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Despite apparent unanimity among actors, individuals experience the revolutionary moment quite differently. Diverse dynamics of radicalisation operate. In order to understand how a multitude of individuals who were not part of the political opposition per se engaged in collective action, we must avoid the “immaculate contestation” trap. Therefore I focus on 1/ increased engagement in contentious collective actions in “inner Tunisia” since 2008, and 2/ emerging ambivalent counter-behaviours among different social groups that are transformed under certain circumstances into anti-regime protests. Through repeated interviews carried out since 2006, this diachronic study identifies the conditions which triggered these mobilisations: socio-professional situations, neighbourhood and family sociabilities, the interplay between generations, memories of past struggles, and experience of repression. Simultaneously, the ethnographic approach reveals the extent to which political engagement was contingent in an uprising as intense as it was rapid.