This report studies patterns of radicalisation within the French Islamist youth milieu since the 1980s in order to explore radicalisation in historic and spatial context. Based on the review and evaluation of existing literature and research data collected from the end of the 1980s to the middle of the 2010s, analysis is structured around two main sections: the first is dedicated to the historical background to the debate on Islam in the French context, with specific attention to the nature of the relationship between radical milieus, violent political groups and the broader social and political, including gender, environment; the second is focused on three research questions: i) What role do historical memory and ‘grievance’ or ‘humiliation’ narratives play within radical milieus and how does this shape radicalisation processes? ii) What roles have conspiracy theories and eschatological narratives played in radicalisation ‘waves’? iii) Under what circumstances have radical milieus contributed to escalation of violence? Given the frequent association of Islam with behavioural traits, attitudes, ideologies and forms of difference which are marginal to French society, identifying and analysing the major models of radicalisation, means we are confronted with an important issue: identifying in the most precise possible manner the elements which distinguish Islam from radical Islam. We have therefore attempted to update, chronologically, a fresco of the imagined image of radical Islam in France by examining two perspectives simultaneously. The first analyses how radical Islam became an issue for discussion and research as debate converged around a series of correlations between extremism and Islam associated with social phenomena such as ‘intégrisme’, fundamentalism, Islamism and Jihadism, etc.). This analytic perspective focuses on the evolution of understandings of the actors and rationales of radical Islam. The second endeavours to contextualise references to radical Islam (or the threat which it constitutes) in the wider debate on Islam in France. The first section thus highlights the political and media treatment of Islam in France, along with key moments of dialogue but, above all, tension between the Muslim population in France and the state, in which various perspectives on radical Islam emerge. From 1980 to 2020 an evolution in the models can be noted that tends towards a break with rational choice theories. From this point of view Islamist radicalisation might be seen less as a strategy associated with socio-political aims in contrast to the models of the 1980s, 1990s and beginning of the noughties than but instead from the standpoint of explanatory schemes varying considerably and extending from an emotional register to rationales of social protest, possibly involving pathological forms. In the second section, some of the major models identified are tested against the three questions mentioned above. Regarding the first question, in contrast to the ubiquitous presence of issues of injustice and humiliation, the question of the historical past is rarely present in radicalisation models, whether in the actors’ narratives or in the analyses of researchers. The second line of questioning is the role of eschatological narratives and conspiracy theories. While the former seem to occupy a central place in the forms of appropriation of radical Islam for many young people, the latter are more a subject of debate. On the third issue – that of the much debated and multifaceted question of violence - we identify, in the most recent radicalisation models, a shift from the definition of violence as a transition towards violent acts, to a definition of violence as a prediction or risk, which brings together (within the same model) individuals who may have very different profiles with regard to their relationship with violence.