Mattering at the periphery: Geographies of peri-urban life and its discontents

Amidst growing social unrest in the peripheries of Western European economies, this thesis investigates the lived experiences of those inhabiting “places that don’t matter.” Focusing on Yellow Vests activists in France, the thesis addresses the socio-political grievances and aspirations of peri-urban inhabitants, seeking to understand the complex fabric of peri-urban life and politics. This is done through an investigation of how Yellow Vests protesters navigate, challenge, and reshape their lived realities, focusing on the experiences, contestations and transformations that characterise the experiential and socio-political landscape of peri-urban life.

Based on a Lefebvrian-inspired critical phenomenological approach, this research engages ethnographically with the lives lived in French peri-urban peripheries, intertwining an understanding of subjectivities with a critical awareness of socio-spatial structures that shape and constrain lived experiences. Alongside economic hardships and political marginalisation, the thesis qualifies how peri-urban socio-spatial challenges are compounded by a scarcity of opportunities for meaningful encounters, exacerbating experiences of isolation and marginalisation. The thesis also highlights the agency of peri-urban inhabitants in challenging such experiential condition, exemplified by the Yellow Vests’ alternative politics of encounter, as they strive to contest and redefine the fabric of their peri-urban lived realities in the everyday.

Exploring what it means to live in peri-urban peripheries and how they are experienced by those inhabiting them, this thesis offers insights into the multifaceted impacts of urbanisation on people’s lives and the discontents this may engender. It complements inquiries into geographies of discontent and “left-behind places” by highlighting peri-urban inhabitants’ aspirations to matter at the periphery. The thesis suggests that peripheries should be conceptualised as involving a spectrum of lived experiences and bring them into focus to address the discontent and uncertainty surrounding their political futures.