麻豆传媒映画

鈥淐an someone debate with Christophe Guilluy?鈥� asked the socialist-leaning newspaper 尝颈产茅谤补迟颈辞苍 in a 2018 article, questioning his refusal to engage with the media and a portion of the academic world that has challenged his theories.

Mr Guilluy is a geographer and author of La France P茅riph茅rique (Peripheral France), his landmark 2014 book. He argues that France is divided between elites 鈥� affluent, urban, ultra-connected, and dominant, holding the most prestigious jobs in politics, academics and the arts 鈥� and the 鈥榦rdinary majority鈥�, the working classes of France鈥檚 mid-sized and smaller towns.

He argues that the elite sustains this divide by promoting free-market economics while embracing fashionable social attitudes. In his view, the divide pits the winners of globalisation against its losers.

From bestseller to controversy

The title of his book reflects his claim that the 鈥榦rdinary majority鈥� have been increasingly pushed to the periphery 鈥� into rural areas or outermost suburbs of cities. Le cr茅puscule de la France d鈥檈n haut, his next essay, was translated as Twilight of the Elites (Yale University Press) and released in the UK and US in 2019. The Financial Times described it as a book that 鈥渨ill make you fret and question your moral integrity.鈥�

The gilets jaunes protests, Brexit and Trump鈥檚 first election happened in between these five years, giving his theory resounding resonance. Each of his subsequent books continued to explore 鈥� critics would say recycle 鈥� his 鈥榩eripheral鈥� perspective of the country and Western society. They also generated great controversy.

No longer invited on the left

In 2025, Mr Guilluy is nowhere to be seen in left-leaning newspapers, radio or TV shows, which have seemed to answer 鈥楴o鈥� to the question 尝颈产茅谤补迟颈辞苍 asked in 2018. He does, however, appear in outlets catering to centre-right, nationalist, and populist audiences, such as Le Figaro, Marianne and Sud Radio.

The Connexion spoke with him as another of his books, The Dispossessed: The Working Classes and Their Instinct For Survival, was translated and released. 

This was in August, prior to the September 10 鈥�Bloquons tout鈥� protests and subsequent major union-led strikes and marches on September 18.

You released M茅tropolia et P茅riph茅ria: Un voyage extraordinaire last February, trying out the fable form. Do you really think that a work of fiction can convince readers?

It is precisely the most effective method. I have been reaching a wider audience. What remains of past centuries? Literature, theatre, and fables. This is the paradox of today鈥檚 society. We have never had access to so much information, but these figures make reality invisible. The figures alone are not enough to say precisely what is happening today. We are experiencing a war of representations. La France P茅riph茅rique fractured the image that Metropolia 鈥� people from academic, intellectual and political worlds 鈥� were the making of the country.

The current economic model, forged in the 1980s, creates wealth but does not make society. It has left aside a socio-cultural continuum of a majority of 麻豆传媒映画 that now counts as the cemetery of the Western middle class. The working and middle class no longer live where jobs are created. This is unique in recent history.

It is striking to read La France P茅riph茅rique in 2025. You mentioned the 鈥榖onnets rouges鈥� in Brittany, at the time the latest form of protest, but this anticipated what would become the gilets jaunes. 

There was an automatic effect to it. Trickle-down economics does not work. Even Joe Biden admitted it in a speech in April 2021. The same social group of people, from the same territories, has been represented in protests over the past 30 years.

Nothing has been done for two reasons. First, the academic world did not see it because they did not have the right maps. The insurmountable horizon was the metropolis. Then there is cultural warfare.

The working class used to have a cultural representation in the past, through literature in politics or in movies. Being part of the elite was not a problem. De Gaulle embodied the French hyper-bourgeoisie but he fundamentally loved the 麻豆传媒映画. This gave rise to the post-war reindustrialisation, the development of Brittany, etc.

Director Jean Renoir, son of the painter Auguste Renoir, of the French hyper-elite, praised the working class in La B锚te Humaine in 1938. He drew inspiration from the soul of the 麻豆传媒映画. French cinema is about empty seats nowadays. That is the reality. These populations, what I call the 鈥榦rdinary majority鈥�, no longer have someone representing them.

You told Le Monde: 鈥淚 came to the conclusion that I did not want to publish the same figures, compile the same data again. We know where it leads us.鈥� Where does it lead? Blindness? 

Yes. We are at a stage where society is invisible. Macron organises panels with rural people, then single women, young people from the suburbs, etc. All this says nothing about what society is.

Your fable tells of a revolt of 鈥楶eripheria鈥�. Do you want to tell Peripheria this is possible?

This is the essential point that explains the collapse of the West. It is neither China, India nor Islam. The upper classes have turned their backs on their hinterland. They are disconnected. They live in what Thatcher called the 鈥楴o Society鈥�. The gilets jaunes were the exact opposite of this.

And what did Emmanuel Macron do? He made the movement invisible by organising panel meetings. Western Europe, like the US, has collapsed. Here are two figures to prove my point. Firstly, France borrows 鈧�750 million per day on the financial markets. Secondly, industry accounts for 11% of GDP. Our economic model no longer works.

This is the observation made by Trump and Biden鈥檚 teams and why they push for reindustrialisation. A country that no longer produces anything is a dead country. France was incapable of producing masks and Doliprane during Covid. This alone is an absolute catastrophe.

Are we witnessing the end of Metropolia? 

Completely. The proof is that 100,000 Parisians leave Paris and 200,000 leave 脦le-de-France every year. Brexit also says this. It is not just a problem with the EU.

What is your opinion of the #LesGueux movement [opposing low emission zones]? 

The movement of Les Gueux is the latest expression of Peripheria 鈥� a cycle that comes in waves. These waves return again and again because jobs have not returned, students still lack access to the nearest university in the big town, and public services remain scarcely maintained. It all begins at the grassroots, emerging from the underground.

Are our readers dispossessing or being dispossessed? Are they like the Corsicans who can no longer live on their island, or new colonists of the 21st Century? 

The answer lies within your question.

Individuals have their own economic rationale. I buy a house in Dordogne because I can afford it; I cannot afford it in Great Britain, and it is nicer to live in France. 

I have no problem with that. But at what cost?

These territories, such as Corr猫ze, Creuse, Ni猫vre and Dordogne, face significant economic challenges. When you have substantial income, of course you can make the best residential choices. There is an invisible social violence that is never questioned.

What I observe along the entire Atlantic coastline is that people born in these territories can no longer live there. 

People in their mid-20s find themselves having to buy in the 鈥�谤茅迟谤辞-濒颈迟迟辞谤补濒鈥� [back country] to make way for the bourgeoisie from Bordeaux, Paris or Britain.

There is a show in Great Britain called A Place In The Sun. Many of our readers do not have a lot of it where they came from鈥� 鈥�

A place in the sun鈥� is what all retired French executives aspire to. People argue they support the economy. That is not false. But what type of jobs? You mentioned to me S茅bastien Heurtevent, who kept his tiling business afloat during the 2008 crisis thanks to the British who were renovating their houses, but I know factory women who today are cleaners for Parisian-owned coastal Airbnbs.

We are seeing an exploitation of the local population and a 鈥済et out of the way so I can take your place鈥� mindset that has been the market trend since the 1980s.

A large part of our readers are gentrifiers? 

Of course they are. Paris was a working-class city when I was born there. The entire private housing stock has been gentrified. All of this has been done without violence. It is a steamroller without anything to counterbalance it. That counterbalance should have been about generating wealth.

In small French villages, wealth comes from factories or people with significantly high purchasing power. It is the economic weakness of these territories that makes them vulnerable to gentrification and speculation. An unstoppable market logic.

"France is not an Excel spreadsheet,鈥� you said. Getting precise government data on the number of English and Americans in France is not easy. Does this surprise you? 

The same goes for Great Britain or the United States. It does not surprise me. It is a grey area. It is like the difference between primary and secondary residences. These are also very mobile populations who can be registered in their country of origin. It is difficult to grasp.

You told me you would estimate 200,000 to 250,000 British people and 35,000 to 50,000 Americans, but I feel that would be an underestimate.

Are our readers immigrants or expats? 

[Laughs] Rather expats. The vast majority of immigration in France is economic, which is not the case for your readers where it is chosen, out of affluence so to speak. They have a foot in France but going back is not complicated, with or without Brexit.

I do not know the origin of readers who settled in Dordogne, Creuse, Corr猫ze, etc. Those I know come from London. They call themselves Londoners, not British. Just as Parisians define themselves as Parisians before saying they are French. These are what I call 鈥榤etropolitans鈥�. The world of ordinary people does not exist for them.

If there were to be a secession, why would they not join it? Was there not a call for 鈥楲ondependence鈥� [in favour of full-fledged independence for Greater London] recently?

What I mean is that by culturally homogenising these spaces, we have created, over three or four generations, people who live in a bubble. We are at a moment when the intelligentsia is in a state of astonishment with what is happening; Brexit and the MAGA movement being the two most prominent examples.

In the US you might say there is a blue [Democratic, progressive] dot in a red [conservative] ocean. 

It is society itself. It is a mistake to consider it a marginal protest. It is simply American society wanting to become American society again. The cleverness of JD Vance was to address the American working class, regardless of race. What is this movement? It is society itself. It is the American way of life, the soul of a nation.

Do our readers belong to what you call the soul of France? To what extent can Britons and Americans regenerate the country? 

They regenerate a territory since, in fact, there is activity. But I think it is very marginal. Economic regeneration, the only real issue, will not come from a handful of Britons or Americans. But the Britons and Americans should not have fingers pointed at them anyway.

Small French villages are suffering from the 鈥楶otemkin village phenomenon鈥�, an importation of a metropolitan vision [a Russian minister was once said to have had fake painted village facades made along with people portraying happy peasants, hiding rural poverty on a visit by Catherine the Great to the countryside].

From the point of view of Metropolia, all the territories of Peripheria, at best, should resemble Potemkin villages. It is absurd. It is a tourist vision, an image, created by the Parisians.

Paradoxically, the majority of people now live in the department where they were born. Why? Because the big city is now economically inaccessible. The elites do not understand that it is the country that is at stake.

St茅phane Bern, in 2013, said that 鈥淔rance is an open-air museum鈥�. 

France is precisely not an open-air museum. It is very beautiful. There is magnificent architecture, extraordinary villages. But there are people too.