The 2005 French Urban Unrests: Data‐Based Interpretations

Abstract

The French 2005 riots in the urban outskirts were the most numerous, widespread and violent France has experienced since the beginning of the 1980s. In The Politics of Collective Violence, Charles Tilly refused the term ‘riot as a scientific idiom’ because it embodies a political judgment rather than an analytical distinction. Authorities and observers label as riots the damage‐going gatherings of which they disapprove, but they use terms like demonstrations, protest, resistance or retaliation for essentially similar events of which they approve (2003, 18). Our aim here is to discuss this assertion. How far is violence an act of protest? How far can the authors of collective violence acting in the French deprived urban areas in November 2005 be described as ‘rioters’ or rebels? The following contribution mainly focuses on empirical data (quantitative and qualitative) in order to fulfil this aim. We will leave the root causes and contextual aspects by one side (economic deprivation, urban segregation, conflicts with police forces, etc.) and concentrate on immediate data produced in the wake of the riots, in the little research produced afterwards.

The 2011 England riots in European context: A framework for understanding the ‘life-cycle’ of riots

“…In both France and Sweden a typically broad range of crimes was committed -one study of 208 arrestees in the 93 rd department in France found 40% of offences to be crimes against police officers and 30% destruction or damage to public or private goods -but, unlike England, the most visible target of rioters' violence was motor vehicles. In all, in France over 10,000 cars were destroyed, the bulk by arson (Jobard, 2008). Similarly, Hörnqvist (2014) notes that setting fire to cars in order to attract the police has been a Swedish specialty in certain circles for more than a decade.…”

“…The rioting in France in 2005 broke out initially in Clichy-sous-Bois, which is the poorest locality in Seine-Saint-Denis, the department with the highest unemployment rate in France (Body-Gendrot and Savitch, 2012). The rioting spread to approximately 300 locations, at least 85% of which were identified as one of Zones Urbaines Sensible (Jobard, 2008), characterised by extremely high levels of youth unemployment and a variety of other social problems (Salanié, 2006). In England, of the rioters interviewed in the Guardian/LSE Reading the Riots study who were of working age and not in education, three fifths were unemployed, a pattern confirmed by government data (Ministry of Justice, 2012).…”

“…The two deaths occurred at a time when tensions between the police and the residents of Clichy-sous-Bois, and other Parisian banlieues, were already very high. The eventual outcome was some of the most severe rioting in living memory -described in American media as 'civil war in France' (Jobard, 2008) -affecting not just Paris but over 200 towns elsewhere. In excess of 10,000 cars were burned, hundreds of buildings severely damaged, over €200m worth of damage caused, more than 3,000 people arrested, and a state of emergency declared by President Chirac.…”

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“…However, here too Mr Sarkozy refused to concede that the police had any reason for contrition (Schneider, 2008). As Jobard (2008Jobard ( , p. 1290) points out, this atrocity 'acted as a powerful mechanism of boundary activation', fostering a pronounced 'us versus them' mentality throughout the length and breadth of French society ( Jobard, 2008( Jobard, , p. 1290.…”

“…cit. ; Jobard, 2008;Mucchielli, 2006). In the summer before the rioting occurred, Mr Sarkozy paid a visit to a north Parisian housing estate on which, one day earlier, an 11-year-old boy had been accidentally shot dead in crossfire between local gangs.…”