4

Since 2015, regular and recurring strikes of varying duration have been organised in Marseille in the hotel cleaning sector. Occupying the forecourts of the fairly upmarket hotels in Marseille city centre has become a common practice for some of these employees as well as for the trade union that supports them (cnt - Solidarité ouvrière). By appropriating public space in this way – at least during the strike – these almost unseen women become visible. In contrast, in Lyon, cleaning women represented by the same union are struggling to mobilise. To shed light on these variations in the intensity of activism, this article draws on several field-works. Space, or more precisely local embeddedness, proves to be a significant explanatory factor. Our argument is that the sharing of social and living spaces, the maintenance of working-class togetherness, and the construction of a memory of the struggles in Marseille, foster trade union involvement.