Fariz Allili looked out at the decaying tower blocks he calls the "ghetto". Grafitti cakes his entrance hall, there is no heating, the lift has been broken for months and unemployed youths loiter with nothing to do.Well, clearly they lack the skills to fdo anything about the heating or the lifts, but if they wanted to make a start, why not clean up that graffiti? Since they have 'nothing to do'?
Five years ago these estates in Clichy-sous-Bois on the edge of Paris exploded in riots that spread across France and led to a state of national emergency. The trigger for the violence was the death of two young boys electrocuted in a power substation while hiding from police.Really? Are we sure it wasn't the pitiless Western society that forced them to...
Aha!
But the root cause was the hopelessness of a generation of young French people, ghettoised in dismal suburbs, marginalised and jobless because of their skin colour or their parents' immigrant origins.Whew! For a minute there, I wasn't sure if I really was reading the 'Guardian'...
But the president's anti-immigrant stance, aimed at securing him votes from the extreme-right Front National, is not so much about newcomers. It is about French society's problems coming to terms with its own diverse make-up.It's 'diverse make-up'? Isn't that quite a recent phenomenon?
When Angela Merkel declared that multiculturalism in Germany had "utterly failed", some saw it as a vindication of the French integrationist approach. Under the republican model, multiculturalism is seen as taboo. In France, once a French citizen you leave cultural and ethnic differences at the border and are theoretically seamlessly assimilated into the republic. Everyone is equal before a state that is blind to colour, race and religion.In other words, quite the opposite to the UK, where diversity is celebrated and enforced by printing of all council leaflets in a multitude of languages, and the proliferation of quangos and fakecharities ensures that no-one need consider themselves 'English' or 'British'.
And things are no better, are they?
Welcome to Clichy-sous-Bois; twinned with Leeds...
Despite an outcry about the urban riots, some racially diverse estates in Clichy-sous-Bois still face over 40% unemployment for the under-25s. A recent study of French citizens with immigrant parents found that they suffered higher unemployment, fared worse at school and faced more discrimination than other French people. Over a third felt society did not accept them as being French.And they are getting worse:
Another leaked report for the prime minister's office warned of a "ghetto effect" in some schools where integration had failed and children were identifying more with religion and immigrant roots than being French.Sound familiar? It does to me:
Paradoxically these second- and third-generation French children, raised and schooled in the republican tradition, were less integrated than their often semi-literate immigrant grandparents who came from north and sub-Saharan Africa, Asia or southern Europe to work on building sites after the second world war.
7 comments:
Don't you just love that - create a "diverse makeup" and then moan when it all goes wrong.
Just goes to show that no matter how many laws you create or or how little it's not the government that can make immigration work - it's society. If the society isn't ready for it then no government fiddling will ever make it work. Immigration in dribs and drabs with the immigrants integrated as they come in would work a lot better than a mass immigration event where the immigrants end up in their own ghettos reproducing their original life.
"Over a third felt society did not accept them as being French"
Hmmm... would that be because the 'newcomers' themselves don't see themselves as being part of the host country? The overriding feature of most immigrants, especially from islum, is to despise the country they are in and not be part of it.
If people say you don't belong it's because of the signals you have already sent.
"Over a third felt society did not accept them as being French"
Anecdotal I know but, of the French people I have discussed this with, not one accepts the subjects of this article as being French. Funnily enough, the same applies to my British friends over here vis-a-vis our own immigrants (or "Britons" as the BBC insists on describing them). Accordingly, I suspect that not only are they failing to integrate, but if two thirds of the immigrants perceive that they are accepted as French I think that they would be disappointed with the reality of their position.
And yet if you stay in Paris and go to the 13eme arrondisement, around the Place de l'Italie you will find tens of thousands of perfectly well assimilated immigrants, eager to take advantage of their opportunities to get an education, get ahead and prosper in French society. You won't be surprised to learn that they are Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian.
Some years ago I had to do an insurance survey on a small block of flats - only 2 years old. All occupants were of the religion that must not be named and most of them were professional people.
Five of the eight flats needed total refurbishment because the carpets in the living rooms had been ripped up to allow cooking fires to be set in the middle of the, fortunately, concrete floor. Needles to say the owner of the block was not amused.
Why those people imported their ways into the country rather than staying at home I never worked out.
"...create a "diverse makeup" and then moan when it all goes wrong."
Indeed! But they never suffer from it themselves, do they?
"...it's not the government that can make immigration work - it's society."
Spot on!
"...would that be because the 'newcomers' themselves don't see themselves as being part of the host country? "
I suspect that's a good part of it, actually.
"...if two thirds of the immigrants perceive that they are accepted as French I think that they would be disappointed with the reality of their position."
A depressing thought!
"You won't be surprised to learn that they are Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian."
No, I certainly wouldn't! I guess they must be unique in some way, despite being totally different cultures themselves.
"Five of the eight flats needed total refurbishment because the carpets in the living rooms had been ripped up to allow cooking fires to be set in the middle of the, fortunately, concrete floor."
!!!
Mind you, my grandfather - who worked in some very grand London hotels - had similar horror stories to tell of Saudi princes rolling in money yet unfamiliar with the workings of the modern, ummm, convenience! Hair raising....
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