Counter-radicalization, Islam and Laïcité: policed multiculturalism in France’s Banlieues

Abstract

What is the impact of counter-radicalization policies on minority membership in France? Probably more than any country in Europe, in France, the question of terrorism and radicalization has been inseparable from that of the accommodation of the Muslim minority–a debate structured around the French interpretation of universalist secularism, or laïcité. Laïcité is presented as both a principle of terrorism prevention and an ideal to safeguard. Avoiding communautarisme, the retreat of minority populations into cultural and political segregation, is what is at stake. If we follow this logic, counter-radicalization policies should be one step further into France’s assimilationist and resolutely anti-multiculturalist system. Drawing on fieldwork in two suburbs on the outskirts of Paris, Pantin and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, this article argues however that current practices of everyday anti-terror policing end up enacting precisely what they are trying to avoid, resulting instead in what I define as “policed multiculturalism”.