13th of June: the suburban youths in France

This day focused on the topic of the suburban youths in France.

In the morning, we met Fabien Jobard, a sociologist and a researcher at the CNRS who used to work with the police headquarters and who talked about the relationship between the police and suburban youths. He reminded us the circumstances of the trigger of the 2005 riots with the death of two young men. He underlined that both the attitude of the Minister of the Interior (in 2005 it was N.Sarkozy) and the government were much more at the origin of the riots than the event itself, claiming that the two young men were at that time well known by the police without any material clue. Moreover, he insisted both on the duration of those riots which lasted two weeks and on their intensity (the damages were estimated at 200 million of euros). His explanation about the end of the riots was very interested and a bit amazing because he argued that the fall of the temperature and the beginning of the soccer game were the main reasons of the end of the riots (the youth could not gather anymore). In addition, he highlighted the fact that the race had not a large role in the riots. According to him, the main justifications of those riots were: to protest against Sarkozy and his police forces but also to struggle against the silence of the Older toward their own situation of immigrants.

At the end, he underlined that there was not any political meaning of the riots: no leader voice, no political party involved, and no influence of any religious group. In fact, the riots were mainly motivated by the fear of the future, the economic situation of the youths in the “cités” and the local events which reinforced the feeling of injustice among this population.

In the afternoon, we had a roundtable with two institutional actors in a Parisian suburb called Ivry. The first was Mehdi, a 29 years old official of the communist party and the second was André Added, an entreprenor. Both grew up in a project and come from an immigrant family but they have two different views about the youth in the “cites” especially in terms of action. Mehdi focus on a social action although André Added argues that the main thing we have to do is to invest in the projects.

Moreover, it was very interesting and thoughtful to hear different opinions about the challenges towards the youth in the suburbs today. For Mehdi, it is clear that we have to give them a chance to create their own way to success. For, André Added, the most important thing is that they have to take this chance, underlining that in the suburbs the youth is hardly convinced that they cannot avoid their own fate and change the system. Beyond their disagreement, both embody an image of hope for the youth in suburbs: showing that if you want, you can. But for them, it’s obvious that the society has a role to play, establishing some mechanism to guarantee their inclusion.