What is urban about urban violence in France? Violence in marginalised neighbourhoods as body politics

In France, urban violence is associated with juvenile violence that concerns certain marginalised spaces of the city and certain, specifically racialised, inhabitants.1 In comparison to British and American contexts, the term is used mostly to address anti-institutional violence: what is called violences urbaines in France corresponds to ‘race riots’ on the other side of the Atlantic. The term ‘urban’ violence is problematic for three reasons. First, it is used as a euphemism for a racialised representation of juvenile violence. Second, the seemingly neutral term ‘urban’ underplays the political significance of these forms of violence. Third, the term renders other forms of violence invisible, by symbolically confining violence to certain spaces.