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Banlieue
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Banlieue is the French word for "outskirts." It comes from the two French words ban and lieue ("league", roughly four kilometers), and thus describes the zone around a city that is under the city's rule.
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Encyclopedia
Banlieue is the French word for "outskirts." It comes from the two French words ban and lieue ("league", roughly four kilometers), and thus describes the zone around a city that is under the city's rule. The old French term was faubourg for suburb.
Some dictionaries translate banlieue as suburb, but while both the French word banlieue and the English word suburb both refer to residential areas on the outer edge of a city, in everyday usage their meanings can be quite different. In the England, the word suburb generally connotes areas of low-density, detached or semi-detached housing, inhabited by the middle and upper classes, whereas in France the word banlieue is more frequently used to describe areas of low-income apartments and social housing. (Nonetheless, a banlieue may be rich or poor; Versailles, Le Vésinet, Orsay and Neuilly-sur-Seine are affluent banlieues of Paris, while Clichy-sous-Bois is a poor one.) Its colloquial equivalent in America would be "the projects", or "the hood". In the UK, the equivalent terms would be a "Housing Estate" or "Council Estate".
Euphemism
Since the 1970s and 1980s, the phrase les banlieues has been increasingly used as a euphemism to describe low-income housing projects in which mainly French of foreign descent or foreign immigrants reside, especially around Paris, but also some other large French cities. The new connotation of the word is mostly restricted to European French (shared with Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco). In Africa, the word retains a neutral meaning and, in Quebec, it means suburb. Recently-coined terms used in politics, sociology, and the French media to describe banlieues with high levels of poverty, violence and drug trafficking include zones urbaines sensibles ("sensitive urban areas") and quartiers dits sensibles ("neighbourhoods deemed sensitive").
Banlieues rouges
The banlieues rouges ("red outskirts districts") are the outskirt districts of Paris where, traditionally, the French Communist Party held mayorships and other elected positions. Examples of these include Ivry-sur-Seine, and Châtillon. Such communities often named streets after Soviet personalities, such as rue Youri Gagarine.
Crime and unrest
Since the 1980s petty crime has increased in France, much of it blamed on juvenile delinquency fostered within the banlieues. As a result the banlieues are perceived to have become unsafe places to live, and youths from the banlieues are perceived to be one important source of increased petty crimes and uncivil behaviour. As a result of this criminality, the National Front, a far right political party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, rose to prominence during the early 1990s on a platform of tougher law enforcement and immigration control.
Violent clashes between hundreds of youths and French police in the Paris banlieue of Clichy-sous-Bois began on October 27 2005 and continued for more than seventeen nights. The 2005 Paris suburb riots were triggered by the electrocution deaths of two teenagers who were, allegedly, attempting to hide from police in an electrical substation.
In the summer of 1981, dramatic events involving young Franco-Maghrebis brought about many different reactions from the French Public. Within the Banlieues, events called rodeos would occur, where young "banlieusards" would steal cars and perform stunts as well as race them. Then before the police would catch them, they would exit the cars and light them on fire using gasoline. During July and August 1981 around 250 cars were vandalized. Shortly after this incident, grass roots groups began to demonstrate in public in 1983-1984 to make problems of the Beurs and immigrants in France known to the French government. In doing so, North Africans, specifically Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Arabs, and Berbers, in France began to develop a stronger identity unified by the problems that have been imposed on them economically and politically. The banlieue became a unifying point to the marginalized immigrants of France, despite the fact that there are various identities that constitute these individual groups. "We don't consider ourselves completely French...Our parents were Arabs...We were born in France (and only visited Algeria a few times)...So what are we? French? Arab? In the eyes of the French we are Arabs...but when we visit Algeria some people call us emigrants and say we've rejected our culture. We've even had stones thrown at us." Overall the displacement of identities that Franco Maghrebi's feel becomes a unifying factor in French society and assimilation is particularly difficult because of their placement in the banlieue, and the French's refusal to assimilate due to the violence portrayed at events such as in the summer of 1981.
See also
- aire urbaine
- District B13 / Banlieue 13 An action film set in the fictional Banlieue 13 (District 13) of Paris in 2010, where the protagonist is tasked with locating and deactivating a nuclear weapon that presumably has been stolen by a powerful gang thirsty for absolute control over the district.
- La Haine, a film by Mathieu Kassovitz about the disaffected youth and police brutality in the French banlieues.
External links
- of the introduction and first chapter of Éric Maurin's book : Le ghetto français, enquête sur le séparatisme social
- on burning girls and burning cars in France by Alice Schwarzer at signandsight.com]
- French author François Bon has spent years giving writing workshops to youths in the suburbs that are now being set ablaze. He looks critically at where the violence originated and with despair at where it's headed, at signandsight.com
- A dossier with four related feature articles as well as a comprehensive collection of international voices from In Today's Feuilletons and the Magazine Roundup of sighandsight.com
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