Stabbings outside a high school, a general fight in a fast-food restaurant or the beating of a teenager in the street… Youth violence and brawls between rival gangs are regularly in the news, including at 20 minutes. Marwan Mohammed, sociologist and researcher at CNRS, has just published There is confusion, sociology of neighborhood rivalries, at Stock. On this occasion, we submitted to him several preconceived ideas about this violence that we are facing.
Received idea number 1: there are more and more fights
“There is no sustainable statistical system that allows us to say whether there are more or fewer brawls than before. I would speak more of a cyclical phenomenon. Moreover, most of the rivalries will not be talked about, and then, for reasons linked to the geopolitical context, or the seriousness of the facts, a small part will have the right to media coverage. Moreover, what happens within Paris itself is more often covered in the media than what happens behind the ring road or in the region.
What changes the situation considerably today is that videos of clashes arrive in our pocket, via our smartphone, and therefore, for the population, it is a direct connection to local violence. »
Received idea number 2: it’s always stories about territories
” Yes. Disputes in neighborhoods or villages are, by definition, part of territories, because the parties involved in the conflict each claim their belonging to this territory whose honor must be defended.
Neighborhood rivalries are an ecosystem in which we distinguish several types of actors: firstly, there are those who confront each other physically and who fuel the violence. Then we find a multitude of other actors: those who engage, those who moderate, those who help organize the raids or even those who try to make peace. And all these roles are mixed. »
Misconception number 3: only young people are involved
“Indeed, very often, they are young people, a large number of them minors, and the age of young adults involved in neighborhood disturbances rarely exceeds 23 years. So, it’s more of an adolescent phenomenon. And we have been seeing this for more than sixty years. Since the end of the 1950s, we have had statistical data on the age of the young people involved in these rivalries: they are mainly minors, and these figures are relatively stable. »
Watch our entire interview with Marwan Mohammed in the video at the top of this article.