Policing appears stuck in an all-or-nothing approach.
Earlier this year, international human rights organization the Council of Europe took the extraordinary step of directly lambasting the French police for "excessive use of force" during protests against Macron's pension reforms. Police brutality is a topic of great concern in France at the moment, beyond the Nanterre incident. In two presidential terms, he has failed to produce a coherent policy for solving some of the key problems of the suburbs. But his vision does not include any plan for using economic growth to bring opportunity to the suburbs or, viewed the other way round, to harness the potential of the suburbs to drive economic growth. President Emmanuel Macron presents himself as committed to re-industrializing France and revitalizing the economy. The first riots of the kind currently happening in Paris took place in Lyon as far back as the 1990s.Īnd yet, outside moments of crisis, there appears to be practically no discussion by French leadership about how to tackle the problems that drive so much anger in the suburbs. Even just having a certain name on your CV can rule you out of employment thanks to widespread racial discrimination.ĭiscontent among young people in these places has been brewing for decades as a result. Poor-quality housing and schooling combine with geographical isolation and racism to make it virtually impossible for people to stand a chance at improving their circumstances.Įvidence has long shown that people living in poor suburbs can expect to face discrimination based on the very fact of living in those suburbs when they apply for a job. Many of the issues behind the unrest back then remain unresolved to this day and have potentially been aggravated by ever worsening relations between the police and the public.ĭuring my extensive fieldwork in the suburban estates of Paris, Lyon and Marseille I have seen and heard first-hand the grievances that are now being cried out on the streets of Nanterre.Ĭertain suburbs of large French cities have, for decades, suffered from what has been labeled the worst "hypermarginalization" in Europe. It raises the memory of the violence that spread across the city's suburbs in 2005, lasting more than three weeks and forcing the country into a state of emergency.
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