Border crossers: movements in urban space and the social production of borders in French banlieues

ABSTRACT

Intra-urban borders are a pervasive feature in today’s global cities. They are not only the result of urban planning but they are also reproduced in everyday movements and interactions. Based on interviews and participant observation in French banlieues of Greater Paris, Mulhouse and Strasbourg, I analyse how inhabitants narrate movements in urban space that lead them to cross the boundaries of their neighbourhood. I build upon Lefebvre’s notion of spatial practice and insights from border studies to understand how these movements relate to the social production of urban marginality. The findings show how experiences and representations of intra-urban border-crossing among banlieue residents are shaped by and reproduce geographies of exclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Banlieues
• borders
• France
• immigration
• space
• urban ghettos

Acknowledgments

I thank the anonymous reviewers for their exceptionally insightful comments and suggestions. I also thank my students for their valuable feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I thank Michael Job for his explanation on this common etymology.

2. I use the use the term ‘social imaginaries’ in the sense theorized by Taylor (2004, 23) to refer to shared, yet possibly contested beliefs, narratives and images about a community’s ‘social surroundings’.

3. A total of 12 face-to-face and 17 phone or videoconference interviews were conducted. Participants for in situ interviews were recruited with the help of (former) social workers and the first interview partners. The remaining of the informants were recruited through an add on a popular online platform. Pseudonymization was guaranteed to all participants. While the distribution of interlocutors according to gender and age was balanced in in situ interviews (7 women, 6 men aged 18 to 62, median age: 26, standard deviation: 12.2), it was skewed in favour of young males in the case of phone and web-based interviews (14 men, 3 women aged 18 to 37, median age: 22, standard deviation: 5.7). National or ethnic origins were not a recruitment criterion. However, all but two participants described themselves using identifiers related to racialized minorities such as ‘Maghrebi’ or ‘Black’. Unfortunately, the interview contexts did not allow mapping exercises. Also, the interviewed persons did not mention gang territories as a factor of delimitation or upholding of intra-urban borders. This might have been different if the interviews had been conducted in neighbourhoods with more widespread gang violence. Research was done according to the Principles of Professional Responsibility of the American Anthropological Association (2012). Participants received access to a translated version of the original manuscript along with a simplified summary.

4. Seine-Saint-Denis is a département north of Paris featuring a large number of priority neighbourhoods and has come to epitomize urban marginalization in France.

5. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this interpretation that would merit further scrutiny.