Abstract
The qualitative analysis has made it possible to distinguish two types of situations in which an identification with the suburbs exists in a relationship with national and other social identifications. Firstly, suburban apartment complexes may be treated like any other French space. Differences between inhabitants of those areas and inhabitants of city centres and detached houses are then considered within the social and economic context. Secondly, however, identifications not connected with the context of nationality, which emphasise the social marginalisation of inhabitants of the suburbs in respect of other French people, may appear in connection with an identification with migrants. The suburbs are then perceived as not always or not fully French: the spatial and social conflict is seen not as intra-French, but as a conflict between French and non-French. The feeling of exclusion experienced by inhabitants of the suburbs may then be compounded, since it also concerns nationality.
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Notes
- 1.
Nevertheless—in contrast to what is often communicated in the media—a clear majority of the descendants of immigrants from various countries (second generation) live outside neighbourhoods stricken with high unemployment and other social problems (zones urbaines sensibles). As many as 71 per cent of working-class people, 83 per cent of middle- and upper-class people and 81 per cent of other social classes (people working in trades, commerce or running their own businesses) live in neighbourhoods not covered by special recovery programmes, though it is true that the children of immigrants are over-represented in ‘difficult’ neighbourhoods (Collet and Santelli 2012, 327).
- 2.
Identifying with an apartment estate as a collective space, and not an ethnocultural one, also cropped up in studies by Jean-François Bruneaud and Élisabeth Lisse. In summarising his project, Bruneaud (2005, 292) stated that the district of residence is of no significance for the occurrence of specific ethnic characteristics. On the other hand, Lisse (2011, 180–181) emphasised that, in the statements given by the people she surveyed, identification with an apartment complex—partly resulting from the acquisition of the negative image of such areas and the need to feel that one is united with other residents—has the result that ethnocultural differences between residents are not important. Lisse pointed out that even Roma and residents who are recent immigrants give up their own cultural reference points in favour of identifying with their housing estate.
- 3.
Lisse (2011, 174–179) shows that the inhabitants of the housing complex she studied perceive themselves, despite economic and cultural differences between them, as a single community that stands in opposition to ‘the big, rich, bourgeois other world up at the top’. Residents identify with the name of their complex, describing themselves as ‘poor’, ‘little ones’, ‘RMI neighbourhood’ [Revenu minimum d’insertion—benefits paid to people in the lowest income bracket]. Collectively disqualified by people from outside the complex, they share the feeling of being part of an undifferentiated mass located on the bottom rung of the social ladder. There is a powerful identification with the territory of the community, which is treated as opposed to both inhabitants of other neighbourhoods and to people of higher economic status. Residents are convinced that they share common characteristics, and many of them value these. Those characteristics include: solidarity, well-developed neighbourly relations, being interested in each other, simplicity (‘We’re not proud’), living for the moment. (Lisse considers these values as close to working-class communities). One of the women who live in the complex spoke about this aspect as follows: ‘It’s true that Ney has the reputation it has, but people here have a lot of solidarity. There are problems with feeding, or with children or what have you, but there are also a lot of people who are always ready to help those in need. That adds something to our neighbourhood—to see people who are in such solidarity. Three-quarters of the people in Ney that I know are like that’.
- 4.
The story told by Hélène, a French woman who took up with an Algerian immigrant, is different from that told by her daughter. She describes her life in the housing complex in detail, including the ordinary details of daily and family life that constitute both good and worse experiences. She does not treat the suburbs as her daughter does; it is a place like any other, not defined by its contrast with other neighbourhoods or cities.
- 5.
Residents of the neighbourhood studied by Lisse would agree with this hypothesis (2011, 174–175). They admit that they recognise each other by their language, clothing and behaviour. Being aware, though, of their neighbourhood’s bad reputation, they use various strategies in their contacts with ‘others’ (school, job office, employers, banks, administration, local politicians) in order not to disclose their socio-spatial affiliations. In such situations, they try to wear fashionable clothes, be especially polite, control their behaviour, and speak differently than they do among themselves (using different words and complex sentences).
- 6.
Mothers of Maghrebi children surveyed by Sicard (2011, 47–48) complained about the reduced, negative depiction of ‘difficult’ neighbourhoods, and at the same time stated that people of Arab origin benefiting from housing supplements have no chance to relocate elsewhere: ‘Nobody’s going to offer you a flat in a HLM block in a good district! … Because actually we’re not asking for anything more than for our children to grow up in a good situation. We want to live in the same conditions as the French. … We pay our taxes without complaining, we pay our bills—we’re like them! Maybe our skin colour is different, but we’re just like them, we grew up here, we finished the same schools, we read like them, speak and express ourselves like them. So why are we left on our own? Why aren’t we wanted among—quote—‘elegant’ people? Why?’ (Sicard 2011, 48).
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Kubera, J. (2020). Identification with the Suburbs. In: Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin . Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5_6
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