Bédinadé, Daphné

PhD Candidate in Ethnology and Social Anthropology,
EHESS and CESSP (France)

The paper I aim to present is based on an ethnographic study conducted between the end of 2013 and 2014, among three African and West Indian hair salons specialised in the care and treatment of Afro hair in the Château d’Eau district of Paris, known, along with Château Rouge, as the African district. This African ‘centrality’ was structured between the 1970s and 1990s and is characterised by a concentration, on a few streets, of around 150 hairdressing salons and shops distributing cosmetic products for black people, both legal and illegal, as well as by a strong informal economy (Chabrol, 2011). I will also mobilise data collected (mainly interviews with hairdressing professionals) during my ongoing doctoral thesis on the production of beauty within the ‘ethnic’ beauty market and the cosmetics industry in Brazil and France.

The hairdressing market in France is very segmented. In fact, there are very few salons where both so-called European and Afro hair is styled. The absence of ‘mixed’ salons and state-accredited professional training that would include all hair types attests to the fact that ‘access to femininity is a privilege reserved for a minority’ of women (Arango Gaviaria, 2016). Indeed, governmental organisations only consider Afro hair from the point of view of its transformation – with a view to straightening it – and not from the point of view of its care or treatment. Moreover, it is still referred to in the catalogues of these training courses as pathological and “negroid” hair, highlighting which standards of beauty are valued and how those beauty norms are constructed on racial hierarchies. If today some actors, often second generation of African or ultramarine immigrants and invested in the ‘natural’ treatment of medium or high end hair, struggle to legitimise the practice of Afro hairdressing and frizzy hair care with institutions such as the Federation of French Hairdressing and the Ministry of National Education, it turns out that this profession remains largely excluded from the field of hairdressing in France.
Thus, firstly, I would like to discuss the way in which public policies (Fédération de la coiffure, Ministère de l’Education Nationale) structure the hairdressing market in France and specialised Afro hairdressing, in particular through its interventions in terms of training. It would be especially important to highlight, through an analysis that crosses gender, race and class (Mazouz 2015), the way in which these policies hierarchise this field (Bourdieu, 1992) of Afro hairdressing, which depends largely on the dispositions of the actors (in terms of legal status, ability or not to train internationally or through the cosmetics industry, strategies of distinction, among others). More broadly, I would like to point out the ways in which these public policies, through their biopolitical actions, contribute to marginalising this sector from the market and making the knowledge and know-how produced in it invisible and prevent its professionnalisation. What does this reveal about positions in terms of citizenship and second-class citizenship in France (Larcher, 2014)? Finally, how do afro hairdressing actors find strategies and means to build professional legitimacy in this context (Jacob-Huey, 2006)?