Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

American Studies

Second Department

French Studies

Reader 1

David Seitz

Reader 2

Annelle Curulla

Reader 3

Fazia Aitel

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Abstract

This thesis studies the political discussions, practices, and projects that emerged through mutual aid Facebook groups based in France and the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of particular interest is how these online spaces and the Facebook users that comprised them understood their mutual aid organizing in relationship to specific themes, including but not limited to: the COVID-19 pandemic as a "crisis", the role of government presence or absence in the wellbeing of the public, and the concept of collective yet differentiated struggle. Chapter 1 looks at four Facebook pages based in the greater Paris area: Entraide Danube, Clichy Entraide, Entraide COVID Saint-Denis, and Solidarité Migrants Wilson. Chapter 2 looks at four similar Facebook groups in the outer boroughs of New York City: South Bronx Mutual Aid, Sunnyside & Woodside Mutual Aid, Queens Mutual Aid, and Bushwick Mutual Aid. Close analysis of a selection of Facebook postings on these pages over the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic reveals that while French and American mutual aid groups were organizing within different cultural relationships to the State, success with mobilizing online discussion into collective action hinged on similar factors. Most notably, it proved essential for organizers to either come into the space with an intuitive understanding of the political practice of mutual aid through first-hand knowledge of differentiated struggle, or to develop that understanding through hands-on organizing, in order to build personal investment and reciprocal relationships that could last beyond the urgency of the "COVID crisis".

Download

Share

COinS