ABSTRACT
French banlieues have become a cultural cliché, a metaphor, a shortcut for a vaguely formulated yet deeply seated malaise. 1 Today, “banlieues” is often used in the plural, as if all banlieues were the same, and the word had lost most of its semantic territory. “Banlieues” now evokes one single type of urban landscape: dilapidated areas of social housing populated by a fantasized majority of “foreigners” and especially of “Arabes.” 2 Those demonized cités are the symbolic crossroads where anti-Arab feelings crystallize around issues of housing: images of drug-ridden basements and of vandalized letter-boxes are often ethnically encoded. Gradually, amalgams permeate French culture, certain types of housing are equated with violence or even terrorism, and immigration is reduced to a gendered caricature: to the menacing silhouette of armed young male delinquents.
