French riots follow decades-old pattern of rage, with no resolution in sight

By François Dubet, Université de Bordeaux

Although they never fail to take us aback, French riots have followed the same distinct pattern ever since protests broke out in the Eastern suburbs of Lyon in 1981, an episode known as the “summer of Minguettes”: a young person is killed or seriously injured by the police, triggering an outpouring of violence in the affected neighbourhood and nearby. Sometimes, as in the case of the 2005 riots and of today’s, it is every rough neighbourhood that flares up.

Throughout the past 40 years in France, urban revolts have been dominated by the rage of young people who attack the symbols of order and the state: town halls, social centres, schools, and shops.

An institutional and political vacuum

That rage is the kind that leads one to destroy one’s own neighbourhood, for all to see. Residents condemn these acts, but can also understand the motivation. Elected representatives, associations, churches and mosques, social workers and teachers admit their powerlessness, revealing an institutional and political vacuum.

Of all the revolts, the summer of the Minguettes was the only one to pave the way to a social movement: the March for Equality and Against Racism in December 1983. Numbering more than 100,000 people and prominently covered by the media, it was France’s first demonstration of its kind. Left-leaning paper Libération nicknamed it “La Marche des Beurs”, a colloquial term that refers to Europeans whose parents or grandparents are from the Maghreb. In the demonstrations that followed, no similar movement appears to have emerged from the ashes.

At each riot, politicians are quick to play well-worn roles: the right denounces the violence and goes on to stigmatise neighbourhoods and police victims; the left denounces injustice and promises social policies in the neighbourhoods. In 2005, then interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy sided with the police. France’s current president, Emmanuel Macron, has expressed compassion for the young man killed by the police in Nanterre, but politicians and presidents are hardly heard in the neighbourhoods concerned.

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