A 2017 song by the French rapper Médine has made a comeback in recent weeks. “Grand Paris” nods both to the technocratic lingo of urban planners (the “Grand Paris Express” is a public transit project that seeks to better connect the ring of outer suburbs, or banlieues, to the inner city) and makes a political revindication. The Paris banlieues are known to most French people only through the prism of violent riots, gangster rap, and degraded public housing projects, but as Médine has it, they are no mere corollary to the glittering center – they set the trends:

C’est nous le Grand Paris
La banlieue influence Paname, Paname influence le monde

We’re the greater Paris
The suburbs influence Paris, Paris influences the world

For the past four weeks, teenagers throughout France have been scrawling these words onto cardboard protest signs and hoisting them through the streets during the country’s largest student demonstrations since May 1968.

In September, students from the banlieues began blockading their high schools – rising each morning at the crack of dawn to drag trash bins, construction equipment, wooden planks, and even trees to barricade their entrance-ways. They rose up to denounce decades of chronic disinvestment that have led to poor study conditions: classroom infestations of rats and cockroaches, broken toilets, lack of tables and chairs, teaching staff shortages, and buildings fundamentally unfit to withstand France’s boiling summers or freezing winters.

What started with debris piled in front of schools in banlieues more often known by the first two numbers of their department codes (the 91, 93, or 94) than their names – Saint-Michel-sur-Orge, Saint-Denis, Créteil – became, as the rapper had predicted, the center of a much larger movement.

By 1 October, nearly 1,000 high schools across France’s 3,700 were either blockaded or preemptively closed – including more privileged ones, whose students rose up in solidarity with their banlieusard peers. Teachers and parents soon joined in, to support the students and to protect them from the violent repression of the riot squads. On 17 October, doctors, farmers, and workers upset at the cost of living crisis also took part in the biggest – and most violently repressed – movement France had seen in decades.

But as national and international headlines focused on the protest’s charred aftermath, the government began to crack down on looters, and the banlieues began to disappear from the story they had set in motion.

As a journalist, I’ve been reporting from the Paris banlieues ever since I moved to France in 2018. And though I now reside in Paris, I lived for a time in the 93. Ever since the protests began earlier this month, I’ve continued to return to one banlieue in particular: Saint-Denis. It’s here, in this dense, multi-ethnic, and historic city known as the “city of dead kings and living people” that so many of France’s contradictions come to a head.

I wondered: what became of the movement in the place it kicked off? So I asked the people who live, work and study there. (Their answers have been translated and edited for clarity. Some names have been changed upon request.)

The Schools

Students, teachers and parents have long alerted the French government and elected officials in the Île-de-France region, which controls high school budgets, to the lack of proper educational facilities and poor study conditions. Schools in Saint-Denis were particularly affected by last summer’s heatwaves, with classroom temperatures as high as 40 degrees Celsius. The heat waves added to already-simmering frustration decades in the making.

Olympe, 16, high school student at Lycée Suger in Saint-Denis: We’re not in a school that’s as run-down as, say, Paul Éluard. But then again, obviously, this isn’t a competition to see who can have the worst school. We know we don’t have the best one, but we know we’re not the worst either.

Raniya, 15, high school student at Lycée Suger in Saint-Denis: I think there’s still plenty of room for improvement, though. For example, there’s a problem with the size of the classrooms, because there are so many of us – especially in the general track – and the classrooms aren’t big enough to accommodate us. And also meal times are a problem, because the timetables are quite packed. We’ve got 55 minutes to eat, so that’s not great, especially since there are long queues at the canteen. So, to actually have enough time to eat, either the teacher lets us leave a bit early – though not all teachers agree to that – or we have to rush when we come out of class.

Until perhaps two weeks ago, there weren’t any sanitary towels or panty liners in the girls’ toilets at all. And now, in Building B at least, we’ve actually got a proper stock. It’s great that we have sanitary products for girls, but if there are still no doors or the locks don’t work, ultimately it’s not much of an improvement.

Martin, high school teacher at the vocational training school ENNA in Saint-Denis: In the 93 [the area code for the broader Seine-Saint-Denis department], I don’t think the students even realise how bad their conditions are. It sounds silly, but the pupils tell you: ‘I can’t even go to the loo at school’. And that’s actually really degrading.

In my classroom, I’ve had the same window that’s been open ajar and broken for six years, and it still hasn’t been fixed. There are whole rooms where the shutters are broken, stuck down. Last winter, my colleagues and I exercised what’s known as the “right to withdraw” from work. We all stopped working because of the conditions in the buildings. The heating in the electrical engineering workshops doesn’t work, or sometimes it does work, but the building is such a thermal sieve that it was 12 degrees. So we all stopped coming to work for two days, saying, ‘Look, these working conditions aren’t good; we’re putting ourselves and the pupils at risk, so we’re no longer coming to work.’ It was the same during the heatwave. At my school, it was 40 to 45 degrees in the classrooms; they sat their final exams in May, and it was over 40 degrees.

In six years there’s never been a social worker. When I arrived, we had a full-time nurse. For two years she’s been half-time, split between Bartholdi, with 1,000 students, and us, with 500. She spends two days there, two days here. They cut her post in half. One of our teachers, who is in charge of the electrical engineering track, hasn’t been there since the start of the year. If there’s no teacher after the holidays, my students will have an eight-hour gap in their week. That’s huge. It’s their main subject. And they notice. They’re not stupid.

Sarah Ichou, director of the Bondy Blog, a community media outlet covering the Paris banlieues: Since the Bondy Blog was founded [in November 2005, during the mass riots in the banlieues following the deaths of two young black teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, who were electrocuted while fleeing police in the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois], we’ve been reporting on inequalities in education. The banlieusards’ right to education was already a key topic when I started, 15 years ago.

What these kids are telling us – the lack of means, the missing nurses, the lack of substitute teachers – these are things we’ve observed, that we have sometimes lived through ourselves.

Sofia Boutrih, deputy mayor in Saint-Denis, president of the Plaine Commune Habitat social housing organisation, and Communist Party member: There are so many missing teachers in the Seine-Saint-Denis department that the average pupil has missed an accumulated year of schooling by the time they sit the baccalaureate exam at 18. This has been recognised by the government. Stéphane Peu, the Communist Party deputy for the constituency [and for whom Boutrih worked as a parliamentary assistant], even filed a parliamentary report on the “regalian” policies of the State: that’s to say security, education, justice. And it was found that across these public policies, French departments like Seine-Saint-Denis don’t have access to the same resources as the rest of the country. For much greater needs, we have fewer resources.

I know these young people. Obviously, there’s stigmatisation directed at working-class neighbourhoods, based on the assumption that people there can’t read or speak, that they’re violent and that they can’t form proper sentences. So everyone, at least outside the banlieues, was a bit taken aback to see them rise up. Not us – because we know them, because we are them. I used to be in those young people’s shoes, so I’m living proof we can make something of ourselves.

The Blockades

The first school to be blockaded was not in Saint-Denis, but in Créteil, a suburb further to the South. After the first blockade at Créteil’s Lycée Saint-Exupéry in mid-September, the movement spread around the outer ring like wildfire. While Lycée Paul Éluard came to crystallise the students’ discontent in Saint-Denis, with videos showing rats crawling across the school grounds, Éluard was far from the only school to be blockaded. High schools like the nearby Lycée Suger and the vocational school ENNA, also joined in.

Olympe, 16: On Monday, 28 September, when schools across France started organising blockades, we blockaded our high school. At first, we didn’t really have any teachers supporting us, or elected officials. The police were particularly violent. People – classmates of mine – were arrested even though they didn’t do anything wrong. They were tear-gassed from 20 centimeters away, right in their face, which is not the mandated distance, but well, voilà. So, the first blockade didn’t really succeed, because of the violent response. But eventually, elected officials joined us and supported us, and there was much less violence after that.

Martin, teacher: I couldn’t believe it when our students started striking. I’ve been teaching at this high school for six years, and they’d never done anything like this. We’re a trade school, so the students here aren’t very politicised. It’s not like the Lycée Paul Éluard, where this all started. But in the end, my students began organising their own blockades.

Raniya, 15: I didn't really experience physical violence, but it could be scary. From the moment the riot police came to my school, they started pushing and snatching people. I saw them from a distance, and even from there it was super scary. I find it shameful that school leadership didn’t support us at all. Our teachers went on strike to back us up, but the principal and the vice principal instructed riot police to confiscate the trash cans. At one point, we tried to escape the police by going inside the school because it was getting dangerous, but they didn’t let us in. It was discouraging to feel like we were all on our own against the riot police.

Sofia, deputy mayor: What has really shocked me over the past few weeks was the opposition from the police forces. I participated in the movement against the CPE [First Employment Contract, a 2006 reform that students protested massively] when I was at Lycée Paul Éluard myself. We did much more than blockade our schools: we were also allowed to engage in exchanges with the adults, and the government at least attempted to listen to us. It was difficult, for sure, but there was not as much violence.

Olympe, 16: Physical violence by the police is a big part of this story, but I don’t think that enough gets said about the psychological violence. We’re 16-year-old children. We’ve always been told that the police are supposed to be there to protect us, but when we see them show up at 6:30 AM in front of our high school to beat, arrest, and gas young people, it completely destroys the bond of trust. One time, we tried to form a human chain around the trash cans that we had been using to blockade the school, but the police just started yanking us and pulling us out of line.

But on 1 October, students from other schools came, from Lycée Paul Éluard, from Bartholdi, from ENNA, and even college students from Paris 8. They helped us blockade the school. It got really big.

Sofia, deputy mayor: Solidarity is in the DNA of working-class neighbourhoods. In 2005, for example – I was in high school at the time – there were already elected representatives, parents and teachers going round the neighbourhoods, standing outside schools, keeping watch, joining forces with us, and making sure young people’s voices were heard.

Martin, teacher: In the early days, you got the feeling that it was almost like a blockading contest on TikTok. Lycée Suger next door blockaded, Bartholdi blockaded, so we blockaded too. At first, it was mostly the Year 10 students, the ones who aren’t really integrated into school life yet. But quickly, the Year 12 students took things into their own hands and began blockading. They were hearing about all these demands, often on TikTok, and they said, ‘Well, if that’s what they’re asking for at Paul-Éluard, and what they’re asking for at Suger, that’s us too. It’s the same at our school. In fact, here, it’s almost worse.’

Sarah, Bondy Blog: Attending high school in the banlieue taught me critical thinking and everything that goes with it. It’s been beautiful to see that put into practice. Beyond the images of violence, the students’ aim at the start was to change the material realities that had been degrading their education. We haven’t seen concrete measures put in place to address this as of yet. At one point, we were told that 3,000 substitute teachers would be hired. The schools obviously need them. But the aim of the movement is to get concrete answers, and to get them now.

The March

On Saturday, 17 October, an estimated 500,000 (according to the authorities) to 800,000 (according to the unions) French people marched across the country. The march occurred the day after schools officially went on autumn break, and marked the return of the Gilets Jaunes movement, which lasted from 2018 to 2020, and who joined the student movement to protest the cost of living crisis. In Paris, protesters were kettled by police, with large amounts of tear gas being fired. As the day went on, looters began to burn cars, smash buildings and throw fireworks at police, leading to images of violence and destruction picked up by international media.

Raniya, 15: I went to the protest with my sister. We started marching on the Faubourg-Saint-Martin, a wide avenue with loads of people peacefully demonstrating around us. On a side street, I saw a barricade made of bikes, and realised a fire had been started. From the moment I got out of the metro, I was shocked by the number of police officers I saw.

Olympe, 16: Right from the start of the march on the Place de la République, the police started firing tear gas at everyone. So that sort of broke up the march a bit. There were small groups of people still moving along, but honestly, I think it completely disrupted what was supposed to be a big march westward. There was a fire at a grocery shop, and some cars set on fire, too. So, we decided to avoid the Place de la République, because it was absolute chaos.

In every demonstration there are looters, people who are there just to smash shops, to take advantage of a chaotic situation. We can’t stop them. But on Saturday, there were a lot of them – more than usual. I think most of them came into Paris to smash and loot, which is a shame, because the high school movement was extended to 17 October precisely so that we could assert our rights alongside the big march.

Raniya, 15: At one point, there was a young guy who threw a firecracker – it was really loud – but he wasn’t aiming it at people, he just threw it into the air. So we started to move away because we were quite close to the person throwing the firecracker. Except that, as we were moving away, we saw that the riot police were starting to run towards us. There was a line of maybe 15 riot police with their shields and batons, and they started running towards us, and then we heard people shouting, “They’re going to use tear gas”, and they did. So we started running.

Sarah, Bondy Blog: We only talk about the surface level and not the substance, the why of the violence, but not the why of the movement.

Sofia, deputy mayor: When it comes to footage of riots, I think we’re reaching a turning point in journalism. We have a whole far-right media ecosystem sphere and a whole mainstream media narrative that wants to brutalise public opinion and turn people against one another. And showing violence plays into the hands of the far right; it encourages people to turn in on themselves and reject others without necessarily listening to their demands – however justified they may be – whether social, political, environmental, educational, or relating to equality and solidarity.

Martin, teacher: I worry the movement’s running out of steam, first because the government closed some of the schools preventatively, which slowed it down. And there have been 6,000 arrests [of minors]. In my high school, seven or eight kids ended up in jail, and two more last week. I think that scares the students a bit, even if, in the 93, some of them feel like they have nothing to lose. The government is betting on the movement running out of steam, saying that now that it’s the holidays, it’ll settle down. They’ll make announcements, but no, there won’t be anything close to the 10 billion the kids have demanded, that’s for sure. I have a feeling nothing is going to change. I’m a bit defeatist.

Sarah, Bondy Blog: I think the violence eclipsed the students’ demands. I hear a lot of people say it gives fuel to the far right, that this banlieue framing will help one party or another. But in fact, those who didn’t like the banlieue before like it even less now. Those who loved it before love it even more.

Raniya, 15: For the moment, the future of the movement is pretty unclear. I find that we’ve stopped speaking about the high schoolers’ demands, and I worry that we’re being forgotten. I really hope we haven’t done all of this for nothing. It would be a waste.

But honestly, I hope that we can continue the movement after the break without disrupting our futures. Because we have important exams this year.

The Future

On Sunday, 18 October, French President Emmanuel Macron addressed the nation, and announced meetings between government ministers, unions and student leaders. Blaming the violence on the “far-left”, the President announced no concrete measures to address the cost of living crisis or the demands of the student movement. Further mobilisations are planned for 24 October.

Raniya, 15: There are a lot of things you don’t see on TV. They show what they want to show, what they think people want to hear. But if you really go on the ground and look at what’s happening, it’s a totally different story. The banlieues will always be seen as full of thugs and people who want to break things and to destroy Paris. These are working-class neighborhoods, sure, less well-off, but that doesn’t mean we’re not as good as the people in the centre of Paris, that we’re less human. We might not have the same chances, the same opportunities, but that doesn’t make us dumber or inferior.

Olympe, 16: There are lots of people, especially internationally, who are just now hearing about this student movement. But barely any of them ever say that it was born in the banlieues. I think it’s a good thing that we’re finally in the spotlight. For once they’re talking about us, they’re not talking about Paris.

Sarah, Bondy Blog: Last week, when the social movement made it to the mainstream, journalists suddenly – and finally – began holding out their microphones to the banlieues. We were invited onto TV sets to give our opinion, to report on what we’ve heard and seen. And then just as suddenly, this spotlight came to an end. There was violence in that.

As one TV producer told me once [after a different protest movement that started in the banlieues started to die down]: “The working-class neighbourhoods sequence is over.” But here, on the ground, reality doesn’t just move on to the next thing.

Sofia, deputy mayor: I’m the chair of Saint-Denis’s social housing board. We’re going to vote on a rent freeze for 2027, because tenants have faced six years of rising rent, while their wages have stayed the same. We’re facing a deep crisis.

Martin, teacher: The government doesn’t want to back down because, politically speaking, if they back down on this now, it’ll look like a defeat. It’s like during the Gilets Jaunes protests: They didn’t want to lose, so they didn’t back down, and it worked. The movement ran out of steam.

Sofia, deputy mayor: The French République has a motto – “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. It’s emblazoned on every town hall and school, but it’s lost its substance. Across the country, liberty is being trampled underfoot, the level of inequality is scandalous, and as for fraternity, it has been completely shattered by the rise of a far right that seeks to tear French people apart. Are we witnessing the fall of the Fifth Republic? Maybe. Our institutions are at a breaking point.

Sarah, Bondy Blog: It’s the youth that keeps me optimistic. At our local media outlet, we’re holding on by our shoestrings, so when we see this energy coming from young people, taking to the street to impose their demands, it gives us hope.

We’ve got an editorial meeting in an hour, and our team [primarily composed of young journalists from the banlieue] are already in the newsroom. Everything isn’t great, but they’re great, so there’s no reason to lose hope for the future.

Martin, teacher: When all of this is over, what will remain is the politicisation of young people. I was supposed to be giving them a civic education class this semester, but this movement is doing that for me. They’ve had more civic education in two weeks than I could give them in three years.