French student protests: 'Illiberal' Macron govt dismisses social movement as 'urban violence'

To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: © France 24 09:36 Issued on: 02/11/2026 - 19:07Modified: 02/11/2026 - 19:09 Jennie Shin is pleased to welcome Éric Fassin, Sociologist and Professor at Université Paris 8. “In a democracy, elections are very important, but it’s not the end of democracy. It’s the beginning,” explains Fassin. He interprets France’s student protest movement growing into a challenge to socioeconomic policy and what he describes as an “illiberal turn” in government. Connecting the treatment of working-class, racialized youth with wider restrictions on dissent, he argues that racism and democratic participation are central to understanding the unrest. His analysis also challenges the attribution of responsibility to the left, placing the government’s response within a broader debate over the normalization of oppressive measures and the far right. Video content Video Middle East Video content Video Europe Video content Video Middle East Video cont...