International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 129

International Journal on Criminology
ers positioning themselves as interlocutors in order to extract a social status, but
also and sometimes above all as a search for political recognition, in the sense of
establishing an imaginary reciprocal relationship (in the sense of Durand 1969;
2003) with the elements of the former colonial power. This involves negotiating
with them in almost the same way as freedom fighters seeking to legitimize their
use of territory. Yet the 2007 book by Mucchielli et al. about the 2005 riots, does
not establish such a correlation between the construction of identity and the relationship
to violence. The events of the riots are described as follows:
A profile of the rioters can be produced by studying the legal case
files in the Seine-Saint-Denis region. They were exclusively boys,
mostly between the ages of 16 and 21; almost all of French nationality
and born in France, but the majority of “foreign descent,”
primarily North African. The rioters gave two sets of reasons for
their anger. The first of these, not routinely mentioned, concerned
the events that had triggered the riots, while the second, which recurred
throughout their statements, did not concern the context of
the riot but the everyday lived experience of these young people.
Some rioters first mentioned the events in Clichy-sous-Bois, focusing
on the fact that the police were responsible for them and
that the Interior Minister had tried to hide this. But in reality, with
one exception (a young man who had friends in Clichy), the initial
tragedy was brought up with little emotion. Several focused however
on the tear gas grenade thrown in the direction of the mosque
and, again, it was less the grenade itself that outraged them than the
lack of an apology from the police. In both cases, it was what was
considered to be denial and lies on the part of the authorities that
provoked indignation and the feeling of a moral legitimacy for the
rioters’ anger (Mucchielli 2007, 22 et seq.).
Thus several of them “meanwhile focused on the tear gas grenade thrown
in the direction of the mosque and, again, it was less the grenade itself that outraged
them than the lack of an apology from the police.” This absolute search for an
apology would appear less to indicate the expression of a humiliation produced
by further “police violence” 33 against Islam, understood as a religion, but rather,
evidence that Islam, symbolically embodying the relationship to their parents’
country—as stated above, the majority of the rioters were of “North African” origin—was
presented by the rioters as a political line not to be crossed between
them (the French) and an “us” originating in the superior history described by
Meynier in his description of FLN discourse. In other words, it would appear that
33 Commissioner Bui Trong (2003, 65) relates that in over “two-thirds of riots, the police are entirely
absent from the origin of the event.”
120