Conclusion

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the key findings of the book and emphasizes the need to study the making of the banlieue, as constituted both ‘externally’ (by state actors) and ‘internally’ (by young people on the street corner). This book looks beyond a simple enumeration of poverty, unemployment, segregation and discrimination, and instead describes and analyses the daily lives of those who live in a neighbourhood that has been labelled as ‘problematic’ since the early 1980s. It shows how many young people struggle between hanging out on the street or staying inside; between strongly identifying with or dissociating from the neighbourhood; between seeing violence as morally wrong, as a desperate last resort to protest against structural and state violence, or as a way to gain status and respect. These young people are, above all, in search of dignity and safety, in search of a home and belonging. At the end, I explain why religion plays a limited role in this book and offer an antidote against the tendency of exclusively emplacing jihadism in the French banlieues.