The Making of the Banlieue

An Ethnography of Space, Identity and Violence

Luuk Slooter

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9783030182090
• eBook ISBN: 9783030182106
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Antropologia

This book studies and disaggregates the "crisis of the suburbs" in Paris through the stories of inhabitants in 4000sud: a French suburban neighborhood. These stories have become pressing in the aftermath of the recent wave of terrorist attacks in France. The French banlieues are some of the most prominent and infamous examples of urban neighborhoods affected by vandalism, rioting, criminality and chronic poverty. Based on extensive ethnographic research, the book explores the making of the French suburban crisis as constituted both externally (by state actors) and internally, by young people at the street corner. It reveals how the French state's understanding of banlieue violence, and subsequent policy measures, contribute to the creation and hardening of boundaries between "us" and "them".
The book takes the reader on a journey from the city center of Paris to the heart of neighborhood 4000sud. It unveils how young suburban residents try to cope simultaneously with the negative images imposed on them from the outside, and the disciplinary expectations of their peers on thestreet. In search for identity and dignity they navigate life through diverging strategies: they escape the neighborhood, contest stereotypical images through (violent) protest, or confirm and act out the image of "gangster from the ghetto". Drawing on Urban Sociology, Human Geography, and Cultural Anthropology, this book offers new analytical vocabularies to understand the connections between place-making processes, social identity dynamics and violent performances. The book is written for a broad audience of students, scholars and policy makers interested in contemporary (sub)urban violence in Europe.

© The Author(s) 2019

Luuk SlooterThe Making of the Banlieuehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18210-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Luuk Slooter¹

(1)

Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Luuk Slooter

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

This book tells the story of 4000sud, a French suburban neighbourhood north of Paris. It is about the everyday lives of its inhabitants Jean, Marie, Sofyan, Abdel, Duna, Idriss, Fadilah and many others: stories about inequality, unemployment, poverty, discrimination, injustice and violence; stories about neighbourhood pride, solidarity and compassion but also neighbourhood aversions, antagonisms and suffocation. Through these stories, this book studies and disaggregates what is widely perceived as one of the most urgent and recurrent problems in contemporary French society: ‘ La crise des banlieues ’—‘The Crisis of the Suburbs’.

The French banlieues became especially world-(in)famous for a 2005 episode of violence that erupted in the north Parisian suburb Clichy-sous-Bois after the death of two teenagers who were electrocuted in a power substation where they were hiding from the police. The violence lasted for 21 days, included around 300 suburban neighbourhoods across all of France, and left about 10,000 charred vehicles and 300 burnt-out public and private buildings (Rivayrand, 2006, p. 56). Especially affected were the so-called Zones Urbaines Sensibles (ZUS), neighbourhoods known for their above-average number of poor, unemployed and migrant inhabitants.¹

The 2005 episode of violence was not the starting point or the final round of the suburban crisis. Rather, it was just another, albeit particularly illustrative, chapter in an enduring story of French suburban unrest. Violent events had already occurred in the banlieues in the 1970s (see, e.g., Bachmann & Le Guennec, 1996; Dikeç, 2007; Kokoreff & Lapeyronnie, 2013) and after 2005 numerous incidents of suburban violence were to erupt again.²

Throughout the years, the violence came in different forms, ranging from the so-called rodéos (car races) and collective car-burnings, to clashes between young people and police, to intergroup fights and territory conflicts between drug dealers. Some of these episodes were long-lasting, widespread and intense, causing extensive damage; others were less violent, remained limited to one or a couple of neighbourhoods and extinguished within hours or a few days.

Over the past decades, the 4000sud neighbourhood was the site of many of these violent eruptions. Only a few kilometres away from 4000sud lies Paris city centre, with the Eiffel tower, the luxurious Champs-Élysées, the carefully laid out parks and their impeccable lawns, with the French national motto ‘Liberté, Égalité , Fraternité’ (Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood) carefully carved out in the facades of many impressive state buildings. On the walls of the high-rise apartment buildings in 4000sud; however, a very different slogan is inscribed in graffiti: ‘Nique la France, Nique la Police’ (Fuck France, Fuck the Police). These two worlds are physically so close but psychically, as it seems, so far apart. It is a contrast that calls out to be examined.

Using 4000sud as an emblematic case study, this book ethnographically explores the making of the suburban crisis, viewed both from the outside perspective of the state and from within through interpretations, meanings and practices of 4000sud’s inhabitants, especially the young. My aim is not so much to define what the banlieue is or who its young residents are, but to understand the process of becoming: the constitution, transformation and contestation of these places, the dialectics between the categorizations and identifications of its young inhabitants, and the role that violence plays in these processes. The book can be read as a journey in time and space: a journey through the decades and a journey from the city centre of Paris to the heart of the suburbs. Borrowing a phrase from sociologist William Foote Whyte (1981 [1943], p. 323), it aims to be ‘a moving picture instead of a still photograph’. This introduction is intended to serve as a preparation for that journey.

The French Case: A European Exception?

From a broad West-European perspective, the French unrest of the past decades is by no means exceptional, as illustrated by recent incidents of (sub)urban violence in ‘migrant neighbourhoods’ in, for example, Amsterdam (2007), Copenhagen (2008), London (2011), Stockholm (2013) and Gothenburg (2018). Although the scale of these violent episodes differs, the images of burning cars and fierce clashes between young people and police are rather similar. Also, more mundane forms of ‘disruptive’ youth practices are on the daily news across Europe. It therefore seems possible to speak of a broad, structural development of violence rather than merely of one-off incidents in single countries.

Moreover, the media and political debates in the aftermath of these violent episodes resemble one another: cacophonies of expert voices all trying to explain why youngsters in France, the Netherlands, Denmark, the UK or Sweden resort to violence. Among the most frequent explanations are social exclusion, physical isolation, poverty, unemployment, discrimination, (neo)colonialism, racism, the failure of integration (models), cultural, ethnic and religious differences, (radical) Islam and pure criminality. In short, in the struggle to identify causes, the stress is on the urban, social, cultural or criminal roots of violence.

Despite similarities in both the manifestations of this European violence and the subsequent contestation about its root causes, I will argue that the French case can also stand out as an exception.³ In comparison with other European countries, the dominant French public and political narratives label these acts of violence much less openly in ethnic and much more explicit in spatial terms. This tendency can be illustrated by a brief look at two more or less similar acts of violence in Western Europe, one in the Netherlands, the other in France, about which the dominant narratives projected onto the images differ considerably.

Sunday afternoon, mid-October 2007

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Bilal, a 22-year-old man, enters a police building at the August Allebéplein in the western part of Amsterdam. He jumps over the front desk and stabs a female police officer. A colleague, who tries to protect her, is stabbed in the neck and shoulder. The female police officer shoots Bilal, who dies shortly afterwards. The police officers are hospitalized but survive. The event leads to a tense atmosphere in the city, with cars burning in Amsterdam during the weeks that follow.

The death of Bilal and the subsequent car-burnings are prominently covered in the Dutch media and in political debate. In these discussions, Bilal’s ethnic and religious identity is emphasized. He is Moroccan, or at least Dutch-Moroccan. He is Muslim. Government representatives claim that Bilal had links with the so-called Hofstadgroep, an Islamist network based in Amsterdam and The Hague. However, relatives of Bilal have a different explanation. They send out a statement stressing that Bilal suffered from psychological disorders, voices in his head and suicidal tendencies. Was this the result of a ‘crazy’ young man? An act of Islamist terrorism? Or another illustration of ‘typical Moroccan youth behaviour’? These are the central questions that journalists and politicians pose.

In search of accountability for Bilal’s death, rumours start to spread in this Amsterdam neighbourhood that Bilal had made his way to the police office simply to report impolite treatment, and some say he was killed intentionally by the police. The local and national governments try to force back such conspiracy theories and appeal for calm, but to little avail. On television, the Amsterdam chief of police warns about ‘Parisian-style fuss’. The Minister of Interior Affairs at the time, Guusje ter Horst, quickly discounts such a scenario and declares that ‘the scale is not in proportion to what happens in Paris’.⁴

Sunday afternoon, the end of November 2007

Villiers-le-Bel , France

Six weeks later and about 500 kilometres south of Amsterdam, 15-year-old Moushin and 16-year-old Laramy drive on a small motorbike through Villiers-le-Bel, a suburb north of Paris. They get into an accident with a police car and are killed in the crash. As in the Netherlands weeks earlier, the media, politicians and experts dive into the event. Also as in Amsterdam, in Villiers-le-Bel different readings of the ‘accident’ arise and rumours spread both locally and nationally. Family members and friends of the boys state that the police were driving too fast and some say they deliberately ran into the boys with the intent to hurt them. Conversely, t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Making of the Suburban Crisis by State Actors
• 3. Ethnographic Research and the Discovery of the ‘Field’
• 4. The Internal Place-Making Process
• 5. Social Identification Strategies and the Dynamics of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’
• 6. Manifestations and Interpretations of Violence
• 7. Conclusion
• Back Matter