This article takes another look at contemporary stereotypes concerning banlieues and peri-urban zones in France. Both of them are often treated as homogeneous entities cut off from the cultural, political, and social dynamics of other urban areas. At present, stereotypes of banlieues reduce them to lawless, “no-go zones”: ghettos that have always existed, as if they were natural essences that are, by definition, suprahuman. Peri-urban zones, for their part, are viewed only as territories marked by their uniformity, banality, vulgarity, and ecological carelessness; their archaeological monotony is embodied by the figure of the “pavillon” or tract home. It is thus important for field research to rehabilitate these banlieues and peri-urban zones, and to depict them in all of their complexity.