Chapter 8: Bartering for Belongings: Ethnic Trade in Belleville, Paris

This chapter considers contested belonging through the prism of ethnic shops and goods in Belleville, a migrant neighbourhood in Paris. In France, the ethnic makeup of cities is at the heart of debates over who belongs and who is excluded, and in the context of terrorist attacks and the rise of the far right, much has been written about the deprived suburbs, the disadvantaged second- and third-generation immigrants and the specificities of an integration model that struggles to recognize its citizens’ multiple affiliations.

Belleville is a multicultural district in the tenth arrondissement. Situated in the poorer, northeastern part of the city, it has functioned for over a century as an arrival neighbourhood for successive waves of migrants. Many of these newcomers have set up shop in Belleville, opening a range of bazaars that provide a wide variety of goods at cut prices. This chapter takes a closer look at these bazaars and the products they sell, while reflecting on new ways of belonging in a multicultural setting. More specifically, it examines how the bazaar traders and shopkeepers are brokering novel forms of belonging and challenging the dominant discourse of French identity, calling into question the states’ prescriptive model of national belonging and its secular foundations.