La Machine à trier - Analysis of how and why the 2005 French riots securitized schools

Résumé du document

The 'story' started in Clichy-sous-Bois, eastern 'banlieue' (suburb) of Paris. On Thursday 27 October 2005, a group of youths who were going back home after a football match were approached by policemen. Not having their ID papers and fearing persecutions, three of them escaped and took refuge in a power transformer. Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré died electrocuted while the third one was seriously burnt. Early versions of the facts, presented by the Ministry of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy saying that the police 'had not been physically pursuing' the group, were finally contradicted by an IGS (Inspection Générale des Services). Report proving that officers failed to assist the youth in danger. In memory of their friends who were, according to them, 'dead for nothing', groups of youths went to the street and started fights with the police, burning cars and other buildings. Thus began three weeks of violent riots that spread to other banlieues.

Extraits

[...] Implications - Political reactions: towards securitization? What I found interesting is that as it was a ‘securitization from below', only persons in position of authority, here political leaders, had the possibilities to propose measures to ‘desecuritize' the issue. Even if the concept of desecuritization has been less developed, Waever considered three strategies to do so: ‘not speaking about an issue as a threat at all, managing a securitization so that it does not spiral and moving the securitized issue back into normal politics' (Fako, 2012). [...]

[...] For Waever, one facilitating condition is that the threat must usually be considered as such. Thus, considering school as a threat can be surprising. When I open a dictionary[4], two definitions apply to school: the place where one receives a collective and general teaching, what has the mission to instruct and educate. Schools are the most important national institutions to shape and prepare for the future of students. Free and compulsory until the age of 16 in France, school aims to respond to the Republican ideal of ‘égalité' of opportunity and ‘fraternité'. [...]

[...] Unfortunately, many families circumvented the regulation by moving or choosing a private school. Instead of furthering equal opportunities, it increased the ‘ghettoization' of banlieue schools (Giblin, 2009). The experience of the USA ‘busing system', to bring children from the suburbs to schools in the city centre, didn't succeed either. Only the setting up in 1998 of the REP, ‘Réseaux d'éducation prioritaires' (educational priority zones, former ‘Zones d'éducation prioritaires' in 1982) is a certain achievement as disadvantaged schools benefited from more resources (additional teaching hours and jobs, financial support). [...]

[...] Methodology During the riots, the public opinion was surprised by the number of schools and educational building destroyed. Some thought that youths' actions were motivated by easy-accessible targets but others argued that they attacked places that crystallized disappointment, disillusion and trauma they experienced. To show how and why the riots targeted primarily schools, I'll first look at the role of media in making the population and the government aware of the importance to deal with troubles of education in the banlieues. [...]

[...] Reviewing different testimonies of youths talking about school, I came up with a list of ‘problems' that were often (if not always) cited Ghettoization The first argument feeding youths' anger was surrounding conditions that have impacted their school successes (failure of political measures: carte scolaire, busing . They denounced the word ‘banlieue' which reminds that they lived in ‘la place des bannis' (banned people). For many, schools are ‘ghettos' that reinforce their feeling that they are different (Mucchielli, 2009). ‘There's not rich, no daddy's boys in our schools. No future énarque[12], no future CEO. [...]