Earlier this month, France’s second city suffered a pair of brutal killings that appeared to be the latest in a long list of tragedies inflicted by drug-related turf wars. In a place where groups have battled for years over highly coveted “points of sale”, many of them in the city’s impoverished northern neighbourhoods, the age of those involved in the latest killings was especially stomach-churning. The Marseille prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, described how following the recent gang killing of a 15-year-old, a 14-year-old had been hired to carry out a revenge killing. A prisoner had recruited the teenager, the prosecutor said, and “organised the logistics for him to be collected by car and brought to a hotel room in Marseille”. The 14-year-old then allegedly shot and killed the taxi driver, who had nothing to do with the drugs trade, for not waiting for him.
Unfortunately, grim stories such as these have become one of the big reasons Marseille makes headlines not just in France, but in the English-language press too. In addition to putting the spotlight on figures clamouring for more police authority and harsher prison sentences, they fuel a particular image of the port city in the rightwing imagination: Marseille as the ultimate symbol of French decline, a once-great metropolis torn asunder by decades of lawlessness and immigration that has become so dangerous it is now practically unliveable. Somehow, this reactionary fantasy hasn’t yet damaged a radically different image of the city gaining steam: Marseille as a promised land for twenty- and thirtysomethings seeking sunshine, natural beauty and just the right dose of urban “grit.”
These competing visions of the city are enough to make your head spin. But as with all cliches, the reality is far more complicated.
According to police, Marseille did see a record number of 49 drug-related killings in 2023, though the numbers are on track to be lower this year. And while the drug trade is indeed sweeping up younger participants, talk of “cartels” or an alleged “Mexicanisation” of the business is wildly off-base. As the award-winning author and chronicler of the city’s drug trade Philippe Pujol told me earlier this year, drug gangs in Marseille do not control production. Instead, they’re fighting over distribution in a local market. Forget about Pablo Escobar or El Chapo. The situation here is much closer to something out of The Wire: in scores of poor neighbourhoods lacking jobs and opportunities, the drug trade has filled the void, exploiting the labour of teenagers at the behest of a privileged few.
But perhaps a better way of considering the paradox of Marseille is to imagine one of those distorting mirrors at a carnival fun-house. Viewed from a certain angle, the city can indeed reflect an uglier version of France. It suffers from racialised social segregation, with poverty and drug violence concentrated far from the wealthiest areas. Basic public services can be unreliable or downright lacking, problems that could get worse as the French government prepares for an austerity budget with €40bn (£33bn) in spending cuts. Amid a dearth of jobs, the local economy relies heavily on tourism. The “war on drugs” is an unmitigated failure.
And yet, from a slightly different angle, Marseille can resemble a more attractive version of France. For one, it’s a place where people of different backgrounds do coexist. Despite the segregation, many Marseillais are accustomed to living among people who don’t look or talk like they do. This is the legacy of a port city with a long history of welcoming visitors and newcomers from abroad: from Italy, Armenia and the Maghreb in particular, but also from west Africa and the Comoros in more recent years.
It may not be a giant melting pot, but the sheer diversity encountered by residents over the years has forged a certain kind of tolerance. “It’s a city that’s very welcoming for people who arrive from wherever,” Driss Benattia, 58, the son of Algerian immigrants who grew up in the Cité Busserine, a housing project in the northern neighbourhoods, told me. “It’s a city that allows for you to have a place in it so long as you adopt it. If you adopt Marseille, you’ll be adopted by Marseille.”
As Benattia pointed out, affordability is another closely related historical benefit. “Even if you didn’t have a lot, you could always figure out a way to get by,” recalled the musician and handyman of his younger days. “You could find a place somewhere to live and to survive.” Rents are inching up, but the average rental price in Marseille is still half the level it is in Paris, and remains on the lower side when compared with other big French cities.
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That open-minded spirit and relative inexpensiveness go a long way to explaining why Marseille has attracted a spate of new arrivals over the past several years, including creative professionals such as chefs, artists, musicians and writers. (For the sake of full disclosure, I could be considered part of that cohort, having fled Paris two years ago, in part for the aforementioned reasons.) This newer wave of transplants has fuelled the city’s trendy aura, no doubt contributing to a rise in housing prices in the process.
But something else seems to explains Marseille’s appeal: France is arguably the most centralised country in western Europe, and in the capital, cultural production is highly stratified and highly codified, staffed by gatekeepers whose influence spans the worlds of politics and business. Looking back into the distorted mirror, Marseille seems to offer another path forward. Shouldn’t the barriers to entry for hopeful artists be lower? Shouldn’t people be able to create without the snobbish gaze of those who think they’ve figured everything out? Shouldn’t France just be more decentralised in general?
I had initially approached Benattia for this story because he is the most Marseillais person I know, and was hoping he would wax poetic about his home town. But then he shared the terrible news: his nephew, Nessim Ramdane, was the taxi driver killed in the crime that recently shocked the city. “It always seems like it’s far off until you’re directly concerned,” he said.
When I asked what he thought of all the calls to beef up law enforcement, Benattia said he was sceptical. “We’re going to talk about policing and quickly turn the page. And then it’ll be vive l’OM [the football team Olympique de Marseille], vive Marseille with all its parties and festivals, but the root of the problem isn’t addressed. If you don’t take care of the wound, then it gets infected again.”
Beyond the fantasies and projections, Marseille is a poor city in dire need of investment and another approach to the failed war on drugs. Unfortunately, it appears France is moving in the wrong direction on both fronts.
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Cole Stangler is a journalist based in Marseille and the author of Paris Isn’t Dead Yet
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