By the way the Algerian conflict had been settled. One can note the existence — at first, above all — of a population of Algerian origin that had taken part in the Algerian War on the side of the French army: the Harkis, or the children of those Harkis, who were concentrated in the housing estates of the Paris region, the Lyon region, or the south of France, the Mediterranean region. And then it came to involve all those who had arrived in the late 1960s to help France during its period of strong growth. This gave rise to the first revolts of young “Beurs” (which means “Arab” in verlan — French back-slang).
The foreign populations, being the last to come aboard, were the first affected by this economic crisis and by this massive exclusion from work.
They were the first elements to give material form to a situation of exclusion and of revolt against a society that was incapable of integrating them and that, in particular, gradually showed that it was incapable of granting them a status through work. Then this gradually spread to other populations, and we find ourselves today in a situation where a portion of the French population now finds itself in a situation of exclusion. So why begin with this description? Because I believe that, if visibility at first concerned the foreign populations, the cause of this situation is not the foreign character of those populations. It is first and foremost an economic situation. These populations, being the last to come aboard, were the first affected by the economic crisis and by the massive exclusion from work. For what we can say, after about ten years of confronting this situation, is that the primary cause of it is the lack of work and therefore of a status deriving from the possibility of integration through work. And this situation has lasted. It has lasted all the longer because, for an entire period, the political leadership took the view that the crisis was merely a parenthesis; that new solutions would therefore appear with an economic recovery and renewed growth.
But unfortunately, we observe today that what was called, throughout an entire period in political discourse, “tunnels” that were supposed to open onto radiant futures has dragged on indefinitely. The result is that all the solutions that were proposed, aimed at managing situations that were experienced as transitional, are today more and more poorly received by the populations concerned. That is to say, the whole body of young people in particular who were targeted by all the schemes of integration, reintegration, and social support — what are more generally called “odd jobs” or internships or fixed-term contracts — have massively rejected all those schemes, because they understood very well that what was at the outset temporary — that is, “you accept this situation and afterward things will get better” — has in fact dragged on indefinitely, and that they are being offered the chance to move from odd job to odd job and precisely not to succeed in integrating.
And that is precisely the major problem we face: this situation of exclusion that has widened, that endures, that moreover is concentrated — and this is the other problem posed — in a certain number of geographical sites that accumulate all the problems; that is, that accumulate both exclusion through work and, consequently, the problems of cohabitation within these geographical sites. And this, beginning from the problems of the failure to address the difficulties these populations encounter, which, on that basis, accumulate increasingly dramatic family and social situations: couples that break apart, hence the emergence of single-parent families; children no longer cared for by social services; municipalities that no longer have the financial means to compensate for these kinds of situations; living environments that grow more and more degraded; increasingly heightened violence, rising insecurity. This is the phenomenon that appeared at the beginning of the 1990s. A kind of counter-society establishes itself in these geographical zones, in these ghettos that are taking shape on the periphery of our large cities. This counter-society is essentially patterned by a parallel economy in which drugs (drug trafficking, narcotics trafficking) have become one of the essential elements organizing life in the estates. That is to say that, very gradually, a part of the population that has been excluded from work has tried to find means of livelihood in other practices, and notably in narcotics trafficking. I insist on narcotics trafficking, because I think — and I had been one of the first to point it out in the 1990s — that it has changed the nature of relations within our estates. It has become today a genuine parallel economy that rots the whole of our social relations, insofar as the financial sums in motion are considerable. It is no longer merely a matter of petty thieving to try to improve daily life or one’s everyday lot. It is no longer a matter of what we used to know in the 1960s: pickpocketing, small burglaries by a string of young people. It is essentially a matter of an organized, structured, hierarchized economy that sets enormous financial means in motion, that weaves its web, and that on that basis even organizes life within the estates around this trafficking. With a recent development, which we have witnessed over these past two or three years: those who engage in this illicit trafficking too have integrated the legal frameworks within which we operate; they know, for example, that to slip through the meshes of law enforcement the best means today is to use the youngest.
The racist phenomenon that is present today is first and foremost the product of this situation of exclusion that became concentrated, at first, on this type of population.
So, we have a parallel economy that has been built by instrumentalizing and using all the minors who are often enlisted in this process, and the economy has been built around that. And we now even have family units that live off the gains produced by this situation. And it has obviously become a dramatic situation, insofar as the territorial zones that have seen this type of trafficking penetrate are less and less under control from the standpoint of public order. This leads a certain number of officials to speak of the existence, in French society, of “no-go zones,” even if, obviously, the police can penetrate anywhere on the territory. We know that there are today geographical zones in which a structured, organized trafficking exists — not violent, because the traffickers need a certain calm precisely — but which is the product of this situation. I think that the racist phenomenon that is present today is first and foremost the product of this situation of exclusion that became concentrated, at first, on this type of population. Then, afterward, people theorized about the intrinsic capacities of these populations, given their ethnic origins, to integrate into the French republican model. Experience shows that this is not the essential factor. It is marginal. Even phenomena specific to populations from black Africa, to their cultural practices — I am thinking in particular of excision, or of a form of family organization that is not exactly the same form of family organization as in Western society — these phenomena fade away. That is to say, the norm that imposes itself on all