In Bonheur d'occasion (1945), Hey Waitress and Other Stories (1989), Les enfants Beaudet (2001) and Lullabies for Little Criminals (2006), the characters struggle with exclusion, confinement and lack of social recognition in precarious environments. Moving in and out of home, they resist power structures that define and delineate their living spaces and they use strategies of transgression that allow them to make sense of their existence in relation to other people who share similar struggles. One aspect of the transgressive function of the texts is to represent alternative spaces in the lives of women and children that result from their experiences of struggle. The texts dramatize a desire for alternatives to dealing with spatial distress, economic crisis and sex-gendered boundaries. This desire is represented by the female and child characters' survival strategies, which show their capacity to surmount the socio-spatial difficulties. As Barbara Godard remarked, one of the aims of recent feminist research"coincides with the efforts of women writers to open new dimensions of space, to allow women freedom of movement, without hesitancy, or fear, or obstacle, through geographic and political spaces, but, more fundamentally, through cultural, conceptual and imaginary spaces" (Godard 2). Looking closely at how authors Gabrielle Roy, Helen Potrebenko, Isabel Vaillancourt and Heather O'Neill dramatize female and child characters' movement through and experience of daily living spaces, I suggest that, indeed, the texts open and question the geographical, material, sex-gendered, and imaginary spaces in which fictionalized subjects struggle to exist. By exploring the characters' experience of spatial, economic and psychosocial distress, I argue that the fictionalized subjects are able to build localized spaces of comfort both in the public and in the private sphere and thus to find a certain"freedom of movement" (Godard 2). Their survival strategies used for coping with social, spatial, economic, and physical boundaries show that they are agents of change and capable of finding and preserving minimum comfort in living spaces. For instance, the characters show ambivalence towards their sense of home, and, accordingly, they seek to rebuild and/or negotiate this living space through alternative sites such as embodied, fantasized or shared spatiality. I will read the texts according to the experiences of struggle of the characters, the represented survival strategies, and textual elements such as narrative point of view and discourses on space, gender and poverty. Bonheur d'occasion concentrates on the ways of using and creating space to get out of poverty and represents women's active, but subjugated, roles. The collection of short stories Hey Waitress and Other Stories gathers fictional voices of working-class, elderly, and poor subjects who experience sex-gendered, spatial, and economic struggle. These struggles create a space for alternatives and for resistance in living spaces that are open to change. Les enfants Beaudet fictionalizes the lives of children who, as a closed group, try to appropriate private and public spaces and use violence and revenge to cope with feelings of abandonment and injustice. Finally, Lullabies for Little Criminals , a first-person narrative, dramatizes the daily struggles of a pre-teenager who goes from one place to another, searching for recognition and a sense of home in Montreal. Each text represents particular living spaces and lived spatiality that situate and inscribe the agency of the female and child protagonists. Despite spatial crises, these stories dramatize how oppressed subjects are able to take action. Drawing on theories of space (Henri Lefebvre, Elizabeth Grosz, Kristinne Miranne and Alma H. Young), home (Catherine Wiley, Thomas Foster, Janet Zandy) and the fictional representation of poverty (Roxanne Rimstead), this thesis analyses home, the workplace, the body, and the shared space of solidarity as fragile, limited and conflicting sites. The four books dramatize the socio-spatial distress of characters that arise when precarious living conditions limit their opportunities for survival and subjecthood. I suggest, more particularly, that the negotiation of space is an important part of the process of identity formation through which the characters find a sense of home between the material and the psychological, the public and the private, and individuality and solidarity.

Cette thèse en Anthropologie filmique porte sur l’espace habité des Bédouins de Syrie, en termes d’espace humanisé, c’est-à-dire modelé et rendu utilisable par les personnes qui l’occupent. La recherche, tout à la fois anthropologique et filmique, met en œuvre pour la première fois une méthode d’enquête audiovisuelle appliquée à l’étude de l’espace habité nomade. A partir de l’observation et de l’analyse de l’habitation (tentes et abris) d’une famille bédouine syrienne vivant dans un campement aux alentours de Palmyre (Nord-Est de la Syrie), ce travail dévoile comment le mode de vie des Bédouins influence la forme et la fonction de leur habitation. Le texte est accompagné de dix films qui décrivent le campement et les différentes utilisations de l’espace. / This thesis in Visual Anthropology examines the Syrian Bedouins’ living space in terms of humanized space, i.e. built and functionally transformed by the persons living in it. The field research was anthropological, but used the camera as the main tool for investigation. For the first time, this research proposes a filmic investigation method for the study of the nomads’ dwellings. Through the observation and analysis of the habitation (tents and shelters) of a Bedouin family living in a camp near Palmyra (North-East Syria), it shows how the Bedouin way of life influences the structure and the functions of their living space. Ten films describing the camp and its different utilization complement the text.

Ce mémoire se penche sur les discours citoyens des Lavallois lorsqu’il est question de l'altérité ethnoculturelle dans leur quartier de banlieue. Cela implique de poser un regard sur le contexte spécifique de la ville de Laval pour y déchiffrer les arrimages entre rapport à l'espace et rapport à l'altérité ethnique dans l'expérience des répondants. Cette recherche qui se situe donc à la croisée des domaines des relations ethniques, de la géographie sociale et des études urbaines permet d’ancrer les représentations de l’altérité ethnoculturelle dans l’espace social et physique de la banlieue. Dans ce cadre, le discours de citoyens lavallois issus de deux quartiers ayant connu différents processus de croissance urbaine et de diversification ethnique sont analysés. Pour une majorité de répondants, les changements urbains récents témoignent d'une diversification de l'espace habité, ce qui est généralement mal perçu. Les manifestations d’altérité ethnoculturelle dans l’espace public et privé lavallois sont aussi associées à une détérioration du lien social dans la communauté du quartier. Au terme de cette étude, je soutiens que la présence d'immigrants est imbriquée dans les récents changements urbains dans la ville de Laval et que ces derniers sont directement associés à la perte du statut convoité de banlieue idéale. / This master's thesis addresses citizen discourses, regarding ethnocultural otherness in suburban neighborhood of Laval. To do so, I focus on the specific context of the city of Laval to detangle the relations between space and ethnocultural otherness from the perspective of the inhabitants. This research, thus standing at the crossroads of ethnic studies, social geography and urban studies, enables an anchoring of the representation of ethnocultural diversity in both the social and physical spaces of the suburb. Within this framework, the discourses of the Lavallois, coming from two neighbourhoods each characterized by different processes of urban development and ethnic diversification are analyzed. For a majority of our sample, the recent changes in the urban landscape attest of a diversification in the inhabited space that generally evokes a negative response. The presence of ethnocultural otherness in the public and private spaces of Laval is also linked to a perceived degradation of the social bond in their community. At the study's conclusion, I argue that the perception of immigrants is intertwined in the recent urban changes occurring in the city of Laval. As such, immigrants are directly associated with the loss of the idealized suburban branding.