ordre urbain, in Enjeux de la sociologie urbaine, BASSAND Michel, KAUFMANN Vincent, JOYE Dominique, 171-188, Lausanne: Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, 2007. POLLAK Michael, Lhomosexualit masculine ou le bonheur dans le ghetto?, Communications, n35, 37-55, 1982. POLLAK Michael, SCHILTZ Marie-Ange, Identit sociale et gestion d'un risque de sant. Les homosexuels face au sida, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, Vol.68, n1, 1987. PRTECEILLE Edmond, La sgrgation sociale a t-elle augment? La mtropole parisienne entre polarisation et mixit, Socits contemporaines, n62, 69-93, 2006 PROTH Bruno, Lieux de drague. Scnes et coulisses de la sexualit masculine , Toulouse: Octars, 2002. REDOUTEY Emmanuel, Gographie de lhomosexualit Paris, 1984 -2000, Urbanisme, n325, 59-63, 2002. RUELLAND Nadine, Le pacte civil de solidarit: importante progression en 2005, Infostat Justice, n89, Ministre de la Justice, 2005. SCHILTZ Marie-Ange, Un ordinaire insolite: le couple homosexuel, Actes de la recherche en Sciences Sociales, Vol.125, 30-43, 1998. SIBALIS Michael, Urban Space and Homosexuality: The example of the Marais, Pariss Gay Ghetto, Urban Studies, Vol. 41, n9, 1739-1758, 2004. THVENOT Laurent, L'action au pluriel. Sociologie des rgimes d'engagement , Paris: La Dcouverte, 2006.

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We were just testing what kind of man you are- negotiating masculinities in a New Mexico prison.
Bettina Van Hoven, University of Groningen We were just testing what kind of man you are- negotiating masculinities in a New Mexico prison. Bettina Van Hoven, Department of Cultural Geography, University of Groningen, PO Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, the Netherlands. Email: b.van.hoven@rug.nl
Abstract This article addresses the issue of spatial injustice/s at the level of the prison. The article begins by contextualizing prisons, introducing the spatial context of differences in implementing justice within the United States. It briefly explores the becoming and structuring of prisons and addresses prisoners identity work to illustrate the ways in which different prisoners use different resources available inside and outside of the prison in order to negotiate the experience of punishment within the US legal system. In so doing, it draws on a wider study with 21 male prisoners of different ethnic backgrounds in a New Mexico prison. In particular, drawing on work by Wetherell and Edley (1999), the article explores different kinds of masculinities expressed by prisoners as a response to the prison system as well as a way of bridging prison lives and the

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outside world. The analysis shows that prison spaces cannot be viewed as homogeneous spaces in which ideas of justice are translated into the same means of control and punishment for all prisoners.
Key words: Spatial injustice, discursive practices, masculinities, New Mexico, prison.
Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for financial support of the study and Inge Noback for her research assistance. In addition, David Sibleys intellectual input and friendship constitute an invaluable source of support.
Introduction This article addresses the issue of spatial injustice/s at the level of the prison. As far as the (legal) justice system goes, prisons are perhaps the most obvious locations established in service of this system. At the same time, they are inherently contested spaces. Looking back, they were meant to cleanse an enlightened -society-to-be of unwanted elements (e.g. the poor, the drunk, the sexually promiscuous) desirably at far away locations. Over time, notions of prisons and prisoners have changed reflecting the values of (dominant groups in) the societies in which they are placed. For instance, a justice system may place someone in the prison system for several years for the possession of soft-drugs in one nation but not another. As ideas of justice differ at the international scale, differences can be found at the national and regional scale (see below) as well as within the prison system itself. As a result, some persons are more likely to be imprisoned than others but some persons are also more likely to experience imprisonment as punishment than others. Although this article begins by introducing the spatial context of differences in implementing justice within the United States, the bulk of the article zooms in at the micro scale of the prison itself. It has been argued that the US prison system is not merely a manifestation of ideas about justice, punishment and betterment but that it serves to maintain patriarchal society because, in sum, the (perception of) displays of excessive masculinities by prisoners enable men outside of prison to feel empowered and secure in their own

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masculinities (Sabo et al., 2001 but see also Seymour, 2003). This supports Connell and Messerschmidt (2005: p. 832) who maintained that hegemonic masculinity 1 is achieved through culture, institutions and persuasion (my emphasis) but is changeable over time (and space). Institutions such as prisons can indeed be important locations for establishing (illusions of) normality, because they provide the certainty of unwanted Others that are spatially separated but nevertheless ever-present. This means, however, that the correctional system is imbued with values that are part and parcel of this patriarchal system. This is reflected in who is incarcerated, why, where, for how long and, as I will explore below, how their incarceration should be experienced. In 2008, the US justice system had legal authority over more than 1.6 million prisoners. The prison population consisted to 93 percent of males and, in the US, men were imprisoned at a rate 15 times higher than females. The male prison population consisted of 34% whites, 38% blacks and 20% Hispanics. The largest group of male prisoners (17.2%) fell in the category 25-29 years. Since 2000, the number of persons imprisoned has declined but this trend was unequally present in the different states, reflecting the level of conservatism, with New York leading a drop in the number of inmates (down 3.6% in 2008) and Pennsylvania leading a rise (up 9.1% in 2008). The overall decline was attributed to a decline in the number of imprisoned blacks since 2000. Nevertheless, black males are imprisoned at a rate 6.5 times higher than white males (Sabo et al., 2010). It is important to note, that some authors have argued that prisons, as a means to spatially segregate men, are but a part of a wider landscape of incarceration (e.g. Davis, 2001; Wacquant, 2002; Mendieta, 2004; Shabazz, 2010) from which norms and values of hegemonic masculinity become apparent. Shabazz (2010) claimed many men have experienced spatial injustice prior to their imprisonment through their class, sexuality and most often, their race. Using the example of the Robert Taylor homes in Chicago (and South Africas mining projects), he argues that carceral forms organize the living and working space of many poor and working-class black men in the United States (p.277), thus leading to prisonized subjectivities (p.277) and a preparedness for
the pattern of practice (i.e. things done, not just a set of role expectations or an identity) that
allowed mens dominance over women to continue.

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prison. Shabazz maintains with no real or abstract power [] these men learn to negotiate this world by performing prison masculinities (2010: 285). At the larger geographic scale then men are more likely to be spatially segregated (with some men more likely than others) than women. However, prison spaces cannot be viewed as homogeneous spaces in which ideas of justice are translated into the same means of control and punishment for all prisoners. The US prison system is structured using a levels system, ranging from level 1 through 62. Inmates at the lower levels generally have more privileges and freedom of movement than those at higher levels (see appendix 1 for overview of the levels system). It is possible for inmates to be credited by correctional officers for good behavior with Good Time which might enable them to move to a lower security unit. Within the levels, too, there are ways of differentiation (see also Karp, 2010). Some inmates may maintain good relations with correctional officers, or know how to circumvent spaces of control and thus earn privileges more readily than others (van Hoven and Sibley, 2008). Phillips (2001) argued that privileges emerge as powerful symbols of the reassertion of autonomy and status. Modes of social organization are built around these limited goods and services (p.15). At the micro scale, among and between prisoners, spatial injustice is enacted and utilised to achieve and maintain power (see also Owen, 1985). The introduction above suggests that the prison system involves different levels of spatial injustice. In addition to a spatial dimension, injustice has, amongst others, a gender, class and race dimension. Various authors have established an additional link with the (re)production of hegemonic masculinity and argue that the resources available for (white, middle-class, educated) men to achieve hegemonic masculinity are not equally available to all men. Messerschmidt (1993), for example, argued that crime (and imprisonment) can then become a resource for accomplishing ma sculinity, for doing gender (Seymour, 2003). Yet, different social interactions, structures and practices (see Connell, 2000) produce different gendered identities. Exactly these interactions,
It must be noted that not all prisons contain all levels. In order to be categorized into one of
these levels, prisoners receive points upon arrival according to a number of criteria, such as the type of crime committed, whether they are first-time offenders or repeat offenders, whether or not there is a record of behavioural problems- or gang membership.

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structures and practices are the context for a discussion in this article of the production of masculinities at the micro scale. The article draws on data collected in the context of a broader study on everyday experiences of prisoners at Central New Mexico Correctional Facility (CNMCF), level 2. Masculinity emerged as key theme volunteered and explored by prisoners. This article is structured in three parts. First, the article draws attention to structure by providing a brief background of (Foucauldian) representations of prisons as largely controlling and limiting spaces, but inserting more recent work that illustrates how prisons encompass material spaces and imaginary spaces, that are unseen and not susceptible to regulation by the regime and that are used by prisoners to exercise agency. Next, it discusses prisons and masculinities, and last but not least, extracts from the interviews are explored in relation to they way in which men take different positions when talking about masculinity.
Prisons, structure and agency Many prison studies draw on Foucaults work Discipline and punish. The birth of the prison (1979) as a context for their analyses. In his historical account of prisons, Foucault described prisons, along with asylums and workhouses, as a means to create modern society. Enlightenment theorists instigated a concern for humanitarian aspects of punishment which ultimately led to the conceptions of institutions as places for punishment (increasingly replacing public, corporeal punishment) (Ignatieff, 1981). The organisation and use of space in exercising punishment plays an important role in early conceptions of prison as panopticon, such as Benthams (and Foucaults readings of Bentham) where a prisoner is subject to the ever-present, all-seeing eye of the institution. Goffmans (1961) analysis of total institutions shows how space and time are regulated to achieve organisational goals. The organisation of space and time involves all aspects of life occurring in the same place and under the same authority, daily activities are conducted in the presence of others, and all activities are highly schematized and supervised. In the case of prisons, the daily schedule is centred on counts, meals, work and recreation, perhaps the distribution of medication, and lock up. Such means, or rituals, to structure prisoners everyday lives also serve to highlight the

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subservient position of inmates and are meant to produce compliance (Leger and Stratton, 1977)3. Foucauldian interpretations of prison, and to some extent Goffmans too, give priority to structure over agency by neglecting the subject of surveillance as a social being. However, later work on prisoner adaptation increasingly acknowledges prisoners personal backgrounds and agency (Irwin and Cressey, 19624; Toch, 1985; Cao, Zhao and Vandine, 1997; Paterline and Petersen, 1999)5. Although they do not use the term agency in their discussion, Paterline and Petersen (1999) propose an integrated model. In this model, they include prisoners inner world by taking into consideration non-criminal relationships outside the prison and a multitude of self-attitudes and identities, all of which can be weighed by inmates in different ways depending on particular situations and encounters. Paterline and Petersen also imply that inmates have a range of identities to choose from in different contexts and encounters. This resonates with writings by other authors who claim that prisoners may also feign compliance. Vaz and Bruno (2003) argue that, prisoners docility would only be apparent, a mask that [they] carried as long as [they] thought [they] were being observed. [They] would internalize powers eye but [they] would not identify with its values (p. 276) (see also Simon, 2005). In geography, too, some have drawn attention to spaces, social relations and exercising agency within the prison. Dirsuweits (1999) account of a womens prison in South Africa highlighted resistance and subversion as evident in trading in drugs and food, looking for partners and prostitution, but also in attempts by inmates to establish a
Additional means to achieve compliance are, for example, entry procedures or stripping
processes that inmates undergo, e.g. the replacement of personal clothing and items with institutional ones, and the assignment of a number to each prisoner as well as a system of penalties and rewards.
4 5
But see also critique by Roebuck (1962) The importation model (Cao, Zhao and Vandine, 1997), developed in response to the
deprivation model, predominantly considers prisoners criminal background outside of prison. The situational model is more dynamic and includes intra-prison relationships, i.e. inmates positioning in relation to the organisation and members of staff (and correctional officers).

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sense of home, using whatever materials at hand to designate space as personal and, to some extent, private. Baers (2005) more recent study in young offender institutions in the United Kingdom discussed how inmates were able to use consumable items, such as shampoo bottles, to personalize the otherwise alienating spaces of the prison (see also Anita Wilson (e.g. 2004) who provides rich material on the personal transformation of prison spaces, and Baer and Ravneberg (2008)) . Such accounts further question the efficacy of the prison in producing docile bodies6.
Men in prison To date, an impressive body of work on spaces of masculinities has developed, drawing on the relevance of place in negotiating masculinities and pointing to the significance of including the voices of marginalised men in theories of masculinities (see, for example, Barker, 2005; van Hoven and Hrschelmann, 2005; Aitken, 2006; Bandyopadhyay, 2006; Hopkins, 2006; Nayak, 2006; Leyshon and Brace, 2007). In the context of the above studies, it is notable that work on men in prisons has emerged significantly earlier, namely from the 1940s. With regards to work on men in prison, prominent studies were conducted by sociologists, such as Clemmer (1940), Jacobs (1977) and Sykes (1958). The often cited study A society of captives by Gresham Sykes (1958), for example, provides insights into the relationship between environment, behaviour and the construction of masculinity. Sykes explained prisoner behaviour, in particular violence, as a result of psychological trauma experienced through the prison environment itself and the loss of freedom7. He interprets the formation of a prisoner subculture as a way of dealing with deprivations and preserving the self.
But, see also ethnographic research, such as Wahidins work with older inmates (Wahidin,
2006), who demonstrates the explanatory power of Foucauldian theory.

7
More recently, such arguments still find support through work such as by Carrabine and
Longhurst (1998) who stated that militaristic management styles in prison contribute to the display of excessive masculinity. The spatial constraints encountered and everyday survival strategies produce a kind of masculinity that perpetuates crime, violence and other destructive behaviours (Fraley, 2002: p.86).

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Even though more recent work on prisoners and masculinities has begun to see masculinity in a more relational way (which resonates with changes in writings on inmate adaptation), Gresham Sykes work is still echoed by recent studies on prison and masculinities (see, for example, Phillips, 2001; Sabo et al., 2001; Hua-Fu, 2005; Karp, 2010). Sykes (as do others) emphasises the significance of the prison code in prisoners everyday life. The prison code emphasises the superiority of masculine toughness and insensitivity. A key concern for prisoners then is to find means to be, to become or to remain masculine. The presence of a variety of (subordinate) masculinities results in the establishment of an inmate hierarchy. From Sykes point of view in 1958, a key criterion of maleness in society was heterosexual intercourse. In the homosocial environment of the prison, the achievement of dominant masculinity relied on alternative means to be a man. Unlike men on the streets, men in prison relied on these alternative means exclusively and excessively which produced a context in which manhood was judged by accompaniments of sexuality rather than sexuality itself (p. 98). Therefore, some behaviour was not accepted and regarded as weak and/ or lacking self-restraint, for example preying on the weak or providing sexual favours for personal gain. Since 1958 changes in the prison system have effected changes the inmate subculture. Paterline and Petersen (1999) referred to an increase of inmates within the following five groups: mentally ill inmates, drug and alcohol abusers, youth offenders, lifers, and gang members. In many ways, prison life has lost some of its clear and ordering structures including a clear division between prisoners and the prison organisation. Hunt et al. (1993) ascribe these increasing uncertainties in prisoners lives largely to the attempts of the prison system to control prison gangs, such as using confidential informants, segregating gang members in different buildings and prisons, intercepting gang communications, setting up task forces to monitor and track gang members, locking up gang leaders in high security prisons and locking down entire institutions (p.400). Even though inmate relationships evolve around group cohesion and the exploitation of inmates, solidarity among them has declined significantly (Cordelia, 1983). Now, a key problem for adjusting to life behind bars is prisoners relations with other prisoners (see also van Hoven and Sibley, 2008; Sibley and van Hoven, 2009). The assignment of loyalties and behavioural codes has become more messy. In this context, the cultural contruction of manhood to borrow Phillips (2001) terminology, has

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become more differentiated, more flexible as well. It is important then to revisit prisoner identities and, as Wetherell and Edley (1999) state to understand the nitty gritty of negotiating masculine identities and mens identity strategies (p.74). Referring to the free world rather than the context of prison, Wetherell and Edley suggest that identification is a matter of the procedures in action through which men live/ talk/ do masculinity and [] these procedures are intensely local (situationally realized) and global (dependent on broader conditions of intelligibility) (p.353). Since their thinking about performing masculinity is relevant to the analysis of my own data, I will elaborate their study in some more detail. Social psychologists Margaret Wetherell and Nigel Edley (1999) discuss how hegemonic masculinity is appropriated by men in their everyday lives 8. More specifically, they address norms conveyed and enacted by men in different situations: when do men try to conform to their ideals of masculinity and when do they resist it? Their analysis falls into three general positions men appear to take in talking about masculinity -the heroic position, the ordinary position and the rebellious position. In contrast to the argot roles proposed by Sykes, the three general positions can be taken by the same men in different situations. The ordinary position describes situations in which men embrace conventional ideas and social practices of masculinity and their attempts to embody hegemonic masculinity. The rebellious position defines events in which men contrast themselves to this heroic masculine imaginary position by labelling it macho and by positioning themselves as average men instead. Respondents also recount rebellious events which are marked by activities they consider unusual for their gender but which they embrace as being one of the many sides of their being men. In the context of prisons, the heroic position has been recognized, for example by Whitehead (2005) who notes that the Hero may be seen as setting a standard of masculinity that overarches social divisions between men [] a mans claim to masculinity does not depend on his social, cultural or racial positioning, but rather on his ability to display transcendental courage.(p.413). In contexts where other aspects of identity are less relevant than ones identity as a man, the tension between the imagined ideal masculine self and lived reality causes anxiety at the relational and
A recent update by Connell (with Messerschmidt, 2005) acknowledges Wetherell and Edleys
work as advancing the way in which hegemonic masculinity has been conceptualized thus far.

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ontological level: a man may both be afraid and afraid of being unable to transcend his fear, [of] showing nerve, or in the words respondents to my research of having a heart. The remainder of this article discusses ways in which prisoners perform, interpret and reinterpret masculinity under the conditions of life in a minimum security prison in New Mexico.
Case study New Mexico - Data Collection The respondents for the interviews were selected with the help of prison case workers. Respondents were chosen from a minimum security level for several reasons, the most important being their willingness and ability to cooperate and the absence of a security risk for the (female) researcher. The sample was comprised of 21 males of whom the youngest was 24 years and the oldest was 59 years. The majority of the respondents (11) were Hispanic, 5 were Anglo-white, 4 were African-Americans and 1 Native American. The majority of the respondents had been in and out of prison since they were teenagers, 6 respondents were first time offenders. Half of the respondents served a sentence of 5 to 10 years, 4 served a sentence over 10 years. Three respondents reported some form of gang affiliation. During the in-depth interviews the following topics were explored: the prisoners personal/ family/ criminal background (depending on which information the prisoner volunteered); first impressions of the prison; the prisoners daily routines; their physical, mental and material well-being; the nature and quality of contacts with other prisoners, with prison staff and friends and family; rules and regulations in the prison and the prisoners view of themselves at the time of the interview. It is important to note that th e interview was strongly influenced by the topics prioritized by the prisoners themselves. Start up questions on sexuality and gender identity were not asked, instead masculinity was explored in the context of the above themes. In addition to the research project taking an interest in everyday geographies in general, there were other reasons for this choice: the respondents were assigned to the researcher by case workers rather than approached by the researcher following a longer presence in the prison (e.g. as observer). There was little opportunity to establish trust and rapport with prisoners prior to the interview and the researcher was not able to get a feel for the personality of the respondent. The researcher therefore felt it was important to take cues from the content

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and emotional charge of the interview. This concurs with perceptions of some other authors work on prison masculinities. Davidson (2007), for example, noted: to talk to different men about, say, their favourite music most likely would not create the same amount of anxiety, nervousness, pride, shame, anger, boasting, privilege, and pain that may accompany talk about masculinity(p.379). And Sabo et al. (2001) claimed that prison is an ultramasculine world where nobody talks about masculinity(p.3). In spite of these reservations, the interviews revealed a wealth of statements on the ways in which men perceived and performed their masculinities.
- Prison masculinity at a minimum security prison in New Mexico It is not difficult to discern the heroic position (Wetherell and Edley, 1999) from the prisoner interviews. It transpires from the analysis of prisoner stories that these heroic positions are assigned to specific times (the past), situations (e.g. initiations) and locations (higher security levels or facilities).
- Heroic Positions The quotes below describe challenges encountered that helped the respondent establish his position as a strong male. Respondents describe themselves as being in control, meeting the challenge of a risky situation.
George B. (44 years, Anglo-white) explains: When you walked into Santa Fe Main, back then you had to mind your own business, do your own time You had to go in and you had to fight. Dont make no difference if you win or lose. If you had to stab them youd stab them, if you had to kill them, youd kill them, whatever it took In the system of the 70s and 80s it was predatory, you know, they preyed on all the weak people ... That was a very violent system [ ] But if you didnt ha ve a heart, or wouldnt fight, they would steal your kit, or rape you or whatever, beat the shit out of you and you would have to go to the protection unit for the rest of your days. A lot of people were scared, they were afraid to die. I was. I was afraid to die but I wasnt going to let anything happen to me, so I fought. Until I earned my respect. George B. recalls his experiences as a young prisoner at a time when the system was different, before policy demanded the separation of gang leaders (see discussion above). He begins by saying that you had to fight in order to be distinguished from the weak prisoners who would, by definition, be preyed upon. It was a system in which

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identities were formed through establishing opposites, along the lines of not-guard and not-weak using the resources available: violence, sexual domination and accumulation of property. However, George also reveals that violence was taken on as a means of survival and did not constitute a natural feature of the prisoner. He st ates that although he was successful in adopting the required features, he also experienced fear and uncertainty.
Raul (47 years, Hispanic) recalls similar experiences of being tested as a new prisoner but also reveals that these experiences belonged to a past time and regime. He says: At that time you have 160 people on 1 cell block, there was a lot of violence and not just anybody could walk the line, you were tested. [] Me personally, I was in an A facility back in 99. [] Within a short amount of t ime a person came up to me and said Hey are you this person? I said yeah. Well I heard these bad things about you. So get your shank [homemade knife] and Ill meet you in the yard after dinner. [] Well I dont know this guy, hes tattooed from head to toe [] I had no clue what he was talking about. But it did give me this feeling like wow, where am I, where did I get myself into. But I knew that no matter what it was I was going to have to handle it or lock it up. Lock it up, do my time and 5 year segregation which is not a choice to me. So I sleeked a shank and waited for the dinner call. [] When you get to the yard you pass one gate and once you pass that gate they lock that gate. No, you are in the yard and there is no way out. [] The person I had to confront was standing there with some friends of his waiting for me. I approach them and asked what the problem was [] because it better be worth dying for. [] I listen to them and no matter what happened today Im taking one of them with me. It were 5 or 6 of them so they were going to stick the shit out of me but Im taking one with me. [] After they had seen that I was willing to take it to the final step they came forward and said: We were just testing you, see what kind of man you are, if you have heart. And you have a lot of heart [] you came by yourself. So that broke the ice and I was respected throughout my time. Raul's recollections reveal a few more interesting aspects. He is being tested by a prisoner who is tattooed from head to toe but does not immediately appreciate the authority that comes with bodily markers; the actions required of him do not constitute a part of his self-ascribed identity. Instead of responding directly with (readiness for) violence, Raul contemplates what options he has and what results different actions will yield. He concludes that he needs to confront his challenger, largely in order to establish a sense of stability for his remaining time in prison. Although Rauls is illustrative of a heroic position, there are nuances in his account, too.

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It is important to note that the respondents use of examples from a past time and different place has certain implications for the way in which they may have perceived and now perceive their masculinity. It appears from the extracts that the respondents feel they had nothing to lose by displaying the described behaviour and, in fact, needed to display it in order to create and protect boundaries which meant protection from bodily harm in the future. The minimum security level they were at during the interview poses a rather different context in which to perform masculinity compared with the medium or maximum security levels. Last but not least, when seen in the context of the entire interview, the heroic positions resonate a rite of passage, a memory of youth and a knowledge of having matured since and possibly of not requiring said behaviour to protect boundaries and their body any longer. George A. (24 years, Black) explains: These days, it is alright to hang out with som ebody of another race. In level 3, it is still somewhat segregated. Not in level 2 anymore. When you are here in level 2, you are getting ready to go home. Every inmate knows, you have a short time left. So you are not trying to get into real trouble. - Ordinary Positions In their analysis, Wetherell and Edley described those instances as ordinary positions where respondents describe themselves as normal, moderate or average. To identify an ordinary position using the same definition in the context of the prison is not, however, straightforward. Prisoners have already been labelled as abnormal, undesirable and abject persons by society. To reiterate, for society normal prison behaviour would be excessive and destructive. What then, in the context of the prison and from the perspective of prisoners could be viewed as ordinary positions? As noted above, heroic positions were usually associated with past regimes or high security levels. Prisoners interviews at CNMCF level 2 now position themselves in opposition to the excessive behaviour of young prisoners, which they almost caricatured, and which helps them view themselves as normal. Anthony (45 years, Mexican) illustrates this: These younger kids they dont care []. The mentality they have, theyre getting tattoos, always working out and getting strong, see whos the toughest macho, you know what a macho is showing off, Im the best, Im the baddest. I used to be like that. When I was a kid. An important means of establishing normality for many prisoners is heterosexuality. However, the interviews do not reveal a universal, violent response to homosexuality. Gary (42 years, Irish), for example, talks about his (Mexican) homosexual bunk mate

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whom he tolerated as long as his sexual activities remained out of sight and outside of Garys personal space. Gary: I told them, as long as you dont bring that over here I aint got a problem. You do your thing and Ill do my thing and well be fine. But then they were at two in the morning - happened to be sitting next to my bed doing their thing. Interviewer: Too close? Gary: Too damn close. I was getting the creeps. Although Garys strategy initially is avoidance, he does tell other prisoners which results in gossip and name-calling. Gary: [They were] calling them homo and anything else you can imagine they were called all kinds of stuff. In this particular case, the bunkmates identity as Mexican afforded him a higher status that that as gay person which implies unquestioned support from fellow Mexican prisoners. As a result, Gary was caught unawares and injured by hot saltwater thrown in his face, leaving him with severe burn marks. Most prisoners in this research agreed, though, that, their lives at present were characterised by just wanting to get by, lying low and doing their time without getting into trouble. This is not to say that they are model prisoners, instead they make careful choices about what kind of transgressive behaviour they adopt in what contexts and at what times. At times, doing something against the rules is necessary for them to be normal. Raul (47 years, Hispanic), for example, uses contact with prisoners who have the means and connections that help him establish a quiet existence, mostly separate from other prisoners. Raul: You just ask: Who do you need to talk to, who makes everything happen? When I first got here, there was a gang guy here. He worked up here with the staff and everything, and he could make anything happen. [..]I went to him and told him I have money [] so get me a job that I wont be bothered with anybody else, do my laundry for me, give me anything I need as far as for a bunk area [] and let me do my time. [] Let me think about the things that I need to do, talk to my family, and writing my letters, watching TV and doing my time. I did the crime and I am doing my time. Let me do that and I will be out of the way. Rauls interview demonstrates that some men are able to position themselves as ordinary because they have the resources that allow them to avoid violence as a means

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to determine their self-identity. George B. (44 years, Anglo-white) gives another example of being normal in terms of the outside world in relation to his work. He says: I work on the utility crew, I do the hardest labour they got, pluck weeds, chop logs, you know whatever needs to be done from here to over there across the street. Anywhere really, we gotta keep this place tidy [] Were always doing something every day. Whatever has to be done. Even at night sometimes. [] Its a good job, its hard labour, it really is. Its a benefit to me, thats why I do it. [] Ive worked all my life, Ive never been without a job. I like to work. So after all these years, when I do finally get out, I wanna be able to work. Not like these guys here who are not used to working. Im gonna go work and Im gonna have a job. Its a benefit to me. Again in this example, certain resources are utilised. George uses resources similar to many men in the free world: hard labour. Moreover, he views his works as a link between his past and his future outside of prison, he implies that he needs to maintain the skill to be able to work in order to be able to gain access to paid employment- which in turn implies being able to contribute to the household income of his family, buy consumer items that will afford status etc. The quotes suggest that prisoners continually shift between reinterpreting their behaviour as ordinary either in the context of and by the standards of the prison or those of the outside world.
- Rebellious positions In Wetherell and Edleys study, men taking on rebellious positions described occasions in which they were unconventional. Respondents emphasised that they felt being masculine just meant being themselves which implied a rejection of macho masculinities and could include activities unusual for [their] gender such as knitting and cooking (Wetherell and Edley, 1999: p.347), as well as being caring and being the main caretaker in the family. In the above discussion, I already pointed at the respondents reinterpretation of their behaviour to fit the specific situation described in the interview. As a result, some quotes used in the above section could equally be discussed here. For example, George B. (44years, Anglo-white) emphasises that other prisoners have no interest in working, thus portraying them as normal prisoners. He feels that work will help him be normal by the standards of the outside world. But in the context of the prison, he may be seen as rebellious. In fact, George B. provides other examples of contested notions of normal. He describes his relations with some correctional officers

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(COs) as amicable and notes that at present and at level 2 such relations are okay but in the past, they would have broken the prisoner code. There is COs in here that, if it came down to it, I would defend their life ... the one I work for, he retires this year, the end of this year. There is nothing I wouldnt do for that man. Because he has nothing but respect for us, he would help us in any way he could. Theres, I mean that man, I dont see him as a CO, hes a boss, we work with him, Ive worked with him for years and hes earned a lot of respect. If one of these guys tried to jump on him or hurt him, I would be there to help him. I wouldnt do that back in the day, but I would now. The resources utilised by George here cross the them -us boundary present in earlier work (see above). He highlights respect as a key characteristic of his relations with the officer, something that could, by definition, only be afforded to fellow prisoners in the past. It seems here that the boundaries between groups of people are blurring but perhaps also between the institution and the outside world. There are other examples to be found in the interviews, though, that refer to an inclusion of more feminine traits as a part of the masculine self. George B. describes doing crafts, i.e. drawing and making decorative items, but reinterprets these as a means to generate money to send home which in turn helps secure his position as a normal father in the outside world. He says: Its hard because some of these guys they dont have the income or money to [cook]. They dont have money to do it. [] I would make money every day. I hussle. I do a lot of different things, everything I see is money. I can get money off a dead weed if I want to. Theres a lot of ways to make money if you know how to do it. [] Well, right now its... I got a bunch of dead weed right here haha. Ill find pieces of wood somewhere and make a little case. Ill take these weeds and spray em with wax and arrange them inside the little box and put Plexiglas over it or whatever. Ill get 20 dollars for it. [] Ill sell it in here, one of the inmates will buy it for 20 dollars to give to his wife or whatever. Somebody. Things like that. Anthony (45 years, Mexican), too gives a glimpse of an emotional, more feminine side, although he describes that he hides this from other inmates. First, Anthony takes on feminine tasks of the banquets organisation (serving, cleaning), then Anthony talks about being overwhelmed by emotions when watching children play within the confines of the prison. Anthony notes: We have the banquets. We have Mexican food. [] I served the food and I cleaned up. It was wonderful. [] Families came, kids came. [] They had a piata, it was great I loved it. It was great to see the kids smiling, they had a

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blast. You know it made me cry. Made me miss my granddaughter [] It was just good to other families, see their loved ones in prison and that theyre okay and theyll be home soon. We had fun, we got together and had fun. We took pictures. [] What made my banquet was to see the kids having fun. It made me cry. I had to go to the bathroom so they wouldnt see me cry. Cause they were so happy.
Discussion The material quoted from the New Mexico study first of all illustrates that men do not define their masculinities primarily through violence and unruly behaviour, as has been suggested elsewhere, even though there were some parallels to Sykes work when prisoners have taken on quasi argot roles. Old divisions between prisoners and the organization are less strict and solidarity expressed among the group of prisoners has declined (Hunt et al. 1993). Inmates do their own time and seek alliances that serve their needs and personal goals. In so doing, they draw on different kinds of masculinities. In many ways, the New Mexico case supports Wetherell and Edleys findings on mens talk about masculinity. However, Frosch et al. (2003) contended that Wetherell and Edleys research falls short of explaining why men can be macho or new men. Frosch et al. ask What is it that produces the specific choice of location a particular individual makes amongst the available identity positions? (p.40). And in addition, which needs are being met [] by the position which is taken up (p.52). In this research, a vailable resources seemed to play an important role in picking an identity position during the interview. Violence and association with other prisoners were key factors in establishing a prisoner identity as capable, or even dominant men in the past (heroic position). But masculinities are continuously negotiated, continuously shifting and changing depending, for example, on the racial or age group they belong to. Dissociation from other prisoners and access to income to facilitate either this or a bridge to their lives outside of prison were important factors in establishing the present self-identity (ordinary position) of prisoners. It needs to be reiterated that the organizational context in this study played an important role in determining the kind of masculinities found. The study was undertaken at a minimum security level which means that the prison organization views its inmates as suited for reintegration into mainstream society in the near future. George A. (24 years,

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Black) maintains that it is not a real prison and Anthony (45 years, Mexican) emphasizes that this prison is, relatively, the best place to do time because the prison organization relies more on normative power than coercive power, meaning fewer threats of physical sanctions by the organization (Etzioni, 1977). Prisoners at minimum security perhaps feel a smaller need to act out against the system and remain more in control in their response to aggravating situations concerning other inmates in order to avoid repercussions such as segregation or the extension of their prison time. Certainly, further in-depth research at different security levels would shed more light on this. As noted above, prison spaces cannot be viewed as homogeneous spaces in which ideas of justice are translated into the same means of control and punishment for all prisoners. The data for this study has illustrated how institutional ideas of justice are experienced in different ways based on individual characteristics of prisoners. Those with years of experiences in the prison system, those that are older, those with more available income and those belonging to a dominant social group usually are able to find ways to alleviate the experience of punishment somewhat. Sometimes, this is done at the expense of other prisoners, for example when labor, prime locations in the prison, or other services are bought or traded. A number of prisoners have begun to actively shape their identities in ways they think will potentially be successful in the free world, for example, through hard work and nurturing relations outside. However, and unfortunately, it is likely that many prisoners will encounter resistance in their attempt to shake off their previous identity as prisoner, or they might return to unfavorable living conditions and socio-economic environments which put them at risk of recidivism or even suicide (see, for example, Farrell and Marsden, 2008; Petersilia, 2003; Rosenfeld et al., 2005). For these prisoners then, having served their sentence, having done justice by the standards of society, does not provide more equal access to resources needed to (re-)establish themselves as masculine. They continue to lack real or abstract power and often remain a part of landscapes of incarceration (see also Shabazz, 2010 in the discussion above).

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DAVIS Angela Y., Race, gender, and prison history: from the convict le ase system to the supermax prison, in Prison Masculinities, Donald Sabo, Terry A. Kupers and Willie Londen, 35-45, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. DIRSUWEIT Teresa, Carceral spaces in South Africa: a case study of institutional power, sexuality and transgression in a womens prison, Geoforum, Vol. 30, 71-83, 1999. ETZIONI Amitai, Power, goals, and organisational compliance structures, in The Sociology of Corrections, Robert G. Leger and John R. Stratton, New York: Wiley and Sons , 7-19, 1977. FARRELL Michael, MARSDEN John, Acute risk of drug-related death among newly released prisoners in England and Wales, Addiction, Vol. 103, n 2, 251255, 2008. FOUCAULT Michel, Discipline and Punish. The birth of a prison, New York: Vintage Books, 1979. FRALEY Steve. Book Review Sabo, D., Kupers, T.A. and London, W. (2001) Prison masculinities. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, Contemporary Justice Review, Vol. 5, 85-88, 2002. FROSH Steve, PHOENIX Ann, PATTMAN Rob, Taking a stand: Using psychoanalysis to explore the positioning of subjects in discourse, British Journal of Social Psychology Vol. 42, 39-53, 2003. GOFFMAN Erving, Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates, Chicago, IL: Aldin, 1961. HOPKINS Peter E., Youthful Muslim masculinities: gender and generational relations, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 31, n 3, 337-352, 2006. HUA-FU Hsu, The patterns of masculinity in prison sociology: a case study in one Taiwanese prison, Critical Criminology, Vol. 13, 1-16, 2005. HUNT Geoffrey, RIEGEL Stephanie, MORALES Tomas, WALDORF Dan, Changes in prison culture: prison gangs and the case of the Pepsi Generation, Social Problems, Vol. 40, 398-409, 1993. IGNATIEFF Michael, State, civil society and total institutions: a critique of recent social histories of punishment, Crime and Justice, Vol. 3, 153-192, 1981. IRWIN John, CRESSEY Donald R., Thieves, Convicts and the inmate culture, Social Problems, Vol. 10, n 2, 142-155, 1962.

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JACOBS James B., Stateville: The penitentiary in mass society, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. JEFFERSON Tony, Subordinating hegemonic masculinity, Theoretical Criminology, Vol. 6, n 1, 63-88, 2002. KARP David R., Unlocking men, unmasking masculinities: doing mens work in prison, The Journal of Mens Studies, Vol. 18, n 1, 63-83, 2010. LEGER Robert G., STRATTON John R., Correctional institutions as complex organizations, in The Sociology of Corrections, Robert G. Leger and John R. Stratton, 7-19, New York: Wiley and Sons, 1977. LEYSHON Michael, BRACE Catherine, Men and the Desert: Contested masculinities In Ice Cold in Alex, Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, Vol. 14, n 2, 163-182, 2007. MENDIETA Eduardo, Plantations, ghettos, prisons: US racial geographies, Ethics, Place & Environment, Vol. 7, n 1, 43-59, 2004. MESSERSCHMIDT James, Masculinities and Crime: Critique and reconceptualization of theory, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993. NAYAK Anoop, Displaced Masculinities: Chavs, Youth and Class in the Post-industrial City, Sociology, Vol. 40, n 5, 813-831, 2006. OWEN Barbara A., Race and gender relations among prison workers, Crime & Delinquency, Vol. 31, n 1, 147-159, 1985. PATERLINE Brent A., PETERSEN David M., Structural and social determinants of prisonization, Journal of Criminal Justice, Vol. 27, 427-441, 1999. PETERSILIA Joan, When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. PHILLIPS Jenny, Cultural construction of manhood in prison, Psychology of Men & Masculinity, Vol. 2, n 1, 13-23, 2001. ROEBUCK Julian, A critique of Thieves, convicts and the inmate culture, Social Problems, Vol. 11, n 2, 193-200, 1962. ROSENFELD Richard, WALLMAN Joel, FORNANGO Robert, The contribution of exprisoners to crime rates, in Prisoner reentry and crime in America, Jeremy Travis, Christy Ann Visher, 80- 104, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005. SABO Donals, KUPERS Terry A., LONDON Willie, Prison masculinities. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001.

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SABOL William J., WEST Heather C., COOPER Matthew, Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin. Prison in 2008, Washington: US Department of Justice, 2010. SEYMOUR Kate, Imprisoning masculinity, Sexuality & Culture, Vol. 7, n 4, 27-55, 2003. SHABAZZ Rashad, So high you cant get over it, so low you cant get under it: carceral spatiality and black masculinities in the United States and South Africa, Souls, Vol. 11, n 3, 276-294, 2010. SIBLEY David, VAN HOVEN Bettina, The contamination of personal space- boundary construction in a prison environment, Area, Vol. 41, n 2, 198-206, 2009. SIMON Bart, The return of panopticism: supervision, subjection and the new surveillance, Surveillance and Society, Vol. 3, n 1, 1-20, 2005. SYKES Greshem M., The society of captives. A study of a maximum security prison, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958. TOCH Hans, The catalytic situation in the violence equation, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 15, 105-123, 1985. VAN HOVEN Bettina, HRSCHELMANN Kathrin, Spaces of Masculinities. London: Routledge, 2005. VAN HOVEN Bettina, SIBLEY David, Just duck: the role of vision in the production of prison spaces, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 26, n 6, 10011017, 2008. VAZ Paulo, BRUNO Fernanda, Types of self-surveillance: from abnormality to individuals at risk, Surveillance and Society, Vol. 1, n 3, 272-291, 2003. WACQUANT Los, From slavery to mass incarceration: rethinking the race question in the US, New Left Review, Vol. 13, 41-60, 2002. WAHIDIN Azrini, A Foucauldian analysis: experiences of elders in prison in Foucault and Aging, WAHIDIN Azrini, POWELL Jason L., 115-128, New York: Nova Science, 2006. WETHERELL Margaret, EDLEY Nigel,Negotiating hegemonic masculinity: Imaginary positions and psycho-discursive practices, Feminism and Psychology, Vol. 9, n 3, 335356, 1999. WHITEHEAD Antony, Man to man violence: how masculinity may work as a dynamic risk factor, The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, Vol. 44, n 4, 411-422, 2005.

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WILSON Anita, Four days and a breakfast: time, space and literacy/ ies in the prison community in Spatialising Literacy Research and Practice, Leander Kevin, Sheehy Margaret, 67-90, New York, Peter Lang, 2004.

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Women and the Local: Promotion or New Confinement in African Cities?

Monique Bertrand, University of Paris 1-IRD Translator: Laurent Chauvet, IFAS Women and the Local: Promotion or New Confinement in African Cities? Monique Bertrand, Research Director, Development Research Institute UMR 201 Development and Societies, University of Paris 1-IRD Translator: Laurent Chauvet, IFAS
Although this article is inspired by a study of West African capital cities, its intention is to contribute more generally to debates concerning gender-based territorial issues and spatial politics. In cities undergoing metropolisation, in Mali and Ghana in particular, gender-based issues are found first in land management analyses which, already from the beginning of the 1990s, highlight a breakthrough for women applying for building lots in certain land segments and through specific land access networks. These analyses also confirmed the increasing importance of women in urban politics during Africas democratic transitions (Bertrand, 2001). At the same time, increasing residential mobility marked the integration and jeopardising of women per se, and in their relations to men. The influx of young girls observed in Bamako, seems to be linked to domestic employment and to the employment of their elders in urban areas. Almost a decade

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later, an analysis of residential practices within the Greater Accra Region highlighted the fact that adults had managed to secure land and housing markets (Bertrand, 2004)1. Today, womens empowerment (i.e. freedom of choice and action according to the World Bank) is geographically related for several reasons. It concerns first of all the impact of gender studies in the general problematic of development, particularly in SubSaharan Africa (UNDP, 2003; Imam, et al., 2004), which refers to an older and more structured tradition in Anglophone academic circles2. Secondly, with the generalisation of structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s, their subsequent criticism and the definition of the Millennium Development Goals, international donors for development re-assessed the issue of poverty and set out targets for its reduction (World Bank, 2001)3. Thirdly, with a view to meeting or in anticipation of such programmes and objectives, civil societies in developing countries have expressed a desire to be recognised, particularly women. This often widespread pressure came from NGOs, community-based associations and various forms of decentralised co-operation. This article examines the concomitant promotion of women and the local in development issues, and questions the political meaning of refocusing on women. According to which models of citizen participation does development appear fairer? Couldnt it lead to new instances of spatial injustice when it creates confinements under the appearance or within the limits of promotion? In Sub-Saharan Africa, of importance in this regard is the Project principle which is now dominant in urban development, and in the formulation of urban management standards. Concernin g conditions, womens capacities for appropriation and exploitation justify more analyses, but these are beyond the scope of this article. Among the three elements referred to above, we will focus on
Bertrand, 2004; also Bertrand Monique, Linsertion des femmes chefs de mnage dans la
rgion du Grand Accra, Ghana. Mnages, couples, individuation, Journe dtude Genre, Ingalits et Territoire, 24 May 2002, Bordeaux, Regards-CNRS and IFAID-Aquitaine.
2
The crossing of colonial histories and womens history gives rise to different orientations in The third of the eight MDGs endeavours to promote gender equality and womens
particular (Bulbeck, 1998; Hugon, 2004).

3
autonomisation, while the fifth is more classically dedicated to the improvement of maternal health.

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the second, i.e. policy formulation, before considering how it interferes with the differentiated trajectories of local political space construction.
1. New Development Idealities and Conditionalities Since the 1990s, structural adjustment programmes aimed at the economies of the South have given way to new discourses and credit systems. International donors promote the social dimension of development and fight against poverty. This change is reflected in the diagnosis of the risks associated with poverty (Lachaud, 1997 and 1999). Development results which were previously reported to national accounting, are now also evaluated by the yardstick of household living conditions before being set against a multidimensional approach of vulnerability (Rakodi, 1995; Chambers, 1995) 4. The impact of the informal sector on survival strategies is now the focus of attention. In this regard, we are looking into womens contribution to home economics and low wage employment: food production and trade, exchanges and donations as well as therapy businesses. Indeed, in urban areas in particular, households have shown to hold out against the depreciation of their purchasing power through the increasing involvement of youth and women in small commercial activities. This affects the way relationships between generations and genders are structured (Adjamagbo, et al., 2009). Expert studies dedicated to poverty advocate moral requirements in particular. But, as the need for in-depth analyses of the problem is being felt, e.g. as regards the more equitable access of producers and users to land resources, their implementation in the Poverty Reduction Strategies and in targeted projects, in fact, comes down to the compartmentalised management of the poor. In addition, the World Bank often refers to women through what is supposed to be promoted as a collective subject The voices of the poor crying out for change (Narayan, et al., 2000 and 2002; Blackden and Bhanu, 1999).
Rhetoric Chain of Poverty Reduction Strategies
For a sectorial application involving the gender-related dimension of poverty, see Booth, et al.,
2000; Turner and Fouracre, 1995.

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During the last two decades, the terms of reference have been expanding and those involved in poverty reduction have been arguing for some form of intrinsic process, while frequently referring to previous and later terms of reference, listed as follows (as if to obtain credits by following a compulsory set of steps): adjusting the offer of commercial services to the solvability of the demand, ensuring stabilised partnership between public and private actors, providing a security net mechanism for the destitute, imperatively ensuring good governance (rolling back the state, decentralisation, participation), managing natural resources sustainably, promoting women and, finally, developing cultural heritage. In addition to balanced national accounting, new requirements have been imposed upon states and organisations requesting loans, often echoing UN conferences. Yet, with agendas renewed on an international scale, organisations benefitting from loans appear to be divided up into broad categories: young/old, migrant/indigenous, active/idle etc. Poverty figures are treated independently from one another and from an analysis of wealth: unemployed graduates, volunteers agreeing to take pre-retirement, economic micro-operators, women heading households affected by droughts, war etc. Cities are also carved into poverty-solving labels ready for financial support: high-intensity labour projects, land servicing, community rehabilitation, alternative offers of service and opening up, etc. In this adjustment of displays and actions, the gender dimension appears to be set in many development-related themes. Combining the theme of women with concerns of land management, purification, out-of-season market gardening, basic health and the repatriation of international migration savings, amongst others. Country by country, the increasing number of seminars dealing with and recycling these themes cannot be understood without this overall rhetorical refocusing: once the state rigidities have been stigmatised by structural adjustment, development strategies race out of control by mutually reinforcing one another. Engendering Development Women and the Local: A Virtuous Pair
Among redundant paired relations, the gender-based and local development relation is particularly promising. In the middle of the 2000s, the World Banks website PovertyNet promoted the reinforcement of womens capacities, by referring to the keywords:

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participation, community development and environment. The gender page of the UNDP is also linked to the pages on poverty, the environment and governance. It is in this context of the wide-ranging promotion of civil society that the women subject emerges, sometimes as an obvious actor to be developed, sometimes as a potential to be revealed. Yet, for over two decades now, these themes have also been promoting another redundancy effect internationally, concerning the local. Just as the Conference on Women held in Beijing in 19955 had an impact, the institutional reforms of decentralisation justify the attention paid by donors to the social dimension of the adjustment. They also justify that the women component of local development, confers upon the basic referent of geographic space real virtues to fight against the general impoverishment process in the South: solidarity versus exclusion, mobilisation versus abdication and abstention, democracy versus vote-catching. Formulated in community or municipal terms6, this territorial refocusing is associated with primary sociability and basic economic solidarity. However, the geographic referent remains vague, variable and not fully delimited. The local is sometimes used to describe the position of a metropolitan district in relation to the regional or national environment, sometimes pieces of a town: deprived suburbs, ethnic enclaves or islands of poverty in a truly mixed urban network. Just as in rural areas where sometimes it refers to a set of village communities having decided on a common county-town, sometimes it only concerns an association of producers within a restricted land. This vagueness is claimed indeed, unlike administrative strictness, as a condition for regulation or even for an end to financial or environmental crises which would be inherent to proximity spaces. It is in this uncertainty that women are increasingly representing a source of inspiration for thinking globally / acting locally. Such a bottom-up refocusing implies first of all that sub-groups need to be isolated so as to define the potential targets of predetermined
Many NGOs took part in the 1995 Conference on Women and contributed to making their
rights and needs more legible in their respective countries.

6
Creation of new communes in Mali, institutional reinforcement of districts in Ghana. Both
countries are designated as being exemplary by their donors in the decentralisation process currently taking place in Africa.

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programmes, i.e. women in search of micro-credit, women responsible for foodproducing businesses, migrant girls oriented towards domestic work and other new types of entrepreneurship. The adopted methodology to isolate sub-groups often refrains from making comparisons, all things being otherwise equal, between these categories in their different contexts. Nonetheless, women as head of households are certainly catching the attention of donors (Lockwood and Whitehead, 1999). With these female-headed households as the poorest of the poor, what is emphasised is the fact that, first, women must not be considered only as individuals, and secondly that they are especially embedded in family and community structures which play a large role in determining their behaviour and possibilities (Chant, 2003: 41). Womens responsibility with regard to development is then associated with the trust values and consensus of tontine funds and community-based groupings. Their sociability, often seen through rosy lenses, is immensely popular with funding agencies. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the women-local link moved from the countryside to the cities at the same time as donors were recognising the unavoidable or even beneficial nature of the urban phenomenon7. During the last decade, urban projects mentioning women and promoting their involvement have abounded and been characterised by proximity solutions: neighbourhood interaction, suburb mobilisation, micro-lending or even, as in the North of Mali which is affected by the Tuareg crisis, the pacification of inter-ethnic relations. All these put together seem to guarantee greater efficiency and fairness. The fact that town planning is decentralised in this manner in a few informal neighbourhoods and pilot communities (Bertrand, 2002-a)8, does not fail to remind us of those domestic
7
The international conference of Addis Abeba held from 28 April to 1 May 1998 on African
Women and Economic Development: Investing in our Future, organised by the UNs Economic Commission for Africa, African Centre for Women, developed the self -management of neighbourhoods on a domestic and familial basis in a mainly rural environment. Focused on cities, the MOST-UNESCO Project entitled Cities, the Environment and Social Relations between Men and Women, closely follows the points of convergence between Africa, Latin America and Switzerland (references mentioned hereunder).
8
The third Urban Project in Mali, which is completed today, supported the programme entitled
Lets Save our Suburb which concerned 25 suburbs of Bamako in the middle of the 1990s (Diallo A., Vaa M., 2000, The Urban Poor, Gender and the Fight Against Poverty. The Case of Mali, International Conference on Urban Futures, Witwatersrand University, 10-14 July 2000,

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and merchant needs managed by women living in cities (access to drinking water, reproductive health and childrens health), around basic equipment and in favour of better cost recovery. In the end, the lack of geographical precision of the local which boasts the participation of urban women, makes it possible to envisage women as a collective figure confronted with the authorities and on the margins of the actions of men, and as a coherent political subject at the local level and in the environmental domain (Hain ard and Verschuur, 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2006). Because women are to be found side by side with men at this level, it is seen as the level at which women should be granted citizenship. Admittedly, ambiguities abound around these issues, and hopes are not always followed by the expected effects. But it is no accident that space is being thought along the lines of small is better just as development is being reformulated in feminine terms. In the end, whatever the origin of urban dysfunctions and, more generally, of the crises affecting economies and societies, which neoliberal interpretations as well Keynesian orientations have failed to account for, the idea is to remain pragmatic and assist basic solidarities to counter the risks of social exclusion and costs. In this regard, various initiatives are given as examples: intra-urban food production, drainage of private savings in favour of water points and garbage collection, exploitation of municipal showers or public toilets in markets. The women dimension and the local development dimension have jointly become part of an argument which has been interiorised by citydwellers to gain access to credit. The importance given to gender is clearly growing in poverty reduction operations, and in relation to decentralisation. In this regard, things are becoming increasingly efficient as far as the action programmes of multilateral and bilateral co-operation initiatives are concerned. The same goes for the many instances of civil society in which the role of women appears de facto to concern local intervention scales, while any decentralisation measure is inevitably accompanied by gender empowerment9.
Working group on Gender and the City). Since 1997, Urban Environmental Sanitation Project and its extension UESP 2 support the development of poor suburbs in the Greater Accra Region.
9
LAfrique municipale, Impliquer les femmes dans la gestion locale , Bulletin thmatique du
Programme de Dveloppement Municipal, n 14, 2000.

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Geographic Issue, Political Category In rhetorical shifts between North and South, the issue of women is ascribed a local geographic dimension while, at the same time, space is conferred a political dimension, i.e. womens participation. And so we might ask: what do es the association of territoriality and the gender variable consist in? Womens relationship to space is not only expressed in terms of places and movements which are either over-invested or forbidden, or according to co-presence or specific geographic distributions (Bard, 2004). It also has to do with choices locating analyses and actions at the smallest territorial level. Poor among the poor, but also fully-fledged actors of economic adjustment, women appear to be no longer defined by a space delineated only by a scale defining their roles and expressions. As privileged actors of development policies whether concerning land, urban neighbourhoods or administrative hierarchies, women confer upon local instances the positivity of their growing visibility on public issues. While womens participation appears more constrained spatially than mens, women have definitely developed an ideal relation to space, beyond any topological reasoning on localisation. This territoriality is not just a concern with material layout or appropriation, socialisation, consumption or mobility practices. It also gives political meaning to gender relations, which brings us to a somewhat less classic geographic issue: the mode of territorial focus in which women could run the risk of being confined again, for in discourses at least, their promotion on the development scene is explicitly focused on situating and managing problems. Womens potential or actual initiatives are referred to a space characterised by a scale of analysis, i.e. a true political marker. Yet, there is nothing new about the fact that the local, just like other categories of cognitive division of reality, gives rise to reification. Indeed, there is nothing unusual about the existing confusion between an object of study or institutional measurement, and one of its approaches: it occurs in discourses on decentralisation, in the North as in the South, or in engaged research. The local, as a relative element of appreciation, among other things, of a complex geographic reality, becomes THE prototypical spatial category through which gender issues are addressed. The methodological efforts deployed to categorise data on poverty according to gender, and the institutional endeavour to involve women in managing their needs, are thus brought down to the

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local paradigm. This is used to justify a downsizing of the credits allocated to development, while development is supposed to become more humane and sustainable. In the end, spaces of proximity emerge as the node of a triple regulation: a better articulation of national authorities and grass-roots social actors; the reconciliation of public missions and private commercial ventures; and more equal relations between men and women. That this spatial dimension is attributed de facto to the category of women is probably not scientifically better founded than the territorial references of a civil society into which they fit more generally. The ideological content of the guidelines a citizenship defined by the tool boxes of the donors is crucial here. The idea is to neutralise another ideological issue at the national level, womens involvement in class and economic inequality principles. Taking city-dwelling women into consideration is indeed not new in development issues. It is the change of scale of this consideration which has been of concern to us in the last decades. In the 1970s-1980s, experiences in development would link the entry of women into modernity with national and often nationalistic construction imperatives. But the state turned out to be too unstable in many respects to carry out a global social project. Confronted with a crisis in terms of national recognition and public funding, populations are increasingly incited to take responsibility for themselves, and to take over from discredited administrative and political authorities. Women are designated as stakeholders in local governance. It is now at the level of village groupings, neighbourhoods and municipalities that the commercial and political requirements of globalisation are reformulated: switching to management without public subsidies, adjusting the price of services, integrating the poor to the free market, and ensuring free competition for procurement contracts. With this end-of-century evolution, space can be interpreted as a gendered construction, and gender as a social relationship embodied in space. Development is no longer thought in technicist, productivist and more masculine terms, as it was during the decades of ambitious integrated projects and pioneering developments. The change in the level of intervention is striking. Not that the issue of women had not been discussed before the structural adjustment measures. But the conquest of rights was linked to public action, to the legal and planning state. Gender equality was being questioned in the very places where it was being asserted (marriage and family codes in particular) or

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negotiated (labour representations for example)10. From being the object of national measures or concerns, women are becoming a collective actor of basic regulations in the discourse of the following decade, when associations, more or less assisted by various international networks, become part of the governance problematic.
2. Interpretations of Localism Out of realism and pragmatism, womens responsibilities and initiatives appear to be limited to the local: their educational and financial capital is lower than the mens; their know-how is also narrower. However, social and geographic proximity also carries the seeds of social relations based on patronage, confinement, the prospect of a relative isolation, and the risk of new forms of exploitation.
Limits of the Univocal Territoriality of Women in Civil Society
In my research on urban housing, I felt fieldwork had to take such conditions into account, in particular because all countries seemed to be echoing them, and networks were being established between them. However, what went on in the housing market necessarily led women to engage with the city generally, beyond their local neighbourhoods. Both their behaviours and representations moved between different places and levels of reference, in complex territorial webs. While urban programmes undeniably value neighbourhood associations (water conveyance and electricity supply, cleaning up and land security), their scope must still be measured in relation to external migrations and internal flows in the city, which influence inhabitants perceived and relational space. It is also in a metropolised framework, and in the sociability relating to often complex forms of living (multi-residence, reduction of cohabitation rate between generations), that the potential for future participations in public space is being constituted. There are therefore three different ways in which the pairing of women and the local is questionable: 1. The first limit stems from the standardised character of development actions targeting women at the root. An analysis of the poverty affecting them sometimes disregards
10
Peuples mditerranens : Les femmes et la modernit , n 44-45, July-December 1998.

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their geographic mobility and sometimes interprets their vulnerability simplistically, in terms of a mobility deficit and as the result of the unequal decompartmentalisation of the relation between city dwellers and their living space (Diaz Olvera, et al., 2004; Bertrand, 2010). Yet, this constrained territoriality established for the poor, and the poorest of the poor in particular (households headed by single women), calls for discussion when migration and residential movements are observed in depth in the capital cities of West Africa. In this regard, the Greater Accra Region constitutes a classic example. According to a survey on Housing Practices and Residential Mobility (2000-2001)11, almost 28% of households were headed by women in the Ghanaian capital city. This longitudinal survey followed the trajectories of 1 400 adults, some of whom were sedentary residents from deprived neighbourhoods and others, residents from new suburbs (they move around the most). The first type showed the lowest intra-urban mobility rates during their lifetime, while the second ended up occupying the most valuable detached living units. A major factor of their economic success appeared to be their educational achievements, which led them to migrate towards the Ghanaian capital, and to redeploy there on a long term basis. In this context, female household heads were clearly over-represented in poor neighbourhoods populated by natives (non-migrants) and eligible for a few urban rehabilitation operations. In the suburb of Teshie, which donors finally adopted at the end of the 1990s, the share of women as household heads far exceeded the urban average with 48%; they relied on family usufruct rights to avoid the financial constraint of renting, but at the price of living in highly crowded conditions in courtyards. Their activities were derived from fishing and in many respects were restricted to the neighbourhood in which they originated on the Atlantic coast. While this typical profile could well be validating the thesis according to which the poorest are relatively confined in urban space, it is nonetheless far from representing all the forms of poverty: other forms of confinement concern renting households that are not very quick to develop their environment, households in which women are not the main decision-makers or bread-winners. Furthermore, another indigenous area similar to Teshie, i.e. with usufructuary women living in mediocre and densely populated buildings, concentrates on the outskirts of the city poor people who are much more mobile. While women who
11
IRD, UR 013 and University of Ghana, Legon (Bertrand and Delaunay, 2005).

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head households are also more represented there than on average (42 % of households), they did not miss out on the inter- and intra-regional mobility which is strongly restructuring this area and making the mobilisation of its community uncertain in the medium term. The assumption that there is a unified perspective to be had on women in a given city was therefore challenged by this basic comparison of different areas. 2. The second limit of a development refocused on the local scale and within womens reach, lies in the fact that the urban practices studied concern a double inequality, not only between women and men but also and especially between women. In this light, the gender variable appears less discriminatory than those of intergenerational relations and economic differentiation. This is particularly the case when a market adjusted to neoliberal standards, e.g. those of building lots, becomes more selective (Bertrand, 2003). While housewives in search of land security are doing the round of town halls to plead their case with auctioneers, and are even accumulating in the process several serviced lands and rental investments, the range of market positions hardly leads to a unified feminine figure. 3. The third limit lies in the final term of the women-local combination, which would imply an increased potential for participation. On this important political ground, many studies show firstly that the grass-roots/mobilisation equation does not always function; secondly that it does not go without conflicts, diversions of meaning and interest or disputes for leadership that can inhibiting development actors (Bertrand, 1999 and 2002-b); and that, finally, the particular equation of women and local consensus is not happening as per expectations. Perhaps this is what justifies the new requirements for poverty to be appreciated within a more phenomenological framework, stressing the awareness which interested parties have of their own capacities and the manner in which they assess their limits. Their assessment goes beyond the scope of this article.
Two Registers of Local Legitimisation
Refocusing development from the bottom-up is not a novelty. In many respects it constitutes the new version in the South as in the North of a localism already proposed as a way to resolve crises. Furthermore, there is nothing new about taking

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African women city-dwellers into account as a dominated as well as active category (Vidal, 1977; Copans, 1987). Using these expressions eventually leads to the analysis of governmentality which is more varied than what appears at first. However, the trend is for national representations to be withdrawn and for state bureaucracies to shrink. General modernisation is no longer aspired to, its regulatory and political implications having been decried. The focus is on the fragmentary preservation of regulation capacities, and of short and medium term accountability. Funding choices place potential aid targets in competition with one another. The conditions imposed by international donors, in a public action reduced to pilot operations, define a narrow context in relation to decades of easy credit. Selection processes give rise to a real sense of exclusion on the part of those who do not benefit from loans. Yet, the political authorities responsible for implementing such selections no longer base them on the expression of unitary appearance that prevailed under nationalist juntas or under the monopole of one-party regimes. Today, transparent reasons justify arbitrations in a political landscape which is sometimes chaotic but which one assumes is pluralist. In this general context, gender empowerment or the women ramifications of sectoral programmes play an important role. But it is more a question of legitimising those political authorities responsible for implementing operations than promoting real social change. There are two interpretations of this politically correct link between women and the local in the currently globalised understanding of development. 1. The first interpretation follows from a community perspective. The womens promotion model shifted from national public issues linked to state controls and legislation to a specific expression of citizenship in local action systems12. Indeed, many studies insist on the bottleneck and consequently the potential for empowerment represented by the recognition of land rights when going from the private expression of womens problems (physical and economic violence, excessive
12
One of the strengths of the participatory empowerment approach to development has been
its focus on the local and its belief that even the poorest communities can understand and solve their own developmental problem. (Parpart J.L., Rethinking Participatory Empowerment, Gender and Development in a Global/Local World, Montreal: MacGill University, Centre for Developing-Area Studies, 67-74, 2003).

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domestic work), to a public expression13. In a perspective that emphasises roots in a community of origin, family status and belonging based on geographic proximity appear crucial to the evolution of womens contribution to development. As such, the analyses and recommendations particularly reflect the precariousness generated by the unequal distribution of land, customary rules on land use and the protection of land tenure. Urban areas are also affected by this type of perspective, as shown by the survey of the Greater Accra Region: in 2000, 53 % of households headed by women were housed in usufruct or were occupying an inherited family dwelling for free, whereas only 30% of households headed by men benefitting from of shared property rights. During surveys conducted prior to urban rehabilitation operations, it was essential to hold group discussions with womens representatives in order to show good territorial coh esion. However, concerning markers of lineage and community, conquered rights or standards claimed locally by women, political cultures diverge in Anglophone and Francophone Africa, and from the coast to the Sudano-Sahelian interior. In Mali for example, Islamic law ensures that heiresses are demoted in favour of heirs, and inheritance practices often push them aside from estates. Moreover, the Republican tradition inherited from French colonisation made a long-lasting mark on the land development legal system. State-owned property occupies a central place in land use requisitions, redistributions and conversions. The national development imperative prevails over customary interests. In town, administered estates, which constitute a reference even for informal settlements, continue to influence the rehabilitation of deprived suburbs. Therefore, it is in reference to public power and its political expression based on patronage in particular that women are gaining ground as far as their residential positions are concerned, including in informal settlements and in favour of land regularisations, but not as regards community frameworks. Anglophone Ghana, on the contrary, conforms to the hypothesis of persistent customary pressures and tenacious land issues in political, local and national expression. In the wake of indirect colonial rule, the land jurisdiction recognises collective family, clan and chieftainship rights. The fact that a citizen is rooted in his/her hometown, whether or not
13
The influence of Hernando de Sotos theses on the recommendations of the World Bank as
regards Making Markets Work Better for the Poor is obvious: small entrepreneurship is erected as a vulnerability exit model by securing land rights.

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s/he resides there, as long as s/he claims a share of the land inheritance, constitutes a first step towards belonging to the Ghanaian nation. The exercise of national civil and political rights is influenced by the local definition of land rights. From this territorial attachment which is common to highly differentiated ethnic frameworks in the country, follows an implication of women in development. The classification of their commitments is linked to the varied community rules for the transmission of properties and statuses. As seen in the Ghanaian capital, the benefit of usufruct over family courtyards varies between women, those who head households in particular, according to whether they are migrants or natives, impoverished or committed to an increasing residential mobility, individualised in their initiatives or subjected to mens. The attention paid to women, youth or customary owners in setting up projects for the rehabilitation of neighbourhoods, is not formalised in Ghana. The research consultancies in charge of proposing underprivileged communities in need of rehabilitation, usually vouch for communities that will be prompt in getting involved in focus group discussions, a technique which is valued in development expertise. These favour a collective expression of needs and commitments. By removing gender issues from participation, the approach seems to validate (better than in the Francophone environment) business solvability imperatives (i.e. ability and willingness to pay) and those of decentralised governance (i.e. demonstrations of community initiatives and cohesiveness). Yet, even rooted as it is in political culture, this model of community solidarity relies on myth and has encountered many limitations (Mayoux, 1995; Guijt and Shah, 1998). As in rural projects, obstacles lie in the first as much as the second imperative: the lack of mobilisation and the divergence of interests does not concern women less than men; womens participation is not necessarily more exemplary or better reproducible than mens commitment when it comes co-financing local facilities for example. The categories of women, poverty and the local do not establish long-lasting practices. Neither the semantic promotion of each term nor their association can hide the theoretical poverty of the argument. Beyond the community approach, there is development make-believe: an approach by projects, not based on a broader analysis of social inequalities, a fight against vulnerability reduced to management measures, and a promotion of proximity that does away with the issue of geographic mobility.

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2. The second interpretation of womens participation is sceptical as regards the current discourse on community loans. The issue of women should contribute further to the preservation of public services. The regulatory role of the state is essential as far as specific local characteristics and the market are concerned. It is apparent here in the definition of objectives and criteria of male-female parity. Concerning women, the change from domestic expression to public claims ends up being played during elections, which then puts women in competition with men. The governance concerned here is indeed national in scope. It reflects quotas of women added whether explicitly or not to the representation of political parties for legislative and municipal elections, and by the selection of female candidatures in primary elections. It falls to the democratic authorities to implement them at grass-roots level first of all, as illustrated by the consecutive elections for reforms on decentralisation held in Mali from 1993 to 199614. However, there were many instances of dissidence generated by imposed
sponsorships, and of turmoil in a few influential towns as regards feminine promotion, which probably equals the turmoil created by rivalries between men and defined by them in the pluralist regimes or within one-party political systems. In the end, the voice of the poor has natural limits: the local is not all that consensual, individual careers are advanced under the pretence of collective arguments, women remain poorly represented in elections and destitute populations remain suspicious of a state that did recover sufficient credibility with the multiparty system. Official or unofficial quotas for women are certainly promoting their visibility at different levels of local expression, and in various institutions of social and political representation. However, the future of the promised reinforcement of womens collective capacities is still conceived of as smaller, more confined and less open than that of men, based on private and daily life: the courtyard (while men monopolise decisions in district councils), neighbourhood sociability (while men bustle about in town), and leaderships of regional county-towns (while men speak in favour of women on the governmental or international scene).
Conclusion
14
For the first elections in the series, see Bertrand, 1998.

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At the turn of the century, womens entry into the terms of reference of globalised development was played at the local level. The gender and decentralised dimensions which many associations claim to represent, like the financial set-ups of the World Bank in favour of the poor, cannot be understood without going back two decades: a real flight of enthusiasm for developmental themes following the duller terms of structural adjustment; a close link between the epistemological promotion of gender and the pragmatic alternative (once the African state was disowned) of good practices at grassroots level. Space and time i.e. local space and project deadlines are more than ever necessary to analyse the context effects which could confer truly varied political issues on the dual springboard of community and elections upon women. However, their promotion never fails to be called for, despite serious misgivings on the part of researchers and the sense that localism bears new dependencies towards external donors.
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BERTRAND Monique, Gestion foncire et logique de projet urbain : expriences compares en Afrique occidentale, francophone et anglophone , Historiens & Gographes, n379, 77-90, 2002-a. BERTRAND Monique, Profils du leadership local au Ghana : conflits et fragmentation urbaine dans la mtropole du Grand Accra , Autrepart, n21, 135-149, 2002-b. BERTRAND Monique, Mondialisation, march foncier et dynamique sociale Bamako, Mali , in Villes et citadins dans la mondialisation, Annick Osmont et Charles Goldblum, 151-167, Paris : Karthala-GEMDEV, 2003. BERTRAND Monique, Femmes et modernit citadine au Mali , in Femmes et villes, Sylvette Denfle, 283-304, Tours : Presses Universitaires Franois-Rabelais, 2004. BERTRAND Monique, Mobilit, pauvrets : les villes interroges. Introduction. , Revue Tiers Monde, n201, 7-23, 2010. BERTRAND Monique, DELAUNAY, Daniel, La mobilit rsidentielle dans la Rgion du Grand Accra. Diffrenciations individuelle et gographique, Paris : CEPED, 2005. BLACKDEN Mark C., BHANU Chitra, Gender, Growth and Poverty Reduction. Special Program of Assistance for Africa, 1998 Status Report on Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, Washington D.C.: The World Bank,1999. BOOTH David, HANMER Lucia, LOVELL Elizabeth, Poverty and Transport. Final Report, London: Overseas Development Institute, 2000. BULBECK Chilla, Re-orienting Western Feminisms: Womens Diversity in a Postcolonial World, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1998. CHAMBERS Robert, Poverty and livelihoods: whose reality counts, Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 7, n1, 173-204, 1995. CHANT Sylvia, The Engendering of Poverty Analysis in Developing Regions: Progress Since the United Nations Decade for Women, and Priorities for the Future, London School of Economics: Gender Institute, New Working Papers Series, 2003. COPANS Jean, Des modes domestiques aux modes salaris : cycles de proltarisation et proto-proltarisation fminine. Rflexions partir dexemples africains , Cahiers des Sciences Humaines, vol. 23, n1, 75-87, 1987. DIAZ OLVERA Lourdes, et al., Mobilits quotidiennes des femmes en Afrique subsaharienne , in Femmes et villes, Sylvette Denfle, 135-153, Tours : Presses Universitaires Franois-Rabelais, 2004.

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GUIJT Irene, SHAH Meera K. (eds.), The Myth of Community: Gender issues in participatory development, London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1998. HAINARD Franois, VERSCHUUR Christine, Filling the Urban Policy Breach: Womens Empowerment, grass-roots Organizations, and urban Gouvernance , International Political Science Review, vol. 22, n1, 33-54, 2001. HAINARD Franois, VERSCHUUR Christine, Femmes dans les crises urbaines. Relations de genre et environnements prcaires, Paris : Karthala-MOST, 2002. HAINARD Franois, VERSCHUUR Christine, Femmes et politiques urbaines : ruses, luttes et stratgies, Paris : Unesco-Karthala, 2004. HAINARD Franois, VERSCHUUR Christine, Mouvements de quartier et environnements urbains. La prise de pouvoir des femmes dans les pays du Sud et de lEst , Dakar et Paris : ENDA Diapol-Karthala, 2006. HUGON Anne (dir.), Histoire des femmes en situation coloniale. Afrique et Asie, XXme sicle, Paris : Karthala, 2004 IMAN Ayesha M., MAMA Amina, SOW Fatou (dir.), Sexe, genre et socit. Engendrer les sciences sociales africaines, Paris/Dakar : Karthala/Codesria, 2004. LACHAUD Jean-Pierre, Les femmes et le march de travail urbain en Afrique subsaharienne, Paris : LHarmattan, 1997. LACHAUD Jean-Pierre, Pauvret, mnages et genre en Afrique subsaharienne. Nouvelles dimensions analytiques, Bordeaux : CED, 1999. LOCKWOOD Matthew, WHITEHEAD Ann, Gendering Poverty: A Review of Six World Bank African Poverty Assessments, Development and Change, Vol. 30, n3, 525-555, 1999. MAYOUX Linda, Beyond Naivety: Women, Gender Inequality and Participatory Development, Development and Change, Vol. 26, n2, 235-258, 1995. NARAYAN Deepa, et al., Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us?, New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 2000. NARAYAN Deepa, et al., Voices of the Poor: Crying Out for Change, New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 2000. NARAYAN Deepa, et al., Voices of the Poor: From Many Lands, New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 2002. RAKODI Carole, Poverty Lines or Household Strategies. A Review of conceptual Issues in the Study of Urban Poverty, Habitat International, Vol. 19, n4, 407-426, 1995.

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TURNER Jeff, FOURACRE Philip, Women and Transport in Developing Countries, Transport Reviews, Vol. 15, n1, 77-96, 1995. UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME, Transforming the Mainstream. Gender in UNDP, New York: UNDP, 2003. VIDAL Claudine, Guerre des sexes Abidjan. Masculin, fminin, CFA , Cahiers dtudes africaines, vol. XVII (1), n65, 121-153, 1977. WORLD BANK, Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice, Washington DC: Oxford University Press, World Bank Policy Research Report, 2001.

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Circular migration and misrecognition

Djemila Zeneidi, Ades (Cnrs/Bordeaux) Translator: Melanie Mauthner, London, Claire Hancock, UPEC
Circular migration and misrecognition: the experience of spatial injustice of Moroccan women doing seasonal agricultural work in Huelva (Spain) Djemila Zeneidi, CNRS, Ades 5185 Translator: Melanie Mauthner, London, Claire Hancock, UPEC
Abstract This article explores seasonal Moroccan agricultural workers' who come to the Huelva province in southern Spain in the context of temporary contracts in origin. These contracts are aimed at women with family responsibilities, mostly married women with children, who are hired to pick fruit, strawberries in particular, in precarious conditions. Yet when interviewed, some of these women explained that the worst-case scenario they could imagine would be to be denied work in Spain. This article, drawing on theories of recognition and recent work in geography, casts light on the different forms of injustice they experience, and spatial injustice in particular.
Key words:
circular migration, seasonal agricultural workers, recognition, injustice,
contracts in origin.

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Circular migration and misrecognition: the experience of spatial injustice of Moroccan women doing seasonal agricultural work in Huelva (Spain)1 It makes me want to stop eating strawberries, said MEP Hlne Flautre after a parliamentary visit to Huelva province in June 20102. Her target in these comments was not just the devastating environmental impact of intensive farming on the water table and the damage caused by pesticides, but foreign workers' working conditions. The newspaper El Pas (13 June 2010) ran an article about the "victims of the red gold", the exploitation of Moroccan women workers in intensive greenhouse strawberry farming, hired on the basis of contracts in origin. The term 'origin' alongside 'contract' indicates that recruitment takes place in the workers' country of origin on an understanding that they will return home once their work is done (within 3 to 9 months). To make sure that they will return, it is mostly married women and mothers of young children who are hired. This system of short-term contracts clearly reeks of economic exploitation (Burchianti, 2009) partly because workers are denied equals rights with Spanish citizens and remain dependent on their employers because their work status is precarious (Moreno Nieto, 2009). During my fieldwork, carried out in both Morocco and Spain I met many seasonal migrant women workers and witnessed the type of discrimination they face both in terms of housing and employment. But this research also enabled me to hear firsthand how their greatest fear was to be denied the right to return to Spain. The women I interviewed distinguish forms of injustice: the worst sort they are likely to encounter is spatial, the denial of their migration. As long as they are allowed to travel to Spain, they feel that they can put up with anything. They told me their work experience in Spain is crucial because it gives them independence, self-esteem and a positive identity as a working, independent, woman. Despite what we might see as domination, they still value the recognition attached to their migration. From their point of view, if one does
This research was funded by the ANR Terrferme programme coordinated by Bndicte
Michalon (Les dispositifs de l'enfermement, approche territoriale du contrle politique et social contemporain).
2
From the Europe Ecologie website.

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not gain the right to return to Spain, one's qualifications as worker are questioned, which amounts to contempt on the part of employers. They refer to this situation with the Arabic word hogra which means both contempt and injustice, with an interesting overlap between moral spheres. Recognition or misrecognition are crucial to establish a hierarchy of what is more or less bearable, and to be shown contempt or disrespect seems paramount here. Even in situations of social and economic inequality, forms of autonomy, and a positive sense of self are likely to emerge, and space plays a role in the experience of recognition or misrecognition. This paper looks at the levers of spatial injustice, and addresses the following question: how is autonomy asserted in the context of domination? I draw on theories of recognition which emphasize self-realization, and I analyze injustice in terms of its effects on groups and individuals. I subscribe to definitions in which the experience of injustice is the experience of misrecognition, and which construe the demand for respect as a demand for justice (Honneth, 2000; Renault, 2004). In the first section I look more closely at contracts in origin, I describe the fieldwork I conducted and suggest a working definition of spatial injustice that stems from the intersection of theories of recognition and geography literature. The second section examines the injustices regarded as bearable in a context of domination. The final section addresses the only unbearable injustice in women's view, the denial of migration to Spain.
I Contracts in origin and spatial injustice: context, concepts and fieldwork
Firstly, I want to focus on the temporary contracts that underly circular migration and which unashamedly serve the interests of employers rather than those of employees. Next I provide an account of my fieldwork and the insights it provides on spatial injustice, at the intersection of theories of recognition and space.
Contracts in origin or injustice made legal
Contracts in origin which target female labour reflect the increasing feminization of cross-border migration. Whereas in the past women uprooted themselves to join their families, nowadays more and more women journey alone either through legal channels

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or illegally. Most migrant women are employed in the service industry, in catering or as domestic workers, or in global care (Falquet, 2010). This feminization of immigrant labour is particularly noticeable in Southern Europe where large numbers of women migrants from the Maghreb countries, the Philippines and Cape Verde Islands are employed (Campani, 2000). Another element of context is the development of circular migration, seen by wealthier nations as a "solution" to permanent migration, construed as "problem". International organizations such as the ILO (International Labour Organization) or the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Develoment) extol the virtues of circular migration organized at state level as "win-win" for the countries and the migrants. The USA, Canada, Great Britain, Belgium, Ireland, Germany, Italy and Spain have followed suit by hiring a limited number of temporary migrant workers with specific skills to plug a labour gap. This selection of workers across borders leads to greater labour market segmentation according to gender, race and ethnicity. These recruitment policies frequently target women, which is justified in terms of the "promotion of women" or "codevelopment", but which mostly reflects the fact women are seen as "cheap submissive labour (in agriculture) to replace migrants in labour-intensive sectors in several industrialized countries (Moreno-Fontes Chammartin, 2008). In Andalusia agricultural workers were, from the mid-90s onwards, mostly Moroccan or Sub-Saharan African men3. However, protest by these seasonal workers disgruntled with their working conditions prompted employers to start hiring women from Eastern Europe with contracts in origin. And in order to stem any permanent settlement on Spanish soil these employers opted to recruit solely women. But once their countries of origin joined the European Union these seasonal workers fled the greenhouses and fields of Huelva. The next tactic was to target Moroccan women, as part of a deal between Morocco and Spain to curb illegal immigration (Miret, 2009). Since 2001, according to figures provided by Cartaya council, a town of 18 000 inhabitants in south-western Spain, 38 000 Moroccan seasonal women workers have been employed in the Huelva province. In 2010 this figure dropped to 4500 owing to the
Before strawberry farming evolved into its current intensive production mode, strawberry
pickers were typically farmers' wives. Then in the mid 1980s the demand for labour increased and farmers looked further afield to Moroccan and Sub-Sahara agricultural workers.

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economic downturn. Women who are offered these contracts in origin are selected according to two criteria4: physical strength enabling them to perform agricultural work (as stipulated by their Spanish bosses) and guarantees that they will return home. This explains why employers favour married women and mothers of young children, on the assumption that mothers will not abandon their offspring. Aged between 18 and 45 these women are from rural areas and must pledge to return to Morocco, a return clause that complies with EU directives and regulations (the EU sees these contracts as a way to stem illegal immigration). The Huelva province, which produces 90% of Spain's strawberry crop and makes it the third biggest producer globally, the largest in Europe, is a pilot experiment in this attempt to control migratory flows (Plewa, 2009, p. 4). Farmers hire workers with contracts in origin because they are willing to accept low wages (37 euros per day), unlike Spanish citizens (El Pas 4 September 2008).
Employers want a cheap, flexible, expanding workforce which tolerates the hardships of agricultural labour and these Moroccan women5 meet all of these criteria, not by nature, contrary to widely held beliefs among employers and institutions, but because the form of contracts leaves them no option. As hirers and firers the employers have the upper hand (Hellio, 2009) and women migrants are dependent on them to have their contracts renewed. The nine clauses in the contract (written in Spanish rather than Arabic) essentially uphold employers' rights and make abuse possible, while the employees' situation is highly precarious. Clause 2 for example, allows for overtime beyond the statutory 39-hour week by 'mutual agreement.' What hope is there for any sort of mutual agreement when we know how dependent these seasonal workers are on their employers to secure a new contract for the following year? Clause 3 allows for a temporary suspension of every clause in "exceptional circumstances", including bad weather, and the duration of "temporary" is left up to the employer's discretion.
4 5
On the ground the preferred term is selection rather than recruitment. Experience has shown that Moroccan women are sensitive and hard-working and with their
slender hands that is something the strawberries really appreciate, the mayor of Cartaya told the Moroccan press who took this comment as worthy of great national pride (Infosbaldi.com 18/04/2008 see http://www.infosbladi.com/articles).

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Another rule not specifically mentioned in the contract lies at the root of many perceived injustices and sheds light on processes which force women to accept this unfair employment regime. Recruiters for the strawberry farms entice women with the promise that after four consecutive work seasons, if they are offered a one-year employment contract, they will be entitled to a work permit and Spanish residency (according to the Ley de Extranjera du 11/ 01/2000). The hope of this golden prospect puts migrant women at the mercy of their employers. It is, however, more of a lure than a realistic aspiration, since one-year contracts are virtually non-existent in farming where the work is seasonal. Moreover, the procedure is well-nigh inapplicable because one necessary condition is residency via registration on the local city roll (empadronamiento), which these Moroccan women workers are not entitled to as they are mainly housed in lodgings that do not conform to the empadronamiento stipulation. This form of contractual employment 'in origin', sanctioned by law, in effect denies these seasonal workers basic rights.
Fieldwork read through the lens of spatial injustice I carried out three fieldtrips to Morocco (Rabat, Casablanca, Kenitra and Kreda) and Spain (Cartaya). I met some key figures in Morocco, in the Spanish Embassy, and representatives from ANAPEC, the national agency for skills and employment development, which works with the Spaniards for contract in origin recruitment. I carried out thirty-four interviews, in dialectal Arabic, with Moroccan women workers. In Kenitra in the douar or hamlet of Kreda I spoke to former seasonal workers and carried out some observation work in their family settings. I also interviewed Moroccan women workers in Spain as well as key figures in Cartaya, a town that plays a crucial part in maintaining the local infrastructure through which contracts in origin are administered. It employs staff for this, among whom Moroccan go-betweens to supervise the workers6.
In 2004 the town received 1,196 000 Euros as part of European funding of the Aeneas
programme (Programme of assistance to third countries directly related to migration management) to help supervise Moroccan women migrant workers, 'an integrated ethical management system for labour migratory flows'. This programme has been extended until 2013 with a new EU grant.

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The approach on injustice that I favour, in the light of this research, is inspired by thinkers who have questioned the understanding of social justice as distributive justice, and argued that it does not sufficiently take into account other negative experiences (Renault, 2004). They have criticized distributive justice theory for its emphasis on the quantitative, on goods owned, and for the implied opposition between affect and reason which forms its basis. According to Iris Young, who offers a thoughtful critique, what this theory lacks is an analysis of various forms that oppression and domination (Hancock, 2009, p. 63). She and others have suggested that a negative experience, a sense of injustice, are fruitful grounds from which one can analyze justice. This is where the idea of recognition offers a useful perspective. One key social scientist whose work explores the concept of recognition is Axel Honneth. He argues that an individual's sense of his or her own value depends on the image others have of him or her, of his or her actions and what he or she represents. A positive sense of self is intersubjectively constituted, and is therefore intersubjectively vulnerable and in need of confirmation (recognition). Honneth on this basis establishes an interpretative grid of varied expectations in an attempt to examine different levels of self-esteem. The experience of injustice is derived from a failure to meet fundamental normative expectations. Theories of recognition allow for a definition of social injustice which relies not on a definition of justice but from a wider perspective that takes the experience of misrecognition into account (Renault, 2004). For Honneth socio-economic inequalities are also enacted in an unequal access to social esteem. The challenge here is how to marry a geographic approach with this definition of injustice that draws on the theory of recognition. One starting point is to pay closer attention to the place of space in this theory, and to establish the relation between space and recognition, despite the fact Honneth did not initially consider material mediations in his theory (Deranty, 2005, p. 159). He has, however, reconsidered his very abstract stance and given a greater part to material aspects: "[...] Giving due respect to material aspects of recognition is vital for any analysis of social relations that views society as a network of social relationships of recognition" (2006, p.165). When it comes to this material dimension, it seems crucial to highlight just how significant space is when thinking about social relations. "Space is [...] one of those material conditions to be taken into account if theories of recognition are to preserve their heuristic power" (Renault, Zeneidi, 2008). While Honneth (2006, p.166) makes it

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explicit that recognition is far more than a linguistic act or a set of behaviours, he acknowledges the place of space in relationships of recognition, but sees it as a mere container. However, in order to think of spatial injustice in a perspective that foregrounds the relation between space and recognition, space has to be seen as more than a container, and its "causal, transformative" quality has to be acknowledged (Dike, 2009, p.3). Space has to be thought of as moral and political, since the material outlay of space can play a major role in a sense of being treated with contempt or with due recognition: for instance, some homeless people feel that "homeless-proof" street furniture is a slight. Space that can convey misrecognition can also be claimed in a struggle for recognition: Gay Pride marches makes the issue of the invisibility of gay people manifest in public space, where sexual minorities are usually thwarted. Space plays a central role: "Space could be both a 'good thing' for politics or a 'bad thing'; that is, it could as much hinder political possibilities as it could engender them" (Dike, 2009, p. 2). Space is indisputably a major dimension of social injustice (Marcuse, 2009). While we have to be careful not to imply an autonomy of the spatial with respect to the social, I would suggest to define the experience of spatial injustice as a form of injustice derived from fundamental normative expectations not being fulfilled, with space playing the part of vehicle.
II Dominated but free, overcoming injustice through space
Let us return to the experience of seasonal women migrant workers: I want to examine their working conditions and how they endure them. I shall look at how they are treated, as second class citizens, in terms of housing and work, but also how they move beyond their sense of injustice by valuing their work and their personal mobility.
Injustice at work and at home: women as second class labourers The women I interviewed spoke eloquently about their poor working conditions and how this made them feel discriminated against as employees. They felt resentful about being so dependent on their employers and frustrated with the daily uncertainty they faced regarding their temporary contracts. In one farm employing 25 Moroccan female workers and twelve men from Sub-Saharan countries, two women I spoke to decried the fact that they had no idea when they would be allowed to return to Morocco. When I

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met them during my fieldwork (April and May 2010) they still had not been notified of a possible date even though they had arrived in October 2009. 'I thought I would go home in December, we worked so hard on the land and then the boss said, 'stay', and I don't know when I'm going back. It's not bad, I'm saving a lot of what I earn but it's tough not knowing when I'll see my two daughters again.' When I asked this woman about why her employer was not more forthcoming with her about the end date of her contract she shrugged: 'well, he's more concerned with the harvest, that's natural isn't it, he's the boss; the rest, the pickers, what does he care?' The sense of being a 'remainder', part of 'the rest', can be interpreted as a lack of recognition. Many women also worked for weeks on end without a single day off. On this same strawberry farm many had worked non-stop since February, in other words since the beginning of the harvest and one told me how exhausted she was, how her back ached from weeks of bending and fruit-picking without a day's rest. What she was most indignant about was not even getting a day off to celebrate the religious festival of Eid: 'so you see, we have to stop and take time off for their religious festivals yet they make us carry on working during Eid celebrations (...) We made a request, -Jefe- we said -tomorrow it's a Muslim holy day, so no work, right?- He refused.' This kind of incident reveals a sense of their Muslim culture being less well considered and inferior to Christian culture, which implies a slight to an individual who identifies with the former. Having to comply with their employers' will and the rules they establish, adds to their sense of injustice. A woman told me about how her boss would punish her by dismissing her early after a few hours work but did not pay her for the hours worked. Another told me of yet another incident when she was prevented from working for two days after she had received a phone call during working hours. Other women mentioned being told off for arriving a minute late at the start of their shift; others told us how their boss would deduct a percentage from their wages for the time it took to carry the fruit from the strawberry beds to the lorry because the boss deemed it necessary to pay them only for the picking. They suffer other spatial constraints as part of the housing conditions provided for in the contract procedure: they have to live on-site, on the farms or in nearby hostels managed by the local authority, and guarded day and night by security staff. Most women had accommodation on the farm, which meant they were often far from the town centre

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where they did their own grocery shopping (very few Moroccan women migrants had centrally located accommodation). For their shopping they relied on the weekly shuttle bus laid on by their employer, though some were not so lucky and had to walk into town.
'It's a struggle to get here (to the centre of Cartaya). It's rough on our feet, we work standing up and then we have to keep walking to get our groceries.' This meant a hike of an hour and a half, and other workers who lived even further away from the town were completely trapped there. How did they experience and interpret these injustices? The women I interviewed were well aware of being treated like second class workers; it was obvious to them that they were treated more harshly than other strawberry pickers, Spaniards and migrants from other countries who had open ended residency permits. The only other social group worse off than the Moroccan migrants were illegal migrants. Unlike other employees, they were expected to report for work fifteen minutes before their shift and to await a signal from their boss to sign off. 'The Spaniards, when it's time to clock off, they stop, tap their watch with their finger in front of the boss, and off they go but we stay put, we're the last to leave.' They emphasized they had little choice, coming from poor communities in Morocco: their greatest fear was to be dismissed, not be able to return and not to have their contract renewed the following year. They told me how hope of a better future helped them to endure the hardships, which they felt they had to put up with in order to return and obtain from their boss a residency permit, which would enable them to find different jobs. What they wish for is to be able to keep working in Spain, because it compensated for everything they had to endure.
Overcoming injustice through work and mobility Women who expected to return for work the following year expressed a sense of selfesteem, which bolsters them in their daily struggle. They are attached to their job, and their lives as migrant workers, not just for economic reasons, but also because they derive pleasure and a sense of fulfilment from them. They gain a form of recognition of their own value through work and mobility, which enables them to put up with other injustices.

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This positive sense of self comes in part from the fact they were selected, among thousands of applicants for these jobs, and managed to interest the bosses who carry out the recruitment procedure. They are also proud that they are able to make a valuable economic contribution to their families and children. In addition, they develop, along with work experience, a sense of being skilled for their work, and having specific qualities. For instance, one woman I spoke to for whom this was her sixth year working in this business was admired by her peers for her speed and dexterity, spoke of her sense of self-worth: 'the bosses, they appreciate me, they never shout at me, I know I'm a good worker because I work fast... they've always renewed my contract.' The mobility they have experienced also makes them feel more worthy, as though they had been through a personal adventure. They mentioned repeatedly the pleasure they have at moving around freely, despite the difficulties mentioned above. They also speak eloquently of the pleasure of not being under men's scrutiny: one of them summarizes her stay as "no father, no brother, no husband". They gain a sense of themselves as independent women working for their living. "There's one good thing at least about Spaniards, they give you respect, they respect your rights. They pay you even though they try and diddle you, whereas us Arabs: well, you work hard and then when it comes to getting paid, the boss he pays you half what he should and then says, no, I've got no money. And if you look alright, if you're not too badly dressed, he says well you're doing alright aren't you, you don't need any extra." Some women I spoke to found temporary relief in being able to escape their traditional roles at home. "Nowadays girls' lives resemble boys' lives: they have to fight, they travel to find work and earn a living". These jobs mean some migrant women receive due recognition as the main breadwinners bringing home an income from Europe. Their menfolk are no longer the only ones who cross borders. They also gain a new sense of self from more material things associated with mobility, such as mobile phones, handbags and bank accounts. Acquired in Spain, these are part of a migrant's essential kit. Domination doesn't necessarily prevent subjectivity formation. One of the workers captured this well, "strawberries are hard work, but freedom tastes sweet". The importance of these employment opportunities and the mobility they allow is best measured when they are withdrawn, which causes a profound sense of injustice. Christophe Dejours (1998) shows just how central employment is as a source of selfworth, self-esteem and recognition as well as a means to overcome hardship; and

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conversely, it can make us feel vulnerable when it no longer conforms to one's expectations. These women's expectations are not just centred on employment, but also on their access to the spaces of migration. Access to Europe is part of a construction of their selves. Space intervenes here on two levels in the process of recognition. From a legal point of view, they gained a work visa, a contract which, though temporary, makes them fully-fledged migrant workers. They also gain a form of recognition from their employer, who will favour those among his employees who have the greatest skill. This is highly valued in Morocco where many people aspire to migrate to Europe, and it is spatial mobility, their access to European space, that grants them this recognition. This allows them to overlook the exploitation they suffer in Spain.
III Closure of space and the unbearable misrecognition The worst injustice for these women is spatial, it's the denial of access to Spain. When they met this situation, women either broke down or became angry. In the following sections, I draw on two examples to illustrate cases of women sent home to Morocco, whose contracts were not renewed; and workers who suspected their contracts would not be renewed after their relationship with their employer turned sour. In each instance, space played a key role in their sense of injustice.
Women sidelined: soul-searching and suffering Some women I interviewed in Morocco had worked in Spain for a period lasting between one and three years, they hoped to continue to work in Spain and had become used to their existence as migrant workers. Their families appreciated their financial contribution, built houses and bought second-hand cars with their earnings. These women after many enquiries hoped to discover why they were not hired in subsequent years: rarely did they blame their former boss, instead they waited patiently wondering whether 'poor performance' was the reason why they were not hired again. Many found it difficult to question the employment regime because they retained a positive impression of their employer. Inevitably they tended to blame and torment themselves with a barrage of questions. Some gradually developed a sense of injustice by assessing their own attitude and performance. Mostly they saw themselves as loyal employees because they met all their commitments, worked diligently and complied with the expectation to return to

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Morocco they felt let down and unappreciated. One of them mentioned a worker she knew from the village they lived in who stayed on in Spain illegally, as illustrative of the unfairness: "well, you see, we met their demands, we came back, we worked really hard, we did everything expected of us and now, they won't take us back, it's unfair, it's really unbearable." This experience left many feeling sad and unworthy, their selfesteem dented. There were worse cases in terms of damaged self-esteem among groups of women dismissed from the strawberry farms because they were pregnant or had given birth. Their employers had them escorted by Moroccan go-betweens off the farms to be handed over to a welfare organisation. Once removed from the workplace they are housed on a short-term basis prior to being formally dismissed, a procedure that closely resembles that of being deported: stripped of their official documents they are forbidden any visitors. I met four women in this situation during my fieldwork: they had no option, they told me, because in order to travel over to Spain, they had incurred heavy debts, to pay for their visas in particular. They felt humiliated, being reproached for their pregnancy, and felt their debts were not taken into account. "We get told off, so why do you come over here if you're pregnant, they want to know; we're not so fluent in Spanish but they really shout at us at social services." These two cases give some indication of how space plays a part in the injustice the women face and how much their damaged self-esteem and suffering stems from misrecognition. Their negative experiences are rooted in spatial reality, being excluded from the workplace and the space of mobility. If being denied access to these spaces hurts so badly, it's because they are valued, not only as mere entry points to a much needed source of income and sense of independence, but as crucial to a sense of identity and autonomy. Space underlies relationships based on recognition, in this case between employers and their employees. Moreover, their employers' approval of their performance has a spatial element to it as well. Being asked to return year after year for a migrant worker is bound to make her feel that her professional skills are recognized (to be denied this affects her perception of her own skills and identity). This spatial dimension mediates their experience of injustice and when their access to both the workplace and cross-border migration is compromised, it is clear how much recognition is tied up with space. For those who are not yet in the difficult situation of having

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migration prospects denied, but who fear they are threatened with it, misrecognition is met with anger.
Speaking out against spatial injustice Several women I met were very critical of their situation, and one recurrent expression in the interviews was hogra. They talk about hogra to express their outrage at being exploited and betrayed and they criticize the whole system of migration. This often comes about once their relationship with their employer has broken down, and they feel they will not be hired for another season. Many of them spoke about the diminishing numbers of migrants recruited: the official reason given by the Spanish officials was the economic downturn. They felt they had been fed lies to make them more compliant with the demands of the industry: "Four years of work and then a residency permit. It's all a pack of lies, there's no respect, they were just toying with us", one woman told me after she fell out with her boss. "The boss called me in, asked me if I'd been considering 'hrgue'" (Arabic word meaning literally to burn and a metaphor for staying on within EU borders as an illegal immigrant). This woman felt certain that her employer would not renew her contract leaving her especially bitter as she had worked in Spain for five years. When these women realized that they had reached the end of the road, they desperately wanted to tell me their stories and saw me, the researcher, as someone who could report on the injustice of their situation. They reinterpreted their entire trajectories in terms of broken promises and this gradually gave them a more critical viewpoint on their collective situation as groups of exploited women migrant workers. Some of their complaints were aimed at their employers: "He yells at us when we don't work hard enough... He says: I'm helping you out of dire poverty, you arrived in rags scraping the barrel and I get you over here and you don't work." This interviewee also talked about employers who sexually harassed younger women migrants. Their anger is also directed at the Moroccan officials; one woman explained: "Morocco is sending over women like trainloads of cattle." She felt furious with the way political authorities does nothing to defend Moroccans' rights, and assist migrants: "Thanks to M6 (Mohammed VI) who granted women equal rights and who allows women these days to emigrate to seek work (...) but what I don't understand is why don't they follow through with this measure and give us our full rights? Why don't they

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ensure we are issued with the official paperwork? Why don't they back us so we can get the permits? Why do they hand us over to those bosses, who make us beg for the chance to go back, to get all the legal documents we need? Why do they let us lose all dignity?" Some women I interviewed felt not only exploited because they had adhered to the employment contract, trusted the terms and conditions, giving their all in their work; but they felt let down by the Spanish authorities who by refusing to grant them leave to stay and work in Spain, confronted them with an unbearable dilemma: to 'hrgue', go underground and live in the shadows to earn a living as an illegal immigrant, or to go home to their former existence in Morocco. Staying in Spain means abandoning dependants, but going home would make it harder to secure a brighter future for their children and better care for elderly parents. For women with no kin this was all the more cruel because they had no relatives to ask for support and help in their responsibilities as carers: this reminds us of how torn many women still are between the ethic of care and the ethic of emancipation (Gilligan, 1986). All of these injustices are experienced as wrongs, which Lyotard defines as being deprived of the means to testify to injustice (cited in Renault, 2004, p. 40). The main challenge for these women was how to find a place where they could voice their grievances, raise awareness, organise as a group and resist, which is unlikely. Their precarious status as disposable workers made any effort to organise a protest or to resist unfeasible. Employers and the Spanish authorities opted for this type of contract, for circular migration, precisely because they did not want to be faced with any form of protest from foreign workers. These contracts, which migrant workers in many parts of the world are subjected to, are amongst the most deplorable for precisely this reason, that they silence workers and allow abuse, by making it impossible for them to uphold their rights (Basok, Carasco, 2010).
Conclusion: social and spatial justice The main debate in the literature on female migration has to do with disagreements about the extent to which it is a source of emancipation or of domination (Moujoud, 2008, Schmoll, 2007). My study of Moroccan seasonal workers experiencing domination and yet at the same time given access to some measure of emancipation, and selfesteem through recognition is a case in point and calls for new thinking on how

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oppression functions in practice. The concept of injustice rooted in recognition theories proved useful for exploring discrimination as something that does not necessarily crush individuals, who demonstrate the ability to construct themselves as subjects notwithstanding. This does not mean that these Moroccan workers submit to domination but they are involved in an on-going project to develop a positive sense of self-esteem in their employment and migration journeys. We have seen how they evolve as active mobile agents despite the restrictions they live and work under. However the employment regime and bureaucracy may thwart them they continue to circulate. In her study of maquiladoras work in Nicaragua, Natacha Borgeaud-Garcianda offers a sharp analysis of how subjectivity is constrained yet reinforced through relations of oppression. "The problem, for domination, is less to subdue individuals than to subdue their will and desire. And this is precisely what springs eternal with the construction of subjects: an obstinate desire to be" (2009, p. 138). The experiences of injustice reported by migrant workers make their deep-seated desire for mobility obvious. "Part here, part there, what we want is a residency permit", this is the phrasing of these women's claim for justice. We have heard them discuss recognition as central to their experience of migration, and how situations of abuse and harassment are overcome by forms of recognition, gained through spatial mobility. Access to the space of migration is essential not only in terms of economic resources, but also in terms of identity construction. Being a worker and part of migratory flows add value to their sense of self. When they are denied access, the whole process of recognition is called into question. This case study allowed for a discussion of space in its manifold aspects, and recognition in its most material form. This is how geography may gain from engaging with theories of recognition, in terms of gaining conceptual tools, elaborating a critical perspective on certain situations, and seeing space as a means to establish more social justice.
References

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BASOK Tanya, CARASCO Emily, Advancing the rights of non citizens in Canada : a human Rights approach to migrants rights , Human Rights Quarterly, Vol 32, n2, May 2010, 342-366, 2010. BORGEAUD-GARCIANDIA Natacha, Dans les failles de la domination, Paris : Puf, 2009. BURCHIANTI Flora, La fresa amarga. Mobilisations autour des perscutions rencontres par les travailleuses agricoles saisonnires trangres dans la province de Huelva , Rseau Terra, 2009. http://www.reseau-terra, CAMPANI Giovanna, Les femmes immigrantes et le march du travail : intgration et exclusion , Recherches Fministes, Vol 13, n1, 47-67, 2000. DEJOURS Christophe, Souffrance en France, la banalisation de linjustice , Paris : Edition du Seuil, 1998. DERANTY Jean-Philippe, Les horizons marxistes de lthique de la reconnaissance , Actuel Marx, n 38, 159-179, 2005. DIKE Mustafa, Lespace, le politique et linjustice , Justice spatiale / spatial Justice, n1, 2009. www.jssj.org DOMINGUES Juan Antonio Mrquez, MERCDEZ Gordo, DELGADO GARCA Francisco Javier, Temporary contracts in origin as policy to control immigration in Spain: the Huelva model, Cahiers de lUrmis, n12, 2009. http://urmis.revues.org FALQUET Jules, LEtat nolibral et les femmes, le cas du bon lve mexicain , in Le sexe de la mondialisation, Genre, classe, race et nouvelle division du travail , edited by Jules Falquet et al., 229-242, Paris : Presse de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 2010. GILLIGAN Carol, Une si grande diffrence, Paris : Flammarion, 1986. (original version In A Different Voice, Harvard University Press, 1982). HANCOCK Claire, La justice au risque de la diffrence : faire une juste place lAutre , Annales de gographie, n 665-666, 61-75, 2009. HELLIO Emmanuel, Importer des femmes pour exporter des fraises , Etudes Rurales, n182, 185-200, 2009.

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HONNETH Axel, La lutte pour la reconnaissance, Paris : Cerf, 2000. (English translation : The Struggle for Recognition: the Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts , Polity Press, 1996). HONNETH Axel, La socit du mpris, Vers une nouvelle thorie critique, (trad. fr. Olivier Voirol, Pierre Rush and Alexandre Dupeyrix), Paris : La Dcouverte, 2006. (English translation: Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, Polity Press, 2007) MARCUSE Peter, Spatial Justice: Derivative but causal of Social Injustice, Justice spatiale spatial Justice, n1, 2009. www.jssj.org MIRET Anak, Limmigration dans un contexte de basculement migratoire rcent : lexemple de lEspagne , in Migrants dici et dailleurs, du transnational au local edited by Karen Akoka, Patrick Gonin and Hamelin David, Poitiers : Ed. Atlantique, 2009. MORENO-FONTES CHAMMARTIN Gloria, La situation des travailleuses migrantes sur le march de lemploi , Sminaire de rflexion thmatique de la stratgie europenne pour lemploi, 29 Avril 2008. MORENO NIETO Juana, Los contratos en origen de temporada : mujeres marroques en la agricultura onubense , Revista de Estudios Internacionales Mediterrneos REIM, n7, 2009. http://www.uam.es/otroscentros/TEIM/Revista/reim7/pdfs/ArticuloJuana.pdf MOUJOUD Nassima, Effets de la migration sur les femmes et sur les rapports sociaux de sexe : au-del des visions binaires , in Femmes, genre, migrations et mondialisation : un tat des problmatiques, edited by Jules Falquet, Aude Rabaud, Francesca Scrinzi and Jane Freedman, 57-79, Paris : Cahiers du Cedref, Publications Universitaires Paris Diderot, 2008. PLEWA Piotr, Administration seasonal of foreign workers admissions to Huelvas strawberry agriculture, Preliminary draft of the presentation for the immigration reform: Implications for farmers, farm workers and communities, Washington, 2009. REDONDO Dolores, Les contrats en origine dans la production intensive des fraises Huelva , Etudes Rurales, n182, 169-184, 2009. RENAULT Emmanuel, Lexprience de linjustice, Reconnaissance et clinique de linjustice, Paris : La Dcouverte, 2004.

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RENAULT Emmanuel, ZENEIDI Djemila, Formes de reconnaissance conflictuelle : relations sociales, appropriation de territoire, culture et politique dans un groupe de punks squatters , in La reconnaissance lpreuve, Explorations socio-
anthropologiques, edited by Alain Battegay, and Payet Jean Paul, 193-199, Genve : Edition Septentrion, 2008. SCHMOLL Camille, Femmes et migrations : Pratiques spatiales transnationales et stratgies de mobilit des commerantes tunisiennes , Revue Jura Gentium, 2007. http://www.juragentium.unifi.it/fr/surveys/med/schmoll.htm

Clair Hancock - Gender, Sexual Identities and Spatial Justice

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justice spatiale | spatial justice

Gender, Sexual Identities and Spatial Justice

world all too cruelly.

justice spatiale | spatial justice

justice spatiale | spatial justice

justice spatiale | spatial justice

justice spatiale | spatial justice

justice spatiale | spatial justice

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justice spatiale | spatial justice

justice spatiale | spatial justice

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justice spatiale | spatial justice

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justice spatiale | spatial justice

Keywords : homosexuality, lesbian, territory, city, network.

justice spatiale | spatial justice

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2. Lesbian businesses in Paris

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2.2 Lesbian businesses in Paris since 1970

[Figure 1. Lesbian businesses in Paris in 2010]

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Le Troisime lieu, 4th arrondissement, and OKubi Caff, 10th arrondissement.

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Le Nix between 2006 and 2009.

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Four bars, le Caveau de la Bastille, El Scandalo, Les Scandaleuses, Le Boobsbourg, were

managed in succession by the same person.

A survey by SOS Homophobie on lesbophobia, published in 2008, relies on approximately

1800 questionnaires answered by lesbians or bisexual women: see www.sos-homophobie.org.

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[Figure 7. Lesbian places in Paris since the 1970s]

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[Figure 8. Geography of lesbian parties in Paris since 2000]

Black women and their friends.

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4. Female homosexuality and the Marais: location strategies

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Conclusion : lesbian invisibility and right to the city

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Seeking recognition: spatial justice versus heteronormativity

Keywords Recognition, heteronormativity, minority, gay marriage, gays and lesbians.

justice spatiale | spatial justice

The second kind of injustice is cultural or symbolic. It is rooted in social patterns of

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justice spatiale | spatial justice

justice spatiale | spatial justice