The paper focuses on the various processes of occupation of places, endeavoring to etch them again into the ideological historicity of oppositional modes of action, into the variability of meanings assigned to them by individuals and citizen groups - heterogeneous themselves - who commit themselves, and primarily into the materiality of the practices engaged therein. Checked against the reviewing of the actors’ social routes, the ethnographic attention brought to the gestures carried out within the recreated daily life of occupied places allows revealing the importance of the mechanisms of downward social mobility, margin experience or exposure to violence while comprehending the processes of engaging into an occupation act, particularly for actors who have had no past as activists. Allowing the reconversion of an intimate experience of suffering and injustice into a militating resource, commitment into a rhythm of occupational action, both radical and familiar, provides a place for collective recognition paving the way towards a citizenship experienced as an accomplishment, as it is indexed to effective political action.