Urban violence as a conflict over public space
Résumé
The starting point for the proposed paper is that urban violence should be analyzed as a form of conflict, based on the hypothesis that there is no violence without some form of conflict. Urban violence here is understood as confrontations in public space at different levels : firstly, opposing police and youth in French banlieues (relegated neighbourhoods with a high population of immigrant origin (post-colonial)) ; secondly, violent confrontations between youth from different neighbourhoods and thirdly, confrontations between groups of youth and other residents of a specific neighbourhood around behavior referred to in French as « incivilités » which literally means uncivilized. The paper focuses on the latter form of confrontation. It will place this form of micro-conflict in France's post-/colonial history, arguing that conflicting encounters in public space should be understood as part of a larger conflict about the place of « youth of immigrant origin » in French society. Fieldwork in a middle-sized French city with a group of « night mediators » gives the necessary empirical grounding to the argument.