French Banlieues By François Dubet And Didier Lapeyrloum Analysis

There is a veritable stigma that is attached to residents in bounded and segregated spaces of the city. The author borrows from a 1992 study of the French banlieues by François Dubet and Didier Lapeyrronie the notion of “neighbourhoods of exile”. The French urban areas that are here analysed constitute the lowest level of the public housing complex of a city that have undergone a striking demographic and material decline since their establishment in the 1960s. As a consequence these neighbourhoods attracted a great inflow of migrant families who contributed to the negative public image of the French cités, which are commonly associated with immigration, insecurity and delinquency. Such degree of territorial stigmatization has serious effects
Accordingly the author argues that the stigma the French banlieues residents are bound to is purely residential and territorial, while that of American ghetto inhabitants stems from an inseparable dynamic of space and race. In fact it would suffice for residents of the Quatre mille not to show their residence for them to avoid discrimination, for there is no physical or cultural marker that labels them as being members of the Red Belt. Hence, even if temporarily, there is a way for them to shed the
The dynamics are in fact harshened by the mere fact that colour is perceived as a marker of identity, thus the social inferiority does not only stem from a territorial element but mainly from a racial one, according to which the symbolic association between place, colour offers an evaluation of social properties and values. Hence members of the American black community living in ghettos suffer from what the author calls conjugated stigmatization, cumulating the negative symbolic value attached to both colour and territory. Consequently, if there is a way to escape stigmatization for French inhabitants of the Red Belt (even if temporary), the possibility for American ghetto residents to do the same is highly improbable, thus being necessary for the latter to learn how to survive despite the unacceptable