Lila Belkacem

Expressing and contesting minoritization in ‘minor mode’: online conversations of Black youth of West African descent in the Paris region

ABSTRACT This article explores daily online conversations between Black young people of West African descent in the Paris region. It analyses how they react to the racial and social categorizations which they are subjected to. How do they express and/or contest everyday racism, discrimination, and their being defined as a social and ethno-racial minority? What are the social effects of these modes of expression? Away from the explicit and organized discourses from associations and anti-racist groups, these conversations show how people invent modes of expressions and/or contest everyday racism, using spaces and modes which are not always explicitly political or militant, but refer to their experience of minoritization. Analysing ‘minor modes’ of expressing and contesting opens to a study on the processes of community building among black people in the French migratory and postcolonial context.