Clémentine Autain (born 26 May 1973) is a French politician and journalist who has represented the 11th constituency of the Seine-Saint-Denis department in the National Assembly since 2017. She is a member of La France Insoumise (LFI).
Autain is the daughter of singer Yvan Dautin and actress Dominique Laffin. A feminist activist, she is co-editor of the monthly publication Regards with Roger Martelli and co-secretary of the Fondation Copernic, a "circle of reflection" critical of liberalism.
In 2001, Autain was elected to the Council of Paris for the 17th arrondissement with the support of the French Communist Party, where she served one term. As a councillor, she developed the Conseils de la jeunesse de Paris (Youth Councils of Paris). From 2001 to 2008, she held the title of Deputy Mayor of Paris under Bertrand Delanoë tasked with youth affairs. She was a member of the executive council of the Organisme d'habitations à loyer modéré and Offices publics d'aménagement et de construction, organisations responsible for the management of low-cost housing in Paris. In 2014, she was elected to the municipal council of Sevran, where she served again one term.
Autain has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the 11th constituency of Seine-Saint-Denis since 2017 as a member of La France Insoumise. She currently holds a position in the Bureau of the National Assembly of the 15th legislature of the French Fifth Republic as a secretary. She has also served as a regional councillor of Île-de-France since 2021, previously holding a seat in the regional council from 2015 until her resignation in 2017 to focus on her work as an MP.
Autain was born in Saint-Cloud, the daughter of actress Dominique Laffin and singer Yvan Dautin. Her paternal uncle, François Autain, was a French senator and member of Parti de gauche (Left Party) for Loire-Atlantique, as well as former Deputy Mayor of Bougue and former Secretary of State for Immigration, Defense, and social security during the presidency of François Mitterrand. Her grandfather, André Laffin, a veteran of the Indochina Wars, was briefly elected as a right-wing candidate as a member of UNR in the department of Yonne. Her mother committed suicide in 1985, when Autain was twelve.
She has a son and a daughter, born in 2008 and 2010. As of 2022 she has written 15 books, including a novel, Assemblées.
Autain studied history at university, earning a master's degree in history ("maîtrise"), with a specialisation in colonial Algeria, and a master's degree (Diplôme d'études approfondies, DEA) examining the Mouvement de libération des femmes (MLF).
In 2001, the French Communist Party asked her to run at the top of the ballot in the 17th arrondissement of Paris against Françoise de Panafieu, which she described as a "big bourgeois woman" with "appalling class contempt". Winning with 35% of the vote, the new Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, named her assistant in charge of youth.
As a representative of the Paris municipality, in 2001 she attended the Universités d'été euroméditerranéennes des homosexualités, where she worried about possible discrimination towards militant bisexuals in the associations within the homosexual world, a "biphobia". ...
Source: Article "Clémentine Autain" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
