This article examines the relations between residents of the French suburbs and the police - or more precisely, the population formed by generations of Algerian and Moroccan immigrants. It attempts to explain why the militancy of the children of immigrants is infrequently considered and recognized as such by municipal left-wing groups, in particular the Communist Party (PC), which runs numerous local councils in the French suburbs even today. Based on long-term ethnographic research conducted in the 1990s and an analysis of the situation of Gennevilliers, the town where the research was carried out, the author develops two lines of reasoning to explain the divorce between the political left and the residents of the suburbs. Firstly, the stereotypical image of the children of immigrant Algerians and Moroccans, which makes them appear a category apart, "foreign youths", "second generation immigrants", "problematic populations". And secondly, the urban history of left-wing municipalities over the last fifty years, in particular the circumstances behind the evolution of large housing estates in the industrial outskirts. Combining these two readings allows us to an insight into the situation of the working class districts, today doubly disinherited: at an economic level, as is frequently emphasized, and at a political level, a factor more rarely noted.
French Suburbs; Social Militancy; Communist Municipal Left; Youths from Immigrant Families; Social Discrimination; Urban History and Social Housing