Reading the Riots: Investigating Newspaper Discourse on French Urban Violence in 2005

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Reading the Riots: Investigating Newspaper Discourse on French Urban Violence in 2005 READING THE RIOTS: INVESTIGATING NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE ON FRENCH URBAN VIOLENCE IN 2005 Laura Costelloe, LLB, M.St. (Oxon) This thesis is submitted in part fulfilment of the academic requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Prof. Angela Chambers Dr. Helen Kelly-Holmes Submitted to the University of Limerick, November 2013 i ii External Examiner: Prof. Michał Krzyżanowski Örebro University, Sweden Internal Examiner: Dr. David Atkinson, University of Limerick iii iv READING THE RIOTS: INVESTIGATING NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE ON FRENCH URBAN VIOLENCE IN 2005 Author: Laura Costelloe November 2005 saw a significant flashpoint in the long-running history of tensions between minority groups and those in power in France. Two teenagers, allegedly while hiding from the police, were accidently electrocuted in a Parisian sub-station. This incident was the catalyst for the spread of violent riots in communities across banlieues or urban French districts lasting for a number of weeks. Mindful of the printed news media as important sites of ideology production, this study contributes to a growing body of work on newspaper representations of the banlieues, with focus on the particularly traumatic events of November 2005. Recognising the active role of the media in constituting and shaping reality, my interest lies not merely in identifying instances of prejudicial discourse in French newspaper texts, but also in highlighting how largely covert ideological structures of power and dominance can be disguised in ostensibly neutral discourse. This study examines French newspaper representations of urban violence in 2005, combining a qualitative Critical Discourse Analytical methodology with a quantitative Corpus- Assisted Discourse Studies examination of a corpus of texts specifically created for the study. The project questions the discursive construction of the events of November 2005 and the associated individuals and groups. It shows how the scenes of violent rioting prompted media discussions pertaining to French national identity, and thus examines interpretations of French national identity that are implicit in news reporting on the riots. This research suggests that in its reaction to the challenging events of November 2005, the printed news media adopt strategies which ‘other’ immigrant minorities and those living in the banlieues. Residents of the banlieues are depicted as being outside the borders of the homogenously constructed French society. It is thus argued that newspaper discourse on incidents of urban violence in France in 2005 provides further evidence of how language can be used as a means of enacting and upholding social relations of dominance and discrimination. v vi Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis is entirely my own work, and has not been submitted for any other award at this or any other academic institution. Where use has been made of the work of others, it has been fully acknowledged and referenced. ________________________________ Laura Costelloe November 2013 vii viii Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful for the help and support provided to me in the preparation of this thesis and I would like to acknowledge and thank the following people: Firstly, sincere and heartfelt thanks to my supervisors Prof. Angela Chambers and Dr. Helen Kelly-Holmes for their invaluable support, guidance and advice throughout this project. I truly appreciate the time you have taken and the interest you have shown in this study in the last four years. I would like to acknowledge the bodies that have provided generous financial support for this project, including the Irish Research Council, Department of Education and Skills (Easter Week Commemoration Scholarship Scheme) and Plassey Campus Centre Ltd. Additionally, the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication, University of Limerick offered financial assistance so that aspects of this work could be presented at a variety of international conferences. Thank you to friends and colleagues in the School of LLCC and CALS who have provided advice and feedback at various stages of this research. I am also grateful for the friendship and support of fellow postgraduate students with whom I have shared this journey – in particular, thank you to Aisling O’Connor for her continuous encouragement and peer-reviewing skills. A very special thank you to my friends and especially my family: my parents Pius and Judy who instilled both a love of learning and an appreciation for la belle France from an early age. Thanks for your unwavering support. Thank you also to my brother Robbie and sister Jen, I really appreciate you putting up with me especially during the stresses of the last few months! Particular mention must go to my Dad, who embarked on his own challenging journey at approximately the same time that I began this project. Dad, your hard work, motivation and positive attitude are a daily source of inspiration for me, thank you. Finally – but by no means least – thank you Ronan for your proof-reading skills, patience, love and so much more...you have been there every step of the way and I truly appreciate it. ix x To Ronan, And to my parents – with love and gratitude xi Table of Contents Appendices: Texts in Mini-RiCo xviii List of Figures xix Key to Abbreviations xx 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 1 1.2 OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS 5 1.3 OUTLINE OF THESIS 7 2 THE CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF MEDIA DISCOURSE: ORIGINS, APPROACHES AND CRITICISMS OF CDA, AND THE IDEOLOGICAL NATURE OF MEDIA DISCOURSE 11 2.1 INTRODUCTION 11 2.2 ORIGINS OF CDA AND THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS 12 2.2.1 INTRODUCTION 12 2.2.2 ORIGINS OF CDA 12 2.2.2.1 The ‘Linguistic Turn’ 12 2.2.2.2 The Contribution of Critical Linguistics 14 2.2.2.3 Foucault’s Influence on Critical Discourse Analysis 16 2.2.2.4 From Discourse Analysis to Critical Discourse Analysis 18 2.2.3 PRINCIPLES OF CDA 19 2.2.3.1 Introduction to CDA 19 2.2.3.2 The Eight Principles of CDA 22 2.2.3.3 Discourse and Power 24 2.2.3.4 Discourse and Ideology 25 2.2.3.5 Discourse is Historical 27 2.2.3.6 A ‘Critical’ Approach to Discourse Analysis 27 2.2.3.7 Definition of Discourse 28 2.3 PRINCIPAL FRAMEWORKS 30 2.3.1 INTRODUCTION 30 xii 2.3.2 FAIRCLOUGH’S SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH 31 2.3.3 VAN DIJK’S SOCIOCOGNITIVE APPROACH 34 2.3.4 THE DISCOURSE HISTORICAL APPROACH 37 2.4 CRITICISMS OF CDA 39 2.4.1 INTRODUCTION 39 2.4.2 CDA AND CONTEXT 40 2.4.3 CDA AND CRITICISMS OF METHOD: THE SELECTION OF TEXTS AND ANALYSIS OF DATA 43 2.4.4 CDA AND THE READER 47 2.4.5 CDA AND RESEARCHER SUBJECTIVITY 48 2.5 THE CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF MEDIA DISCOURSE: IDEOLOGIES IN NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE 51 2.5.1 INTRODUCTION 51 2.5.2 MEDIA AS A SITE OF DISCOURSE 52 2.5.3 THE IDEOLOGICAL NATURE OF MEDIA DISCOURSE 53 2.5.4 A GENERAL CHARACTERISATION OF NEWS DISCOURSE 57 2.5.4.1 Newspapers as ‘Ideological Brokers’ 57 2.5.4.2 Specificity of Newspaper Discourse: Layout, Quotation Patterns, Access and Editorials59 2.6 CONCLUSION 63 3 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH 66 3.1 INTRODUCTION 66 3.2 DATA: RICO AND MINI-RICO 67 3.2.1 SOURCES OF RICO AND MINI-RICO 67 3.2.2 RICO 71 3.2.3 MINI-RICO 75 3.3 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH (1): FAIRCLOUGH’S SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH TO CDA 77 3.3.1 INTRODUCTION 77 3.3.2 DESCRIPTION OF FAIRCLOUGH’S ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK 78 3.3.3 ORDERS OF DISCOURSE AND INTERTEXTUALITY 81 3.3.4 LINGUISTIC CATEGORIES 83 3.3.4.1 Lexis: Lexical Choice, Collocates, Metaphors and Pronouns 84 3.3.4.2 Sentence Construction: Transitivity, Nominalisation and Active/Passive Sentences 86 3.3.4.3 Modality 89 xiii 3.3.4.4 Analysing Representations of Social Actors 90 3.3.4.5 Analysing Strategies in Discourse 93 3.4 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH (2): CORPUS-ASSISTED DISCOURSE STUDIES (CADS) 95 3.4.1 INTRODUCTION 95 3.4.2 DESCRIPTION OF CADS ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK 95 3.4.3 METHODOLOGICAL SYNERGY OF (CRITICAL) DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND CORPUS LINGUISTICS: CADS 97 3.4.4 LIMITATIONS 101 3.4.5 PRACTICAL APPLICATION 103 3.4.5.1 Flexibility of CADS 103 3.4.5.2 Frequency and Clusters 105 3.4.5.3 Collocation 106 3.4.5.4 Concordancing 107 3.5 CONCLUSION 109 4 CONTEXTUALISING THE STUDY: FRENCH MEDIA AND SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXTS 111 4.1 INTRODUCTION 111 4.2 DISCOURSE PRACTICES OF PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION 113 4.2.1 INTRODUCTION 113 4.2.2 THE FRENCH MEDIA CONTEXT 113 4.2.3 STATE SUPPORT, OWNERSHIP AND INFLUENCE 116 4.2.4 NEWS REPORTING ON THE BANLIEUES 118 4.3 SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT 121 4.3.1 INTRODUCTION 121 4.3.2 FRENCH IMMIGRATION HISTORY AND THE REPUBLICAN TRADITION 121 4.3.2.1 Post-War Immigration 122 4.3.2.2 The French Republican Tradition 124 4.3.2.3 Policy Approaches to Immigration: Assimilation and Integration 125 4.3.3 CHANGING PERSPECTIVES ON IMMIGRATION: THE RISE OF THE FAR-RIGHT IN FRENCH POLITICS AND THE ‘THREAT’ OF IMMIGRATION 129 4.3.4 LES BANLIEUES: THE PROBLEM OF THE SUBURBS AND LA VIOLENCE DES BANLIEUES 133 4.3.4.1 The Emergence of the Banlieues 133 4.3.4.2 Urban Violence and the ‘Problem’ of the Suburbs 138 4.4 FRENCH URBAN VIOLENCE IN 2005 141 xiv 4.4.1 INTRODUCTION 141 4.4.2 OVERVIEW OF EVENTS IN 2005 142 4.4.3 PROFILE OF THE RIOTERS 144 4.4.4 AGGRAVATING TENSIONS: NICOLAS SARKOZY AND RELATIONS BETWEEN THE POLICE AND LES BANLIEUES 146 4.4.4.1 Nicolas Sarkozy 146 4.4.4.2 Police Interactions with Les Banlieues 147 4.4.5 THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN THE 2005 RIOTS 149 4.4.6 POLITICAL RESPONSES TO THE RIOTS 152 4.4.7 INTERPRETATIONS OF THE CRISIS: SOCIAL CAUSES, DELINQUENCY AND ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS 154 4.4.7.1 Social Causes Explanation
Recommended publications
  • An Overview of French Riots : 1981-2004 Fabien Jobard
    An Overview of French Riots : 1981-2004 Fabien Jobard To cite this version: Fabien Jobard. An Overview of French Riots : 1981-2004. Dave Waddington; Fabien Jobard; Mike King. Rioting in the UK and France. A Comparative Analysis, Willan Publishing, pp.27-38, 2009, 978-1-84392-504-0. hal-00550788 HAL Id: hal-00550788 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00550788 Submitted on 19 May 2015 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. An Overview of French Riots, 1981-2004 Fabien Jobard In contemporary France, ‘riots’i refer to urban disorders mainly, if not exclusively, located in urban areas called banlieues*. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of such events in the two decades or more leading up to the most recent French riots of 2005-7. It will soon become evident that there is no recent French academic tradition devoted to theoretically explaining these preceding riots to rank alongside the British literature alluded to in the previous chapter. Here, our contribution will trace the historical evolution of the riots and their consequences in two areas: the policies that were implemented as a response to those urban disorders, and the influence of the riots on the political representations in France.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Unrest
    Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies Cambridge Risk Framework Social Unrest: Stress Test Scenario MILLENNIAL UPRISING SOCIAL UNREST SCENARIO Systemic Social Unrest Social media connectivity between cities Geographical spread of ‘Occupy’ movement hashtags tweets, Sept-Oct 2011, coordinating political protests in 950 cities across the world. Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies University of Cambridge Judge Business School Trumpington Street Cambridge, CB2 1AG United Kingdom [email protected] !http://www.risk.jbs.cam.ac.uk/ October 2014 The Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies acknowledges the generous support provided for this research by the following organisations: The views contained in this report are entirely those of the research team of the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies, and do not imply any endorsement of these views by the !organisations supporting the research. This report describes a hypothetical scenario developed as a stress test for risk management purposes. It does not constitute a prediction. The Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies develops hypothetical scenarios for use in improving business resilience to shocks. These are contingency scenarios used for ‘what-if’ studies and do not constitute forecasts of what is likely to happen. Report citation: Bowman, G.; Caccioli, F.; Coburn, A.W.; Hartley, R.; Kelly, S.; Ralph, D.; Ruffle, S.J.; Wallace, J.; 2014, Stress Test Scenario: Millennial Uprising Social Unrest Scenario; Cambridge Risk Framework series; Centre for Risk Studies, University of Cambridge. ! !Research Project Team Social Unrest Project Lead Dr Gary Bowman, Research Associate !Coordinating Editor: Tamara Evan Social Unrest Subject Matter Editors Richard Hartley, Co-Founder, Cytora Ltd. Joshua Wallace, Co-Founder, Cytora Ltd.
    [Show full text]
  • Epidemiological Modeling of the 2005 French Riots: a Spreading Wave and the Role of Contagion
    Epidemiological modeling of the 2005 French riots: a spreading wave and the role of contagion Laurent Bonnasse-Gahot1, Henri Berestycki1 , Marie-Aude Depuiset2,3,4, Mirta B. Gordon4, Sebastian Roch´e2, Nancy Rodriguez5, Jean-Pierre Nadal1,6,* 1Ecole´ des Hautes Etudes´ en Sciences Sociales, PSL Research University, CNRS, Centre d'Analyse et de Math´ematique Sociales, Paris, France 2Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Grenoble, CNRS, PACTE, Grenoble, France 3Universit´ede Lille, CNRS, UMR 8019 - CLERSE´ - Centre Lillois d'Etudes´ et de Recherches sociologiques et Economiques,´ Lille, France 4Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, LIG, Grenoble France 5The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Mathematics, Chapel Hill, USA 6Laboratoire de Physique Statistique, Ecole´ Normale Sup´erieure,PSL Research University; Universit´eParis Diderot, Sorbonne Paris-Cit´e; Sorbonne Universit´es,UPMC { Univ. Paris 06; CNRS; Paris, France. *corresponding author. Email: [email protected] Dated: December 15th, 2017 This is an author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Scientific Reports (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18093-4) Abstract As a large-scale instance of dramatic collective behavior, the 2005 French riots started in a poor suburb of Paris, then spread in all of France, lasting about three weeks. Remarkably, although there were no displacements of rioters, the riot activity did travel. Access to daily national police data has allowed us to explore the dynamics of riot propagation. Here we show that an epidemic-like model, with just a few parameters and a single sociological variable characterizing neighborhood deprivation, accounts quantitatively for the full spatio-temporal dynamics of the riots.
    [Show full text]
  • Modeling the Propagation of Riots, Collective Behaviors, and Epidemics
    Modeling the propagation of riots, collective behaviors and epidemics Henri Berestycki1,2, Samuel Nordmann3, and Luca Rossi1 1Centre d’analyse et de mathématique sociales, EHESS - CNRS, 54, boulevard Raspail, Paris, France 2Senior Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 3Department of Applied Mathematics, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel February 16, 2021 À Italo Capuzzo Dolcetta, en signe d’affection, de profonde estime et d’amitié Abstract This paper is concerned with a family of Reaction-Diffusion systems that we introduced in [15], and that generalizes the SIR type models from epidemiology. Such systems are now also used to describe collective behaviors. In this paper, we propose a modeling approach for these apparently diverse phenomena through the example of the dynamics of social unrest. The model involves two quantities: the level of social unrest, or more generally activity, u, and a field of social tension v, which play asymmetric roles. We think of u as the actually observed or explicit quantity while v is an ambiant, sometimes implicit, field of susceptibility that modulates the dynamics of u. In this article, we explore this class of model and prove several theoretical results based on the framework developed in [15], of which the present work is a companion paper. We par- ticularly emphasize here two subclasses of systems: tension inhibiting and tension enhancing. These are characterized by respectively a negative or a positive feedback of the unrest on social tension. We establish several properties for these classes and also study some extensions. In particular, we describe the behavior of the system following an initial surge of activity.
    [Show full text]
  • Jihadists' Grievance Narratives Against France
    ICCT Policy Brief February 2018 DOI: 10.19165/2018.2.07 ISSN: 2468-0486 Jihadists’ Grievance Narratives against France Author: Laurence Bindner France ranks first in the EU as a provider of foreign terrorist fighters in Syria and Iraq, and as the most-targeted European country in the context of the Syrian-Iraqi conflict. France has a longstanding history related to jihadism, correlated with multiple grievances from jihadist groups: it has been depicted as an enemy of Islam because of its foreign policy, its domestic policy towards religion, and, last but not least, its very essence. These grievances have been conveyed, like the baton of a relay race, from the first generations of North-African Islamist networks and the “elder brothers of jihad” to contemporary jihadists. The French jihadist media ecosystem has been instrumental in attracting a particularly large contemporary following. From the French perspective, a range of social, cultural, religious, economic, political, demographic drivers and identity factors converged to create a fertile ground for receptive radicals to emerge and break away from democratic values. Informed by these issues, this Policy Brief aims to identify avenues of further development for the French counter-terrorism strategic communication strategy. It concludes by stressing the need for this communication strategy to strive for positive, alternative messaging to re-create a continuum between individuals in the jihadist milieu and France as a nation state. Keywords: France, Grievances, Jihadists, Alternative narratives, Propaganda, radicalization drivers, Republican Pact Jihadists’ Grievance Narratives Against France Introduction “Following the decision of the French government that prevents our righteous women from wearing the veil as required by Allah’s order, who constantly fights Islam and Muslims, who is present with the Crusaders in Afghanistan, France is today the flagship of disbelief and of Allah’s enemies, in attacking Islamic Mali.
    [Show full text]
  • Riots in Lyon and Oldham: a Comparative Study
    Riots in Lyon and Oldham: A comparative study Sabine Prahl SID: 308070437 Department of Government and International Relations School of Economics and Political Science University of Sydney Australia October 2011 This work is my own, and where any part of this work is not my own, I have indicated this by acknowledging the source of that part or those parts of my work. Word Count: 19,897 i Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank Diarmuid Maguire for his insights, knowledge and above all his patience over the last few months, helping me clarifying my thoughts. Secondly, I want to thank my parents and my grandparents for giving me the opportunity to study in Australia. I also want to thank Doug for all his support over the last few years, without whom I would not be at this stage right now. Thirdly, I want to say thank you to Becky, who has always had an open ear for me, not just in the last weeks but over the last few years. Thanks also to Manna, without whom Honours would only be half as fun. ii Abstract In recent years both Britain and France have witnessed riots by ethnic minority youth. This thesis will conduct a comparative study into the riots which broke out in Oldham in 2001 and Lyon in 2005. This is guided by two questions: firstly, why did riots erupt in these two cities; and secondly, why was it that Lyon‟s riots were composed of two parties (police and ethnic youth) and Oldham‟s riots three parties (police, ethnic youth and right wing activists)? This thesis will argue that the role of the police is central to answering both questions.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Outskirts: How French Suburbs Face Disproportionate Inequality
    University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Honors Theses and Capstones Student Scholarship Spring 2018 On the Outskirts: How French Suburbs Face Disproportionate Inequality Krysta Suzanne Gingue Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/honors Part of the Income Distribution Commons, Infrastructure Commons, Other International and Area Studies Commons, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Social Welfare Commons, and the Urban Studies Commons Recommended Citation Gingue, Krysta Suzanne, "On the Outskirts: How French Suburbs Face Disproportionate Inequality" (2018). Honors Theses and Capstones. 470. https://scholars.unh.edu/honors/470 This Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses and Capstones by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Krysta Gingue December 15, 2017 University of New Hampshire International Affairs 701 Final Paper Submission Introduction France has been coming under fire for many of its cultural structures that alienate those who do not fit the typical mold of a Frenchmen. Despite its revolutionary spirit, the country continues to seek to quash any individualities within its society. Many of these culture feuds have taken place in the last 60 years, with the great influx of immigrants from Maghreb, northern African countries previously colonized by France, or the Caribbean, former Atlantic colonial sites of France. As Alexander Still notes, “During periods of economic expansion, France was happy to have inexpensive foreign laborers for its factories and unskilled jobs, housing them in out-of-the way housing projects on the periphery of its major cities.
    [Show full text]
  • ARAB GEOPOLITICS 2020 the Middle East: What Kind of Future
    ARAB GEOPOLITICS 2020 The Middle East: what kind of future? Speakers Biographies WELCOME REMARKS Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo, President, NATO Defense College Foundation, Rome He started his diplomatic career in 1969 at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, within the Directorate of Cultural Affairs. After having served at the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C. and as Commercial Counsellor at the Embassy of Italy in Prague, Amb. Minuto-Rizzo worked as Head of External Relations Office of the EEC from 1981 to 1986. In the next years, his career focused on Europe and Space Policy. In 1997 he was appointed Diplomatic Counsellor of the Minister of Defence Nino Andreatta, then of his successors Carlo Scognamiglio and Sergio Mattarella. In 2000, Amb. Minuto-Rizzo held the position of Italian Ambassador to the Western European Union and to the Political and Security Committee of the EU, of which he was among the founding members. Amb. Minuto-Rizzo was Deputy Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance between 2001 and 2007. His mandate was mostly carried out in the strategic political- industrial area, in relations with sensitive countries such as those in the Gulf and the Southern Mediterranean. He is the author of the books: The road to Kabul, publisher Il Mulino-Arel (2009); A political journey without maps, diversity and future in the Greater Middle East (Rubettino2013), and NATO and the Middle East: The Making of a Partnership (New Academia Publishing, 2018). Karim El Aynaoui President, Policy Center for the New South, Rabat He is President of the Policy Center for the New South and Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 CERS Working Paper 2016 Charis Dant Racism in French Politics
    CERS Working Paper 2016 Charis Dant Racism in French politics Racism in France can be traced back for centuries, however most recently, after the decolonisation of France, there was a large influx of immigrants from places such as Algeria, who were nicknamed pieds noirs, who took advantage of their French citizenship much to the displeasure of some French nationals (Mitra, 1988). It also follows the anti-Semitic influence the Nazis had over Europe would create a racist undertone in France in that era, however in a more modern age that racism and xenophobia is still strongly felt towards France’s ethnic minorities. One of the main influences of this is politics, where political leaders have the use of the media to be a strong voice and promote their views on ethnic minorities. This is where the National Front party has made their stance on French politics, becoming known as an extreme right-wing party due to their initial ties with Mussolini and the Nazis, but most recently their views on immigration (Fysh and Wolfreys, 2003). Although it is not uncommon for right wing extremist parties to appear, the way in which the National Front grew in popularity is rare. Many factors are responsible for xenophobia and racism in France, and a lot of it can be traced back to politics. Firstly, although some parties may not be racist, governments have neglected the poorer areas of France, namely the suburbs, which are largely populated by immigrants, and so lead to the inequality of citizens and social exclusion (Bowen, 2015). This in itself does not create racism, however it shows the neglect that has led to a high proportion of Muslims being incarcerated (Bowen, 2015), and thereby giving fuel to the idea that immigrants bring crime.
    [Show full text]
  • {Replace with the Title of Your Dissertation}
    Homo Mediaticus: Immigrants, Identity, and (Tele)Visual Media in Contemporary Francophone Literature A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Séverine Valérie Bates IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Judith Preckshot September 2016 © Séverine V. Bates 2016 Acknowledgements I would like to begin by giving thanks to God, my strength and my shield, who has so far not forsaken me. I will continue by thanking the members of my committee, Jaime Hanneken, Hakim Abderrezak, Bruno Chaouat, and Judith Preckshot, for your contribution, guidance and encouragement during these past few years. I want to thank in particular Bruno Chaouat, Chair of the French and Italian Department, whom I consider as a friend. Thank you Bruno for your support, encouragement and our many “controversial” discussions in the hallways of Folwell Hall. Thanks also to Hakim Abderrezak whose teaching and guidance allowed me to discover and explore a new set of texts from the Maghreb. I am also forever grateful to my advisor, Judith Preckshot, for her guidance, support, patience, understanding and incredible editing skills which have been more than I could have ever expected and which I have appreciated during the past few years. Judith, like Bruno, has become someone whose friendship I value greatly and will continue to cherish. Thanks is also due to the Department of French and Italian for its financial support without which this work would not have been possible. During my time in this program, I have been the recipient of two Summer Research fellowships as well as a recipient of the Armand and Madeleine Renaud Fellowship in 2015 which allowed me to complete my research and make valuable progress on my dissertation.
    [Show full text]
  • A Model of Riots Dynamics: Shocks, Diffusion and Thresholds
    NETWORKS AND HETEROGENEOUS MEDIA doi:10.3934/nhm.2015.10.443 c American Institute of Mathematical Sciences Volume 10, Number 3, September 2015 pp. 443{475 A MODEL OF RIOTS DYNAMICS: SHOCKS, DIFFUSION AND THRESHOLDS Henri Berestycki Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and CNRS Centre d'Analyse et de Math´ematiqueSociales (CAMS, UMR8557) 190{198, avenue de France - 75013 Paris, France Jean-Pierre Nadal Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and CNRS Centre d'Analyse et de Math´ematiqueSociales (CAMS, UMR8557) 190{198 avenue de France - 75013 Paris, France and Ecole Normale Sup´erieure,CNRS, UPMC and Univ. Paris Diderot Laboratoire de Physique Statistique (LPS, UMR8550) 24, rue Lhomond - 75231 Paris cedex 05, France Nancy Rod´ıguez UNC Chapel Hill, Department of Mathematics Phillips Hall, CB # 3250 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3250, USA Abstract. We introduce and analyze several variants of a system of differ- ential equations which model the dynamics of social outbursts, such as riots. The systems involve the coupling of an explicit variable representing the in- tensity of rioting activity and an underlying (implicit) field of social tension. Our models include the effects of exogenous and endogenous factors as well as various propagation mechanisms. From numerical and mathematical analysis of these models we show that the assumptions made on how different locations influence one another and how the tension in the system disperses play a ma- jor role on the qualitative behavior of bursts of social unrest. Furthermore, we analyze here various properties of these systems, such as the existence of traveling wave solutions, and formulate some new open mathematical problems which arise from our work.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond the Riots' – Policing in Partnership to Prevent and Contain Urban Unrest
    'Beyond the Riots' – Policing in Partnership to Prevent and Contain Urban Unrest Deborah Platts-Fowler Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Law Centre for Criminal Justice Studies September 2016 i The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his/her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Deborah Platts-Fowler to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2016 The University of Leeds and Deborah Platts-Fowler ii Acknowledgements So many people have supported my endeavour to write this thesis, it is difficult to know where to start or end. However, there is certain logic in beginning with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), whose financial investment allowed me to take an employment break and become a not-so poor student again. I thank the staff and fellow students in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, my primary institution and official home for the doctoral journey. I specifically want to mention the administrative staff for supporting the arrangements for my fieldwork and trips to academic conferences, where I was able to share my ideas and be inspired by the work of others. I also want to thank staff and students in the School of Law at the University of Sheffield, where I physically resided most of the time, being less than a mile from where I live.
    [Show full text]