Police Power and Race Riots in Paris

Cathy Lisa Schneider
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Cathy Lisa Schneider: School of International Service at American University, Washington, D.C, cschnei@american.edu

Politics & Society, 2008, vol. 36, issue 1, 133-159

Abstract: This article looks at riots that consumed Paris and much of France for three consecutive weeks in November 2005. The author argues that the uprisings were not instigated by radical Muslims, children of African polygamists, or despairing youth suffering from high unemployment. First and foremost, they were provoked by a terrible incident of police brutality, a tragedy among a litany of similar tragedies. Black and Arab youth were already frustrated: decades of violent enforcement of France's categorical boundaries—both racial and geographic—had filled many with rage. When Minister of Interior Nicholas Sarkozy responded to the violent death of three teenage boys on October 25, 2005, by condemning the boys rather than the police officers who had killed them, he merely reaffirmed what many young blacks and Arabs already believed: that their lives have no value in France.

Keywords: race riots in France; police power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:36:y:2008:i:1:p:133-159

DOI: 10.1177/0032329208314802

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