Within this context, certain mothers draw on their moral respectability, embodied presence, and intimate connections with neighbours to mediate interactions with public institutions.

As everyday intermediaries, they circulate resources, translate bureaucratic logics, and act as spokeswomen between residents and the state. Frequently co-opted into local governance, they legitimise their engagement through a fragile ethic of maternal devotion—sometimes at the cost of personal exposure or disillusionment.

By focusing on these gendered forms of mediation, Alice Daquin sheds light on how transformations of the welfare state are intertwined with the co-construction of political materialism in urban margins. 

Drinks afterwards in CREA Cafe.

About Alice Daquin

Alice Daquin is a postdoctoral researcher in the Prototyping Welfare initiative directed by Anouk de Koning and based at the University of Amsterdam. She is a socio-anthropologist whose work focuses on the state, urban violence, and gender relations.

Her research has examined youth participation in local policymaking, gendered mobilisations, the socio-spatial impact of the “war on drugs,” and political intermediation in French suburbs. She has recently published her doctoral thesis L’intermédiation aux marges de l’État. Une ethnographie du maternalisme politique dans un quartier populaire de Marseille. And an article on the spatial dispossession experienced by mothers through the war on drugs. 

Livestream

If you are not able to join in person, you can also follow the talk and discussion via the livestream.