'Nothing has changed': France's forgotten banlieues

For the past week, France has been gripped by an outpouring of shock and anger following the police killing of 17-year-old Nahel M on 27th June.

The teenager of Algerian and Moroccan descent was shot dead at point-blank range by police in Nanterre, west of Paris, during a traffic stop.

In video footage of the incident, two officers are seen standing by the stationary car pointing a weapon at the driver, with a voice heard saying: "You are going to get a bullet in the head".

The footage quickly went viral, with protests erupting across the country in the largest social unrest in years.

With the riots largely easing, the country is now once again counting the cost of deep-rooted inequality, marginalisation, and police brutality in French society.

"It's not just police violence. It's the complete accumulation of social violence"

"They are killing our little brothers and getting away with it," a young man shouted during the first night of riots in Nanterre, his sentiments capturing the heart of the issue for the young and marginalised in France’s social housing estates, or banlieues.

In 2005, three weeks of rioting shook France after the deaths of Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, following a police chase. The young teenagers were heading home from playing football when suddenly pursued by police.

Terrified, they hid in an electricity substation in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois and were electrocuted to death.

Eighteen years later, residents of France’s banlieues are still waiting for change.

Police violence

Last year 13 people were killed by French police at traffic stops, the majority of the victims of Arab or black origin, who are also twenty times more likely to be subjected to police identity checks, according to rights groups.

Last year, the UN Committee on the elimination of racial discrimination condemned discriminatory ID checks, which it said were “disproportionately targeting certain minorities”.

Following Nahel’s killing, a UN rights body said France must address “profound problems of racism and racial discrimination” within its law enforcement agencies.

"It's not just police violence. It's the complete accumulation of social violence," California University and Science Po Paris scholar Shreya Parikh told The New Arab.

According to a 2021 report by the International Labour Organisation, 37% of young people in France have been victims of discrimination during the hiring process and/or while working.

"When you are looking for work, you send ten CVs, you manage to finally get an interview and you see that gaze that tells you are not getting the job,” Parikh said.

“When you get to social services, the white person gets treated with dignity and not you. This is an accumulation of many layers of violence: racial, social, and economic" the sociologist added.

Systemic racism

Spatial segregation is another form of violence that affects French citizens of Arab or black origin, with low-income banlieues situated on the outskirts of major cities with poor transport connections.

In 2017, former minister Jean-Louis Borloo was asked by Emmanuel Macron to come up with a plan for the banlieues, but the project was abandoned by the French president in 2018.

"There are four times less public funds in suburbs than in the rest of the country," explained Borloo in 2020 to French magazine Zadig. According to a report by the government, 33% of non-European immigrants live in the suburbs.

"What we have in the French banlieues is humiliation: people are not moving up the ladder," says Shreya Parikh.

"There is definitely a deeply rooted colonial heritage within the techniques and the functioning of French law enforcement"

Adding to the issue is France’s rigid version of Republicanism built on colourblind policies that refuse to acknowledge systemic discrimination on the basis of race or religion.

"In a certain way, immigrants have the possibility to speak up against discrimination. French people of immigrant descent don't have that option, as the government will just tell them ‘You’re French, so there can't be any difference,'” Parikh told The New Arab.

"The only thing that has evolved compared to the last decade is that black and Arab people have acquired citizenship, France has not been able to correct the inequalities inherited from migration".

Following the riots, French authorities have denied any form of systemic racism. Parliament speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet even stated that the French police are doing "formidable work".

Comparative data, however, tells a different story. In Germany, in the last ten years, only one person has died after refusing to comply with police. In France, one person has died every month.

Sébastian Roché, a criminologist, says that deaths by police shootings are 50% higher in France than in Germany, with French officers among the most heavily armed in Europe. French police are “wired to be insulated from society, to respond only to the executive”, he told the Guardian.

For some, this institutional culture is rooted in France’s colonial history. An imperial power from the 16th century until the 1970s, the concept of a “civilising mission” was often evoked as a defence of French colonialism.

State violence was a feature of imperial rule, most notably in Algeria as the country fought for independence in the mid-1950s.

"There is definitely a deeply rooted colonial heritage within the techniques and the functioning of French law enforcement," French journalist and anti-racism activist Sihame Assbague told The New Arab.

It’s not just about historical influence, she adds, but rather how non-white people are viewed in France.

"This is not a turning point in French society. Police officers have been harassing, beating, and killing non-white men for decades. This violence is nourished by the constructed image of Black and Arab people as savages, threats that need to be controlled and submitted".

'This always happens to the same people'

Some French politicians, such as Green Party MP Aurélien Taché, have linked police identity checks to colonial practices, calling for an end to ID checks which target Arab and black communities and sanctions on companies that discriminate on the basis of race.

"France is the only democracy that still has unjustified identity checks in the streets, mostly targeting Arab and Black people," he told The New Arab. "Non-whites are more likely to get killed following an altercation with police or to suffer from harsh judicial sentences."

He also wants to overturn the Bernard Cazeneuve Law of 2017, which gave police greater powers to use firearms, including at traffic stops.

Reports indicate that since this law was approved police have opened fire 40% more often. Meanwhile, France's main opposition group, NUPES, has filed a motion to revise the law.

But for people like Jennifer Yezid, whose aunt Malika was killed by police in 1973 at the age of eight, justice for police violence remains elusive.

"What we have in the French banlieues is humiliation: people are not moving up the ladder"

"Nothing has really changed in 50 years," Yezid told The New Arab.

"What happened to Nahel is inhuman. If he didn't have curly hair, everything would have gone smoothly. I've seen what police do to us. When I was young, I had to change many things in order to avoid problems: how I look, my hairstyle, how I practice my religion.”

She recently wrote a book, ‘Malika’, together with sociologists Rachida Brahim and Sami Ouchane, and with the help of author Asya Djoulait, about her aunt’s murder and state violence. The book opens with a list of more than 30 people killed following an interaction with the police.

"All those names still haunt me," she says. "The pain Nahel's mother is going through, my grandmother had to suffer the same," Yezid adds.

"This always happens to the same people".

Amine Snoussi is a political analyst and independent journalist based in Tunis.

Follow him on Twitter: @amin_snoussi