Субкультура молодежного протеста: парижские пригороды осенью 2005 г.

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The protests of the youth of the immigrant neighborhoods in the fall of 2005 are an outstanding event in the history of the Parisian suburbs and in the political history of the Fifth Republic. Having begun as a local revolt, which flared up sporadically in the urban agglomerations of France populated mainly by immigrants from the countries of North and Tropical Africa, the events acquired the scale of a national uprising. They expanded to 300 communes, all departments of the Paris region, and responses happened in the east and west of France. There were thousands of detained and arrested participants, two hundred wounded police officers, thousands of burned cars. For three weeks the police and gendarmerie could not suppress the rebels. Some analysts, emphasizing the vandalism of the protests, call them “riots (émeutes).” Others, pointing to the scale of the protests, their duration, and the fierceness of the confrontation with the forces of law and order, propose the term “uprising (révolte)”. Both explain the vandalism of the protesters by the lack of other ways for young people to express their protest. Historians have noted the similarities between youth protests and social protest in traditional societies. In both cases, the participants sought a demonstration effect to convey to those in power the depth of their indignation. The protests sometimes took the form of festivities, accompanied by emotional release, the acquisition of self-esteem and collective identity. The rebels drew legitimacy for their actions by appealing to moral values. The article traces how deeply the actions of the 2005 rebels could match the cultural and historical typology of archaic forms of social protest.