Badlands of the Republic? Revolts, the French state, and the question of banlieues Why did they happen? This question was remarkably absent in the aftermath of the recent series of revolts in the French banlieues (suburbs). For many activists, social workers, and researchers, the relevant question was why such revolts have not occurred more often given the state of many social housing neighbourhoods in banlieues. Having done practically nothing to alleviate inequalities, prevent discriminatory practices and police violenceödisproportionately felt by banlieue inhabitants, youth in particularöthe repressive government set up by Chirac was more surprised by the magnitude and persistence of revolts than by the fact that they happened at all.

Like previous revolts, the revolts of autumn 2005 were triggered by the deaths of young inhabitants, in which the police, once again, were implicated. Like previous revolts, they were spontaneousönot organisedöuprisings. Like previous revolts, they took place mainly in the disadvantaged social housing neighbourhoods of banlieues. Unlike previous revolts, however, they were suppressed by exceptionally repressive measures by the French state. They not only revealed once again the geographical dimension of inequalities, discrimination, and police violence, but also the contemporary transformations of the French state along increasingly authoritarian and exclusionary lines.

Geographies of revolts

On 27 October 2005 three young men in Clichy-sous-Bois, a banlieue to the northeast of Paris, took refuge in an electricity substation in order to escape identity checks by the policeöa form of daily harassment not uncommon in the banlieues towards youths, especially if they have a dark complexion. Two of them were electrocuted and one was seriously wounded. That the police actually chased them was officially denied, although the surviving young man stated the contrary. This was the triggering incident for the revolts, which first started on 28 October in Clichy-sous-Bois, and quickly spread to other social housing neighbourhoods of nearly 300 towns, lasting for about two weeks. More than 10 000 vehicles were set alight, and more than 3000 people were placed under police custody, of which one third were indicted.

Similar incidents had occurred in the banlieues, as early as the 1970s. However, two major series of revolts were most influential in shaping political debate around banlieues. The first took place in the so-called `hot summer' of 1981, a few months after the arrival of the Left in power. By the end of the summer, some 250 cars had been stolen and set alight in the peripheral social housing neighbourhoods of Lyons, Marseilles, Roubaix, Nancy, and Paris. The second occurred a decade later, taking the Socialist government once again by surprise. On 6 October 1990 the social housing neighbourhoods of Vaulx-en-Velinöa banlieue of Lyons seen as exemplary under urban policy's rehabilitation programme öwere the sites of revolts, following the killing of a young inhabitant in an accident in which the police was implicated. Incidents occurred in other banlieues as well in the following months and years, and the decade saw forty-eightöcompared with five in the 1980sölarge-scale revolts in French banlieues, in addition to some 250 of a smaller scale.

The revolts of the 1990s shared two common features, which are also true for the 2005 revolts. First, virtually all of them took place in social housing neighbourhoods in banlieues. Second, such neighbourhoods had followed a similar pattern of restructuring since the crisis of the early 1970s: they were severely hit by declining industrial and manufacturing activities. In 1975 unemployment rates in such areas did not differ greatly from the national unemployment rate. Since then, however, unemployment rates have rocketed up in these (former) working-class areas; in 1999 one fourth of the active population (twice the national average) and 40% of the young people (compared with the national average of 25%) were unemployed. These commonalities demonstrate that geographies of concentrated unemployment and geographies of revolts largely overlap ö and have extended since the 1980s. These geographies also coincide with `targeted' police repression (Le Monde 2002), ``racist police attitudes'' (Amnesty International, 2005), and police killings that often go unpunished (Rajsfus, 2002).

Overlapping geographies of inequalities, discrimination, repression, and revolts suggest that mere behavioural explanationsösuch as copycat effects or desire to be seen on the televisionöare not entirely satisfactory in accounting for the recurrence of revolts and the increase in their magnitude. The geographical pattern and expansion of revolts imply that there are structural dynamics aggravating inequalities, which particularly hit the social housing neighbourhoods in banlieues. Revolts, therefore, are not just looting and burning; even though they are marked by elements of violence, they connect and speak to larger dynamics and severe material conditions.

``The Algerian war is not over in France'' How, then, did the French government interpret the revolts? For President Jacques Chirac (who remained silent on the issue for about three weeks) they represented ``a crisis of meaning, a crisis of bearings, it's an identity crisis'' (Le Monde 2005). For his security-obsessed Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, they were ``perfectly organised''öa claim contradicted by a report by the French Intelligence Service. For Chirac's minister for employment, Ge¨rard Larcher, they were caused by ``polygamy''. What is so disconcerting about such interpretations is not so much that there is little evidence to support them, but that they deny the slightest responsibility on the part of the government. Furthermore, they reduce the significance of revolts by interpreting them simply as resulting from the involved individuals' cultural (or religious) `differences' (that is, not white and Christian) or violent inclinations.

The government's response to the revolts was marked by a concern with rapid and increased repression rather than a concern with devising redistributive measures that would, in the long term, help alleviate some of the problems of banlieues. In terms of urban policy, concerned mainly with social housing neighbourhoods in banlieues, the government continued cutting funding. Since 2002 the two right-wing governments under Chirac have constantly reduced subsidies and largely contributed to the dramatic decline of the associative sector in banlieues, which saw its finances disappear. The budget for urban policy's renovation programmes decreased by 25% in 2005, 22% for 2006, and the recently voted budget implied a 52% cut in budgetary engagements for the years after 2007 (see Le Canard encha|ª ne¨2005a; 2006). Existing redistributive measures did not go unaffected: about three months after the revolts, the SRU law, (1) aimed at the construction of more and evenly distributed social housing, was modified. The SRU law was passed in 2000, and it obliged communes of more than 3500 inhabitants (1500 in the Paris region) to reach a rate of 20% social housing in their total housing stock in twenty years. About three months after the revolts, the National Assembly, with support from Chirac and Villepin, modified this law by enlarging the definition of what constitutes `social housing', which significantly diminished the required amount of new social housing construction.

In terms of repression, the government did not deviate from its previous policies, which, since 2002, have involved numerous security and penal laws that were aimed mainly at harsher penalties, making identity checks easier, prohibiting gatherings at building entrances (aimed mainly at the youth in the banlieues), and deporting foreigners involved in criminal acts after they have served their sentence (known as ``la double peine''). (2) Just when calm was returning to the banlieues, the government declared a state of emergency on 8 November 2005, allowing curfews to be imposed. This was an unprecedented response to revolts in the banlieues, and the fact that the state of emergency was based on a 1955 law dating from the Algerian war added insult to injury. [START_REF] Canard Encha|ª Ne È | Plus de la moitie¨du plan se¨curitaire de Le Pen de¨ja© cannibalise¨par la droite[END_REF] It certainly brought to mind what was once so bluntly expressed by an activist in Vaulx-en-Velin: ``the Algerian war is not over in France'' (Abdel, interview with the author, 23 May 2002, Vaulx-en-Velin).

The government's response to the revolts was remarkably different from the responses of previous governments. When faced with the 1981 revolts in banlieues, the Socialist government took the incidents seriously and initiated an urban policy programme with such strong ideals as the right to the city, democratisation of the management of the city, and social development of neighbourhoods. Following the 1990 revolts, a City Ministry was created as a sign of the commitment of the state to the `urban question'. However, the 1990s also gave the first signs of the coming of the penal state. The City Ministry started to collaborate with the Ministry of Justice to reinforce the presence of the penal state in `sensitive neighbourhoods' through a rapid, on-the-spot treatment of delinquency. The Renseignements Ge¨ne¨raux (French Intelligence Service) also got involved in 1991 with the creation of a special section called `V|¨lles et banlieues'. With these developments, the banlieues were put under surveillance, and new ways of talking about them were generated with the appearance of new notions such as `urban violence', `sensitive neighbourhoods', and `urban guerrillas'. As many commentators noted, the neighbourhoods with a `bad reputation' in the 1980s became a `menace' in the 1990s, shifting from being `neighbourhoods in danger' to `dangerous neighbourhoods' (see, among others, Bonelli, 2001). The culmination of this growing preoccupation was perhaps best exemplified by the 2002 presidential elections, in which the issue of security seemed decisive. Since then, the French republican penal state has consolidated itself mainly in and through the social housing neighbourhoods in banlieues. (4) The legitimising discourse of this consolidation has been centred around `the Republic', allegedly under threat from the formation of communities at its gates, incompatible with its values and principles.

The republican imaginary and the paradox of actually existing republicanism

The term banlieue has always had negative connotations (although there are many affluent banlieues). However, starting particularly with the 1990s, there has been a strong stigmatisation of banlieues with reference to the formation of ghettos, ethnic separatism, and Islamic fundamentalism. When the `threat' of banlieues was articulated in the 1970s, it did not involve `ethnic' and religious connotations. Starting in the 1980s, however, the banlieues were associated with the `problem of immigration', the problem being the `integration' of non-European immigrants and their descendants into French (2) ``[W]hat strikes me is that political life [in France] is organised around Le Pen'', boasted the extreme right leader in December 2005. And not without reason: since 2002, sixteen of thirty propositions of the extreme right's ``Justice and police'' programme have been realised or are in the course of being realised (Le Canard encha|ª ne¨2005b). [START_REF] Canard Encha|ª Ne È | Plus de la moitie¨du plan se¨curitaire de Le Pen de¨ja© cannibalise¨par la droite[END_REF] This law had been invoked only twice before, for the war in Algeria and for the incidents in France's overseas territory New Caledonia in 1985.

(4) I have elsewhere (Dikec°, 2006) tried to elaborate this argument. society, and, starting in the 1990s, Islam became a dominant theme. This change was not a straightforward reflection of the changing demographic composition of the social housing neighbourhoods in banlieues. The context in which the revolts in banlieues were articulated contributed greatly to the consolidation of the current negative image of banlieues. In the early 1980s the Socialists were in power for the first time in the Fifth Republic with a politically contentious agenda, which included, among other things, the suspension of the expulsion of immigrants, and voting rights for immigrants in local elections. The revolts of the `hot summer' of 1981 took on a specific importance in this context, where the opposition right had focused its critique on the `soft' attitude of the new government towards immigration. The revolts of 1990 occurred in a context of heated debates around immigration and Islam, marked by incidents such as the Islamic headscarf affair of 1989 in France, the Intifada (already in place for three years), the Rushdie affair, and the Gulf War (to start in January 1991). Similarly, the revolts of 2005 occurred in a particularly tense context, marked by September 11 and its aftermath of increasing preoccupations over terrorism, security, and Islam. Other incidentsösuch as war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bali bombings, debates about the entry of Turkey to the European Union, and the London tube bombings ö contributed to the development of hostile arguments against non-European immigrants and Muslims in many Western states, including France where the banlieues became the spatially reified forms of such `threats'.

It is important, therefore, to see the current negative image of banlieues as articulated in and with reference to these particular contexts rather than as an unproblematic reflection of reality. This articulation highlights less the difficult material conditions in banlieues than the `threat' posed by banlieues, shifting focus from growing inequalities and discriminations to menaces to `the values of the Republic', French identity, and the authority of the state. Furthermore, this articulation constitutes the banlieues in the form of a menacing exteriority, which not only makes the application of ever-more repressive measures possible, but also largely debilitates the significance of recurrent revolts.

The 2005 revolts, in this sense, were no exception, and they quickly gave rise to debates about `integrating' the children of (non-European) immigrants, ethnic separatism, and Islamic fundamentalism. In terms of their magnitude, they were compared to the uprisings of May 1968. Broadcast images of the revolting youth mainly showed `darker' people, which led to the interpretation of revolts as `ethnic' and `religious'öan interpretation much exploited by the media in the United States (Fox News, for example, reported the revolts as `Muslim riots'). Let us follow the May 1968 analogy: stating that the revolts were `ethnic' (dark skin) or religious (Islam) is almost as absurd as stating that the May 1968 uprisings were `ethnic' (white) or religious (Christian). There was nothing to suggest that the revolts were `ethnic' or religious. No such claim was made. Banlieues (the `bad' ones) are not particularly attractive places to live. Many of them are marked by deteriorating housing, lack of facilities, education problems, insufficient transportation, and a strong territorial stigmatisation, the negative effects of which are strongly felt on a daily basis by their inhabitants, youth in particular (for example, in relations with the police and job applications). If the majority of revolting youth have a darker complexion, this should raise questions about the dynamics of the housing market and the practices of social housing construction, distribution, and allocation, rather than lead to a hasty conclusion that it is the Arabs, blacks, and Muslims who are rioting.

Therefore, suggesting that the revolts were `ethnic' or religious is misleading in terms of the dynamics behind the revolts and their political implications. Confining the banlieue youth (most of whom were born and/or raised in France) in already given `ethnic' or religious identities is already to place them on the outside, hopefully to be `integrated' by the so-called `republican model of integration'. As a result, when the youth in banlieues revolt, they always `revolt as' (as blacks, as Arabs, as the children of immigrants, as Muslims). This is not to deny the racialised basis of inequalities and discriminations, but to point to the perils of confining political subjectivities into already given categories of identity. Rather than confining their spontaneously constituted political identities to preconceived categories that are deemed incompatible with the principle of ``one and indivisible Republic'', the challenge, it seems to me, is to hear their voices as equals manifesting their discontent and desire to be treated as equals.

The problem is not that republicanism is inherently incompatible with diversity. The problem is that the republican imaginary is so white and so Christian that any manifestation of discontent öeither on the streets or in the spaces of institutional politicsöby the republic's darker and non-Christian (or thought to be so) citizens quickly evokes concerns about the values and principles of the Republic. This is the paradox of actually existing republicanism in France. When those who do not quite fit into the republican imaginary mobilise, the principle of equalityöotherwise strongly defendedögets displaced by a preoccupation with `ethnic' origins and religious affiliationsöotherwise strongly criticised. Rather than a defence of the equality of all its members regardless of ethnicity or religion, republicanism becomes a denial of diversity, and prevents the constitution of political spaces where the voices of the youth in banlieues can be heard as equals manifesting their discontent, making a claim on the republic as part of the republic önot as barbarians at its gate.

ß 2006 a Pion publication printed in Great Britain

(1) Loi relative a© la solidarite¨et au renouvellement urbains (Solidarity and Urban Renewal Law).

Acknowledgements. I am grateful to Claire Hancock, Matthew Kurtz, and Geraldine Pratt for their generous comments and recommendations.

Mustafa Dikec°, The Open University


Space

Governmentality

Mustafa Dikeç

URBAN RENAISSANCE

This article seeks to make a contribution to debates around governmentality and urban policy. The main argument is that although there is a governmental dimension to the constitution of spaces through urban policy, there is no inherent politics to such constitutions. Different ways of imagining space have different implications for the constitution of problems and formulation of solutions.This argument is substantiated by an account of French urban policy (la politique de la Ville) between 1981 and 2005, organized around three periods. The first part of the article relates this policy to the contemporary transformations of the French state, and points to the relationship between urban policy and the penal state.The second part presents an account of this policy with a focus on the changing conceptualizations of space, and their varying policy and political implications.

Space in its Hegelian form comes back into its own. This modern state promotes and imposes itself as the stable center -definitively -of (national) societies and spaces . . . In this same space there are, however, other forces on the boil, because the rationality of the state, of its techniques, plans and programs, provokes opposition. (Lefebvre, 1991: 23) Nothing, it seems, is more un-French than the Lefebvrian city. 1 The latter embodies contestation and resistance, fosters political participation of all city inhabitants in the production of their lived spaces, and conceives space in its multiplicity and relationality as socially produced and decidedly political, while France embodies unity and homogeneity, technocratic and paternalistic state tradition operating on a space divided into discrete pieces and devoid of politics. Yet when it comes to French urban policy, Lefebvrian notions become manifest; social development, self-management (autogestion), participation of inhabitants, right to difference, and right to the city have more than occasionally appeared in French urban policy documents in the last two decades or so. 2 But something happened towards the end of the 1990s. Such notions -though at times little more than merely gestural -have gradually disappeared from the official urban policy discourses. By the year 2005, references to self-management and participation of inhabitants had completely gone, social development gave way to tax concession areas, and the only right to be defended in the official discourse became the so-called 'right to security'. This shift, it seems to me, tells us something important about the concerns in contemporary French urban policy in relation to the wider restructuring of the French state. When French urban policy was first conceived in the early 1980s as a response to revolts in banlieues, it sought to create a political dynamic with such strong political ideals as 'democratization of the management of the city', 'appropriation of space by inhabitants', and 'right to the city'. Two-and-a-half decades later, in the autumn of 2005, banlieue revolts were suppressed by unprecedented repressive measures with the declaration of a state of emergency, making the French state's authoritarian restructuring more evident. What is striking is that the social housing neighbourhoods that experienced revolts were not just any other neighbourhoods. They were, for the most part, designated 'priority neighbourhoods' of French urban policy (la politique de la Ville). This policy was initiated by the Socialist Government following the so-called 'hot-summer' of 1981, marked by incidents of unrest in the banlieues of French cities. Under this policy, several social housing neighbourhoods in banlieues were designated as 'priority neighbourhoods' with an aim to addressing their problems. Since then, the geographies of urban policy and of revolts have largely coincided. All but two of the areas where large-scale revolts occurred in the 1990s were priority neighbourhoods of urban policy. The revolts of 2005 were no exception; 85 percent of the areas where revolts occurred were neighbourhoods of urban policy [START_REF] Lagrange | La structure et l'accident[END_REF].

The increasingly authoritarian restructuring of the French state has already been observed by many researchers, who pointed to a shift from social to penal forms of state intervention. Wacquant, in particular, has conceptualized this orientation among the European states with his notion of the 'European penal state'. For [START_REF] Wacquant | The Penalization of Poverty and the Rise of Neo-liberalism[END_REF], the contemporary transformations of Western states are marked by a 'penalization of poverty', which serves to contain the negative effects of neo-liberal policies on the lower classes. Thus, the increasing use of the penal system serves to manage social insecurity, and to contain social disorders induced by economic deregulation and social-welfare retrenchment. But not all the Western states follow the same pattern of transformation. Although three interrelated transformations -erasing the economic state, dismantling the social state, and enhancing the penal state -seem to capture, broadly, the contemporary transformations of the state in the US or the UK, not all of them apply to the Western European states. What Wacquant calls the European penal state follows the strong state tradition, and intensifies modes of regulation, at once social and penal. The 'left hand' of the state, though still active, is increasingly accompanied by its 'right hand'. There is an intensification at once of social and penal treatments of poverty, with an increased attention on the policing function of the state, and a close surveillance of populations seen to be problematic.

The French state's contemporary transformations resonate well with Wacquant's definition of the European penal state, which he refers to as 'the penalization of poverty à la française ' (2001: 407). I have elsewhere [START_REF] Dikeç | Two Decades of French Urban Policy: from Social Development of Neighbourhoods to the Republican Penal State[END_REF] referred to this as the 'republican penal state' in order to highlight the influence of established political traditions in state restructuring -in this case, the idea of the 'Republican state' and its social obligations towards its citizens. Increasingly since the 1990s, both social policy and penal forms of intervention became key issues for governments of the Left and the Right [START_REF] Levy | Partisan Politics and Welfare Adjustment: the Case of France[END_REF][START_REF] Wacquant | The Penalization of Poverty and the Rise of Neo-liberalism[END_REF]. But the shift towards the penal state was largely legitimized around a discourse which depicted 'the one and indivisible Republic' under threat from allegedly incompatible cultural differences and formation of 'communities', mainly in the social housing neighbourhoods of the banlieues. Especially from the early 1990s onwards, increasing security measures have been directed towards social housing neighbourhoods in banlieues. These included the engagement of the Ministry of Justice and the French Intelligence Service with the question of banlieues in the early 1990s, the so-called 'local security contracts' introduced by the Jospin Government towards the end of the decade, and, more recently, the avalanche of laws and security measures introduced since 2002, which were described by Michel Tubiana, the President of the League of Human Rights, as '[t]he worst step back for human rights since Algeria' (Libération, 2004).

One of the principal spatial targets of these new laws and measures has been the social housing neighbourhoods in banlieues [START_REF] Bonelli | Une vision policière de la société[END_REF][START_REF] Wacquant | Des contes sécuritaires venus d'Amérique[END_REF], most of which were also designated neighbourhoods of urban policy. The 'geography' which urban policy has helped to consolidate through its designated neighbourhoods became officially so accepted that when the French Intelligence Service decided to engage with the question of banlieues, it was the list of urban policy neighbourhoods that they took as a starting point. When the Ministry of Justice engaged with the issue in a stated aim to restore the law, its measures aimed mainly at the same neighbourhoods. Similarly, other repressive measures (such as local security contracts, Sarkozy's flash-ball guns, and so on) and growing anxieties about the 'values of the republic' were all guided by the same spatial imaginary, which became the basis for the consolidation of the republican penal state from the 1990s onwards.

This suggests that the state's spatial practicesin this case, urban policy -have been an integral part in the consolidation of the penal state in France. 3 The spaces of urban policy have become the major sites upon and through which the penal European Urban and Regional Studies 2007 14(4)

278

EUROPEAN URBAN AND REGIONAL STUDIES 14(4) state has been consolidated. However, the relationship between the constitution of spaces of intervention under urban policy and the consolidation of the penal state is not straightforward. As I will try to show, the French case suggests that the ways in which space is imagined and used in urban policy vary, which is perhaps best exemplified by the differences between this policy's early -militant -years, and its contemporary -statist -orientations. 4 My aim in this article is to chart these changes in French urban policy, and to point to the relationship between changing governmentalities and spatial conceptualizations. More specifically, I would like to argue that although there is a governmental dimension to the constitution of spaces through urban policy, there is no inherent politics to such constitutions.

I start with a brief section which explains my understanding of the implications of the notion of governmentality for looking at urban policy with a focus on space. I then introduce French urban policy, and provide an account organized around the changing spatial conceptualizations of its intervention areas. I conclude with some observations on space, governmentality and urban policy.

Governmentality, urban policy and space

In the past decade or so, there has been a growing interest in approaching policy from a somewhat 'non-traditional' perspective. A number of scholars inspired mainly, though not exclusively, by Foucauldian social theory have attempted to go beyond studying policy merely in terms of an unproblematic 'tool' to be employed to address 'given' problems. One of the major contributions of this expanding body of work has been its emphasis on the construction of policy problems as part of the policy-making process rather than taking policies as responses to self-evident problems (see, among others, [START_REF] Atkinson | Narratives of Policy: the Construction of Urban Problems and Urban Policy in the Official Discourse of British Government 1968-1998[END_REF][START_REF] Cochrane | The Social Construction of Urban Policy[END_REF][START_REF] Hajer | The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process[END_REF][START_REF] Raco | Governmentality and Rights and Responsibilities in Urban Policy[END_REF].

One of the obvious implications of approaching urban policy -as in other public policies -in this way is to look at the ways in which problems to be addressed are constituted as part of the very policy process. There is, however, a more specific implication for urban policy that derives from a distinctive aspect of it; that is, space. As Cochrane (2000: 532) notes, urban policy is distinctive compared to other social policies in that it conceives of its object spatially: Urban policy . . . focuses on places and spatially delimited areas or the groups of people associated with them. Its problem definition starts from area rather than individual or even social group, although, of course, a concern with an area is often used as a coded way of referring to a concern about the particular groups which are believed to be concentrated in it.

This suggests that due attention be given to the ways in which space is conceived in urban policy. The spaces in which urban policy intervenes are not already given spaces; they are constituted as part of the policy process, and urban policy, in this sense, has a governmental dimension. This aspect of urban policy has already been noted in the governmentality literature on urban policy However, changing conceptualizations of space has received little attention. I would like to argue, therefore, that constitution of spaces through urban policy is not a governmental practice in a univocal sense. Let me elaborate.

One of the issues [START_REF] Foucault | Governmentality[END_REF] notion of governmentality raises is the mutual constitution of objects of governance and modes of thoughtmentality -which then makes specific forms of intervention possible. Thus, the relevance of the concept for studies of (urban) policy derives from its emphasis on the mutual constitution of formation and intervention as part of the activity of governance, of which policy making is one aspect. The emphasis on the mutual constitution of specific forms of representation and intervention is indicated by the semantic linking of 'governing' and 'mentality' [START_REF] Lemke | The Birth of Bio-politics: Michel Foucault's Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo-liberal Governmentality[END_REF]. This implies that governmental practices cannot be considered independently of the formation of the objects and subjects of governance. As Thrift (1999: 276) notes, following [START_REF] Rose | Governing "Advanced" Liberal Democracies[END_REF], one of the issues Foucault intended to signify with the notion of governmentality was the ways in which governmental activities were based on particular forms of political reasoning as conceptions of the objects and subjects to be governed. This implies, among other things, the constitution of 'governable spaces'. As Rose (1999: 36)

wrote, in order

European Urban and Regional Studies 2007 14(4) DIKEÇ: SPACE, GOVERNMENTALITY, AND THE GEOGRAPHIES OF FRENCH URBAN POLICY '[t]o govern, it is necessary to render visible the space over which government is to be exercised'.

This formulation has useful implications for analysis of urban policy, which depends on and deploys particular spatial imaginaries. Urban policy implies 'a process of actual boundary shaping', and may be seen as an institutionalized spatial arrangement (Shapiro and Neubauer, 1989: 303). This makes it difficult to talk unproblematically about the 'spaces' of urban policy, because, in this view, they are constituted as part of the policy process. It follows that governmental practices, insofar as they involve both formation and intervention, are not merely 'confined' to designated spaces. They constitute those spaces as part of the governing activity. If urban policy has a governmental dimension, as I have suggested, then its spaces of intervention are not merely the sites of this governmental practice, but, first and foremost, its outcomes. However, policy discourses and programmes are guided by particular ways of imagining space, which have different implications for the constitution of problems and formulation of solutions. In other words, how space is conceived matters because urban policy conceives of its object spatially. How do different urban policies imagine their spaces of intervention? What kind of a spatial imaginary do they constitute and act upon? What difference do different ways of conceiving space make for urban policy? Such questions have received littleif any -attention in the geographical literature that focuses on governmentality and urban policy.

The French case, however, suggests that they should. As I will try to show below, although French urban policy has been addressing practically the same areas for years, the ways in which its intervention areas were spatially conceptualized (and discursively articulated) have changed remarkably. This is not to imply that each succeeding programme was a rupture with the preceding one. In each of the periods I use to organize my account, however, there was not only a discernible change in forms of state intervention -with a shift from a social to a penal approach -but also in the spatial conceptualizations of intervention areas -from a relational view of intervention areas to selfcontained areas with rigid boundaries. Different ways of imagining space, I will argue, had different implications for the constitution of problems and formulation of solutions. Furthermore, each of the changing conceptualizations followed different political rationalities, understood as conceptualizations and justifications of goals, ideals, and principles of government [START_REF] Rose | Political Power beyond the State: Problematics of Government[END_REF][START_REF] Simons | Foucault and the Political[END_REF]. This implies that the constitution of spaces through urban policy has a governmental dimension, but there is no inherent politics to such constitutions. It seems to me important, therefore, to give adequate attention to varying conceptualizations of space as they have different policy and political implications, and reflect different political rationalities.

Therefore, my approach to urban policy makes conceptualizations of space central to its analysis. I share the view with the social constructionist approaches that problems and policies associated with spaces of intervention are constituted as part of the policy process, but insist that equal attention be given to the ways in which such spaces are conceptualized in policy. With the governmentality approaches, I concur that the constitution of spaces through urban policy has a governmental dimension, but maintain that there is no inherent politics to such constitutions. Variations in the ways space is conceptualized matter as each policy discourse and programme is based on particular ways of conceptualizing space, as the French experience suggests.

Geographies of French urban policy

As Estèbe (2001: 25) notes, the basis of French urban policy is its definition of a 'geography of priority neighbourhoods'; that is, a geography constituted by the designated areas (i.e. 'priority neighbourhoods'), which then becomes the basis of policy programmes and interventions. This basis has remained stable over the two decades of this policy; since the early 1980s, French urban policy consolidated and acted upon a geography of priority neighbourhoods. However, the 'geography' of priority neighbourhoods has changed over the years -not simply in terms of the number of areas to be included, but in terms of the way in which the included areas have been spatially conceptualized. In this sense, French urban policy has consolidated and intervened upon three 'geographies' -'local', 'relative' and 'statist' (étatique) -each marked by different ways of conceptualizing space.

European Urban and Regional Studies 2007 14(4) 280 EUROPEAN URBAN AND REGIONAL STUDIES 14(4) My account is aimed at highlighting these transformations in spatial conceptualizations rather than providing a comprehensive account of French urban policy. The early years of French urban policy (the 1980s) were marked by what I refer to, following [START_REF] Estèbe | Instruments et fondements de la géographie prioritaire de la politique de la ville (1982-1996)[END_REF], as a 'local geography' that paid attention to local dynamics and specificities, which was a sign of its origins rooted in the selfmanagement and urban movements of the 1960s and 1970s. This was followed by what I refer to, again following Estèbe, as a 'relative geography' that implied collaboration between different territorial units, which was a sign of the emphasis put on solidarity and the welfare state in the second term of Mitterrand in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The shift to what I call a 'statist geography' -rigid and centrally decided by the state -followed from a change in the government in 1993, which was the start of a period of experimentation with neo-liberal ideas in an attempt to foster economic activity in the neighbourhoods of urban policy. This period, as we will see, was also marked by the consolidation of the penal state in and through the neighbourhoods of urban policy.

'Foot-soldiers of democracy': the local geography of urban policy

French urban policy (la politique de la Ville) was initiated in a specific context marked by the arrival of the Left to power for the first time in the Fifth Republic with a highly contentious political agenda. Only a few months after the arrival of the Left under the presidency of the Socialist Party leader Mitterrand, several incidents of unrest took place in the social housing neighbourhoods at the peripheral areas (banlieues) of large French cities during the 'hot summer' of 1981. Furthermore, these incidents occurred against the backdrop of 'race riots' on the other side of the Channel, notably in Brixton, which was haunting the 'one and indivisible' French republic. In this context, the response of the new government carried immense strategic and symbolic significance. Strategically, the new government could not have afforded the recurrence of such incidents, especially faced with the opposition Right's severe critique of the new government's 'soft' attitude towards immigration; symbolically too, because the Socialist Party's success was based largely on the emergence and activism of a new generation of militants and elites, mostly committed to urban struggles. Indeed, the initial impetus for decentralization reforms, which was on the new government's agenda, 'had much to do with the pressure of the social movements that produced the 1981 victory' (Preteceille, 1988: 415), which means that the Socialist Government was, and had to be in order to maintain its locally based power, very sensitive towards urban social movements [START_REF] Harburger | L'Etat face au malaise urbain au début des années 80[END_REF][START_REF] Preteceille | Decentralization in France: New Citizenship or Restructuring Hegemony?[END_REF].

Following the incidents of 1981, a National Commission for the Social Development of Neighbourhoods (Commission Nationale pour le Développement Social des Quartiers, CNDSQ) was created and attached directly to the office of the Prime Minister. Hubert Dubedout, the mayor of Grenoble, was appointed as the president of the commission. Dubedout was one of the founders of municipal action groups (Groupes d'action municipale, GAM) in the 1970s, which sought to promote the idea of self-management (autogestion) at the urban level.

The appointment of Dubedout -a locally elected official -carried immense symbolic value as a sign of the new government's attempt to alter the overly centralist and technocratic state practices. 5 The commission was characterized by three major orientations and sensibilities. First, there was an orientation towards people working in the field (acteurs de terrain) -called the 'foot-soldiers of democracy' (fantassins de la démocratie) by the members of the commission [START_REF] Harburger | L'Etat face au malaise urbain au début des années 80[END_REF] -and towards local specificities and experiences, with an attempt to move away from technocratic practices that had characterized earlier periods. Second, there was a great sensibility towards urban social movements, which, probably, was influential in the creation of the CNDSQ with an urban-spatial focus in the first place following the incidents of the summer of 1981. And finally, priority was given to locally elected, rather than centrally appointed, officials.

The Dubedout Report, Ensemble, refaire la ville (Together, Remaking the City), was published in 1983, outlining the major features of a new approach to address social housing neighbourhoods: the Social Development of Neighbourhoods, or the DSQ. The report identified three major orientations for the DSQ programme. First, it was necessary to act on the deprived neighbourhoods and the causes of their European Urban and Regional Studies 2007 14(4) DIKEÇ: SPACE, GOVERNMENTALITY, AND THE GEOGRAPHIES OF FRENCH URBAN POLICY degradation in order to tackle problems generated by the concentration of disadvantaged groups in certain neighbourhoods, and by 'social exclusion induced by the economic crisis' (Dubedout, 1983: 12). The deterioration of the social housing stock in the neighbourhoods was only one side of a complex problem, which had to be addressed in ways that went beyond an exclusive focus on physical improvement by taking into consideration issues such as unemployment, poverty and education.

The second orientation concerned the participation of inhabitants. It was necessary, the report insisted, to take into consideration diverse forms of participation, and not merely formal associational forms. 'There is not only one but several levels of intervention of inhabitants in democracy at the scale of the neighbourhood [la démocratie de quartier]' (Dubedout, 1983: 38). The quest was for the 'democratization of the management of the city':

In this quest, there are no privileged professions, no monopoly of knowledge, no hierarchical level, no command centres [base arrière]. Meeting this challenge requires a mobilization of all those who want to give access to the right to the city to all those from whom it is withheld. This dynamism must be part of a new political and technical organization of all authorities who manage these issues. (Dubedout, 1983: 29;emphasis added) The third orientation defined by the report concerned the role of local collectivities. In this respect, the report recommended that the role of local collectivities be reinforced, giving them more power in larger decision-making processes, while increasing their responsibilities.

The DSQ programme started with these orientations. The first 16 neighbourhoods were selected in 1982, and seven more were added the following year. There was not a standard, 'objective', or formulized selection process; selections were made by the CNDSQ working in consultation with mayors. The members of the commission already knew the social housing neighbourhoods well. The selection was based on their knowledge of these neighbourhoods, taking into consideration their specificities.

Although the DSQ programme was focused on spatially targeted areas, larger dynamics were emphasized in an attempt to avoid what [START_REF] Belbahri | Les Minguettes ou la surlocalisation du social[END_REF] called 'over-localizing the social'; that is, narrowly conceiving the problems of social housing neighbourhoods merely as problems 'confined' to particular spaces. The incidents of the hot summer of 1981 were seen as manifestations of multifaceted problems, causes of which went beyond the confines of designated neighbourhoods. The creators of French urban policy were very clear on this issue: the banlieues and social housing neighbourhoods were to be seen as part of the production of space, related to larger dynamics, and not as already given welldelimited spaces with problems. All the 'founding texts' of urban policy pointed to the limits of focusing exclusively on selected neighbourhoods, and emphasized the importance of taking larger issues into consideration. The Schwartz Report (1981) on the 'insertion of the youth', for example, argued that the central city and the neighbourhoods at peripheral areas should not be conceived as separate. Similarly, the Bonnemaison Report on prevention (1982) emphasized the importance of conceiving prevention policies on a scale larger than the neighbourhood. The Dubedout Report (1983) went even further:

The opening up [désenclavement] of social housing neighbourhoods implies an ideological breakthrough: their inclusion in debates over the development of cities. (1983: 76) However, the strong political ideals of the DSQ programme found little realization. Following the socalled 'anti-immigrant vote' of the 1983 municipal elections, the political context in which the banlieues and social housing neighbourhoods was addressed would change significantly. This initially experimental policy programme, conceived to generate new ways of thinking about the city through creating a local political dynamic in the spaces of intervention, started to expand to cover more neighbourhoods. The number of neighbourhoods included in the programme was raised to 148 in 1984. The DSQ programme started to become a means for financing renovation projects and prevention of revolts, and the earlier emphasis on democracy and right to the city started to disappear.

Restoring the welfare state: the relative geography of urban policy

When François Mitterrand started his second term as President in 1988, he declared that the city would be one of his priorities, and efforts would be made European Urban and Regional Studies 2007 14(4) 282 EUROPEAN URBAN AND REGIONAL STUDIES 14(4) for 'inventing a real urban civilization' (Banlieues 89, 1989: 3). A few months later, Prime Minister Michel Rocard advanced reforms for the institutionalization of urban policy. The decree of 28 October 1988 established the National Council of Cities, the CNV, created an inter-ministerial committee (CIV), 6 and, more importantly, the Délégation interministérielle à la ville (DIV), an interministerial delegation responsible for coordinating urban policy.

The creation of the DIV not only served to bring an administrative focus to urban policy programmes within other state institutions and policies, but also made clear that 'urban policy was given greater prominence, thereby symbolizing the commitment of the state to tackling the urban crisis and in turn encouraging a greater involvement of the various ministries' (Le Galès and Mawson, 1994: 27-8). These changes occurred in a period referred to as 'the return of the State' [START_REF] Barthélémy | Un avenir pour la ville. Face à la crise urbaine Paris[END_REF][START_REF] Merlin | Les banlieues des villes françaises[END_REF], and they were in line with the new government's emphasis on solidarity and the welfare state, reflected also in other policy initiatives of the period such as the RMI (Revenu Minimum d'Insertion [Minimum Insertion Income]). 7 These reforms were accompanied by a significant increase in the number of intervention areas. With the Xth Plan (1989-93), the number of neighbourhoods included in urban policy increased from 148 to 400, including all the previously designated neighbourhoods since 1982. Urban policy was no longer an experimental policy concerned with a few neighbourhoods, but rather, an ambitious programme with 400 neighbourhoods to be tackled.

Institutionalization of urban policy continued with the creation of a City Ministry in 1990, following another series of revolts in the banlieues of French cities. The problem for the new ministry, whose mission was defined as 'fighting exclusion', was to spatially constitute its object of intervention; that is, spatially defining and delimiting 'exclusion'. 'Fighting exclusion' meant to fight it spatially given the way urban policy had operated since its inception. However, this had to be done with an already existing geography of priority neighbourhoods -the 'local geography' of the 1980s -which consisted of the 400 areas designated in the Xth Plan. Thus, the City Ministry started to collaborate with the INSEE (French national institute of economic and statistical information) for the statistical profiling and mapping of the priority neighbourhoods of urban policy. A section called City (Ville) was created at the INSEE for this purpose. This collaboration was aimed at reconstituting the spaces of urban policy as the objects of a national policy in a more rational and precise way. As Estèbe (2001: 31)

put it:

What is at stake is the transformation of the essentially local geography of the 1980s -based on reputations, empirical and grounded knowledge [des connaissances sensibles et empiriques], parallel histories of cities and neighbourhoods -into a set of territories likely to become an acceptable object for a national policy for fighting exclusion.

The neighbourhoods were thus reconstituted as objects of a national policy for spatially fighting exclusion, using long-term unemployment, young people aged under 25, and 'foreigners' (i.e. not French citizens) as criteria. This new geography of the priority neighbourhoods of urban policy was a 'relative geography' in that the defined criteria were used to measure the 'gap' between neighbourhoods of urban policy, national means, and mean values for communes and agglomerations of which they were a part. What was measured, therefore, was the concentration of long-term unemployed, young people aged under 25, and foreigners in relation to mean values at the commune, agglomeration and national levels. The spaces of urban policy were thus conceptualized not as separate from but in relation to wider geographies.

This spatial approach was also manifest in the urban policy initiatives of the early 1990s. One of these was the City Contracts (Contrats de Ville) programme. These contracts defined a programme of action between the state and the localities for a period of five years. The programme was conceived with three major objectives. The first was changing the scale of intervention from individual neighbourhoods to the entire city-region. The second objective was to encourage mayors to take into consideration broader social and economic issues. The third objective was to encourage intercommunal cooperation by bringing communes together in devising projects to address deprived areas. However, the City Contracts programme encountered serious problems in implementation. One of the recurrent critiques directed at it was its 'stereotypical' contracts, prepared with an aim mostly to receive funding from the state with no precise objectives, or with objectives which were European Urban and Regional Studies 2007 14(4) DIKEÇ: SPACE, GOVERNMENTALITY, AND THE GEOGRAPHIES OF FRENCH URBAN POLICY aimed at redeveloping certain parts of the city without addressing the disadvantaged areas. Intercommunal cooperation also fell far behind expectations [START_REF] Donzelot | Réévaluer la politique de la ville[END_REF][START_REF] Le Galès | Management Innovations in Urban Policy: Lessons from France[END_REF]OECD, 1998).

Nevertheless, the City Contracts programme was an attempt to encourage a more comprehensive approach that took into consideration larger dynamics than one that focused merely on delimited neighbourhoods. It was also supported by many laws passed in the early 1990s. The Loi Besson of 1990 defined the right to housing (droit au logement) as a 'duty of solidarity for the entire nation', and required the departments to financially contribute to 'solidarity funds' at least as much as the state. 8 The Loi de dotation de solidarité urbaine of 1991 was aimed at establishing intercommunal solidarity (as was suggested in the Dubedout Report of 1983) through a transfer of funds from richer communes with less social problems to poorer communes with more social problems. This was a significant redistributive measure which was aimed at fostering solidarity between communes. Finally, the Loi d'orientation sur la ville (LOV) of 1991 was aimed at a more balanced distribution of social housing among communes by requiring them to meet the norm of 20 percent social housing.

The transformations of the late 1980s and early 1990s shifted the orientation of urban policy from a militant to a technocratic one, with a rationally and more precisely defined geography of priority neighbourhoods. This geography was a relative geography in the sense that the spaces of intervention were defined in relation to their larger city-regions. These attempts to conceive the neighbourhoods of urban policy relationally and to address their problems through redistributive policies, however, were disrupted with the initiation of a new programme, the Pacte de relance pour la ville, 9 introduced by the Right-wing Juppé Government in 1996.

Consolidating the penal state: the statist geography of urban policy

Before the passing of the Pacte de relance, the new orientation of urban policy was already signalled by Prime Minister Balladur's right-wing Government which came to office in 1993. The three priorities envisaged by the new Government for urban policy were 'authority, identity, and activity'. 'Authority' implied more repressive measures, and 'identity' a growing concern with the 'integration' of second and third-generation immigrants in the intervention areas of urban policy. 'Activity' referred to tax benefits for firms locating in the neighbourhoods included in urban policy. Thus, the new government associated the neighbourhoods of urban policy with concerns about 'the authority of the State' and 'French identity' (Le Figaro, 1993: 6), and gave the first signals of a shift in focus from comprehensive approaches conceived to alleviate inequalities to measures devised with an exclusive focus on delimited neighbourhoods.

The Pacte de relance was the translation of this orientation into law. The main idea behind it was to foster economic activity and to increase employment in the neighbourhoods of urban policy through tax concessions and public subsidies. Trying to foster economic activity and to increase employment through tax concessions and public subsidies was not a novelty brought about by the Pacte de relance. Attempts had already been made in 1987, by the creation of zones d'entreprises, inspired by Thatcher's enterprise zones, by the then Minister of Industry Alain Madelin under the Chirac Government. The LOV of 1991 had also envisaged giving local collectivities the possibility of tax concessions for the creation and extension of new business (although this was never widely applied). The Pacte de relance extended tax concessions to already existing firms, and involved public subsidies as well.

The novelty of the Pacte de relance was what it did with the geography of priority neighbourhoods. For the most part, the Pacte de relance retained areas that were already included under the City Contracts programme, but turned the 'relative geography' of this programme into a 'statist geography' -absolute, hierarchical, and defined through centrally decided criteria. What the Pacte de relance did was to redefine the neighbourhoods of urban policy through a scale, which identified hierarchical spatial categories of exclusion. A formula called 'Synthetic Index of Exclusion' (ISE) was devised to assign the neighbourhoods of urban policy to their proper places on a scale of exclusion, which consisted of criteria such as the level of long-term employment, proportion of young people, European Urban and Regional Studies 2007 14(4) and proportion of people without high-school diploma. 10 The attempt in the relative geography of the early 1990s was to measure the gap between the neighbourhoods and their surrounding areas through a calculation of concentration. The designated neighbourhoods were seen as 'neighbourhoods at risk', and the attempt was to discern symptoms of larger programmes and populations at risk [START_REF] Estèbe | Instruments et fondements de la géographie prioritaire de la politique de la ville (1982-1996)[END_REF]. This time, however, the attempt was to measure how badly these neighbourhoods were 'excluded'. The Pacte de relance transformed the relative geography of difficulties into an absolute geography of exclusion with rigid boundaries.

This was a major departure from earlier, more 'local' and relational conceptualizations. With this particular spatial conceptualization, the neighbourhoods of urban policy were closed upon themselves, becoming 'problems' as such. The inhabitants and local specificities, in the process, turned into internally homogeneous spatial categories, and the earlier ideas about appropriation of lived spaces by inhabitants themselves disappeared, which led [START_REF] Béhar | La politique de la ville: une politique aterritoriale?[END_REF] to argue that urban policy, despite all its spatial focus, was in fact an 'a-territorial' policy in that it became disconnected from local specificities.

The Pacte de relance gave French urban policy a neo-liberal orientation. With this programme, the focus of urban policy shifted from collaboration and solidarity between communes to economic competition among them. It was conceived almost exclusively in economic terms, with an emphasis on economic success within strictly defined spaces of intervention. Whereas earlier urban policy programmes took into consideration local specificities and relations between designated areas and their larger city-regions, the Pacte de relance was exclusively focused on neatly defined, exclusive and calculable spaces of intervention, which could then be classified, categorized and placed on a scale. This spatial conceptualization had no room for redistributive policies aimed at collaboration and solidarity between communes within the larger cityregion. In the statist geography of the Pacte de relance, the neighbourhoods of urban policy existed in and of themselves, as neatly delimited areas that supposedly contained both the 'problem' and its solution, provided they were able to attract businesses.

Attempts were made to open up the spatial focus of urban policy under the succeeding Government, which came to office in 1997 with Jospin as Prime Minister. The Jospin Government's actions in the domain of urban policy included an impressive amount of measures, which were more or less a remake of the measures of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It reintroduced the City Contracts programme, passed two laws which sought to encourage intercommunal cooperation and change the scale of intervention from the neighbourhood to the agglomeration, passed another that was aimed at a more balanced distribution of social housing, 11 and introduced a large-scale physical renovation programme which took after the Grands Projets Urbains (GPU) of the early 1990s.

All three laws had a redistributional aspect; they were all marked by an emphasis on solidarity [START_REF] Goze | La loi Solidarité et renouvellement urbains, composante de la réforme territoriale[END_REF], although they also implied more responsibility and bidding for communes, interpreted as a sign of the relative disengagement of the state [START_REF] Donzelot | Quand la ville se défait: quelle politique face à la crise des banlieues[END_REF][START_REF] Galès | Reshaping the State? Administrative and Decentralisation Reforms[END_REF]. Nevertheless, these measures implied an opening-up of the spatial focus of urban policy, which was severely limited by the statist geography of the Pacte de relance. The reintroduction of the contracts meant a process open to negotiations between the state and local collectivities rather than a geography imposed by the technocrats of the central state.

The attempt to open up the spatial focus of urban policy came to a halt with the change of government. The Raffarin Government came to power in 2002 with an agenda dominated by the issue of security, and immediately passed laws that gave more power to the police, extended the scope of criminal offence, and intensified penal responses. 'After measures aimed at restoring the republican order, the fight against injustice has started,' declared Jean-Louis Borloo, the new Minister for the City, soon after the passing of these laws (Libération, 2002). Borloo had three priorities for urban policy: 'breaking up the ghettos'; 'jobs and professional insertion'; and 'simplification of procedures' (DIV, 2004: 24). Thus, for the first time in urban policy, a city minister explicitly and without reservations referred to the neighbourhoods of urban policy as ghettos 'at the margins of national territory' [START_REF] Monde | Le gouvernement prévoit la démolition de 40 000 logements par an[END_REF].

The priorities defined by Borloo guided a new law on urban policy, known as 'loi Borloo', passed in August 2003. This law translated the first priority, 'breaking up the ghettos', into demolition programmes; the second, 'jobs and professional insertion', into more areas with tax concessions; and the third, 'simplification of procedures', into the creation of the 'National Agency for Urban Renovation' (Agence nationale pour la rénovation urbaine, known as ANRU).

ANRU would centralize, manage and distribute subventions, thus providing a single stop (guichet unique) for the financing of renovation programmes (Depincé, 2003: 28). This indeed was a significant reorganization, but the creation of ANRU meant much more than just simplification of procedures. The creation of ANRU, and the Borloo law in general, recentralized urban policy. This recentralization implied an urban policy which risked becoming purely procedural, reduced to the physical transformation of the built environment or to the designation of more tax concession areas. It also took urban policy back to the statist geography of the Pacte de relance and remarkably limited its spatial focus.

The creation of the ANRU for physical renovation, on the one hand, and the expansion of tax concession areas, on the other hand, implied a major divergence from previous urban policies, which combined physical interventions and measures with social aspects. Urban policy had always had a social dimension. The Borloo law brought about a dissociation in terms both of the nature of urban policy and the relationship it had established between the state and local collectivities [START_REF] Epstein | Après les émeutes, comment débattre de la politique de la ville?[END_REF][START_REF] Estèbe | L'usage des quartiers. Action publique et géographie dans la politique de la ville (1982-1999)[END_REF][START_REF] Jaillet | La politique de la ville en France: histoire et bilan[END_REF].

Regarding the former, it narrowed down the engagement of the state to physical interventions only, leaving the social dimension to the initiative and capabilities of local collectivities. Regarding the latter, it dissociated the contractual relationship between the state and local collectivities, which was also a feature of the Pacte de relance. The previous City Contracts programme was more flexible in terms of objectives and actions, which were negotiated by the state and local collectivities. The new programme, on the contrary, was very rigid; it defined objectives and actions by law. Thus, the objectives of urban policy were given -not negotiated [START_REF] Epstein | Après les émeutes, comment débattre de la politique de la ville?[END_REF]. Instead of a process of negotiation, a hierarchical relationship was established between a central agency (ANRU) and local collectivities, which risked reducing the latter's role to a purely administrative one executing the centrally defined actions [START_REF] Estèbe | L'usage des quartiers. Action publique et géographie dans la politique de la ville (1982-1999)[END_REF].

In spatial terms, the Borloo law took urban policy back to the statist geography of the Pacte de relance. This geography was centrally defined -not negotiated -and absolute, constituted by neatly delimited spaces of intervention as if they existed in and of themselves. The attempts to open up the focus of urban policy by encouraging projects conceived at the level of agglomeration thus came to an end. The Borloo law reduced the spaces of urban policy to an ensemble of housing estates to be demolished. Over the years, urban policy has gradually shifted focus from the inhabitants themselves to spaces of intervention. The Borloo law carried this trend to the extreme, and transformed urban policy to a policy 'addressed not to inhabitants but to space seen as a problem in and of itself ' (Estèbe, 2004: 255).

Conclusions

As we have seen, French urban policy started as an experimental policy with a limited number of neighbourhoods: 16 neighbourhoods in 1982, which went up to 148 in a couple of years, to 400 in the early 1990s and to about 700 in the mid-1990s. In the process, the neighbourhoods of the previous years remained while new ones were added. By focusing on the ways in which space is imagined in urban policy, I have tried to show that although urban policymakers have been addressing practically the same areas for years, the ways in which the intervention areas were spatially conceptualized (and discursively articulated) have changed remarkably.

In the early 1980s, the idea behind urban policy was to create a new territorial dynamic through the 'spatialization of social policies' -as opposed to sectoral policies -and in this sense, it was seen as innovative at the time [START_REF] Chaline | Les politiques de la ville, 2nd edn[END_REF]. Urban policy was aimed at cultivating a local political dynamic through its spatial approach, and was mainly the work of militants working in the selected neighbourhoods [START_REF] Donzelot | Réévaluer la politique de la ville[END_REF]. Its neighbourhoods were selected based on local specificities rather than on centrally defined criteria. Starting with the 1990s, the neighbourhoods of urban policy were constituted as more precisely defined objects of intervention, with clear boundaries and defining statistical information. This emphasis on precision and statistical manipulation, however, was not premised on a conception of the spaces of urban policy as selfcontained. Although their boundaries were now more clearly defined, they were nevertheless conceptualized in relation to wider geographies rather than as separate entities in themselves, thus changing the 'local geography' of the 1980s into a 'relative geography'. From the mid-1990s onwards, however, this relative geography turned into a 'statist geography' with the neighbourhoods conceptualized as self-contained areas with rigid boundaries. This shift in spatial conceptualization corresponded with two other shifts: first, a shift from comprehensive and potentially redistributive policies to initiatives 'confined' to the designated areas (such as tax concessions); and second, a shift towards more repressive and penal forms of state intervention, the effects of which have been more pronounced in the neighbourhoods of urban policy. Whereas the neighbourhoods of urban policy were sites of political experimentation in the early 1980s, starting with the mid-1990s they have become sites where the republican penal state consolidated itself.

By highlighting the changes in spatial conceptualizations of intervention areas, I have tried to show that space matters in urban policy. Saying this sounds a bit like stating the obvious; after all, urban policy is about space, or better yet, about certain spaces. It defines the issues it seeks to address in spatial terms, delineates spaces to intervene upon, and proposes spatially targeted remedies to perceived problems. Yet spatial conceptualizations, as we have seen, change. Urban policy does not operate with an unchanging view of space. Just as the discursive terms with which to talk about its spaces change, the way it conceptualizes its spaces change as well. In other words, urban policy is guided by particular ways of imagining space, and different ways of imagining space have different implications for the constitution of perceived problems and proposed solutions. Depending on whether spaces of intervention are conceived as neatly delimited areas or in relational terms, initiatives range from limited local interventions to regional distributive policies.

Changing spatial conceptualizations has another implication as well. I have suggested that urban policy has a governmental dimension. However, I have insisted that this is far from univocal. Governmental practices are not about interventions only; they involve both formation and intervention. If we hold the view that space is not already given in urban policy, then it follows that urban policy is a governmental practice not merely because it intervenes upon certain spaces, but because it constitutes them as objects of intervention in the first place. In this sense, the spaces of urban policy are not the given sites of this governmental practice, but, first of all, its outcomes. Different policy discourses and programmes imagine space in varying ways, as the different 'geographies' of French urban policy exemplify. This suggests that changing conceptualizations of space and their policy and political implications should be taken into consideration in analysis of urban policy.

of the local militants. It is this difference that I try to capture with the terms 'militant' and 'statist'. 5 As a former member of the commission put it: "We had the feeling we were inventing a new State profession, closer and more respectful of other partners, notably locally elected officials" (Harburger, 1994: 386). 6 Thus, in 1988, the institutional structure of urban policy was consolidated with the creation of the Comité interministériel des villes (CIV), the Conseil national des villes (CNV), and the Délégation interministériel à la ville (DIV). The CIV, chaired by the Prime Minister, was charged with decision making, the CNV with research and proposals, and the DIV with the coordination of actors and actions concerning urban policy. 7 The RMI offered a minimum income to unemployed people over the age of 25 (provided that they were not students, and were willing to be trained for or placed in work). 8 Departments are one of the three major levels of territorial administration in France, between the regions and the communes. 9 'Pacte de relance pour la ville' cannot be translated accurately, although it has been referred to as 'urban renewal pact' (see e.g. OECD, 1998). The word relance has economic connotations, and means 'boosting' when used with reference to the economy, and 'relaunching' when used with reference to a project or idea. 10 Calculations were made by using data on the included neighbourhoods (the proportions of youth, long-term unemployed people, and people with no high school diploma) and their communes. The formula was as follows: ISE = (% of people younger than 25) × (% of long-term unemployed) × (% of people without high school diploma) × (total population of the commune) divided by the tax potential of the commune. 11 These were the 'Loi Voynet' of 1999, which sought to encourage contracts conceived at the level of agglomeration; the 'Loi Chevènement' of 1999, which was aimed at encouraging intercommunal cooperation through a redistribution of business tax between communes provided they organized in the form of an Agglomeration Community (Communauté d'agglomération); and the Solidarity and Urban Renewal Law (Loi de solidarité et renouvellement urbains, SRU) of 2000, which sought a more balanced distribution of social housing by requiring communes to attain an objective of 20% social housing.

at Senate House Library, University of London on December 12, 2010 eur.sagepub.com Downloaded from

EUROPEAN URBAN AND REGIONAL STUDIES 14(4) at Senate House Library, University of London on December 12, 2010 eur.sagepub.com Downloaded from

European Urban and Regional Studies 2007 14(4) DIKEÇ: SPACE, GOVERNMENTALITY, AND THE GEOGRAPHIES OF FRENCH URBAN POLICY

European Urban and RegionalStudies 2007 14(4)

Acknowledgements

This article draws on my forthcoming book (Dikeç, forthcoming). I am grateful to the publishers for permission to use some of the material here. I am also grateful to the editors of this special issue and the referees for their very helpful suggestions.

Notes

1 This opening is inspired by the opening of a chapter by Connolly (1993: 249) on 'the American state' and 'the Hegelian state'. 2 This is not to imply that all these notions were exclusively 'Lefebvrian'. In the early 1980s, particularly, 'selfmanagement' and 'right to difference' were very popular notions in the political agenda, with a variety of interpretations. Lefebvre, however, conceived these notions with a decidedly urban spatial focus. 3 As one of the referees suggested, there is a possibility here to consider this argument in relation to [START_REF] Lefebvre | The Production of Space[END_REF] 'production of space', taking into consideration the state's spatial practices and representations of space. Urban policy, in this sense, may be seen as one of the ways in which space is 'produced' by the state. 4 As [START_REF] Donzelot | Réévaluer la politique de la ville[END_REF] point out, the early years of urban policy (the early 1980s) were marked by the activity of militants working in the selected neighbourhoods. This approach, however, remarkably changed in the 1990s, and urban policy became more the work of the state's technocrats and bureaucrats than that European Urban and Regional Studies 2007 14(4) DIKEÇ: SPACE, GOVERNMENTALITY, AND THE GEOGRAPHIES OF FRENCH URBAN POLICY


) succinctly put it, ``as a thing of this world''. Law, in this view, is not merely prohibitive, but also productive; it is constitutive of the spaces of social life. Furthermore, it has a geographical specificity; despite its claim to universality, the where of law matters. The latter strand is more concerned with the spatiality of law and sovereign power. What animates this growing body of work is the idea that law may actually be involved in producing spaces of lawlessness, although what is in question is not the absence of law as such but violence committed through law. It is this latter strand that seems to be the more prominent one in contemporary legal ^spatial research. This shift in focus from spaces of law to spaces of lawlessness is not simply rhetorical (`because Agamben had this idea ...'), but circumstantial. This is perhaps best evidenced by the recurrent references to Guanta¨namo and military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have become the paradigmatic examples of much writing on space, law, and sovereignty. (1) Compared with such high-profile examples, however, the issue of asylum has received relatively little attention, despite the worrying developments in the European Union's (EU) asylum law and policy in the past decade or so. This is not to suggest that asylum has been completely neglected by geographers; nor that the institution of asylum is in good health elsewhere in the world. However, the shape EU asylum law and policy has been taking deserves attention from the perspectives both of spaces of law and spaces of lawlessness as it has spatial manifestations in a variety of forms (detention centres, transit zones, appropriated city streets) and a range of places, including those beyond the territorial boundaries of member states. It not

only points to the role that law and policy play in the production of spaceöspaces of law, or legal geographiesöbut also to the `where' of law, and suggests that some of those spaces constructed through law may be raising pressing legal, political, and human rights issuesöspaces of lawlessness.

Given the increasing preventive measures and entry restrictions of the EU and its member states, ``ninety per cent of asylum seekers'', Oxfam (2005, page iii) estimates, ``are forced to enter the EU irregularly''. There are also many thousands who never reach it: between 1993 and 2006, more than 7000 migrants and asylum seekers died while attempting to reach EU territory (half of them in a period of only three years, between 2003 and 2006). And this is only the documented number of deaths; the actual number is probably much higher (Clochard and Rekacewicz, 2006). For those who manage to reach EU territory, one response has been the setting up of detention camps. In the past ten years, ``detention camps for foreigners have mushroomed across the European Union''; there are now more than 200 formal detention camps in EU countries, housing more than 30 000 asylum seekers and migrants awaiting deportation (Brothers, 2007). But in terms of detention, this is not the end of the bad news.

Detention, expulsion, banishment

In the last week of 2008, on 24 December, the Directive ``on common standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals'' was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. Alternatively called the `Returns Directive' (by officials and more moderate observers) or the `Directive of Shame' (by activitists mobilized against it), (2) the directive was first approved by the European Parliament back in June 2008, to be adopted later by the Council in early December. EU member states, apart from the UK, Ireland, and Denmark, now have until December 2010 to bring their domestic legislation in line with the standards and procedures defined by the directive. (3) The directive is called `Returns Directive' because it has been presented as an instrument to regulate the `return' of third-country nationals irregularly staying in EU member states. However, an examination of the text shows that the directive is as much about `return'öor, better yet, expulsion (4) öas it is about detention (a word that does not occur in its rather long title). Furthermore, in a less explicit manner, it is also a potentially very effective and restrictive border management tool, as we will see below. The primary purpose of the directive is not to improve the fundamental protections of affected people, such as those in detention, but to make their expulsion more effective. It sets common rather than minimum standards, some of which, as the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) pointed out, ``are actually lower than the current practices in several EU countries'' (2008, page 6). Amnesty International emphasized that the directive (2) The Ecuadoran president Correa also referred to it as a ``directive of shame''. The Bolivian president Morales, in an article published in The Guardian (2008), qualified the directive as ``hypocritical, draconian and undiplomatic''. (3) If the member states have `better' or more generous standards, it is in their discretion to follow the directive or not. However, they will not be allowed to apply harsher standards than those defined in the directive. (4) Although during the debates the key objective of the directive was presented as encouraging `voluntary return', a term the final text published in the Official Journal also uses extensively, it really is about expulsion. As ECRE (2008) maintains, the use of the term `voluntary' in this context is highly misleading as what is in question is not voluntary returnöwhich would mean a person has freely decided to repatriate even if he or she has no legal obligation to do soöbut `mandatory return', which means that he or she no longer has a legal basis to stay in the territory and is required by law to leave. As the directive is about the return of irregularly staying third-country nationals, the nature of the return is never voluntary, but either mandatory or, if the person fails to consent, forced. ``does not guarantee the return of irregular migrants in safety and dignity'' (2008). Indeed, although the final text emphasizes that third-country nationals in detention ``should be treated in a humane and dignified manner with respect for their fundamental rights'' (paragraph 17), (5) there is no provision in it that would allow for monitoring to see if the returns are indeed safe and dignified. (6) It is no wonder, then, that the directive has also been referred to as a `Directive of Shame', which, apart from the general concerns raised above, arises mainly from three specific instruments provided in the text: entry bans, and limits and conditions of detention.

The directive provides that the expulsion of a third-country national be (if no voluntary departure period has been granted or if the person does not comply with the obligation to return) or may be accompanied by a EU-wide entry ban of up to five years, with the possibility of imposing a longer, even permanent, ban ``if the thirdcountry national represents a serious threat to public policy, public security or national security'' [Article 11(2)], although what constitutes `serious threat' is left unspecified in the text. It is now possible, therefore, for member states to ban from EU territory people who may have lived there for a long time with established families and relationships (this may also include asylum seekers with failed applications, who sometimes reside several years, with a legal basis, in the host country because of long asylum procedures). This instrument, disproportionate as it is, also neglects the possibility that circumstances in a person's country of origin may change, giving rise to a need for international protection (UNHCR, 2008a). Therefore, one of the highly probable outcomes of entry bans will be to encourage the already widespread use of irregular channels to enter the EU, contributing further to the criminalization of asylum seekers, not to mention the risks involved in their efforts to cross boundaries.

Regarding the limits of detention, the directive provides in Article 15(5) that detention for removal may not exceed six months, but in the following paragraph gives member states the possibility to extend it a further twelve months, thus allowing for a detention period of up to 18 months; that is, a year and a half, awaiting deportation, without having committed any crime. (7) Two factors allow for an extension of detention: lack of cooperation by the individual, or ``delays in obtaining the necessary documentation from third countries'' [Article 15(6)(b)] to which the individual will be returned, which is not necessarily the country of origin. The directive expands the scope of `return' to include transit countries or other third countries, which are likely to be even less willing than countries of origin to accept expelled individuals, rendering the obtaining of necessary documents a long process. Therefore, it is possible even for those who comply with the return order to find themselves detained up to 18 months for reasons beyond their control. In addition to the entry bans, it is this excessive duration of detention, which implies an 18-month suspension of the right of liberty of the person who has not committed a crime, that has led critics to call the (5) All references to the directive refer to the text published in the Official Journal of the European Union. (6) Apparently this issue was raised in a report by the European Parliament Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) in September 2007, which urged the registration and monitoring of all returns in order to evaluate their impact on the returned persons (Was the return executed in a dignified manner? Are the returned persons in fact being refouled ? Are they able to (re)integrate in the host community?) and on the receiving country. However, LIBE's amendment was not retained in the final version of the directive, which also failed to take into account any recommendations made by the NGOs and UNHCR (see ECRE, 2008, pages 5 and 7). (7) France limits detention to a maximum of 32 days, lowest among the member states. The highest include Malta and Germany (18 months) and Latvia (20 months). In eight countries, including United Kingdom and Denmark, which are not affected by the directive, there is no upper limit on the duration of detention. Overall, however, the 18-month upper limit set by the directive exceeds that of most member states. directive a `shameful' one. There is, however, one more issue that has particularly outraged the critics, and that relates to the detention of children and vulnerable persons, and the conditions of detention.

The directive allows member states to detainöagain up to 18 months öand deport children (including those unaccompanied) and vulnerable persons (pregnant women, elderly or disabled people, or victims of torture, rape, or other forms of violence). Worse still, it allows their detention in ordinary prisons, if specialized detention facilitiesöwhere foreigners who have not committed a crime, in principle, should be detainedöare not available or when there are ``emergency situations'' such as ``exceptionally large number of third-country nationals to be returned'' and ``unforeseen heavy burden'', none of which are clarified in the text (Article 18). ( 8) More than 200 000 `illegal migrants' were arrested in the EU during the first half of 2007, and fewer than 90 000 were expelled (Le Monde 2008). Migreurop (a network of activists and researchers) estimates that there are 235 camps in the EU for the detention of foreigners. The capacities of 150 are known, which adds up to about 30 000 people. It is difficult to calculate such figures accurately, but, if these are indicative, it is inevitable that many foreigners will either be detained in overcrowded facilities or in ordinary prisons. (9) The directive does not seek to remedy this problem. Nor does it address the problem of the systematic detention of migrants and asylum seekers upon arrival in many southern European countries, such as Malta and Italy, where asylum applications are filed, and their outcome awaited, in detention, often in dreadful conditions.

There are, then, sound reasons to be concerned about the possibilities opened up to member states with this directive. There is a risk, according to Amnesty International (2008) of ``promoting prolonged detention practices in EU Member States and impacting negatively on access to the territory.'' UNHCR (2008a, page 3) maintains that, even though member states are free to opt for higher standards, ``standards on removals are likely to drop as a consequence of this text'', one highly probable consequence being the generalized use of prisons to detain third-country nationals, including children and vulnerable persons (ECRE, 2008).

In many ways the directive, which should be seen as part of a package on immigration and asylum, follows a trend in asylum and migration policies of late, characterized by the regression of fundamental protections and the progression of tools and practices of deportation and prevention of access to EU territory. In addition to the many worrying possibilities outlined above, it also raises a serious risk of removal for potentially a great number of people seeking international protection. Article 2 states that ``Member States may decide not to apply this Directive to third-country nationals who ... are apprehended or intercepted by the competent authorities in connection with the irregular crossing by land, sea or air of the external border of a Member State and who have not subsequently obtained an authorisation or a right to stay in the (8) Article 18 is about `emergency situations' and allows member states to derogate from their obligations regarding judicial review periods, places of detention, and conditions for the detention of families. The derogations are sustained ``as long as the exceptional situation persists''. (9) Prisons are notoriously overcrowded in France, and this may well be the case in some of the other member states as well. France was severely criticized in a recent memorandum by Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, who pointed not only to overcrowded prisons, but also to overcrowded and `dehumanized' detention centres for foreigners [CommDH(2008)34, Strasbourg, 20 November 2008]. Just about a week before the publication of the directive in the Official Journal, the daily Libe¨ration put a film, shot by the frontier police, on its website that showed the dreadful conditions in a detention centre in Mayotte, a French overseas territory in the Indian Ocean, where more than 200 people (including children) were detained in a facility conceived to accommodate 60 people. The article that accompanied the film referred to Mayotte as a ``space of lawlessness'' (zone de non-droit).

Member State.'' This is curious because it implies that the safeguards contained in the directive would apply only to those who entered the EU regularly. However, it is widely recognized that many people seeking international protection are obliged to enter the EU irregularly given various entry restrictions (only one in ten asylum seekers enter the EU through regular channels, according to the Oxfam report cited above). With this directive, they now risk removal even if they are in need of protection, and this without the safeguards that would have applied to them had they entered the territory regularly (which has serious implications regarding effective legal remedy and judicial review of detention, and for the removal of unaccompanied children, who may not benefit from special protections). Thus, the directive, which ``in principle was intended to regulate the situation of those third country nationals staying irregularly in the Member States, has been developed into a non-entry tool to complement EU border management instruments'' (ECRE, 2008, page 8, emphasis added). Hyndman and Mountz (2008) refer to such restrictive border management tools as ``neo-refoulement'', which involves spatial practices that deny access to asylum before individuals can even reach the state's territory. This adds to the question of `where' of asylum, which is a serious one given the direction in which EU asylum law and policy is headed.

Spaces of law, spaces of lawlessness

The preamble to the directive states that ``it is legitimate for Member States to return illegally staying third-country nationals, provided that fair and efficient asylum systems are in place which fully respect the principle of non-refoulement'' (paragraph 8, emphasis added). (10) This, however, is a demandingöand unrealistic, given the current situationö requirement for legitimacy as it is widely recognized that there are significant differences between member states' asylum procedures. Even the European Commission itself explicitly recognized this as a ``critical flaw in the current CEAS [Common European Asylum System]'', which ``goes against the principle of providing equal access to protection across the EU'' (European Commission, 2008, page 3). One clear indication of this flaw is the differences in recognition rates. For example, 0% of Chechens, one of the largest groups of asylum seekers in Europe since 2003, were granted asylum in Slovakia in 2005, whereas 90% of Chechen applicants were successful in Austria in the same year (ECRE, 2007). An Iraqi asylum seeker has virtually no chance of a successful asylum application in Greece (provided he or she can manage to apply), a major EU entry point for the majority of Iraqis. Indeed, concerns about Greece's ability to ensure access to a fair and efficient asylum system have reached such a point that the UN Refugee Agency recently published a position paper advising governments ``to refrain from returning asylum-seekers to Greece under the Dublin Regulation until further notice'' (UNHCR, 2008b, page 1). ( 11) (10) The principle of non-refoulement prohibits states signatory to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention to return refugees to territories where they would be exposed to persecution or risk their life or liberty on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. The full respect of the principle of non-refoulement, however, cannot be taken for granted as far as the practices of member states go. The UK's return of rejected asylum seekers to Zimbabwe in 2005, and Italy's systematic returns of irregular migrants to Libya are but two reminders of this. (11) The Dublin Regulation was originally conceived to deter multiple asylum applications and increase efficiency. It sets out the criteria to determine the member state responsible for examining an asylum claim made by a third-country national, which is usually the member state through which an asylum seeker first enters the EU territory (unless he or she has family members in or prior issuance of visa or residency permit by another member state). For example, if an Iraqi asylum seeker arrives in France and files an asylum application, but has first entered the EU via Greece and had his fingerprints taken there (which would be stored in the EURODAC database), he may find himself sent back there for the examination of his claim. Furthermore, it is not clear where the expelled people will be returned to since the directive has a rather broad definition for `return'. It could be a transit country which they passed through on their way to the EU territory, or another third country with which they may have no links at all. Return countries may even have a well-deserved reputation for the violation of human rights. This is particularly the case with Libya, concerning in particular the treatment of `illegal' migrants and asylum seekers, where detention centres have been built with funding from Italy. The cooperation of Italy and Libya in this domain has been further consolidated with a bilateral relationship treaty signed on 30 August 2008. Given such agreements and the changing nature of EU asylum law and policy, it is not unimaginable ö nor unlikely ö that affected third-country nationals will be deported to camps in transit countries bordering the EU.

The EU is at a turning point in the domain of asylum. Earlier EU initiatives sought to limit the number of asylum seekers and refugees through restrictive measures and increased border controls. Although such measures are certainly not off the agenda, the recent initiatives are marked by a common logic of moving asylum overseas; that is, receiving or transferring asylum seekers, and processing their claims outside EU territory as part of a stated aim to create a `Common European Asylum System' by 2010. This shift was brought to the EU agenda by the UK's 2003 proposal ö the so-called `New Vision' ö to move the processing of asylum claims in regions of origin or transit, an idea which, as Noll (2003) showed, was neither new nor visionary. Although the proposal was quickly discredited on moral, legal, and political terms, it reemerged shortly after; first, in the joint proposal of the Italian and German governments to establish asylum-processing `camps' in Libya and Tunisia, and more recently, in the Hague Programme adopted by the European Council in 2004. Thus, the idea of moving asylum overseas has entered the official EU agenda for the next five-year period of its asylum law and policy `harmonization' process. Another five-year plan is due to be adopted later in 2009 under the Swedish EU presidency.

This shift in the spatial scope and strategy of EU asylum law and policy raises pressing legal and human rights issues concerning state responsibility and the treatment of asylum seekers. There are reported concerns about the practices of asylum processing in some of the countries considered as potential partners of the EU in this domain, some of which, such as Libya, do not even have domestic legislation and structures to deal with asylum claims. Even among the EU member states themselves, as we have seen above, differences remain in the treatment of asylum seekers and processing asylum claims. What this implies is that an asylum seeker's chances of access to a fair and effective procedure without degrading treatment depend on his or her geographical location. In other words, the `where' of asylum matters, and it will become all the more important with the prospect of offshore asylum processing. Asylum `in' the EU seriously runs the risk of becoming yet another paradigmatic example of how effectively spaces of law can turn into spaces of lawlessness öif, that is, it has not become so already.

Acknowledgements. I am grateful to Claire Hancock, Jennifer Hyndman, and the editors of Society and Space for their generous comments and recommendations.

Mustafa Dikec°, Royal Holloway, University of London