Exploring Christophe Guilluy's theory: France's urban elite versus the 'ordinary majority'

‘Can someone debate with Christophe Guilluy?’ asked socialist-leaning newspaper Libération in an article in October 2018, questioning his refusal to debate with the media and a portion of the academic world which challenged his theory.

Mr Guilluy is the theoretician of ‘La France Péripherique’ (Peripheral France), the title of his landmark book released in 2014.It states that France is divided between the elites; affluent people in urban centres, ultra-connected and occupying the most prestigious jobs in politics, academics and arts; and the ‘ordinary majority’, mid- to small-town working-class France. 

That divide is insidiously orchestrated by this elite, spoon-fed with virtue-signalling and cool-kid aura, that follows the textbook of neoliberal economics. They have seceded from the base, he suggests, breaking the social contract agreement.

Both camps represent the winners and losers of globalisation, he argues.

‘Le crépuscule de la France d'en haut’, his next essay, was translated into ‘Twilight of the Elites’ (Yale University Press) and released in Great Britain and the United States in 2019, a book that ‘will make you fret and question your moral integrity’ wrote the Financial Times.

The Gilets Jaunes protests, Brexit and Trump’s first election happened in between these five years, giving his theory resounding resonance. 

Each of his subsequent books continued to explore – critics would say recycle – his ‘peripheral’ perspective of the country and Western society. But it also generated great controversy. 

In 2025, Mr Guilluy is nowhere to be seen in left-leaning newspapers, radio or TV shows which have seemed to answer ‘No’ to the question Libération asked in 2018.

He appears, however, in newspapers catering to liberal-right, souverainistes (nationalist) and populist audiences such as Le Figaro, Marianne or Sud Radio.

The Connexion spoke with him as another of his books, ‘The Dispossessed: The Working Classes and Their Instinct For Survival’ was translated and released last August.

The Connexion asked in which camp our readers were; winners or losers of globalisation, dispossessed or the dispossessors, immigrants or expats?

You released ‘Métropolia et Périphéria : Un voyage extraordinaire’ last February, trying out the fable form. Do you really think that in 2025, in the era of Big Tech and autofiction, that a work of fiction can convince readers?

It is precisely the most effective method. I have been reaching a wider audience. What remains of past centuries? Literature, theatre, and fables. This is the paradox of today's society. We have never had access to so much information, but these figures make reality invisible. The figures alone are not enough to say precisely what is happening today.

We are experiencing a war of representations. ‘La France Périphérique’ fractured the image that Metropolia, people from academic, intellectual and political worlds, were making of the country.

The current economic model, forged in the 1980s, creates wealth but does not make society. It has left aside a socio-cultural continuum of a majority of French people that now counts as the cemetery of Western middle-class. The working and middle-class no longer live where jobs are created. This is unique in recent history.

It is striking to read ‘La France Périphérique’ in 2025. You mentioned the ‘Bonnets rouges’ in Brittany, then the latest form of protest, but almost anticipated what would become the ‘Gilets Jaunes’.

There was a mechanical effect to it. You cannot make society that way. Trickle-down economics does not work. Even Joe Biden admitted it in a speech in April 2021. The protests show that the same sociology of people, from the same territories, has been represented over the last 30 years.

Nothing has been done for two reasons: First, the academic world did not see it because they did not have the right maps. The insurmountable horizon was the metropolis. Then there is cultural warfare.

The working class used to have a cultural representation by the past, through literature in politics or in movies. Being part of the elite was not a problem. De Gaulle embodied the French hyper-bourgeoisie but he fundamentally loved the French people. This gave rise to the post-war reindustrialisation, the development of Brittany, etc. Jean Renoir, son of the painter Auguste Renoir or the French hyper-elite, praised the working class in La Bête humaine, released in 1938. He drew inspiration from the soul of the French people.

French cinema is about empty seats nowadays. That is the reality. These populations, what I call the ordinary majority, no longer have someone representing them.

You told Le Monde: "I came to the conclusion that I did not want to publish the same figures, compile the same data again. We know where it leads us." Where does that lead? Blindness?

This is the essential point explaining the collapse of the West. It is neither China, India or Islam. The upper classes have turned their backs on their hinterland. They are disconnected. They live in what Thatcher called the ‘No Society’ a society of panels.The Gilets Jaunes were the exact opposite of this. And what did Emmanuel Macron do? He made the movement invisible by organising panel meetings. He met with rural people, then single women, young people from the suburbs, etc. All this says nothing about what society is.

Your fable tells of a revolt of ‘Peripheria’. Do you want to tell Peripheria that such a thing is possible?

It is mechanical, I told you. Western Europe, like the United States, has collapsed. Here are two figures to prove my point: France borrows €750 million per day on the financial markets. Second, the industry accounts for 11% of the GDP. Our economic model no longer works. This is the observation made by Trump and Biden’s teams and why they push for reindustrialisation. A country that no longer produces anything is a dead country.

This is where the country should go as well. France was incapable of producing masks and Doliprane during Covid. This alone is an absolute catastrophe.

Are we already witnessing the end of Metropolia?

Completely. The proof is that 100,000 Parisians leave Paris and 200,000 leave Île-de-France every year. Brexit also says this. It is not just a problem with the European Union.

What is your opinion on #LesGueux movement [which opposes low emission zones] of writer Alexandre Jardin?

The movement of Les Gueux is the latest form of Peripheria. It is a cycle that comes in waves. The waves come back again and again because jobs have not come back, students still cannot go to the nearest big town university, public services are barely maintained. Everything comes from the grassroots, the underground.

Are our readers dispossessing or being dispossessed? Are they the Corsicans who can no longer live on their island or the new colonists of the 21st century?

The answer lies within your question. Individuals have their own economic rationality. I buy a house in Dordogne because I can afford it, I cannot afford it in Great Britain, and it is nicer to live in France. I have no problem with that. But at what cost? The territories we are talking about are economically weak (Corrèze, Creuse, Nièvre, Dordogne). When you have substantial income, of course, you can make the best residential choices. There is an invisible social violence that is never questioned.

What I observe along the entire Atlantic coastline is that people born in these territories can no longer live there. Young people in their mid-20s find themselves having to buy in the 'retro-littoral', as it is called, to make way for the bourgeoisie from Bordeaux, Paris or Britain.

There is a show in Great Britain called 'A Place In The Sun.' Many of our readers want a bit of sun because they do not have a lot of it there…

‘A place in the sun' is what all retired French executives aspire to. People argue they support the economy. That is not false. But what type of jobs? You mentioned Sébastien Heurtevent, who kept his tiling business afloat during the 2008 crisis thanks to the British who were renovating their houses, but I know factory women who today are cleaners for Parisian-owned coastal Airbnbs.

We are seeing an exploitation of the local population and the 'get out of the way so I can take your place' logic that has been the market logic since the 1980s.

A large part of our readers are gentrifiers. Is that what you are saying?

Of course they are. Paris was a working-class city when I was born there. The entire private housing stock has been gentrified. All of this has been done without violence. It is a steamroller without any counter power. That counter power should have been about generating wealth.In small French villages, wealth comes from factories or people with significantly high purchasing power. It is the economic weakness of these territories that makes them vulnerable to gentrification and speculation. It is an unstoppable market logic.

"France is not an Excel spreadsheet," you said. Getting government data on the number of English and Americans in France has been a struggle for us. Does this surprise you?

The same goes for Great Britain or the United States (laughs). It does not surprise me. It is a grey area. It is like the difference between primary and secondary residences. These are also very mobile populations who can be registered in their country of origin. It is difficult to grasp. The figures you give me – 200,000 to 250,000 British and 35,000 to 50,000 Americans – are underestimated, I think.

Are our readers immigrants or expats?

(Laughs) Rather expats. The vast majority of immigration in France is economic, which is not the case for your readers where it is chosen, out of affluence so to speak. They have a foot in France but going back is not complicated. With or without Brexit.

I do not know the origin of readers who settled in Dordogne, Creuse, Corrèze, etc. Those I know come from London. They call themselves Londoners, not British. Just as Parisians define themselves as Parisians before saying they are French. These are what I call metropolitans. The world of ordinary people does not exist for them. If there were to be a secession, why would they not join it? Was there not Londependence [ in favour of full-fledged independence for Greater London] recently?

What I mean is that by culturally homogenising these spaces, we have created, over three or four generations, people who live in a bubble. We are at a moment when the intelligentsia is in a state of astonishment with what is happening; Brexit and the MAGA movement being the two most prominent examples.

A blue dot in a red ocean…

It is society itself. It is a mistake to consider it a marginal protest. It is simply American society wanting to become American society again. The intelligence of JD Vance was to address the American working class, regardless of race. What is this movement? It is society itself. It is the American way of life, what I call the soul of a nation.

Do our readers belong to what you call the soul of the French people? To what extent do the English and Americans regenerate France?

They regenerate a territory since, in fact, there is activity. I think it is very marginal anyway. Economic regeneration, the only question to be asked, will not come from a handful of British or Americans.

British and Americans should not have fingers pointed at them anyway. Small French villages are suffering from the Potemkin village phenomenon, which is an importation of a metropolitan vision.From the point of view of Metropolia, all the territories of Peripheria, at best, should resemble Potemkin. It is absolutely absurd. It is a tourist vision, an image, created by the Parisians themselves.Paradoxically, the majority of people now live in the department where they were born. Why? Because the big city is now economically inaccessible. This idea of the Potemkin village clearly shows that the elites do not understand that it is the country that is at stake, and not its margins.

Stéphane Bern, in 2013, said that ‘France is an open-air museum’.

France is precisely not an open-air museum. It is very beautiful. There is magnificent architecture, extraordinary villages. But there are people.