Le poteau, le traitre et la balance. La vie morale des cités

At the foot of the blocks of flats in Montrimond, some of the working-class youth have got into the habit of ‘hanging out’ in the lobbies and public spaces. In this suburb on the inner outskirts of Paris, these young people see themselves as ‘guys from the housing estate’. There are the “Belvédère lads” and the “Val lads”, territorial self-designations that overlap with the map of “sensitive” neighbourhoods.

Kamel Boukir is a sociologist and senior lecturer at EHESS. His work focuses on youth and deviance from the perspective of moral sociology, exploring the conflicts of loyalty that arise when childhood friendships turn into criminal complicity.

His publications include: “‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Complicity between greed, hatred and betrayal’ (Terrain, no. 72, 2022) and ‘“We’re lads from the estates!” The ecological genesis of moral experience: the sense of community among youth gangs in the Parisian suburbs’ (Daniel Cefaï et al. (eds.), Human Ecology: A Social Science of Living Environments, Créaphis, 2024).

At the same time, his passion for the mountains has brought him into contact with tales of exploration. He introduced and translated Matthew A. Henson’s *Diary of a Black Explorer at the North Pole* (Zones sensibles, 2020).

Charlotte Recoquillon is a geographer, holds a PhD in geopolitics and is a specialist in US affairs. Her research focuses in particular on police violence, racism and the Black Lives Matter movement. A lecturer at Sciences Po, she has published a book entitled *Harlem: A History of Gentrification* with Éditions de la MSH.