Life and death of a French shantytown

This chapter analyses the French and Roma social frameworks of domination that make the existence as well as the destruction of ta shantytown possible. The first two parts of the study explain the social and economic organisation of the Roma in the platz together with the Paris suburban context of implantation of the slum. The third part tries to explain the role of the platz’s chief, his biography, the different forms which the expression of this power takes, and the reception and the internal institutions that limit it, namely: the preacher and the heads of household. The fourth part will study the conflict between destroying and keeping the platz: the struggle between the mayor, state representatives, civil society, and the judiciary. The real power of each was confirmed or inferred by a violent, decisive act: the destruction of eighty family houses.