ABSTRACT

On 9 November 2005, France 3 TV aired a news special called The Suburbs: The Big Scare devoted to the riots then taking place across the country. The program included a male narrator who asked viewers to consider the nature of the events unfolding around them: “Is it guerrilla warfare? Barbarism? Civil war? Intifada?” As a live feed featuring close-ups of young men of non-European ancestry, images of burning cars and smoky ruin filling the background, was screened in the studio, the show’s two hosts (both of whom were White and female) asked the question, “Are they all delinquents?” Urban violence that began on 27 October in the impoverished Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, where 50 percent of the people were under twenty-five, 30 percent were foreign, and 25 percent were unemployed, brought unwelcome international attention to France’s “immigrant” problem and youth crime.1 It was here that three boys fleeing the police risked hiding in a power substation, where two died by accidental electrocution and a third was severely burned, rather than face the likely ordeal of arrest, detention in police custody, and a hearing in court.2 Rioting broke out when Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy insisted that the teenagers were implicated in a theft and were running from the crime scene, not from the police. The violence escalated rapidly when Sarkozy promised to rid French suburbs of the “bandes de racaille” (gangs of delinquent scum) he held responsible for urban decay.3