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Between spring 2008 and summer 2010 in the Paris region, several thousand undocumented workers launched a strike during which they occupied their work places. Drawing upon an ethnography of this mobilization, the present article examines the engagement of migrants lacking authorization of residence through the lens of the “tactics of everyday life”, as Michel de Certeau put it, that characterize the experience of migrant illegality. The controversy between the organizers and some participants as to direction in which the movement should go shows why the actors’ involvement must be apprehended from the social substrate that constructs their rationality and understanding of collective action. This perspective allows us to grasp the fact that the actors public discourses are based on a vernacular reflexivity fed by “spaces of hidden script” as defined by James C. Scott. This discussion also contains a significant reflexive dimension on the researcher’s “engaged” position in the field of mobilization – a position that appears to be a necessary condition for accessing these spaces and thereby the speech of mobilized actors.