Police marginality, racial logics and discrimination in the banlieues of France

Youth in ‘high-risk’ urban zones in France see police discrimination and brutality as a fundamental problem in their relationship to the state, but the state insists on marginalizing or silencing issues of racism and police impunity. At first glance, it seems that mainstream society and its political representatives are indifferent to the racial and ethnic dimension of violence that takes place in marginalized minority neighbourhoods. This paper takes a closer look at how the strength of entrenched French institutions and of police unions play a large roll in institutionalized racism. This paper argues that a lack of institutional accountability within the French culture of governance also helps us to understand why the French national police are so reluctant to embrace the community policing model or to register the persistent histories and geographies of intersecting racial, post-colonial and class hierarchies.