ABSTRACT
In order to effectively understand the 2005 French riots, it is necessary to explain the interconnections and distinctions between the lived experience of collective violence and the larger structural dimensions of discontent. The practices of the 2005 riots are found to be modes of enacting half-positions and expression of the frustrations of subordinate and marginal communities’ lack of public voice. Half-positions are commonly those of either citizens without work or workers without citizenship, although race and ethnicity are regularly salient to them. The 2005 French rioters were largely the youthful descendants of immigrants with very limited employment prospects from the stigmatized Banlieues; and hence, the rioters’ modes of contention constituted a symbolic response to disrespect and the binds of the exclusionary integration of being citizens who are unable to meaningfully enact their citizenship rights. The analysis of the riots’ structuration shows how the escalation of the conflict owed particularly to the violation of the local moral order that regulated the youth’s interaction with the police and the consequent violence manifested changes in the dialectic of control. These processes and the rioters’ demand for justice as retribution reflect collectively shared experiences of reification and social disintegration.
