The check and the guardianship: A comparison of surveillance at an airport and a housing-estate area in the Paris outskirts

Fabien Jobard (1) , Dominique Linhardt (2)

1 CESDIP - Centre de recherches sociologiques sur le droit et les institutions pénales
2 CSI i3 - Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation i3

This chapter approaches the question of government and surveillance through a comparison between the control practices observable in two types of places. First, we focus on international airports, specifically the French international airport of Orly. Airports are maximum security zones where persons perceived as having no legitimate business are expelled and where suspicious objects are destroyed. The second kind of places are the ones labeled as "no-go areas", violent pockets within urban space. Social housing projects located in the bleak suburbs of French cities are such dangerous zones. Both kinds of places - airports and no-go areas - have very different time and space features: people briefly pass through anonymous airports where relationships are kept at an impersonal minimum, whereas the population of a housing estate area is made of "permanent transients" pinned down by a shared fate of which there seems no escape.

Mots clés: Sociology and public policy

Mots clés: surveillance; police

Domaines: Sociologie

Fabien Jobard, Dominique Linhardt. The check and the guardianship: A comparison of surveillance at an airport and a housing-estate area in the Paris outskirts. Mathieu Deflem and Jeffrey T. Ulmer. Surveillance and Governance: Crime Control and Beyond, Emerald, pp.75-100, 2008, Sociology of Crime Law and Deviance, Volume 10, 978-0-7623-1416-4 (print) / 978-1-84950-558-1 (online). ⟨10.1016/S1521-6136(07)00204-7⟩. ⟨hal-00559794⟩