pp. 111-153

Based on a decade of victimisation and insecurity surveys by the Institut d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la region Île-de-France (Development and Planning Institute of the Île-de-France Region), the article explores how exposure to victimisation and sense of insecurity variously combine across a range of urban spaces. Each of these two dimensions responds to a different rationale. Exposure to victimisation varies according to place of residence : people living in Paris and the city’s immediate northern outskirts are at relatively high risk ; those living in the rest of the region are at lower risk. Feelings of insecurity work differently, as they seem chiefly related to social status : persons endowed with multiple resources (educational, occupational, financial…) show no concern about insecurity issues : whether at risk or not, they never hold crime as a major issue. Conversely, concern about crime is the lot of working and lower middle classes, although it affects them differently depending on whether respondents live in the immediate working-class outskirts of Paris or at the outer reaches of the Île-de-France region.