This time it was different. Banlieue 2023

Abstract

For decades, French banlieues have been the site of recurrent ‘riots’ that have made them contested territories par excellence. The traditional interpretive paradigm, which considers them as cyclical events regulated by internal logics, unrelated to the common political, social, and economic history, is now largely obsolete. Especially since the 2023 uprisings, triggered by the killing of the teenager Nahel, have introduced new dimensional and qualitative factors that must be linked to a combination of several conditions, including transformations of labour, shrinkage of the welfare state, and new forms of social exclusion. In particular, the extension of clashes from metropolitan outskirts to central, suburban, and rural areas, even beyond the French borders, signals a new phase of urban conflict whose mapping is long overdue. In drawing it, we should recognise that the explosions of open violence in riots are but an episodic form taken by a persistent, widespread, and latent urban violence, rooted in processes of gentrification, expulsion, and social and spatial segregation.