Migration, Displacement, and Violence: Prosecuting Romanian Street Children at the Paris Palace of Justice

This paper examines the displacement and vulnerability associated with the migration of unaccompanied illegal Romanian minors who came as economic migrants to Western Europe, found no legal opportunities for work or education, and were forced into criminal activity on the streets of French cities such as Paris, Lyon, and Nice. Beginning in 1997 growing numbers of unaccompanied Romanians, mostly boys, some as young as age ten, many younger than age 15, were subject to systematic prosecution rather than protection in Paris, the site of the largest and most influential juvenile court in the nation. They were arrested, detained, indicted, released pending trial, judged, and sentenced in absentia, multiple times with different identities. The Romanian minors were caught without legal papers or visas, claimed to be squatters living in abandoned buildings, trailers, or camps outside Paris, and gave little reliable information about their families or lives. Initially arrested for the destruction of city property and the theft of the proceeds from city parking meters, they gradually turned to begging, shoplifting, and prostitution when the city switched from coin to card payment. Deeply concerned by the penalization of a vulnerable population, the president of the Paris juvenile court created a special court to deal more humanely with unaccompanied minors in general, and Romanian children in particular, by establishing their identities and reconnecting them with their families. This article explores the contradictions that emerged between the representation of Romanian children in the media, the legal establishment, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the Government, on the one hand, and their treatment in the juvenile justice system, on the other. It examines the discourse and the context of judging as well as the interactions between court personnel and Romanian minors from in‐take interviews in jail and indictment hearings in chambers to judgment in absentia in the formal court. It compares and contrasts cases heard before and after the creation of the special court and centres on the gaps between official rhetoric, legal norms, and judicial practice. It concludes that the creation of the special court may be having the unintended effect of reinforcing and institutionalizing the very judicial practice it was designed to prevent, namely the penalization of marginality.