ABSTRACT
From the 1980s onwards, France has faced a series of violent riots in urban agglomerations, culminating in the autumn 2005 riots which continued for several weeks and spread to most of France’s major cities. The situation in France has attracted attention across the length and breadth of Europe. Along with previous riots in Great Britain, the French riots provided the basis for German media speculation as to whether similar disorders might well occur in their country. Despite some smaller incidents which occurred in Bremen and Berlin during the course of the 2005 events in the French suburbs, German policy-makers and social scientists initially agreed on the assumption that the situation in both countries has almost nothing in common.
