Most historians point to the riots that erupted in Vaulx-en-Venlin’s La Grappinère section in 1979 as one of the first full-scale riots of the banlieues. But there were a number of smaller clashes between youth and police across France earlier in the decade. In March 1971, in the social housing community of Le Narval (a cité of 4,000) located in La Courneuve, a commune five miles north of Paris, a clash between youth and police erupted after a youth was killed. In September of that year, La Grappinère exploded with violence. As one historian recounts,
“Young people with ‘Maghrebian-sounding’ names, as Le Progrès [newspaper] reported, attacked a florist’s shop probably in retaliation for racist insults. The intervention of the police gave rise to violent exchanges between police officers and young delinquents. Three policemen were injured and eight youths were arrested. Although a gradation in the modes of action was observed, the regional newspaper ‘Le Progrès’ treated the phenomenon as if it were a simple fact, the national newspapers did not mention the event.” Still, throughout the 1970s, the state 251 maintained that social housing was an ideal model for low-income residents, though the notion disintegrated as deindustrialization took hold in the late-1970s.
An outward sign that the banlieues were not the model communities as originally designed burst into the open in 1979 in Valux-en-Velin. On 15 September 1979, French police
Maëlle Moalic-Minnaert, “La révolte de la jeunesse des grands ensembles au cœur des débats politiques: De
251
l'offensive des droites à la conversion de la majorité « socialo- communiste » aux idées sécuritaires (Juin 1981-Juillet 1984)” (“The revolt of the youth of the big ensembles at the heart of the political debates: From the offensive of the rights to the conversion of the "social-communist" majority to the ideas of security (June 1981-July 1984)”), Sciences Po Rennes, 2010, 16.
chased a young car thief, Akim Tabet, as he tried to escape by jumping off of a balcony in Vaulx-en-Velin’s Grappinière section. Sensing that he would be caught and possibly beaten, he cut 252 his arm with a glass shard. A fight broke out between youth and the police, a car was set ablaze, then a brawl erupted, one of the first large-scale banlieue riots in France. One resident who 253 remembered it at the time, known only as Mourad, was 17 in 1979. He told Libération in 2006,
“My family had arrived from a [furnished apartment] in this socially mixed neighborhood, full of French people. We felt good. But with those of my age, we felt we were treated differently. The police were openly racist . . .” At the time, the incident contributed to the negative 254
stigmatization of the banlieues in general and Vaulx-en-Velin in particular. It would be a difficult image to shake, as more violence erupted in the 1980s and 1990s. Such events overshadowed quieter activities, such as association building and efforts to organize peaceful responses to discrimination.
Seen from the perspective of the banlieue residents, society had abandoned them. Newly arrived immigrants could only watch as longtime French families obtained bank loans and moved out of social housing. Educational and business opportunities opened for people who disassociated themselves from stigmatized communities; but for those still living in social housing, even the word banlieue assumed a negative connotation. Those left in the cités were
The 1979 riot is not widely known, but some authors have documented it and others which occurred in the 1970s.
252
See Sophie Béroud, Boris Gobille, Abdellali Hajjat, et Michelle Zancarini-Fournel, Engagements, Rébellions et Genre dans les quartiers populaires en Europe (1968-2005) (Paris: Éditions des archives contemporaines, 2011).
Catherine Panassier, “Politique de la ville dans le Grand Lyon : l’exemple de Vaulx-en-Velin,” Millénaire: le
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Centre Ressources Prospectives du Grand Lyon, juin 2009, accessed November 15, 2017, http://
www.millenaire3.com/content/download/1285/17418/version/2/file/PolVille_Vaulx-en_Velin.pdf. See also Jean-Baptiste Willaume, “Jeunesses des Banlieues et Politique de la Ville, 1981-1986: Le temps des grandes
espérances?” (“Youth of the suburbs and policy of the city, 1981-1986: The time of great expectations?”) (MA Thesis, Université Paris IV - Sorbonne, 2003), 13.
Olivier Bertrand, “Trente ans de violences urbaines,” Libération, 27 octobre 2006, accessed November 15, 2017,
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http://www.liberation.fr/evenement/2006/10/27/trente-ans-de-violences-urbaines_55599.
seen as failures, or worse, problems. Few buses and no light rail or subway lines connected the grandes ensembles with the larger region. The sense of being an individual on the margins of society, hated, and targeted by police and the media looking to sell newspapers with the latest scenes of angst grated on the nerves of young people in the banlieues. Some, like Djida Tazdaït and others formed associations to respond to the hopelessness; others lashed out in violent rage.
Both forms of resistance announced that humans, personalities, children, and families—not animals or inanimate objects—inhabited France’s poorest and most misunderstood communities.
3.7 Conclusion
From the 1950s through the 1970s, the Lyon region, like Pittsburgh, was a staging ground for numerous attempts at housing the poor, first through construction of the cités de transit as a temporary replacement for the bidonvilles, and then social housing high-rises organized in grands ensembles located outside central Lyon, such as La Duchère, Mas du Taureau, La
Grappinière, and Les Minguettes. By 1980, more than 100,000 low-income individuals lived in communities surrounding Lyon, a city whose population by 1982 had bottomed out at 413,000.
Organizational formation by banlieue residents was very fragile and impermanent during this period as they sought outlets to combat the growing discrimination and anti-immigrant sentiment throughout the country. The situation was deemed “fragile” because strong social networks were slow to form among recently arrived immigrant groups. Some national
organizations did exist, such as the Permanences Anti-Expulsion, Association of Moroccans in France, and the Movement of Arab Workers, but they were limited in scope and had limited local impact. By the late 1970s, without formal recognition at the national level, no opportunities to
control property, few civil rights laws, and a dismal employment outlook, it was difficult for low-income and marginalized banlieue residents to develop and exercise social capital. As the 1970s came to a close, banlieue residents faced a bleak future, with declining numbers of industrial jobs as factories closed, few public transportation options, and a native population increasingly intolerant of foreigners.
The late-1970s and early 1980s was a particularly frustrating time for young people, as some first generation French citizens expressed their anger in increasingly violent ways. As the 1980s unfolded, Lyon again became the site of some of the first “rodeo riots” in France
(involving car burnings), a trend that would continue into the 1990s. It is not clear that an earlier generation of activists who arrived in France in the 1960s and early-1970s provided leadership to the youth who would promote civil rights in Lyon and throughout France. But as immigrant communities grew stronger networks and the first generation youth embraced a new version of what it means to be “French,” banlieue residents learned to mobilize their social capital into a new identity and powerful voice for marginalized people.