Gangs, Drug Dealing, and Criminal Governance in Marseille, France

Abstract Marseille is a city that has long been sensationalistically associated in the public imagination with crime and drug dealing. This article begins by tracing the history of drug dealing and gang violence in the city, from its 19 th century origins to the rise of what has been called the “French Connection” in the 1960s and 1970s, when Marseille played a central role in the global heroin trade. The city’s criminality subsequently became more local in scope in the 1980s and 1990s, and the second part of the article draws on recent research carried out in the Marseille cité of Félix-Pyat, a poor neighbourhood widely associated with gang violence and drug dealing, to explore the consequences of the changing nature of crime in the city for process of “criminal governance”. When considered historically and in relation to our previous research on gangs in Nicaragua and South Africa, we suggest that it might be appropriate to talk about there being “varieties” of criminal governance that come together as “assemblages” than can be constituted in fundamentally different ways.