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Short abstract:

This talk studies the reconfigurations of the problem of air pollution linked to the emergence of new citizen mobilizations, driven by the growth of the low-cost sensor market.

Long abstract:

Air pollution is a major public health problem despite three decades of scientific and activist mobilizations. In 2019, the World Health Organization ranked it among the top ten threats to global health (WHO, 2019). According to the WHO, 99% of the world's population is exposed to pollution levels that exceed the recommended thresholds, causing 7 million premature deaths worldwide (WHO, 2023). These concerning results echo those published by French national health agencies, indicating that chronic exposure to fine particles is responsible for 48,000 premature deaths per year (Santé Publique France, 2016). The ongoing of the air pollution problem has led to a series of reconfigurations, including the emergence of a new citizen mobilizations.

This talk studies these recent reconfigurations, driven by the growth of the low-cost sensor market. However, it shifts the focus from the role of the mobilized groups to that of scientists and institutional players involved in participatory and citizen science projects. Based on a field survey carried out during my thesis in Paris, this talk highlights that scientists and institutional stakeholders join citizen science projects with their own interests and objectives, which are different from those carried by mobilized collectives. This results in significant power asymmetries which reduce the role of the mobilized groups to the mere collection of digital data. It shows how this reduction of the citizen to a sensor of environmental pollution limits the capacity of a citizen science project to transform into a mobilization capable of redefining and reconfiguring the problem of air pollution on a local scale.