Political Marketing Towards "Cultural Minorities": Understanding and Analysis of Categorization Processes
(A2021-94140)

AUTHORS

Emna Bouladi, IRG, Univ Gustave Eiffel, Univ Paris-Est Creteil

ABSTRACT

Political marketing seeks to attract targeted social groups by constructing identity categories. This research questions the relevance of categories constructed by political marketing in terms of their attractiveness for electoral participation of cultural minorities. 23 semi-structured and in-depth interviews were conducted with French people of North African origin in order to determine how they perceive these categories, as materialized in political speeches, and which categories they really identify with. After analyzing the results, we find that assigning a person to a given category is a way of constructing their social identity and causing a reaction, that of conforming to and adopting this category. The speeches structure these identities and can refer to the notion of "demarketing" which explains the abstention from voting by some voters.