Banlieusards versus students?
During the anti-CPE struggle the ‘banlieusards’ were opposed to the university students, claims M.B.: The youth of the left movements are mostly students, whereas the others are workers, thieves, robbers, and, as there’s no reason to hide it, also small-scale drug dealers. Mixing up the general question of the social composition of far left youth with the specific problems encountered during the anti-CPE movement does not help one understand anything, including the November ‘riots’ several months previously. The social composition of university students today is very different from in the 1960s. Half of the students work in part-time jobs, with short-term contracts, etc. In universities located in the suburbs there is a higher proportion of blue and white collar workers’ children than in central Paris. On the national scale, white and blue collar workers represent 60 percent of the active population and their children represent only 22 percent of university students, a significant mino
