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THE RECENT VICTORY OF THE 2018 Soccer World Cup by France brought back the debate on national identity in France, especially with regards to the letter of the French ambassador to the US, addressed to Trevor Noah, the South African political commentator and host of the Daily Show, a satirical news program aired in the United States. We are also familiar with the polemic recently orchestrated by Eric Zemmour, a French journalist, which stemmed from the attack of Hapsatou Sy, another French journalist of African descent, about the ways in which her first name was an insult to France. After releasing the segment of the censored live show where Zemmour was attacking her, Hapsatou Sy began to receive racist threats, including being asked to return to her tree (the reference here to monkeys is very telling). Both the polemic between Trevor Noah and the French ambassador to the US after the Soccer world cup with regards to Noah’s referring to the players’ African descent, and the attacks on Hapsatou Sy reveal a profound unease in France with regards to national identity. This debate that resurfaces on the Frenchness is both suggestive and revealing of a serious tension in France with regards to its citizens of African descent, with ancestry both in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. As a matter of fact, in 2005, France was struck by violence in the cités, the projects on the outskirts of French cities that are populated mainly by African migrants and their offspring. The purpose of this essay is, first, to trace back the tale of African presence in France to show that while immigration is characterized by the paradox of invitation and rejection, there is an amalgamation or better a mingling between immigration and citizenship in contemporary France. Second, analyzing the social, political as well as historical conditions for urban riots in the French public housing projects in the last three decades, it is to shed light on the ways in which not only have the banlieues become a primary site for the replication of colonial rules (urban segregation, laws of exception to name but a few), but they also stand out as that space which, while contained within the State, represents the most feared threat...