Creating space for peace after violence in two marginaled neighbourhoods in Grenoble, France

International audienceThe authors of Geographies of Peace (2014) provide a useful framework to think in innovative ways about public space. This paper looks at the process of claiming public space in a struggle for nonviolence and peace in two marginalized neighborhoods in a middle-size French city. It draws on fieldwork with a movement created after the violent death of two young men in 2012 in relation to tensions between two neighboring areas. Citizen mobilization to denounce youth violence brought together 20,000 people in a silent march. This movement, which is diverse in terms of race, class, generation and gender lasts and organizes actions using the words peace, nonviolence, violence and youth. The concept of public space provides an interesting angle to look at this mobilization for two reasons. Firstly, because it helps to understand what is at stake in the physical public space for youths in these neighborhoods. Secondly, because the mobilization is about making space for peace, claiming central public space from the locus of marginalized neighborhoods, insisting on nonviolence in a political context where the security discourse dominates. This symbolic space gets materialized by an annual event occupying prestigious spaces in the city