Following widespread looting sprees and acts of violence occurring on the sidelines of the October 17 student protests, so-called “casseurs” seem to be the centre of attention. But the term, which comes from the French verb casser or “to break”, poses more questions than answers. The sociologist Paolo Stuppia examines the unprecedented situation many cities across France are having to contend with, and the complex combination of collective action whose motivations are unclear and the social media’s extreme agility.The Conversation: How unprecedented are the scenes of looting that we witnessed on the sidelines of the October 17 demonstrations?Paolo Stuppia: What may be unprecedented is the extent of the destruction of private property and the goods that have been stolen. It should be clear, however, that not all the looters can necessarily be sorted into identifiable groups, at least politically.Indeed, as the politician Xavier Crettiez, the sociologist Isabelle Sommier and the historian François Audigier emphasised in 2021 in their joint project Violences politiques en France, the targets of acts of violence that are considered to be politically motivated can be determined both by technical constraints and the militant culture of the people involved. Let us recall Italy in the 1970s when autonomous activists spoke of “self-reduction” (the act of seizing goods or essential services), Maoists in France spoke of proletarian reappropriation. Their raid on Fauchon’s luxury grocery store on place de la madeleine and the redistribution of goods to slums and workers’ hostels that ensued went down in history as their biggest claim to fame.Can we go as far as to say that the October 17 looting sprees were politically motivated? Even if we do not have all the details concerning the profiles of the people arrested, videos posted on social media and stolen goods being resold online tend to rule out the idea. That said, at least some of the targets were chosen haphazardly. While some are symbols of capitalism, like luxury stores, insurance companies, banks, multinationals, others included a number of more localised stores, small shops selling toys or video games; for example, which are rarely targets for such incidents.If, especially since the alter-globalisation movement, we have seen the emergence of damage to property, primarily targeting symbols of capitalism and multinationals, in particular; this phenomenon goes hand in hand with “off the cuff” incidents by groups without any political affiliation, who join demonstrations to “get in on the act” in such a way that we are unable to determine whether it’s just a way of letting off steam or if it’s driven by a goal of redistributing goods – this weekend we witnessed some scenes of goods being redistributed, such as food being given to the homeless.What do we know about casseurs’ profiles? When did they appear in the demonstrations and when did the term first appear in the media?P.S.: Historically, the first research article on the casseur phenomenon can be traced back to the sociologist Gwenola Ricordeau. In France in the 1990s, as was the case during the student and high school movement of 1998, Ricordeau noticed that young people came to demonstrations to commit acts of vandalism or to mug people without having anything to do with the causes behind protest movements. They were driven by opportunism and also a desire to break up the monotony of everyday life.The fact of disqualifying people by designating them as “criminals on the street” therefore ultimately leads us to riot-like phenomena, with or without the “looting” element, which are part of the continuity of “suburban revolt” or “city riots” which have gradually developed in working-class neighbourhoods since the second half of the 1970s. As we demonstrated alongside the sociologist Valérie Becquet in our book Géopolitique de la jeunesse, it forms a collection of pejorative and disqualifying terms pertaining to a so-called “dangerous youth”.The term “casseur”, along with the derogatory term “racaille”, an old French term meaning rabble for example, widely resonated in the language of the media during the 2005 unrest to refer to a lumpenproletariat of young people who attacked both police and vandalised private property and a number of public services and property or street furniture, but whose actions were void of any political meaning. October 17 mass protest movement: who are the casseurs? (France 24, October 2026, don’t forget to activate dubbing or subtitiles in English). If we take the theory of labelling, we can understand that the term “casseurs” is linked to the stigma attached to young people from working-class neighbourhoods. But there can also be a second meaning: the phenomena in which France’s Mouvance autonome (a movement drawing its influences from anarchism and situationism) that sets itself apart), is involved in scenes of outbreaks of violence and damage to property, even harm targeting individuals. However, we should first note that the movement has a history of claiming responsibility for its actions. The casseur stigma is also turned around and sometimes used with self-derision.In 2006, during the protests over contrat première embauche or first job contract law, there were tensions between those who said “we aren’t” or “we don’t want casseurs”, others who said, “it’s the government and the employers – they are the casseurs”. And it was in this context that a banner that appeared in Rennes (in western France), ended up in Paris, claiming: “We are all casseurs.” As if to recognise the term for what it is: a historically vague label, covering different realities, and that the media has invited to every protest movement without fail over the past 30 years.It’s a bit like the expression “black bloc”: “casseurs” is used to refer to people who resort to techniques that are out of order or who conjure up a considerable cause for concern among a certain part of public opinion, and yet the term remains very vague and is easily instrumentalised.How is social media a gamechanger for law enforcement?P.S.: There is a clear difference between fairly structured protest movements, even in an informal way, and the much more spontaneous use of social networks to stage action among young and very young people, such as filming themselves wearing football shirts as they leave Paris’ Place de la République.We are facing a generation that is demonstrating a certain digital agility. There is a proliferation of platforms. In the days of the yellow vests, we were still largely using tools that came from the Internet of the 2000s, whether it was Instagram, Facebook, a bit of messaging, but not that much, and also Twitter. What we are now seeing is a new wave of social networks in action, with tools also designed to reduce control, like Snapchat, or Telegram, where content is extremely short-lived.The question would then be: how do we adapt to these new ways of using social media? There is also the phenomenon of loops, which are difficult to infiltrate, with people who move very quickly and provide real-time support for those involved in the movements, on a rather confidential level. One of the hypotheses would be that, in this case, law enforcement is a bit helpless.There is a quickfire of information, several levels of conversation, with public and private chatrooms, and more or less restricted groups. These real-time conversations are much more difficult to apprehend. Beyond messages that rapidly disappear on Snapchat, for example, a whole set of parameters specific to this universe must be taken into account: profiles feature scores related to the person’s activity; anyone who infiltrates is therefore almost immediately identifiable.The combination of extremely agile social media and protesters’ mobility is very difficult to control. An example of this was the youth movements in Hong Kong in 2019-2020, which caused a lot of trouble for the authorities, even though it involved a police force with a tutelary government that could still be called authoritarian. Even they struggled to control the groups of young demonstrators operating via social networks, committing fragmented acts, with ten people in one place, ten at another, dispersing quickly. It makes you wonder how much of an information time lapse we are contending with . But that will be up to the parliamentary commission of inquiry to work out.Interview by Aurélie Djavadi. A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!Paolo Stuppia ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.