Quelle place pour les flâneuses dans les banlieues françaises?

The flâneur was born at the same time as the modern metropolis. This initially male only figure underwent progressive feminisation in the 20th century as women took possession of the urban space. To become “flâneuses”, women had to be able to observe the city in an autonomous way, become the artist’s doppelgangers, and walk the city alone, exposing themselves to others’ gaze and keeping themselves ready to interact with the unknown. If the conditions of a female flâneur are not always present in the city, they are even less to find in the predominantly working class suburbs marked by successive waves of immigration from North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Can the female flâneur have a rightful place in deprived suburban areas where a stronger male domination has forced women to limit their outings and adopt more traditional female roles? This article looks at mobility of young female characters of Maghrebi descent in three novels by Faïza Guène, Habiba Mahany and Cloé Korman in order to explore the limits of female mobility in today’s French banlieues which find their literary echo in contemporary « banlieue novels ».