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The French Droit au logement (Right to Housing) association, founded in 1990, has contributed significantly to the evolution of the repertoires of collective action in the last 10 years by using direct action modes such as squatting or camping. The article seeks to explain commitment within the Association, emphasizing the role of time. The existence in the association between 1990 and 1996 of three « militant generations », influenced by the association’s relations to the historical context, is highlighted. The analysis deals with defections as well as new members. Such attention to changes in membership makes it possible to illuminate debates, conflicts, scissions and tactics and their developments both synchronically and diachronically. At the individual level, it accounts for the activists’ careers and exit/entry phenomena. Three militants’ careers, typical of each of the three generations, are detailed in order to grasp the relations of the reasons and causes of flows. These provide an illustration of the differentiation of two types of fields over the last 20 years, the partisan field on which most social movements depended since at least the end of World War II, and the militant field, of which Droit au logement seems to be typical.