Zaâma d'Banlieue was a female-led collective for immigrant youth in the suburbs of Lyon, France which existed between 1979 and 1984. The four founding leaders were Djida Tazdaït (born in 1957), Tim (born in 1959), Nadia (born in 1960) et Farida (born in 1954), and were all either of Algerian origin or nationality and lived in Lyon's suburbs. Zaâma d'Banlieue became officially registered under the acronym the "Youth Expression Association" (Association expression jeunes immigrés) on 19 October 1982.
Zaâma d'Banlieue denounced police abuse and violence and was engaged in feminism within the family and social circles. Zaâma d'Banlieue aimed to spark self-organization among youth within Lyon's suburbs.
The collective was dissolved during the 'National Conferences of Youth Associations of Immigrant Origins' (Assises nationales des associations de jeunes issus de l'immigration) between 9 and 11 June 1984 in Villeurbanne and Vaulx-en-Velin.
Origins
National context
The experience of North Africans in France during the late 1970s and 1980s was characterized by racism and extreme violence. Recurrent issues during these decades were racial killings, implicated both by civilian and police brutality.
Launch
Growing up in the backdrop of the aftermath of the Algerian war, the future founders of Zaâma d'Banlieue experienced strong discrimination in their childhoods. While females with a Maghreb immigration background were at the time not with many in French secondary education, the collective's leaders pioneered in high school where they familiarised themselves with the political extreme left, anarchism, and liberalism.
Djida Tazdaït, Tim, Nadia, and Farida were all of Algerian origin or nationality and lived in Lyon's suburbs in the 1980s. The women knew each other before setting up the collective, as they were active and present within similar cultural and activist circles in the Croix-Rousse district and together attended rock concerts in Lyon. Nadia in 2009 stated to have met the other founders through mutual friends when arriving in Lyon between 1980 and 1981. Djida Tazdaït referred to their initial encounters having taken place during a series of meetings with Informations Rassemblées à Lyon (I.R.L., at the time an anti-expulsion committee) which are estimated to have taken place in 1979 on 13 rue Pierre-Blanc.
Influenced by two distinct events, the four women decided to create the collective. Firstly, the death of Lahouri, a 17-year old teenager who was assassinated by a policeman during an identity control, sparked outrage within the women's local networks. Second, familiarising themselves with Rock Against Police (a group of young immigrants advocating for a degree of autonomy in the struggle in the suburbs of Paris) further confirmed and encouraged the leaders' desire to advocate in the suburbs of Lyon.
Because there was no specific meeting or event that marked off the official launch of the collective, the exact date of Zaâma d'Banlieue's birth is unclear. The commencement of the collective's activities and the leaders' meetings are in various accounts suggested to have taken place between 1979 and 1983. Formerly involved activists, for instance, associate the collective's coming-into-being with their involvement in a hunger strike against the Imbert Decree in early 1980, while others refer to 19 November 1980 when a wave of arrests took place in the neighborhood of Place Gabriel-Péri (Place Gabriel-Péri).
In an interview in 1981, Djida emphasized that with respect to the initiations of youth mobilizations in the suburbs, Lyon was different from Paris and Marseille, because in Lyon there was indeed no vital sudden event that served activist movements' launches as a 'trigger':
"A Marseille et à Paris, il y a des morts, des lynchages, des interventions fascistes, ... Et ce sont des éléments comme ça qui sont intervenus pour révéler cette pratique, cette possibilité d'initiative des jeunes des banlieues... De révéler une force, en tous les cas. On a eu à l'analyser, à y réfléchir... et on n'a pas l'intention d'attendre sur la région qu'il y ait un mort ou un assassinat pour réagir ou s'organiser."
Throughout Zaâma d'Banlieue's livelihood and evolvement, the four women remained the collective's core and driving force.