On June 27, 2023, in Nanterre, a western suburb of Paris, a youngster aged 17, Nahel Merzouk, was killed at point-blank range by a police officer who claimed legitimate defense in the face of a refusal to comply with police orders during a roadside check—a claim that was rapidly contradicted by video surveillance footage and by witness statements made by passengers in the car in question. This event triggered rioting in a number of deprived neighborhoods FOOTNOTE (designated quartiers prioritaires de la politique de la ville, or “urban policy priority neighborhoods”), which then spread to a number of small and medium-sized towns marked by segregation. Drawing on a wide-ranging investigation into experiences of discrimination in working-class neighborhoods (Talpin et al. 2021), I put forward the claim, in this article, that one of the explanations for this unrest is the absence of structures to encourage and channel everyday politicization linked to geographical and racial discrimination, which, without any appropriate outlets, can prove highly incendiary.
The gulf between inhabitants’ everyday lives and public debate
Deaths linked to police action form part of the day-to-day realities of some 5 million people living in quartiers prioritaires de la politique de la ville (urban policy priority neighborhoods; hereafter QPVs) in France. For the rest of French society, on the other hand, these kinds of dramas only really become visible once every 20 years or so, when unrest builds to beyond breaking point in the banlieues. [1] In 1983, the hospitalization of Toumi Djaïdja, the young leader of the association SOS Avenir Minguettes (based in the Minguettes neighborhood of Vénissieux, in the suburbs of Lyon in southeastern France), following a confrontation between police and youths in this part of Vénissieux, was the event that triggered the March for Equality and Against Racism (Marche Pour l’Égalité et Contre le Racisme). In 2005, the deaths of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré in Clichy-sous-Bois, in the eastern suburbs of Paris, after they sought to escape police controls by hiding in an electricity substation, triggered major revolts in working-class neighborhoods across France for three weeks. In 2023, the death of Nahel Merzouk triggered riots that did not last as long but which were more intense in nature, including in terms of how the young people involved were dealt with by police and the judiciary.
Researchers that follow the situation in these neighborhoods more closely also cite the 2007 riots in Villiers-le-Bel and other suburbs in the Val-d’Oise département (county), northwest of Paris. A certain degree of visibility was also attributed to these dramas through mobilization led by victims’ families, such as the Justice et Vérité pour Adama (“Justice and Truth for Adama”) collective, formed in response to the death of Adama Traoré on July 19, 2016, following his arrest in Beaumont-sur-Oise after he tried to flee a police check.
For inhabitants, through these dramas, it is brothers, cousins, neighbors, and friends who are affected first and foremost. Take the example of Asma, in her thirties, who works as a civil servant in a suburb in the Seine-Saint-Denis département (county), northeast of Paris, whom we met in Villepinte. When she was 17, her friend Karim died on his motor scooter while trying to evade a police check. They both lived in the Quatre Chemins neighborhood of Aubervilliers. Asma was a good student who regularly helped Karim with his school work in the local library. His death hit her particularly hard, as her little brother’s name is also Karim. This experience was foundational in her subsequent activism work to prevent crime and combat discrimination as a member of the Zonzon 93 association in Villepinte. She emailed me the following text on July 2, 2023:
In 2023, how could I not think of Karim when Nahel was taken from us? This situation was completely predictable. The invisibilization of suffering, and of poverty, in a context of general indifference within a society that does all it can to perpetuate these phenomena, was the dormant fire; and this drama, the death of Nahel, was the match that set it burning again […]. The ise of force must be strictly controlled. We should not let a few discredit the whole of a noble profession. […] All discourse around firm measures are currently directed at “rioters and violent protesters”: this would not be a problem of justice was firm and just with everybody.
On the international stage, French police practices have been strongly criticised. The spokesperson of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a press briefing on June 30, 2023, declared that this was “a moment for [France] to seriously address the deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement.” [2] In France, by contrast, deaths linked to police activity—which number three per month on average—are carefully distanced from the public policy agenda and even the national media agenda. While criticisms are present in the public debate, they generate such controversy that they are drowned in the noise. The dominant public framing of the riots of June and July 2023 could thus be summarized as an indictment against the young people rioting, who were portrayed as savages, with no mention even of the very event that triggered the riots: the arbitrary death of Nahel, killed at point-blank range by a police officer.
This disparity between the weakness of the public debate, the denial of the problem by France’s leaders, and the very direct, personal perception that death could be possible on a street corner following an identity check that turns nasty, and the feeling that police officers act with total impunity, can trigger incompressible rage (Kokoreff 2021). This is what happened in the days following June 27, 2023.
The everyday politicization of the experience of discrimination
Our collective study shows how the experience of discrimination structures the relationship to politics in working-class neighborhoods (Talpin et al. 2021), whether this discrimination is racial in nature or territorial—that is, people being treated unfavorably because they happen to live in a poorer area that, paradoxically, is underserved by public bodies and services.
Our work, based on 245 biographical interviews, as well as observations and interviews with local associations, conducted in nine working-class municipalities in France (Roubaix, near Lille; Vaulx-en-Velin, near Lyon; Villepinte and Le Blanc-Mesnil in the Paris region; Lormont, near Bordeaux; and Grenoble, in south-eastern France) and further afield (Montreal, Canada; Los Angeles, USA; and London, UK), suggests that discrimination, particularly racial discrimination, leads to a degree of everyday politicization.
We collected over 900 accounts of discriminatory experiences, either personally experienced or witnessed by the people we met. To the question, “In your opinion, what are the causes of these experiences?”, individual causes (prejudice, people’s stupidity, respondent’s own attitude/self-blame phenomenon) were mentioned in only half of cases. For the other half, political causes, in the broadest sense of the term, were mentioned: local institutions (schools, local authorities) that don’t uphold the principle of equality, the stigmatization of Muslims after the 2015 attacks in France, national laws, colonial history, and racism in the police and the media.
These two types of causes are cited about the same number of times in the interviews, but the number of respondents mentioning political causes is slightly higher. For example, 45% of victims or witnesses of discrimination attribute their experience to general, structural or institutional causes (versus 41% for individual causes). This is more than we expected, bearing in mind, too, that all respondents (and not just the most highly educated or most politically engaged) proved equally likely to politicize their experience of discrimination in this way. This result calls into question the idea that residents of banlieues are depoliticized, as well as the prevalence of a triangular social consciousness whereby these residents’ problems, in their opinion, come from people who are “lower down”: the poorest, migrants, Roma, etc. Our survey shows, on the contrary, that banlieue residents are more inclined to politicize their experience of discrimination. Conversely, our survey shows that the experience of discrimination contributes to an upward attribution of the feelings of injustice felt by certain fractions of the working classes (people of color who live in poor urban neighborhoods): it is very much the state, public authorities, and public institutions that are deemed responsible. We also observed that this experience shapes collective identifications into a kind of group consciousness that is conducive to political participation. All this is evidence of everyday politicization, with potential for more structured politicization.
Obstacles to associations’ efforts
Yet this everyday politicization is little addressed by political parties and local authorities. These issues are also increasingly difficult for associations in local neighborhoods to address, for two reasons. On the one hand, the associative fabric has been badly damaged by the dwindling number of subsidized contracts (240,000 have been abolished since 2007), cuts in subsidies and the logic of calls for projects. On the other hand, when groups of residents take up issues of discrimination, they are obliged to do so discreetly (Carrel 2023), failing which they are exposed to more or less subtle forms of repression.
We have seen several examples of anti-discrimination collectives involving young people. Initially, their initiatives, born in association with the social center (in Lormont and Vaulx-en-Velin), local community activists (in Roubaix) or academics (in Vaulx-en-Velin), were very well received by the institutions. But when these collectives start to investigate the causes of racial discrimination in more detail, formulate proposals and question the public authorities, they are challenged and end up being singled out by the prefecture, suspected of “communitarianism” (Mohammed and Talpin 2018). Employees of social centers have thus had to transfer or restrict their activity, collectives have lost their funding, the collective inquiry dynamic has been halted. In short, associations in working-class neighborhoods are condemned to not investigate too much, debate too much and question institutions too much about discrimination in order to exist. The deterioration in the associative world’s relations with public authorities, which began after the 2015 attacks, was accentuated with the vote on the law of August 24, 2021. Known as the separatism law, it extended the grounds for administrative dissolution and created the contract of republican commitment, mandatory for obtaining public financial aid. Failure to comply with this contract may result in an association’s subsidies being withdrawn. The interpretation of obligations, such as “not calling into question the secular character of the Republic” or “refraining from any action prejudicial to public order”, gives rise to sometimes abusive sanctions, reinforcing mutual distrust (Talpin et al. 2022). This restriction of associative freedoms feeds a vicious circle of radicalized protest.
No outlets for everyday politicization—an inevitability?
A feeling of injustice based on massive experience of discrimination, everyday politicization without intermediaries, the exhaustion of associative players, mutual distrust between residents and politicians: these are the ingredients of a highly inflammable cocktail. Add to this the negligence of public policies. As far as racial discrimination is concerned, “the fight against discrimination has not taken place” (Simon 2015). In terms of socio-spatial inequalities, numerous evaluations and reports by the French Audit Office (Cour des Comptes) have established that the resources allocated to urban policy - less than 1% of the State budget - are not enough to compensate for the unequal allocation of budgets for other public policies (education, employment, health, security...), to the detriment of priority neighborhoods. We’re a long way from the nineteen measures of the 2018 Borloo plan and the recommendations for a radical reform of urban policy (Bacqué and Mechmache 2013), which our leaders would do well to reread.
As in 2005, there is indeed a revolt, a proto-political dimension, in the conflagration in our working-class neighborhoods, and to deny this political dimension is to evacuate the widespread responsibility for allowing inequalities and discrimination to develop. The radicalization of protests reflects a democratic crisis that extends beyond working-class neighborhoods, fueled by authoritarian government, the disappointed promises of participatory democracy and the growing impoverishment of the working classes. However, another aspect of our survey shows that the empowerment of local residents can be achieved when leaders are supported, when commitment formats are horizontal and action-oriented, and when public officials, elected representatives and scientists listen to and co-construct solutions with the population. All this must be accompanied by a paradigm shift in public policies, so that they become truly redistributive, take charge of the problem of discrimination instead of sweeping it under the carpet, and support associations instead of silencing them.
Bibliography
- Bacqué, M.‑H. and Mechmache, M. 2013. Pour une réforme radicale de la politique de la ville. Ça ne se fera plus sans nous, report for the Ministre de la Ville (Minister for Cities), July 8, Saint‑Denis: CGET.
- Carrel, M. 2023. “Discreet Mobilizations Against Discrimination. Informal Participation in French Deprived Neighborhoods”, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 17–33.
- Kokoreff, M. 2021. La Diagonale de la rage. Une histoire de la contestation sociale en France des années 1970 à nos jours, Paris: Divergences.
- Mohammed, M. and Talpin, J. (eds.). 2018. Communautarisme ?, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
- Simon, P. 2015. “La lutte contre les discriminations n’a pas eu lieu. La France multiculturelle et ses adversaires”, Mouvements, no. 83, pp. 87–96.
- Talpin, J., Balazard, H., Carrel, M., Hadj Belgacem, S., Kaya, S., Purenne, A. and Roux, G. 2021. L’Épreuve de la discrimination. Enquête dans les quartiers populaires, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
- Talpin, J., Delfini, A. and Roux, A. 2022. Enquête sur la répression des associations dans le cadre de la lutte contre l’islamisme, second report of the Observatoire des Libertés Associatives (Observatory of Associations’ Freedoms).
