Repolitiser la diversité ? Une étude des répertoires d’endogénéisation militante des lois antidiscriminatoires

• Main Author: Lisa Buchter
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française 2019-05-01
• Series: Sociologies
• Subjects: diversity; antidiscrimination law; social movements; legal intermediaries
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/sociologies/10690

Theories about diversity policies in the workplace have had a hard time explaining cases when organizations “do better than the law,” or improve their policies over time. Indeterminate, these policies are “à la carte” and dilute the salience of some category at the benefit of others. Non-performative, they set up communication strategies, which primarily aim at improving the reputation of the company. To renew the approach of these questions, this article explores the hypothesis of an activist legal endogenization, by complementing neo-institutionalist approaches of legal endogeneity theory with French sociology about legal intermediaries and social movement theory. Using qualitative research about people who defend a cause in company (disability rights activists and LGBT rights activists), we demonstrate – by contrast with transversal research about diversity managers and entrepreneurs – the way in which insider activists can re-politicize diversity programs, initially conceived as a non-performative interpretation of antidiscrimination law.