Based on a multi-methods investigation, this article focuses on a blog dedicated to the memories of slums and transit camps in Nanterre in post-war France. The article deals with the various dynamics constitutive of memory crusades. While the digital device was initially built to support the legitimization of the upwardly mobile trajectories of its administrators, it also helped a larger group of inhabitants to reconstitute itself and overcome the physical dispersion brought on by rehousing procedures. By engaging themselves in the blog, the former inhabitants access a space in which it is possible to remember and reconnect with each other. The managing practices of the webmasters have also built and organized bloggers’ relationships: They contributed to the unification of narratives around a tribute to a young inhabitant murdered in the 1980s and to the mobilization of a public ready to lobby the City Hall of Nanterre to gain recognition. However, internal group cohesion and consensus should not be overestimated. According to their trajectories, these slum children –migrants from Algeria and Morocco and their descendants– do not have the same capacities and interests to mobilize to make this past more legitimate at the local level.
Keywords
- Memory
- blog
- social ties
- slums
- immigration