Cathy Schneider

Police Power and Race Riots in Paris

This article looks at riots that consumed Paris and much of France for three consecutive weeks in November 2005. The author argues that the uprisings were not instigated by radical Muslims, children of African polygamists, or despairing youth suffering from high unemployment. First and foremost, they were provoked by a terrible incident of police brutality, a tragedy among a litany of similar tragedies. Black and Arab youth were already frustrated: decades of violent enforcement of Frances categorical boundaries—both racial and geographic—had filled many with rage. When Minister of Interior Nicholas Sarkozy responded to the violent death of three teenage boys on October 25, 2005, by condemning the boys rather than the police officers who had killed them, he merely reaffirmed what many young blacks and Arabs already believed: that their lives have no value in France.

The Rise of Crime, Disorder and Authoritarian Policing an Introductory Essay

a model of urban policing being emulated around the world. But in Mexico City, this was particularly strange. Why would an advocate of unsupervised policing with no civilian review be hired to advise a leftist mayor in a city where the police are known to be responsible for half the crime? Why would an advocate of controlling crime by arresting poor vagrants be hired to advise a city where organized violence emerges from elite cartels and state corruption rackets? Giulianis arrival in Mexico City draws attention to a bewildering paradox of

Police Abuse and the Racialized Boundaries of Citizenship in France

Cathy Lisa Schneider argues that police abuse defines the racial boundaries of democratic citizenship. Using ethnographic methods, she reveals how French police treat black and Arab youth, including those born in France, as if they were a foreign enemy. This practice is a legacy of France’s colonial empire, particularly, colonial rule in Algeria. Despite efforts to reform the police in the 1990s, most black and Arab youth continue to live in segregated neighborhoods virtually occupied by police. Because police are not held accountable when they abuse minority youth, minority youth feel that their lives do not matter in France. It is this that explains the periodic eruption of riots, as well as more deadly incidents of violence in black and Arab neighborhoods in France.

Shantytown Protest in Pinochet's Chile.

Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Acronyms 1. Introduction 2. The Making of the Chilean Left 3. Repression and the Consolidation of Authoritarian Rule 4. The Roots of Resistance 5. The Protests in the Poblaciones 6. The Transition to Democracy Bibliography Index