#philippe robert

In his thorough study of the genealogy of modern fears, Philippe Robert found out that starting from the early years of the twentieth century (that is, by more than a sheer coincidence, from the early years of the social state), fears of crime began to subside. They went on diminishing until the middle 1970s, when a sudden eruption of ‘personal safety’ panic focused in France on the crime apparently brewing in the banlieues where immigrant settlers were concentrated. What erupted was however, in Robert’s view, but a ‘delayed action bomb’: explosive security concerns had already been stored up by the slow yet steady phasing out of the collective insurance that the social state used to offer and by the rapid deregulation of the labour market. Recast as a ‘danger to safety’, the immigrants offered a convenient alternative focus for the apprehensions born of the sudden shakiness and vulnerability of social positions, and so they were a relatively safer outlet for the discharge of anxiety and anger which such apprehensions could not but cause.