Conference Program

This contribution contributes to the reflection on the conditions under which educational research is practised when solicited through public commission. It examines two dynamics in particular: research as a legitimation device, whereby academic expertise validates political choices and produces governance frameworks (1), and the structural effects of commissioned research on research objects and critical perspectives (3). Through a reflexive account of a study conducted within a "Cité éducative", framed as "research-based support" (Prieur, 2020; Vinot, 2011), the paper analyses how the researchers navigated between institutional expectations, political legitimation logics, and the preservation of a critical stance (de Bernardy & Boisgontier, 1990).

The contribution is structured around five phases. The first (2019–2022) is one of informal presence on the territory, without a clearly defined status in relation to the "Cité éducative". The second (2022–2023) marks the formalisation of a research proposal: meetings with the Troïka immediately reveal how the research is mobilised as a legitimation device — the researchers "auditioned", their expertise solicited to validate prevailing institutional injunctions, particularly around civic participation, elevated at that moment to a political criterion (Fouquet & Perriault, 2010). The third phase (2023) is one of ongoing adjustment of the scientific brief to the multiple and contradictory expectations of the commissioners, illustrating how political agendas shape research objects. The fourth (from January 2024), marked by integration into operational governance spaces, opens up forms of resistance: facilitating a technical committee shifts the evaluative logic towards reflexive co-elaboration, creating a space where divergent conceptions of participation can surface. The fifth phase, that of the current reporting modalities, closes this space: findings are delivered as an institutional written report, without co-elaboration, at a remove from the territory, embodying the expert-researcher dilemma inherent in commissioned research (Draetta & Labarthe, 2011) and risking the silencing of local dynamics within a document intented to the governance.

In methodological terms, the research draws on observation of all steering bodies (project team, steering committee, technical committee) and collective assemblies since 2019, co-facilitated reflection workshops with professionals, and interviews conducted across actors in the territory. This sustained immersion built a relationship of proximity with key informants, raising persistent ethical questions that will be discussed. Comparisons with other "Cités éducatives", also monitored as part of the research support program, will be provided.

By combining an analysis of the research's genesis with a reflexive account of its conditions of practice, this contribution interrogates the mechanisms of instrumentalisation at work, as well as the forms of resistance the researchers were able to build: reframings, methodological choices, and commitment to spaces of shared reflexivity with professionals in the territory.