This article looks at riots that consumed Paris and much of France for three consecutive weeks in November 2005. The author argues that the uprisings were not instigated by radical Muslims, children of African polygamists, or despairing youth suffering from high unemployment. First and foremost, they were provoked by a terrible incident of police brutality, a tragedy among a litany of similar tragedies. Black and Arab youth were already frustrated: decades of violent enforcement of France's categorical boundaries—both racial and geographic—had filled many with rage. When Minister of Interior Nicholas Sarkozy responded to the violent death of three teenage boys on October 25, 2005, by condemning the boys rather than the police officers who had killed them, he merely reaffirmed what many young blacks and Arabs already believed: that their lives have no value in France.
Interview with reporter Roy Cohen, Ha'aretz , December 10, 2005.
2.
Jean-Pierre Mignard and Emmanuel Tordjman , L'affaire Clichy: Morts Pour Rien ( Paris: Stock, 2006).
3.
Cited in “ Muslims on Riots in France,” New York Times, November 13, 2005.
4.
Cited in Ben W. Gilbert, “Ten Blocks from the White House ,” Washington Post, 1968.
5.
Interview with Siyakha Traoré, June 24, 2006.
6.
Ibid.
7.
Mignard and Tordjman, L'affaire Clichy: Morts Pour Rien, 105.
8.
Ibid, 47.
9.
Keith Richberg , “The Other France, Separate and Unhappy,” op-ed, Washington Post, November 13, 2005.
10.
One-third of the rioters were black, although blacks make up only 2 percent of the population. John Lichfield, “The Outsiders: The Outsiders: John Lichfield in the Banlieues,” The Independent , October 26, 2006, http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article1930641.ece (accessed on September 3, 2007).
11.
Alec G. Hargreaves, “ The Emperor with No Clothes?” (paper presented at the Riots in France, Social Science Research Council , New York, 2006).
12.
Hugues Lagrange, “ Socialisation Des Adolescents Et Délinquance: Les Enfants Issus Des Familles Africaines Noires” (paper presented at Migration and Policing, Maison Science de l'homme, Paris, June 9, 2006).
13.
Dror Mishani and Aurelia Smotriez, “What Sort of Frenchman Are They? Interview with Alain Finkielkraut,” Ha'aretz , November 16, 2005. Finkielkraut, during a trip to Israel in March 2007, claimed he was misrepresented in that interview and denied using the word barbarian. Dror Mishani points out that the word was savage and insists that Finkielkraut used it. See Yair Sheleg, “A Racist Attack,” Ha'aretz, March 28, 2007, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/842795.html (accessed September 3, 2007).
14.
Hargreaves, “ The Emperor with No Clothes?”
15.
Mohammed Rebzani , Des Jeunes Dans La Discrimination ( Paris: Paris Presses Universitaires de France, 2002); Timothy B. Smith, France in Crisis: Welfare, Inequality and Globalization since 1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). High school and university graduates of immigrant parentage are also twice as likely (11 percent) as those with French parentage (5 percent) to be unemployed, Bertrand Bissuel, “ Les Etrangers Particulièrement Touchés Par La Misère,” Le Monde, February 8, 2002. Testers using identical resumes with different French, Arabic, and African names consistently find those with European names eight times more likely to get an interview.
16.
See, for example, Stéphanie Giry, “France and Its Muslims ,” Foreign Affairs85, no. 5 (2006). For an excellent non-Marxist analysis of France's unemployment crisis, see Smith, France in Crisis: Welfare, Inequality and Globalization since 1980.
17.
This approach is similar to that of William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
18.
Olivier Roy , “The Nature of the French Riots” (paper presented at the Riots in France, Social Science Research Council, New York, 2006).
19.
Paul Silverstein , “Post Colonial Urban Apartheid” (paper presented at the Riots in France, Social Science Research Council, New York, 2006), 7
20.
Haaenke, “ La France Face Á Ses Musulmans: Émeutes, Jihadisme Et Dépolitisation; Mignard and Tordjman, L'affaire Clichy: Morts Pour Rien; Roy, “The Nature of the French” Riots”; and Michel Wieviorka, “ Violence in France” (paper presented at the Riots in France, Social Science Research Council. New York, 2006).
21.
John Lichfield , “The Outsiders: The Outsiders: John Lichfield in the Banlieues.”
22.
Haaenke, “ La France Face Á Ses Musulmans: Émeutes, Jihadisme Et Dépolitisation.”
23.
Wage disparities are twice as low for those of African or North African origin and poverty rates four times higher. See Phillipe Bernard, “ L'immigration Au Fil De Besoins De Marché Du Travail,” Le Monde, April 16, 2002; and Bertrand Bissuel, “ Les Etrangers Particulièrement Touchés Par La Misère,” Le Monde, February 8, 2002.
24.
Mignard and Tordjman, L'affaire Clichy: Morts Pour Rien; Paul A. Silverstein, “Postcolonial Urban Apartheid ” (paper presented at the Riots in France , Social Science Research Council. New York, 2006); Wieviorka, “Violence in France.”
25.
Paul Chevigny , Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas (New York: New Press, distributed by Norton, 1995), 12.
26.
Peter Spierenburg, Spectacle of Suffering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 2.
27.
Wolf, Eric, Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
28.
Charles Tilly, DurableInequality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 88—89.
29.
Ibid, 71—72.
30.
Ibid, 66.
31.
Clifford Rosenberg, Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control between Wars ( Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 40.
32.
Chautemps, AN F7 13, 412 quoted in Faithi and Catherine Rodier Bentabet, “L'immigration Algeriérienne Et L'Hôpital Franco Musulman Dans La Région Parisienne Entre Les Deux Guerres, 1915—1947” (Maîtrise, Université de Paris I, 1981).
33.
French police officer interviewed in March 2001. It is noteworthy that I conducted this interview five years before the riots and one year before the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
34.
Interview with Mogdad, Clichy-sous-Bois, June 2006.
35.
Loïc Wacquant, UrbanOutcasts (London: Polity, 2007), ii.
36.
Ibid.
37.
Michelle Lamont , The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class and Immigration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 242.
38.
Ibid.
39.
Maxim Silverman , Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism and Citizenship in Modern France (London: Routledge, 1992), 37.
40.
Blacks comprise roughly 2 percent of the population, while North Africans comprise around 7 or 8 percent. It is almost impossible to gauge exact figures on race and ethnicity in France because it is illegal to collect such data or to publish it. Some scholars use national origin of parent as a substitute for ethnicity. See, for example, Farhad Khosrokhavar, L'islam Dans La Prisons (Paris: Editions Balland, 2004). SOS-racism and other official government testers use Arab- or African-sounding names and neighborhoods. Geoges Felouzis, professeur de sociologie à l'université de Bordeaux II, found that when he asked students their ethnicity or race, instead of inferring from national origin of parent, levels of educational segregation increased from 23 to 47 percent. See George Felouzis, “La Ségrégation Ethnique À L'école Reste Un Sujet Tabou,” La Revue des Parents, April 13, 2006; and Francoise Liotet, Joëlle Perrotone, and George Felouzis, La Ségrégation Ethnique Au Collège, www.islamlaicite.org/IMG/pdf/G.Felouzis.pdf (accessed on September 3, 2007).
41.
Conversation with Eros Sana in Paris, December 2005.
Alec G. Hargreaves, Immigration, “Race” and Ethnicity in Contemporary France (London: Routledge, 1995), 15.
44.
Bennoune, “ Maghrebin Workers in France,” 2.
45.
Rosenberg, Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control between Wars, xiii.
46.
Ibid, 161.
47.
Bennoune, “ Maghrebin Workers in France,” 2.
48.
Rosenberg, Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control between Wars, 207.
49.
Daniel A. Gordon, “World Reactions to the 1961 Pogrom ,” University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History1 (2000).
50.
Rosenberg, Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control between Wars, 206.
51.
Jean Luc Einaudi, La Bataille De Paris 17 Octobre 1961 (Paris: Seuil, 1991); Jean Luc Einaudi, October 1961: Un Massacre Á Paris (Paris: Librarie Arthéme Fayard, 2001); and Gordon, “World Reactions to the 1961 Pogrom .”
52.
Perry Anderson , “Dégringolade,” London Review of Books, September 2, 2004.
53.
Hargreaves argues that the real number is probably three times higher. Hargreaves, Immigration, “Race” and Ethnicity in Contemporary France, 69.
54.
Hargreaves, Immigration, “Race” and Ethnicity in Contemporary France, 70.
55.
Renee and René Lévy Zauberman, “ Police, Minorities and the French Republican Ideal,” Criminology41, no. 1 (November 2003): 1065.
56.
Bennoune, “Maghrebin Workers in France,” 70.
57.
Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism and Citizenship in Modern France.
58.
Paul A. Silverstein, Algeria in France (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).
59.
Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism and Citizenship in Modern France.
60.
Pamela Irving Jackson, “Minority Group Threat, Crime and Mobilization of Law in France,” in Ethnicity, Race and Crime, ed. Darnell Hawkins ( Albany: State University of New York, 1995), 341—60.
61.
Interview in Paris, March 2001.
62.
Interview with Samira, Paris, June 20, 2005.
63.
Jacques Chirac , “Meeting Electoral,” cited in Mots À Maux, ed. Pierre Tevanian and Sylvie Tissot (Paris: Éditions Dagorno, 1990), 77.
64.
Michel Wieviorka and Philippe Bataille , ViolenceEn France, L'epreuve Des Faits (Paris: Seuil, 1999).
65.
Amnesty International, “ France: The Search for Justice,” http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGEUR210012005?open&of=ENG-FRA (accessed September 5, 2007); Fabien Jobard, “Les Voies a Venir Des Conflits Urbains: Premièrs Analyses Sur La Mobilisation Politique De Dammarie-Lès-Lys ,” unpublished working paper (2002); Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism and Citizenship in Modern France, Paul A. Silverstein and Chantal Tetreault , “Urban Violence in France,” Middle East Report Online, November 2005, http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/silverstein_tetreault_interv.htm (accessed on September 3, 2007).
66.
Pierre Tournier, “ Nationality, Crime and Criminal Justice in France,” in Ethnicity, Crime and Immigration , ed. Michael Tonry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 523—51.
67.
Silverstein, “ Urban Violence in France”; Jobard, “Les Voies a Venir Des Conflits Urbains: Premièrs Analyses Sur La Mobilisation Politique De Dammarie-Lès-Lys ”; and Amnesty International, “ France: The Search for Justice.”
68.
Hélène Franco , “Prévention De La Délinquance Amalgames Et Réalités” (paper presented at the Prévention de la délinquance, Senat, Palais de Luxembourg, Paris, 2005).
69.
Amnesty International, “ France: The Search for Justice”; and Fabien Jobard, Bavures Policières: La Force Publique Et Ses Usages, Textes À L'appui. Série “Politique Et Sociétés” (Paris: Decouverte , 2002).
70.
Conseil de Europe Comité Européen Pour la Prévention de la Torture et des Peines ou Traitements Inhumains ou Dégradants (CPT), “ Rapport Au Gouvernement De La République Francaise Relatif À Le Visite En France Effectuée Par Le Cpt, Du 14 Au 26 Mai 2000” ( Strasbourg: Comité Européen Pour la Prévention de la Torture et des Peines ou Traitements Inhumains ou Dégradants (CPT, 2001); Conseil de Europe Comité Europeen Pour la Prevention de la Torture et des Peines ou Traitements Inhumains ou Degradants , “ Rapport Au Gouvernment De La République Française Relatif À La Viste En France Effectuée Par Le Comité Européen Pour La Prévention De La Torture Et Des Peines Ou Traitements Inhumains Ou Dégradants Du 14 Au 26 Mai 1995,” (1996); and Conseil de Europe Comité Européen Pour la Prévention de la Torture et des Peines ou Traitements Inhumains ou Dégradants, “Rapport Au Gouvernment De La République Française Relatif À La Viste En France Effectuée Par Le Du 14 Au 26 Mai 1990 ,” (Strasbourg: Direction Generale des Droits de l'Homme, Comité Européen Pour la Prévention de la Torture , 1991).
71.
“French Police Protest at Jailing of Colleagues for Beatings ,” Irish Times, April 2, 1999.
72.
Amnesty International, “France: The Search for Justice.”
73.
Ibid, 23.
74.
Ibid.
75.
“Procès Du Rappeur Hamé: La Dénonciation Des Violences Policières En Question,” Le Monde Diplomatique, November 12, 2004.
76.
Ibid.
77.
Reliable figures on race or ethnicity are extremely difficult to verify in the absence of official statistics. It is easier to verify ethnic background of victims of police abuse or homicide or abuse by compiling individual cases. See, for example, Amnesty International, “France: The Search for Justice”; Act Up Paris, “500 Suicides En 5 Ans: Jospin Et Lebranchu Ont Du Sang Sur Les Mains,” April 5, 2002, http://www.actupparis.org/article331.html (accessed on September 3, 2007); Comité européen pour la prévention de la torture et des peines ou traitements inhumains ou dégradants (CPT); and “Rapport Au Gouvernement De La République Francaise Relatif À Le Visite En France Effectuée Par Le Cpt, Du 14 Au 26 Mai 2000.” Khosrokhavar uses national origin of father as a measure of North African or Arab ethnicity. Doing this, he found in one prison that 40 percent of young people (eighteen to twenty-five) had a father of North African origin, compared to 8.5 percent of young people in the general population. His method actually underestimates the percentage of Arab youth (most North Africans are considered to be Arab, although some such as those from Kabile are not) in prison by leaving out those with North African mothers. And he leaves out black youth. See Farhad Khosrokhavar, L'islam Dans Les Prisons (Paris: Editions Balland, 2004). In my own visit to a prison for youth in Paris, only two of the fifty prisoners I saw appeared white, the rest appeared split equally between blacks and North Africans. That is consistent with what judges, lawyers, and social workers have told me, based on their own experiences in the courtrooms and prisons. Elizabeth Auclair of the Commission droits de l'enfant de la ligne des droits de l'homme, and Claude Beuzelin, Secrétaire générale du Syndicat national des personnels de l'éducation surveillée, claim that 95 percent of youth in prison “sont issus de l'immigration et des quartiers de misére”. See Claude Beuzelin, “Du Civil au Pénal, les transformations de la justice des mineurs,” in Laurent Bonelli and Gilles Sainati , La Machine À Punir, 2nd ed. (Paris: L'esprit Frappeur , 2001; reprint, 2004), 113. The European Council's committee against torture cites severe overcrowding as one of the factors contributing to high suicide rates in French prisons. France has one of the highest prison suicide rates in Europe, more than 20.9 per 10,000.
78.
Amnesty International, “ France: The Search for Justice”; Act Up Paris, “500 Suicides En 5 Ans: Jospin Et Lebranchu Ont Du Sang Sur Les Mains”; Comité européen pour la prévention de la torture et des peines ou traitements inhumains ou dégradants (CPT); “Rapport Au Gouvernement De La République Francaise Relatif À Le Visite En France Effectuée Par Le Cpt, Du 14 Au 26 Mai 2000”.
79.
Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman, The Crime Drop in America ( Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Fox Butterfield, “ Cities Reduce Crime and Conflict without New York Style Hardball,” New York Times, March 4, 2000. Yet both Rudolph Giuliani and Nicholas Sarkozy reject “problem solving” and “community policing” as “social work.”
80.
Nicholas Pastor, former police chief in New Haven, personal communication June 2001.
81.
The French police, with the exception of the Gendarmes who are under the command of the Ministry of Defense and are widely considered decent police, are all organized under the direction of the minister of interior. Two branches of the regular police are the police judiciare (PJ), which investigate for the courts, and the police administrative, which do not. In addition to the national police (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité or CRS), the Anti-Crime Brigade (Brigade Anticriminalité or BAC) and the RJ are the undercover police. Then there are the small unarmed neighborhood units called the “police de proximité”—what the French call community policing. There are other police units that focus on international crime and several administrative structures that combine several of the police units.
82.
Bonelli and Sainati, La Machine À Punir.
83.
See Pierre Tournier , Appel Aux Parlementaires “Visitez Les Prisons”,17 June 2004.
84.
Ibid.
85.
Interview with Vincent Delbos in Paris, December 11, 2005.
86.
Interview with Siyakha Traoré and Samir Mihi, June 2006.
87.
Interview with Captain P in Parisian banlieue , October 8, 2003.
88.
Interview with Vincent Delbos in Versailles, December 13, 2001.
89.
Personal communication with senate aide Eros Sana about his discussion with the head of the Union Nacional de Service d'Administrative Police (UNSA).
90.
Personal communication with an anonymous source, June 2006.
91.
Interview with French police superintendent, October 2003.
92.
Interview with policewoman in Parisian banlieue October 8, 2003.
93.
Ibid.
94.
Eros Sana, Livre Blanc: Justice En Banlieue “Lutter Contre La Fracture Urbaine” (Paris: Groupe de travail Banlieue , 2007).
95.
Lydie Hervieux , “Evaluation Du Module Dialogue Citoyen En Milieu Fermé: 23, 24, 25 Octobre 2001, Bois D'arcy,” ( Bois d'Arcy, France: 2001).
96.
Interview with Vincent Delbos in Versailles, December 13, 2001.
97.
Ibid.
98.
Interview in Paris, October 2003.
99.
Interview with another Muslim youth leader in Garges, June 2004.
100.
Interviewed June 5, 2006.
101.
Interviewed June 10, 2006.
102.
Rosenberg, Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control between Wars, 97.
103.
Community meeting in French banlieues, May 2002 .
104.
Community meeting in French banlieues, February 2002.
105.
Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse, “Understanding Urban Riots in France ,” New Europe Review, December 1, 2005 .
106.
David Rennie , “Muslims Are Waging Civil War against Us, Claims Police Union,” Telegraph, May 10, 2006, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/05/wmuslims05.xml (accessed on September 3, 2007).
107.
David Rieff , “ Battle over the Banlieues,” New York Times, April 15, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15elections.t.html?ei=5088&en=6e48ed86 (accessed on September 5, 2007).
108.
Interview, December 13, 2005, Garges les Gonesse .
109.
Michael Lipsky, “ Introduction,” in Law and Order, Police Encounters, ed. Michael Lipsky (Chicago: Transaction Books/Aldine, 1970), 1.
