This reflective text explores the controversies surrounding vaccines and mandatory vaccination that unfolded in France between 2012 and 2018. They are approached from the symbolic perspective of public issues. After giving centrality to the interactionist notion of the arena, the thesis is developed that the dispersion and selection of controversies across heterogeneous arenas (more or less public and more or less regulated) account for the plurality of controversies and the politicization of vaccination. It also shows that changes in arenas transform power relations among actors and that attributes conferring authority (especially to institutional and scientific actors) disappear in certain arenas.