Urban riots in France | An air of deja vu

It was in 1995 in Montpellier in the south of France. I remember one evening with friends of North African origin (I specify, because it is important for what follows), where we were turned away from a discotheque while a customer congratulated the bouncer on having fired “Arabs”.

David Morin

The author is a professor of political science at the University of Sherbrooke and co-holder of the UNESCO Chair in the prevention of radicalization and violent extremism

Another time, in the car, we were stopped and checked by police on motorcycles. I had already had this kind of experience before, but obviously a lot less often than them.

The same year, I took part in the demonstrations, the most important since May 68, against the “Juppé law”. I experienced tonfa blows, tear gas and the pangs of police management of social movements in France.

Finally, 1995 was also the release of the film hate which tells the story of young people from cities. It ends with riots, a police blunder and the death of a young man.

It was almost 30 years ago. Everything was there. Already.

An unprecedented scale

Riots of this early summer in France are neither new nor surprising. They are not a French exception either, even if they have multiplied in certain working-class neighborhoods since the 1990s. trying to evade the police.

In 2023, it therefore took the spark of a bullet that unjustifiably took the life of a 17-year-old to ignite minds and cities. But this time, on an unprecedented scale, the fire has spread throughout the territory to the city centers of more than 500 cities in France, large and small.

Unsurprisingly, young rioters take the opportunity to loot stores. Rebels, “satellites without orbit”, the mortar in one hand and the cell phone in the other. We also suspect the presence of criminal gangs and, perhaps, of extremist groups which fuel the crisis and are fed by it.

Chaos rolls the business. We must not deny the challenge that these issues represent in the cities, but it is not the central explanation of this sad situation that France is experiencing.

Each time, the same dull anger, the same feeling of injustice, inequality, exclusion and the explosion of violence that nothing excuses. But not excusing anything does not prohibit trying to understand.

Like, for example, the hatred of the police which crystallizes this anger and attests to a historically tense relationship between the cities and the people in uniform, sent to the front line as if it were their role to heal the wounds of the Republic. A republic, precisely, whose public services, not very numerous in the cities, have been targeted as the symbol of broken promises and of a policy of the city and of a State which, despite the subsidies, have failed.

A blocked social elevator

Some schools also go there, synonymous with academic failure and reproduction of inequalities despite often dedicated teachers, including my parents who started in Nanterre, precisely. The famous social elevator remained blocked on the ground floor of the stairwells.

Contrary to what the far right and some chroniclers here vociferate on the false air of identity conflicts, crime and mass immigration, for some of these young French people, violence is a way of being. of course, to exist and to claim full citizenship status, and not just paper.

But by dint of being told that you are a foreigner, that you are a “scum” or a second-class citizen, you may end up believing it a little too.

At the time of reckoning, the report of failure is overwhelming. Not only do these riots have a stale air of déjà vu, but they were announced by many elected municipal officials, associations and artists from the estates. The inhabitants of these neighborhoods are the first victims.

Instead of the essential self-criticism and the humility that the situation would require from political leaders, the security temptation is, as often, the reflex of the State.

It does have some virtues in certain cases; but we do not treat a social movement, even violent, of this magnitude as a wave of terrorism. In this case, the generalized repression feeds the vicious circle of violence and leads the neighborhoods into a dead end. We restore order, we rebuild, and then what?

If we do not attack the roots of the evil, the feeling of exclusion, inequalities and discrimination, we are condemned to start from scratch each time. It’s time to make these working-class neighborhoods a top priority and really take action. And to try to perhaps reunite this society which is torn apart and polarized a little more with each new political or social crisis.

It’s urgent. Otherwise, with the specter of right-wing populism in power, next time could be worse.