Métropoles (Dec 2012)
Au-delà et en deçà du Périphérique
Abstract
Through an intensive ethnographic fieldwork, this paper illustrates how teenagers from the Parisian northern banlieue navigate the Parisian Metropolis. It shows how the use of space - as a territory and as a symbol - is socially constructed and questions the medias perspective cliché of secluded banlieue teenagers who would never leave their relegated housing projects, as well as the depiction of an ‘unintegrated youth’. Observing how and where they go – and do not go - in Paris allows us to understand their ambivalent position in the French society. Questioning how they relate to where they live also highlights the weight of a potent collective territorial stigmata, it also contributes to the ‘ghetto or no ghetto’ French sociological controversy by showing that the word “ghetto” is rejected and bears a highly negative connotation, being used to disqualify the territory of “the others” (the historical ghetto, the fictional ghetto, the American ghetto, the neighbourly ghetto). Finally, the paper addresses an idealtype of the mental and symbolic map of Paris (le Paris quotidien, le Paris poubelle and le blanc Paris) which highlights the power of social, cultural and racial legitimization and domination processes as well as the daily and routinized connections between Paris and the banlieues in which processes of social integration and desire for social mobility are crucial.
