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Paper short abstract

Underinvestment in France’s rural rail lines weaks the network, risking collapse amid SNCF’s privatization. Fragility shapes daily life: workers maintain tracks with scarce resources, users adapt informally, and mobilizations reimagine these infrastructures as ecological, inclusive transport.

Paper long abstract

For several decades, underinvestment in rural rail lines in France has led to reduced maintenance and weakened the rail network. Trains are fewer in number or have been permanently discontinued. The public railway company SNCF fears the irreversible collapse of this network if no investment is found, in a context of it’s privatization.

Fragility is not an exceptional phenomenon; it is woven into the daily lives of railway workers, residents, and users. What practices emerge when infrastructures routinely malfunction? What emotions does fragility generate, and what consequences do they entail? By tangibly disrupting people’s lives, it isolates certain rural territories, also revealing the ongoing reconfigurations of relationships among public services, the state, and inhabitants today.

I will base my argument on ongoing ethnographic studies of these different communities, conducted as part of a thesis in anthropology. These studies are being carried out on three railway lines in France located in mountainous areas.

First, I propose to understand how fragility is produced by political institutions and economic decisions at different levels of infrastructure.

Second, I will show how fragility is experienced on a daily basis: railway workers must maintain the tracks with limited resources and, when trains are not running, users develop informal coping strategies.

Finally, I will demonstrate how the attachments and mobilizations generated by this fragility are transforming these infrastructures. They are now perceived as ecological and inclusive modes of transport that challenge residents' ability to reclaim these infrastructures, thereby rehabilitating their living spaces.