“Be vigilant!” digital neighbourhood watch systems

While citizen participation in the co-production of order has become a subject of sociological interest in recent years in France, little is known about the municipal and citizen uses of private digital surveillance devices. This article explores these uses, based on a qualitative study (interviews, observations, analysis of a documentary corpus) covering two municipalities located in the suburban and peri-urban periphery of a city with a population of just over 100,000. Municipal involvement in these systems is a social reaction to disorder, yet the existence of dissension among residents as to the validity of the systems has not been enough to involve them in decision making about their implementation. These digital tools, used in multiple ways – including misappropriation –, also reveal the selective surveillance of certain groups and encourage a process of labelling deviance. The article thus reveals the ambivalent effects of these digital surveillance activities.