Paris, London, Stockholm, When the Crisis Is Social

Paris, 2005. London, 2011. Stockholm, 2013. Three different times, countries and social models, but the same dynamic: a man belonging to a minority is shot and killed by the police - that symbolizes the authority and the State - causing the explosion of protests and riots. There are three permanents elements through we can analyze and explain these riots: A) the place, suburbs. A persistent center-periphery cleavage, often improved by gentrification process B) the involvement of migrants (or people of migrant origin), resulting from an incomplete integration process even in “more used” to foreigners ex-colonial countries like UK and France C) rioters’ age, under 30, that is reflected also in the use of social media and technologies for riots organizations. Rioters are mainly a part of population that live in a sort of “limbo”: they are not in work nor in education, not foreign nor citizen of the country where they live (at last they do not feel to be), conditions feeding feelings of anger and exclusion ready to explode at the first chance. These episodes suggest that the economical crisis is undermining social cohesion, enlarging the cleavages between insiders and outsiders of society, center and periphery, youth and not youth, migrants and old-residents. A dangerous outcome resulting in all the worlds of welfare (Esping Andersen): social democratic Sweden, liberal United Kingdom and corporative France.