Banlieusard.e.s claiming a right to the City of Light: Gendered violence and spatial politics in Paris

Returning to the origin of Lefebvre's thought on the right to the city, this paper reflects on how it intersects with French constructions of the banlieue and offers an overview of the gender-specific forms of engagement with the city of young inhabitants of the banlieue, banlieusard.e.s. It argues that an essential background to the current situation of banlieues at present is the implementation of territorialized policies which target areas within the framework of the Politique de la Ville, with specific gendered dimensions. In a context of neo-colonial state feminism, the ways in which women are being promoted and included in the assessment and improvement of their neighbourhood environments operates as an exclusion of men from these processes. The paper goes on to consider forms of gendered violence that inhabitants of the banlieues, in particular those who are perceived as Muslim and/or are racialized, are likely to encounter in their daily lives in the Paris region. The last section of this paper examines how some women's collectives are challenging this and the types of discourse and the spatial claims they stake, for both a city that “belongs to them” and everyday citizenship for all banlieusard.e.s.