This thesis, constituted by a scoping review and three empirical papers, investigates political education for adults in non-formal settings, particularly those shaped by the social-action community organizing (CO) approach. Grounded in the empirical and technological course-of-action research program (CoARP), it aims at interrogating the emancipatory and transformative potential of the social-action CO approach by analyzing organizers situated practices and the extent to which they substantiate this ideal. The research is premised on the close relationship between political education for adults and democracy, and more specifically between pro-democratic political education and political participation. Hence, the relevance of this thesis emerges from its positionality at the intersection of political education for adults and the social-action CO, fields that are most fully realized in a co-constitutive relationship: education is inherently political, and organizing practices are intrinsically educational.
Eight French organizers, conceived as prototypical non-institutionalized yet permanent political actors who pursue an educational intentionality toward politically marginalized communities, participated in this research. Their activity was documented based on significant episodes of campaigns related to social housing in three French cities. Data were collected through ethnographic research, audiovisual recordings, and self-confrontation and analytical interviews. They were processed giving primacy to intrinsic data over extrinsic data.
Findings reveal a constant tension between the aspirations of the organizers and the realities they face. Their efforts to promote citizens' actual participation and to foster political agency are not always successful and often generate tensions, dilemmas, and discouragement. Findings also reveal that, despite organizational and institutional constraints, organizers mobilize available resources to propose alternatives to the institutional participatory democracy offer. Although often insufficient, their non-institutional yet permanent role as political educators remains worth preserving.
Discussion presents a central argument: organizers’ highly emotional and embodied activity seems to acquire fundamental significance when addressed as a political-and-educational practice that commits to fostering three interconnected political-and-educational movements: that of denaturalization of injustice, that of politicization of common grievances, and that of public denunciation aiming at negotiation with the institutionalized power. It also proposes an orienting model that aims to reinforce the educational dimension of non-institutionalized, yet permanent political actors engaged in political education. Crucially, their practice unfolds at the borders of institutional politics and formal education, where these actors occupy a paradoxical position, external to institutions yet enduringly engaged. This position enables them to set up conditions for politically marginalized communities to inhabit an intermediate space where a Ricœurian “practical utopia” may be enacted. Conceived in this way, their efforts can enable collective resistance to precarity and institutional violence. They also can foster political recognition and agency, perspective transformation, and a process of emancipation.
