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RIOTS have broken out in Nan- terre, a suburb of Paris, follow- ing the lethal police shooting of a 17-year-old boy named as Nahel M. An investigation in- to his death is ongoing but the situation has already triggered protest and anger. Whatever the investigation concludes, the in- cident forms part of a complex, deep-rooted problem. It raises the memory of the violence that spread across the city's suburbs in 2005, lasting more than three weeks and forcing the country into a state of emergency. Many of the is- sues behind the unrest back then remain unresolved to this day and have potentially been aggravated by ever worsening relations between the police and the public. During my extensive field- work in the suburban estates of Paris, Lyon and Marseille I have seen and heard first-hand the grievances that are now be- ing cried out on the streets of Nanterre. The suburbs and poverty Certain suburbs of large French cities have, for dec- ades, suffered from what has been labelled the worst "hy- permarginalisation" in Eu- rope. Poor-quality housing and schooling combine with geo- graphical isolation and racism to make it virtually impossible for people to stand a chance at improving their circumstances. Evidence has long shown that people living in poor suburbs can expect to face discrimina- tion based on the very fact of living in those suburbs when they apply for a job. Even just having a certain name on your CV can rule you out of employ- ment thanks to widespread ra- cial discrimination). Discontent among young people in these places has been brewing for decades as a result. The first riots of the kind cur- rently happening in Paris took place in Lyon as far back as the 1990s. And yet, outside moments of crisis, there appears to be prac- tically no discussion by French leadership about how to tack- le the problems that drive so much anger in the suburbs. President Emmanuel Macron presents himself as committed to re-industrialising France and revitalising the economy. But his vision does not include any plan for using economic growth to bring opportunity to the suburbs or, viewed the other way round, to harness the potential of the suburbs to drive economic growth. In two presidential terms, he has failed to produce a coher- ent policy for solving some of the key problems of the sub- urbs. Police brutality Police brutality is a topic of great concern in France at the moment, beyond the Nanterre incident. Earlier this year, in- ternational human rights or- ganisation the Council of Eu- rope took the extraordinary step of directly lambasting the French police for "excessive use of force" during protests against Macron's pension re- forms. Policing appears stuck in an all-or-nothing approach. In a recent interview I helped con- duct for a documentary in the suburbs of Marseille, residents pointed to successive cuts to community based police of- ficers, based in the estates, as key reasons for increases in tension between the popula- tion and the police. Protests, meanwhile, are met with tear gas and batons. Successive governments have used policing to control the population to prevent political turmoil, eroding the legitimacy of law enforcement along the way. And yet, the police are ex- tremely hostile to reform, a stance that is aided and abetted by their powerful unions and Macron himself, who needs the police to crush opposition to his reforms. Macron vs Sarkozy Former president Nicolas Sarkozy is infamous for inflam- ing tensions during the 2005 riots by referring to the people involved as "scum" who needed to be pressured washed from the suburbs. Macron, too, has been repeatedly criticised for striking an arrogant, tone dur- ing his political career, making numerous gaffs including sug- gesting an unemployed work- er only needed to "cross the street" to find work. However, his consiliatory re- sponse to the death of Nahel could not be further removed from Sarkozy's stance. He has called the killing "inexcusable" and held a crisis meeting to seek a solution to the crisis. A trip to see Elton John per- form while the riots occurred was perhaps not advisable and comments about young people being "intoxicated" by video games were somewhat mis- guided, but Macron has at least tried to calm tensions and not inflame them. A key problem for him, how- ever, is the diffuse, de-central- ised nature of the protestors. There is no leadership to meet and negotiate with, and there are no specific demands that need to be met to defuse the tension. As in 2005, the riots are oc- curring spontaneously, some- times estate by estate. That makes escalation very difficult for the government to stop. And it underscores the need for a far more wide-reach- ing, thoughtful response to tackle the entrenched, dec- ades-old problems of poor so- cial prospects and police bru- tality in the suburbs of French cities. 6 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 2 JULY 2023 OPINION Joseph Downing is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Politics, Aston University Joseph Downing Paris riots: when police shot a teenager dead, a rumbling pressure cooker exploded OPINION Locals clashed with police following the death of the teenager