by Summary:
To analyse the urban riots of 2023 – by far the most serious since those of 2005 – and the political misunderstandings to which they give rise, it is essential to go back to the roots of France’s territorial malaise. The suburbs that are currently catching fire have much more in common with the abandoned villages and midsize towns than is sometimes imagined. The only way out of the current contradictions is to bring these different disadvantaged areas together politically. Let’s look back. Between 1900-1910 and 1980-1990, territorial inequalities decreased in France, both in terms of differences in gross domestic product per capita between departments and inequalities in property wealth or average income between communes and departments. The opposite has been true since 1980-1990 (J.
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To analyse the urban riots of 2023 – by far the most serious since those of 2005 – and the political misunderstandings to which they give rise, it is essential to go back to the roots of France’s territorial malaise. The suburbs that are currently catching fire have much more in common with the abandoned villages and midsize towns than is sometimes imagined. The only way out of the current contradictions is to bring these different disadvantaged areas together politically. Let’s look back. Between 1900-1910 and 1980-1990, territorial inequalities decreased in France, both in terms of differences in gross domestic product per capita between departments and inequalities in property wealth or average income between communes and departments. The opposite has been true since 1980-1990 (J.
Topics:
Thomas Piketty considers the following as important: in-english, Non classé
This could be interesting, too:
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To analyse the urban riots of 2023 – by far the most serious since those of 2005 – and the political misunderstandings to which they give rise, it is essential to go back to the roots of France’s territorial malaise. The suburbs that are currently catching fire have much more in common with the abandoned villages and midsize towns than is sometimes imagined. The only way out of the current contradictions is to bring these different disadvantaged areas together politically.
Let’s look back. Between 1900-1910 and 1980-1990, territorial inequalities decreased in France, both in terms of differences in gross domestic product per capita between departments and inequalities in property wealth or average income between communes and departments. The opposite has been true since 1980-1990 (J. Cagé et T. Piketty, Une histoire du conflit politique, Seuil, 2023). The ratio between the GDP per capita of the 5 richest and poorest départements, which had fallen from 3.5 in 1900 to 2.5 in 1985, has risen to 3.4 in 2022. We are witnessing an unprecedented concentration of GDP in just a few départements in the Île-de-France region (notably Paris and Hauts-de-Seine), linked to the unprecedented expansion of the financial sector and the headquarters of major companies, and to the detriment of provincial industrial centres. This spectacular development has been exacerbated by financial deregulation and trade liberalisation, as well as by public investment benefiting the capital region and major cities (TGV versus regional trains).
Similar trends can be seen in the inequalities between municipalities. The ratio between the average property wealth of the richest and poorest 1% of municipalities has risen from 10 in 1985 to 16 in 2022. In Vierzon, Aubusson and Château-Chinon, the average property value is barely 60,000 euros. It exceeds 1.2 million euros in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, as well as in Marne-la-Coquette, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Saint-Marc-Jaumegarde. The ratio between the average income of the richest and poorest 1% of municipalities has risen from 5 in 1990 to over 8 in 2022. The average income in Creil, Grigny, Grande-Synthe and Roubaix is barely 8,000-9,000 euros per inhabitant per year. It reaches 70,000-80,000 euros in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Le Vésinet or Le Touquet. It even exceeds 100,000 euros per inhabitant (including children!) in the 7th and 8th arrondissements of the capital.
The central point is that there are considerable inequalities between communes across the country, both within large conurbations and between midsize towns and villages. At the top of the territorial hierarchy are the wealthiest suburbs of the major metropolises, some of the city centres and a number of wealthy towns and villages. At the very bottom of the pyramid, the poorest suburbs have been hard hit by deindustrialisation. They are now just as poor as the poorest towns and villages, which was not the case historically. These different disadvantaged areas certainly face specific challenges. Poor suburbs have much more experience of diversity of origin and proven discrimination in police practices and access to housing and employment. There is an urgent need for public authorities to finally acquire the means to objectivise and rigorously measure changes in this discrimination – the existence of which has been demonstrated by a multitude of research studies.
The various disadvantaged areas are also characterised by their specific integration into the productive structure. The poorer suburbs include a large number of service workers (retail, catering, cleaning, health, etc.) who continue to vote for the Left. Conversely, the poorer towns and villages now include more blue-collar workers exposed to international competition. Many of them have felt abandoned by the left and right-wing governments of recent decades (accused of having staked everything on European and global trade integration, with no limits and no rules) and have joined the FN-RN. But contrary to what the political leaders of the nationalist bloc imagine, these voters expect above all socio-economic answers to their problems, and not a strategy of identity-based confrontation, which in no way corresponds to the real state of French society, as shown by the very high levels of mixing and intermarriage.
The truth is that poor suburbs and poor towns and villages have much in common with the richest areas, particularly in terms of access to public services and municipal budgets. The reason is simple: the resources available to local authorities depend first and foremost on local tax bases, and the national measures supposedly put in place to tackle these abysmal inequalities have only ever reduced a small part of them. In the end, the per capita budget is higher in richer municipalities than in poorer ones, so that public money exacerbates the initial inequalities instead of correcting them, in all good conscience. The proposals made in 2018 by the Borloo report to objectify this reality and put an end to it have been abandoned, and the liberal bloc continues to explain today that no further redistribution is conceivable. Faced with the impasses of the other two blocs, it is now up to the left-wing bloc to rally the disadvantaged territories around a common platform.