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Abstract
Youth in ‘high-risk’ urban zones in France see police discrimination and brutality as a fundamental problem in their relationship to the state, but the state insists on marginalizing or silencing issues of racism and police impunity. At first glance, it seems that mainstream society and its political representatives are indifferent to the racial and ethnic dimension of violence that takes place in marginalized minority neighbourhoods. This paper takes a closer look at how the strength of entrenched French institutions and of police unions play a large roll in institutionalized racism. This paper argues that a lack of institutional accountability within the French culture of governance also helps us to understand why the French national police are so reluctant to embrace the community policing model or to register the persistent histories and geographies of intersecting racial, post-colonial and class hierarchies.
Notes
1. ‘Visible minority’ is a much-used term in contemporary France. However, the term is contested given that the French population is officially divided only into French nationals and foreigners.
2. Polls show that the proportion of respondents saying that ‘there are too many immigrés and foreigners in France’ went down respectively from 51 and 42 per cent in 2002 to 44 and 38 per cent in 2004 (Body-Gendrot 2008, p. 107). Another poll showed that 77 per cent of the French think that ‘Muslim French are “French like the others”’ (CSA Le Figaro, 2003).
3. For instance, the 2000 Eurobarometer revealed that 58 per cent of European Union citizens surveyed ‘tend to agree’ with the statement that immigrants were ‘more often involved in criminality than the average’ (Sora Citation2001 p. 40). This was the majority opinion in twelve of the fifteen member states, and on average only 30 per cent of Europeans surveyed ‘tended to disagree’ with the claim.
4. See Guillaumin's seminal L'idéologie raciste: génèse et langage actuel (Citation1972) and René Gallissot‘s Misère de l'antiracisme (Citation1985). See also Véronique Citationde Rudder and Michèle Guillon's Autochtones et immigrés en quartier populaire (Citation1987) and de Rudder's ‘Le racisme dans les relations interinterethniques’ (1991), while Daniele Lochak (1987, Citation1990) reflected on the concept of discrimination. In 1988, Pierre-André CitationTaguieff published La force du préjugé : Essai sur le racisme et ses doubles. That same year, Balibar and Wallerstein (Citation1988, p. 20) pointed out a major difference between France and the US regarding immigrant and minority integration: while Americans promoted the ethnicization of minorities, France, perceiving itself as an ethnically homogeneous country, promoted the ethnicity of majorities, a distinction which I later debated, showing that there were already visible convergences in the two countries' racialization logics (Body-Gendrot Citation1995).
5. On theoretical debates, see Bulmer and Solomos (Citation2004).
6. See La France raciste, which included a chapter on the police (Wieviorka Citation1992)
7. French Jews were required to mark their difference with a yellow star, which facilitated their persecution. One-third (70,000) of the French Jewish population was assassinated by the Nazis.
8. Le Monde, 1 September 1973.
9. Figaro Magazine, 15 June 2002, p. 36.
10. Unlike in the US, the number of homicides in France is fairly small and has not increased much since 1991 (1.1 per 100,000). Homicides perpetrated by juveniles are unusual, less than 5 per cent, and by foreigners 15 per cent (Mucchielli and Spierenburg Citation2009, p. 149).
11. New York Times, 30 June 2009.
12. New York Times, 30 June 2009
13. For an analysis of the 2005 disorders in English, see Body-Gendrot (Citation2007).
14. As defined by Garland in The Culture of Control (Citation2001, pp. 145–6).
15. Le Monde, 8[0] January 2009.
16. Le Figaro, 3 June 2008.
17. Le Figaro, 3 June 2008.
18. Le Figaro, 3 June 2008, p. 8[0].
19. Le Monde, 19 February 2003, p. 7.
20. Le Monde, 14 June 2008, p. 3.
21. Of course, in the absence of statistics on ethnicity, it is difficult to determine how frequently ethnic discrimination occurs.
22. The CNDS can only be summoned by citizens via a parliamentary member or institution (Children's Defence, for instance). Currently the number of cases examined each year averages 170. While the commission has no power to redress harm, it has investigation and hearing powers and it issues recommendations, thus giving visibility to cases of misconduct (regarding juveniles, body searches or deliberately did tight handcuffing, for instance). However, as it was created by the Left, the commission did not receive much support from governments on the Right. Its termination has been programmed by the government. A larger consultative body with appointed members should replace it in 2010.
23. Le Monde, 19 February 2003, p. 7.
