"In this study, Sophie Body-Gendrot provides a comparative anlaysis of new types of welfare and social maintenance policies of states and of cities in charge of strategic functions in the global economy. Focusing on concrete urban settings in the USA and in France, the book examines the relationship between national and local decision-makers, including their policy rhetorics meant to check moral panics over juvenile crime and violent events. Beyond such institutional responses, it examines the production of alternative norms and of new forms of politics displayed by the powerless in marginalized neighborhoods."--Jacket.