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Accepted Paper:
A petty state of exception: security policies and police intervention in the French banlieues
Didier Fassin
(Institute for Advanced Study)
Paper short abstract:
Paper based participant observation in a police district, focusing in particular on the recently created and particularly feared anti-crime squad.
Paper long abstract:
During the past three decades, all urban disorders in France, including the 2005 and 2007 riots, have occurred as the result of incidents related to interactions between the youth and the police, in housing projects where lives a working class population, mostly of migrant origin. Yet, no ethnography had been conducted on the work of patrols in the banlieues. During fifteen months, between 2005 and 2007, I realized a participant observation in a police district, focusing in particular on the recently created and particularly feared anti-crime squad. Relating the ordinary activities of the police with the transformations in security public discourses and public policies, I discuss how a petty state of exception has been made possible and tolerable in a democracy.