Les Banlieues

Nestled around France’s major cities, the residents of the Banlieues sit and watch from the outskirts through slits of glass in their faceless high-rise flats. Meaning ‘suburbs’ in French, the Banlieues have come to symbolise the urban and societal failures of modern France struggling to come to terms with how it wants itself to look and what it wants itself to say.

These areas, once marshlands populated by outlaw bandits working outside the city walls, are now home to millions – many from North Africa and the old French colonies who settled after arriving to help rebuild France following the Second World War.

Poverty, unemployment and crime run rife in these neighbourhoods. Lack of opportunities, access to healthcare, a judiciary that only looks down and police violence are also the grim constants for residents here. Constants that have been neglected for decades.  

The concrete crusts of Paris are some of the worst in France for these issues. Grigny, which sits south of the capital is the poorest suburb in France with a poverty rate of 45%, three times the national average.

These districts, around only 15km away from the gleaming lights of the Eiffel Tower, the lavish Champs-Elysses avenue, fine art galleries and the ‘chin chins!’ of tourists toasting their Parisian soiree with a digestif along the banks of the Seine, live ‘The Other France.’ The France some would rather not see. The France some choose to overlook.

At times of political convenience - in the wake of a terrorist attack or when another migrant child is washed up on a Calais beach - the Banlieues are prodded and poked and charged the culprit by gangs of far-right politicians. Their loyalty to the Tricolore is a constant topic of debate which has transformed these areas into the concrete powder kegs of hate, race, religion and identity in modern France. 

France will vote for a new President in April and the Banlieues will be a closely watched battleground come election day. What will France look like post-election? And will the Banlieues, with their unique makeup, decide what that future looks like? 

A 2022 poll carried out by IFOP, the French institute for public opinion, detailed the way the suburbs are expected to vote this year. It seems to suggest that a shift has taken place over the last decade in the Banlieues.

The working classes of parts of these areas are now, more attracted to the right than their historic home of left-wing politics. A trend that has been seen in the UK and America in recent years – with the politics and swagger of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump wooing working-class leftist voters.

The faces leading the right-wing charge in France are Marine Le Pen of the newly-labelled Front National (RN) and Èric Zemmour, media mogul turned chauvinistic grunter - a provocateur who revels in outrage.

Zemmour, fairly new on the political merry-go-round (he only announced his intentions to run in November 2021), has attracted a cult following for his belief in ‘the great replacement’ theory, one of the main ideological pillars to French fascist thought.

The theory dictates that the current Judeo-Christian civilisation will be overrun by a new Islamic universalism and by 2100, France will succumb to an Islamic Republic.

Zemmour has been charged 15 times for inciting racial hatred in the past and in 2020 was charged for labelling young, lone immigrants coming to France as “thieves”, “murders” and “rapists.”

“They have nothing to do here. They are thieves, they are murders, they are rapists. That’s all they are, and they must be sent back.”

- Èric Zemmour speaking in 2020

The 63-year-old denounced the charge as “a stupid condemnation.”

Zemmour is himself the son of Algerian immigrants who arrived in France during the height of the Algerian War of Independence. Plus ça change.

Yet Zemmour is well liked in large swathes of France. And the resurgent face of far-right politics in the country is a trend that has the centre-right incumbent Emmanuel Macron rather worried.

Occasionally, the wick ignites and violence erupts. 2005 was an example of such. The country saw three weeks of rioting and altercations with Police forces on the outskirts of almost every major French city.

It was not the first riots nor was it the last. The uproar grew so much that President Jacques Chirac was forced to declare a national state of emergency.

A precursor to such violence was seen in the 1995 film La Haine. The suppressed rage and anger felt by so many youths in the Banlieues was cast onto the silver screen and for the first time, youths from the projects had a film that spoke to them.

When the film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, policemen turned their backs to the cast and crew, feeling the film was little more than an anti-Police polemic.

Matthieu Kassovitz’s picture struck such a nerve in French culture, that instructions for the film to be watched were hurriedly sent around the President’s cabinet in Paris at once. ‘The Other Paris’ was beginning to speak. And decision-makers needed to listen.

The three stars of the film, a North African, a black man and an Eastern European Jew plod round their district disillusioned, angry, upset and in need of excitement. Their confusion when they find themselves in central Paris, almost tourists in their own city, as telling as ever of the divide between the capital and its boundaries.

“Get out your car! This ain’t Thoiry”, Hubert shouts to a journalist and her cameraman filming the trio sat in a children playground. The cameraman, giddy he’s getting a juicy scoop, starts to grin as the characters become restless and begin to hurl stones towards the press car.

“What’s Thoiry?”, Vinz asks Hubert. “A drive-in safari park”, Hubert replies cynically.

"Some mainstream politicians have lubbed together the Banlieues and made it as a general stereotype for social divisions and non-white traditions."

- Barbara Lebrun, senior lecturer of French cultural studies at the University of Manchester

2005 was the manifestation of all these feelings, and then some.

The catalyst was the deaths of two teenagers, 15 and 17, who were electrocuted in an electricity substation in Clichy-sous-Bois, Paris. The boys, Bouna Traore and Zyed Benna, the children of Malian and Tunisian immigrants, were being chased by Police after a game of football.

It was Ramadan. The boys were in a rush to get home so they could break their fast and didn’t want to be harassed by Police fearing a lengthy interrogation. The explosion was so powerful that the neighbourhood was plunged into a blackout.

Traore and Benna died of their injuries in hospital whilst their friend, Muhittin Altun who was with them at the time, returned home after spending weeks in hospital being treated for burns.  

Unemployment rates of 15–24-year-olds in the areas that rioted are a clear anomaly compared to the rest of France. 41% in Grigny. 54% in the Banlieues of Toulouse. 37% in Clichy-sous-Bois. 42% in the Nantes projects.

The state took a hard-line approach. Interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy preferred inflammatory language to describe the rioters, labelling them as “racaille”, a French term meaning thugs or lowlifes that bears racial and ethnic connotations.

During and after the rioting, Sarkozy would often comment how the Banlieues are nothing more than the rat runs for those who deal in drug-trafficking and prostitution.

By mid-November the wounds had still not healed yet Sarkozy announced a wave of deportations for convicted foreigners regardless of whether they had residency in France or not.

He also announced that immigrants seeking residency shall have to master the French language and integrate into society first.

His tough approach was well liked by voters. The press reported an 11-point rise in opinion polls for Sarkozy and two years later was elected President of France. A post he held until 2012.

Football has always been closely woven with politics. Nowhere more so than in France. But it has not always been the favoured sport. Tennis, cycling, boxing and rugby have historically inspired the national spirit more so than football. However the events of 1998 and beyond have questioned that.

The French football team (FFF) has long acted the reflection to French insecurities. The team confronts society with its obsessions of culture and race, politics and identity. And the FFF continues to breed not only footballers of immense talent, but also players with a political and social conscience – proud of the long-demonized Banlieues they grew up in.  The inequality of these areas also instils an unflappable determination to ‘make it’.

The unique environment of the suburbs has allowed not only players to represent Les Bleus but also play for a host of North and West African teams through their parents or grandparents.   

And whether they put on a French, Algeria or Senegalese shirt, they confront the cynicism that ‘Deep France’ have for the boys from the Banlieues when they do it.

The 1998 squad marked a turning point for the FFF and French society. The team, led by midfielder Zinedine Zidane – who grew up in the notoriously rough Le Castellane Banlieue of Marseille, was hailed as a triumph for French immigrant integration.

‘Black, Blanc, Beur’ was its nickname. Referring to the black, white and Arab faces in the squad that took on the world and won. This team, made up of around 50% immigrant stock, united the country in giving them their first World Cup at a time when the perennial problem of immigrants and their role in France was at the forefront.

After beating Brazil at the Stade de France, chants of ‘Zidane Président!’ was sung all down the Champs-Élysées, with the midfielder’s face projected onto the side of the Arc de Triomphe, a monument to the military grandeur of old France. The icon of new France was now a little boy from the Marseille slums.

"All these things came together to redefine the idea that France was at last confident, satisfied and celebrating its multi-racial identity."

- Barbara Lebrun, senior lecturer of French cultural studies at the University of Manchester

The Arc de Triomphe, an unquestionable symbol of Free France where leaders and generals in the past have stood, chest out, draped in the blue, white and red of the Republic was, in the immediate wake of the 1998 Final, plastered with the face of the son of Algerian immigrants.

The scenes along the Champs-Élysées after the final have been compared to the Liberation of France in 1945 following five years of Nazi occupation. That analogy may have more meaning to it than just the fact millions of joyous faces sung into the night along France’s most famous avenue. It was a brief flicker of liberation for the immigrants and their sons and daughters of France. That a team who had more in common with them, than the usual heads of social architecture, were champions of the world and suddenly, France was in harmony with its citizens, whatever colour.  

The pattern continued, and in 2018 the French National team won again, in Russia this time with a team scouted from the Banlieues. Eight of the 23-man squad were born or raised in Greater Paris. That includes Kylian Mbappe, French footballs golden child, who grew up in Bondy where 30% of residents live below the poverty line, more than double the national average.

And all but two of the entire France squad had some form of dual-nationality status making the victorious 2018 team a supposed triumph for French multiculturalism.

It was a true and free rebuttal of the populist rhetoric spoken by politicians and media jackals who believe France is somewhat impure because of their presence.

"Sports is politics"

-Lillian Thuram, French footballer & 1998 World Cup winner

The cruel irony between how politicians and the media treat Les Bleus will continue with no end in sight. It’s something players have experienced and dealt with for decades. The FFF is the pawn for politicians to move at their convenience. Football acting as the vehicle for social change, sincere or not with the national team the mirror to French society.

The urban make-up of Paris was first drawn up during the reign of the monarchy. In 1670, King Louis XIV built a grand city wall around Paris to aid in the collection of the much-hated octroi tax, a levy on goods coming into the capital.

Consequently, a lawless outback of crime and forbidden goods untouched by the octroi grew outside the city walls. This land was soon populated by ‘Rôdeurs de Barrière’ (Barrier prowlers) who would hide in hedgerows and steal from anyone who came close.

“It was an inhabited location where there was nobody, it was a deserted place where there was somebody. It was a street in Paris that was wilder at night than a forest, gloomier in daylight than a graveyard.”

- Victor Hugo, French novelist (1802-85)

By 1841 the city walls had expanded. Yet it was met with confusion by residents. One illustration from the time depicts a man and woman standing surprised outside their hut, looking over to the grand palaces of Paris in the distance and asking, “So we’re Parisians now?”

This shows the clear indifference those on the outskirts of Paris felt about the capital they were now all of a sudden clubbed together with. An indifference which is still there today among the concrete Banlieues when its residents look towards the capital. Are they Parisian? Because most of the time the suburbs feel like an entirely different country.

"What you need is probably a lot more cash injection - a redistribution of national wealth - and it takes a particularly brave political party to advocate for that, usually from the left."

- Barbara Lebrun, senior lecturer of French cultural studies at the University of Manchester

By the start of the 20^th Century, the outskirts had become a catchall slum for all things crazed and curious.

But thirty years on, it was clear something needed to be done about them.

The HBMs (habitation bon marchè or "cheap housing") started construction in 1928. Nearly 300,000 low and medium cost housing sprung up. Uniform in price, colour and design, and equal in their ability to sap the spirits of its inhabitants.  

Yet on the eve of war in 1939, there was still no substantial answer to social housing for the projects. The population of the suburbs was now equal to that of Central Paris and it had become a hotbed for communist politics among a working-class population.

Paris needed to do more for its ‘Red Belt’ and so by 1950 the city decided - hastened by a fear of communist revolt (some in Government referred to the Banlieues as the pincers gripping around Paris) and partly to house the vast numbers of workers arriving from Africa and the French colonies to help rebuild the country after wartime, developed a wide-ranging system of HLMs (habitation à loyer modéré or "reduced-rent housing").