The Sentier Strike in Paris (1980): The Mobilization of Immigrant Workers as an Anti-Imperialist Struggle
Camille Fauroux & Fatma Çıngı Kocadost
What the paper says
In the 1970s, young activists of the Turkish revolutionary left found themselves in France as refugees, students, or workers. Amongst them, members of Devrimci Yol (Revolutionary Way), galvanized by the intensity of the struggles in Turkey, decided to do their bit by organizing migrant workers from Turkey. So they organized the struggle of undocumented garment workers in Paris in 1980. At the end of a mobilization involving hunger strike, occupation, marches, and public demonstrations, several thousand workers obtained victory. During this episode, Devrimci Yol militants combined in a singular way the anti-imperialist discourse with an analysis of the conditions of exploitation of foreign labour in Europe. However, when the September 1980 coup d’état led to massive repression and arrests in Turkey, activists in France were forced to abandon their effort towards immigrant workers to concentrate on supporting their imprisoned comrades or those forced into exile. Based on archival material and interviews in Turkish and French, the study of this episode allows us to reflect on the possibilities of politics inscribed in the multiple temporalities of a transnational space between the global North and South. Moreover, it explores the tensions between anti-imperialist and immigration labour movements.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.