ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explains how her analysis articulates language and space by developing a constructivist approach to one of the most publicized 'social problems' in contemporary France. She focuses on the actors who initiate language changes in order to understand language changes. The author argues that the social work of symbolic construction is grounded in the objective structure of various social universes. She also argues that the spatial definition of poverty contributed to downplaying a class-based analysis in favour of another based, more problematically, on race. The banlieues have become synonymous with impoverished public housing areas, most of which were built between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s. In public debates, swiftly and on a near unanimous basis, banlieues began to be used as a euphemism to designate populations defined by ethnic background. Social policies which targeted specific urban areas and social ties became politically legitimate.
