In the contemporary context, unemployment is high, housing is crumbling, and periodic bursts of youth protest lead the national government to prescribe an almost permanent riot police presence in the most explosive or "hot" neighborhoods ( les quartiers chauds).
This sphere of production is situated in an urban milieu characterized by the collapse of models of productivity built on factories, workers, and the dreams and demands of modernization. But the signifier banlieue also works at another level, when it refers to the many forms of cultural production that originate in or address what are recognizable as banlieue cultures. In this scenario, the idea of multiculturalism is understood as a threat on the horizon, ready to fragment national identity into unrecognizable and irretrievable pieces. 1 Often the gesture toward peripheral urban spaces and working class and immigrant cultures becomes part of an overdetermined equation to measure the health of the French nation via its "others." This equation links the flow of immigration and the presence of diverse populations in urban France to a range of national problems, from crime and violence to urban decay and unemployment. Since the 1980s, studies of contemporary French culture have been taking note of working-class banlieues (industrial suburbs) and their inhabitants with increasing frequency. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: