Do French unemployment organizations matter any more?

From early December 1997 to late February 1998, unemployment organizations in France initiated protests across the country to force the socialist-led coalition government to put in place a number of social and economic reforms of benefit to the jobless. These organizations led some protest events in subsequent years but, generally and despite the 2008 economic and financial crisis, their disruptive potential declined substantially. Nowadays, they struggle to mobilize the unemployed and public authorities ignore them in the main. This article seeks to account for and to assess the significance of this change in fortune. I argue that French unemployment organizations have come to operate in an increasingly fragmented mobilization environment making them less able to reach out and to mobilize disadvantaged people in general and the unemployed in particular.