Visible Minorities: Citizenship and Discrimination

Abstract

For a long time, there has been a strong reluctance to consider police relations with visible populations from inner cities as one of the main causes of urban violence. France has a 30-year history of urban riots, most of them linked to feelings of discrimination in the minds of young contenders of urban conflicts. In Britain, urban disorder opposing police and young men, frequently belonging to minorities, is of low intensity, but hurtful to the localities where they occur. Several types of offenders whose racial profile varies mark recent decades. Their social marginalization and lack of future make them look alike their French and American counterparts. Yet recent disorders in the Greater Paris and the Greater London have distinct characteristics. Criminal violence has replaced civil violence and it may explain the absence of racial riots in the US in the last few decades. The dispersion of poverty and the socioeconomic mobility of minorities contribute to appease social tensions. But, by comparison, no-go areas remain lethal and illustrate the despair of those with no opportunity.