Riots in France: Political, Proto-political or Anti-political Turmoils?

Jobard, Fabien

doi:10.1007/978-1-137-30553-4_8

Cited by 5 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Whereas French politicians’ interpretations did not differ much from those heard in similar situations in England, Sweden or the Netherlands (see this issue), French academic accounts took two broad approaches: one broadly structuralist (emphasizing social inequality for example, as Lapeyronnie, 2006, or Beaud and Pialoux, 2003, did), the other looking at the dynamics of protest, as Mohammed and Mucchielli (2006) and Jobard (2014) did, and seeking a possible political message in an embryonic social movement. In this article, after describing the events, I examine these existing accounts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…The police forces remained oriented toward a strategy of containment, and direct confrontations were to be avoided. ‘A few cars set on fire are so much less costly than a trashed city centre, train station or shopping mall’ for the authorities, Jobard (2014: 140) remarked. 13 From the rioters’ viewpoint, they anyway preferred to stay on their turf where they had tactical resources, in particular to escape the national riot police who were unfamiliar with the sites of unrest.…”

Section: Considering Scholars’ Interpretationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It would seem that the targets were logically selected as a function of specific local contentions. Disruptive actions seemed to be articulated with a real sense of opportunity and with a quest for public resources through collective violence (Jobard, 2014: 144).…”

Section: An Interactive and Comprehensive Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 13. The law unanimously passed in July 2008 facilitated car owners’ compensation for destruction occurring during confrontations with the police. Burning cars was seen as a ‘norm’ by a Parliament member and such destruction perceived not as a breach of order but as an urban risk (Jobard, 2014: 141). …”

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confidence: 99%

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Making sense of French urban disorders in 2005

Body‐Gendrot

2016

European Journal of Criminology

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The dynamics of contention that unrolled in the French riots of 2005 in France were hardly the first of their kind, but the intensity, contagion, locations and scale of disruption that followed the horrifying deaths of two youths chased by the police in Clichy-sous-Bois were unusual and became imbued with symbolic significance. In this article, based on numerous conversations with involved participants and secondary sources, I distinguish on the one hand the interaction of active protestors, bystanders and police forces, which I call the ‘silent riots’ because so few of those actors talked during these leaderless and spontaneous events, and, on the other, a vast amount of a posteriori comment and analysis, the ‘paper riots’. The merit of the latter was to point out that the root causes of the disorders were relative deprivation, social exclusion, heavy-handed policing, discrimination and disrespect. An alternative comprehensive framework incorporates such dimensions and I add that routine relations were modified by the operation of multiple forces that, in the course of fluid and indeterminate situations, came together to produce a certain type of public disorder. These included the media, the issue of local space, cultural and religious dimensions, and unusual forms of political expression confronting a path of dependency at work in France. Did these ‘riots’ produce change? Except for massive urban renewal operations, the inability of French elites to increase the mobility of a generation of youths from deprived urban neighbourhoods, to alleviate the banlieues’ economic deterioration in terms of jobs and public services, to increase their political representation and to insert Islam’s values into French core values was made possible by the stability of the regime. Nevertheless, disturbances of this type are needed to trigger a public debate, slowly leading to reforms. Other countries face similar dilemmas.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Considering Scholars’ Interpretationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: An Interactive and Comprehensive Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Making sense of French urban disorders in 2005

Body‐Gendrot

2016

European Journal of Criminology

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“…They reveal the risks of an immediate scholarly response to an event which, even today, remains difficult to interpret, given the contradicting accounts, lacking data, the commentators' vested interests or moral and political commitment and the distorting effects of the media on all actors involved. Body-Gendrot divides the proposed approaches into two main categories, 'one broadly structuralist (emphasizing social inequality for example, as Lapeyronnie, 2006, or Beaud andPialoux, 2003, did), the other looking at the dynamics of protest, as Mohammed and Mucchielli (2006) and Jobard (2014Jobard ( ) did' (2016. Body-Gendrot's own framework integrates all these dimensions, as well as a series of contextual forces including the media, the local space, the preelectoral context and even cultural and religious dimensions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Riots or revolts? The legacy of the 2005 uprising in French banlieue narratives

Horvath

2018

Modern & Contemporary France

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Christina Horvath lectures French literature and politics at the University of Bath. Her research addresses the 'urban novel' genre, as well as postcolonial and migrant writing in a contemporary urban context. She currently works on contemporary French 'banlieue narratives'. In 2012, she co-founded the AHRC-funded Banlieue Network with urban geographer Juliet Carpenter and since 2017 she has been a leader of the Co-Creation project: https://www.cocreation-network.org/ This work was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 734770. Riots or Revolts? The Legacy of the 2005 Uprising in French Banlieue Narratives The 2005 banlieue uprisings have been the most important acts of contestation in France since May 1968, yet unlike the earlier student protests, they were largely interpreted as aimless violence rather than political dissent. While the authors of the upheavals remained silent, unable or unwilling to explain their motivations, social scientists and other commentators advanced the most divergent interpretations and made various claims on their behalf. This paper proposes to confront these readings with the analysis of three novels published in the wake of the 2005 riots by Mabrouck Rachedi (2006), Wilfried N'Sondé (2012) and Rachid Santaki (2013). 1 Comparing these banlieue narratives with a range of scholarly readings proposed by sociologists will help us construct an alternative interpretative framework in which riots appear to be collective demands for justice, equality and social mobility. The conclusion will assess whether the riots are likely to leave a legacy comparable to May 1968.

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Converting ordinary resistance into collective action: Visibility struggles, discreet antiracist mobilisations and intermediation work in the French banlieues

Purenne

Carrel

Kaya

et al. 2022

European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology

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Working-class neighborhoods are often seen as political deserts, but can one identify discreet mobilizations that might prefigure broader movements? During fieldwork in poor urban areas in France, we observed different ways of opposing the everyday injustices of discrimination. These practices differ from the infrapolitics analyzed by James Scott: the actors manifest forms of publicization closer to what Asef Bayat calls "the art of presence". The article starts out from analysis of these non-organized practices and then examines the processes that enable feelings of injustice to be converted into more structured collective actions. Based on ethnographic studies in three working-class neighborhoods in France over three years, the investigation highlights the conditions of emergence and publicization of collective action by focusing on the role of intermediaries and re-placing discreet mobilizations in their institutional context of emergence.

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Riots in France: Political, Proto-political or Anti-political Turmoils?

Cited by 5 publications

References 23 publications

Making sense of French urban disorders in 2005

Making sense of French urban disorders in 2005

Riots or revolts? The legacy of the 2005 uprising in French banlieue narratives

Converting ordinary resistance into collective action: Visibility struggles, discreet antiracist mobilisations and intermediation work in the French banlieues

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