Abstract
This chapter describes my first steps in neighbourhood 4000sud and deals with my central methodology: ethnography. First, it discusses the often blurry and fluid ‘field’ in ethnographic research and provides practical guidelines that may help ethnographers in delineating and defining the ‘field’. Second, this chapter discusses the positionality of the researcher. I describe how my presence as a white male researcher in an immigrant neighbourhood provoked various reactions. I was simultaneously seen as an undercover police (by young people on the street corner) and as a drug client (by the local police). Rather than seeing these role ascriptions as ‘access problems’, I argue that these encounters belong to the core of the data-gathering process and give valuable insights into the dynamics between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ and the policing of spatial and identity boundaries.
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Notes
- 1.
RER trains are local trains that connect the city centre of Paris with its suburban areas.
- 2.
A collection of novels, essays and stories depicting French society after the fall of Napoleon.
- 3.
Aurélie Foulon and Nathalie Perrier (2010, May 26) ‘Le drame de La Courneuve intervient sur fond de trafic de drogue’ Le Parisien.
- 4.
Later I find out that different versions of this story echoed around in the neighbourhood. See Chapter 6.
- 5.
Diary notes 27 May 2010.
- 6.
- 7.
Ethnography refers both to the ‘doing’ (the process, the method to gather data) and the ‘writing’ (the result of ethnographic research, the final account). I will mainly focus in this chapter on the former and less on the latter.
- 8.
Numbers are based on 2011 and 2012 and derived from the Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques.
- 9.
Of those counted as ‘étranger’ 50.6% have an African nationality, 30.7% an Asian nationality and 11.8% a nationality from a country in the European Union. Numbers are based on 2006 and derived from the Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques: www.insee.fr.
- 10.
The murder occurred in a context of growing xenophobia in France. In 1982 and 1983, a number of racist murders took place across the Republic and right-wing political party Front National celebrated its first victory, in the municipal elections of 1983 (see Jazouli, 1992, pp. 43–52). See also Chapter 2.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
My Translation. Original quote: ‘Cherche coloc à la Courneuve, rien à voir avec 4000!!!’
- 15.
Diary notes 8 June 2010.
- 16.
Diary notes 9 June 2010.
- 17.
Diary notes 1 July 2010.
- 18.
Diary notes 8 July 2010.
- 19.
Diary notes 13 July 2011.
- 20.
The youth centre is part of the municipality. It is open from Monday to Friday in the afternoons and on Saturdays the full day. All types of activities, both indoor and outdoor, are organized year round. These activities range from a karaoke-pizza night to a soccer tournament, from making your own bracelets to an 8-day trip to London.
- 21.
Diary notes 22 June 2011.
- 22.
This number does not include all the informal conversations that I had.
- 23.
- 24.
The 16th arrondissement is one of the most affluent areas of Paris city centre.
- 25.
Diary notes 13 July 2011. See also Dangschat (2009, p. 837) for a corresponding academic critique: ‘… what Wacquant and the other sociologists are interested in is the “hot spots” where discriminated-against foreigners and poor and marginalized people are concentrated (the concentration of the better-off, rich and whites are never of interest either to scholars or urban stakeholders)’.
- 26.
A similar narrative can be seen in the classic movie La Haine (1995), about life in a suburban neighbourhood. In one of the scenes, journalists enter the neighbourhood and ask youngsters on the street corner some leading questions about a violent event. As the journalists do not dare to step out of their car, the youngsters say in return that their neighbourhood isn’t ‘Thoiry’ (a drive-through safari park not far from Paris).
- 27.
Diary notes 23 June 2010.
- 28.
Diary notes 1 June 2010.
- 29.
Interview Abdel, 29 July 2010.
- 30.
Diary notes 9 June 2011.
- 31.
Diary notes 19 May 2011.
- 32.
Diary notes 27 July 2011.
- 33.
Diary notes 11 May 2011.
- 34.
Dominique Strauss Kahn is a prominent member of the French Socialist Party and former president of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
- 35.
A porteur literally means a deliveryman. The word is often associated with the drug trade.
- 36.
A guetteur refers to the person who posts at the street corner and looks out for the police.
- 37.
Diary notes 1 July 2011.
- 38.
Diary notes 11 July 2011.
- 39.
Diary notes 18 June 2010.
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Slooter, L. (2019). Ethnographic Research and the Discovery of the ‘Field’. In: The Making of the Banlieue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18210-6_3
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