The birth of the banlieue rouge of Paris

This comparative local study of the Parti communiste
français (PCF) in Arcueil and Cachan, two
neighbouring suburbs south of Paris, provides a
unique approach to addressing the origins of the
banlieue rouge, the belt of communist-dominated
working-class suburbs that once surrounded Paris.
This study is also unique in its 1919-1958 time span,
connecting the early implantation of suburban
communism in the interwar years with its apogee under
the Fourth Republic. Rapid suburbanisation and the
Popular Front created the pre-conditions for the rise
of the PCF as an electoral force in both suburbs but
only in Arcueil, where the party spearheaded local
resistance during World War II, did the PCF
consolidate a nascent communist communal identity
under the Fourth Republic. The banlieue rouge was
born of working class alienation from bourgeois
society nourished by a communist counter-society
which was contingent upon the PCF s capacity to
respond to local circumstances. This book is for
professional/local historians, political scientists
and social researchers interested in France or in
studying how social alienation is used to reinforce
group identity among marginalised social groups.