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

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 19th 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 FélixPyat, 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.