Emilie Dubois :

What is the issue ?

I’m going to talk about a major social issue in France which

kind of often lead to a debate every year since a while now :

immigrants integration. Immigration is a recurrent topic in a lot of 

countries, especially at the approach of elections like it is right

now the case in France. Policies and regulations are usually

attempted to be enforced in order to satisfy people concerns

about (among other things) high unemployment rate and

security.

Indeed, it is not rare for example in a time of economic crisis to

hear complaints about the immigrants, as if they were responsible

for the high percentage of unemployed people or the increasing

level of criminality and violence in some urban regions. Some

people strongly believe and spread the word that immigrants are

stealing jobs from the unemployed french population and that

they are also committing most of the crimes that we can hear on

the news. I am not saying that these are complete false

statements, just that they should not be considered as obviously

true in each and every problem that the society may encounter.

People also fear that newcomers with different languages,

religions, and cultures are reluctant to assimilate to French

society and to learn french. Actually, statistics show that almost

40% immigrant students can’t graduate from school because they

can’t achieve what they’re expected to do and in most of the

cases, they can’t even speak french. But can we really blame

them for not accessing to a better education ?

What are the effects on the society (or individuals) ?

Especially in time of crisis, people tend to reject strangers or,

 

let’s say roughly, anything different from what they’re used to in

their daily life.

From this behavior against immigrants (as well as second

generation immigrants who supposedly are actual french

citizens), we can observe a frustration among youngsters,

particularly among the ones living in what is commonly called

“banlieues” (which literally means “suburbs”, in this particular

context you should understand it as an euphemism to describe

low-income housing projects - HLM - in which mainly French of 

foreign descent or foreign immigrants reside, especially around

Paris, but also some other large French cities).

This can also be considered as a serious urban problem which

would have supposedly started in the 1960s. Back in that time the

French government developed huge public housing programs in

the suburbs of most of the big cities ; the architecture was ugly

but it was an emergency because of the arrival of so many

immigrants, among them almost one million of “Pieds-Noirs "

(French people living in Algeria and expelled in 1962, during the

country revolution). Progressively all the people who could afford

to live somewhere else have left and it led, more than forty years

later, to large urban areas where everybody is poor,

unemployment reaches 20% or more and buildings are poorly

maintained and most often vandalized.

We know now since the 2005 civil unrest in France of October

and November*, that all this pressure and neglecting can lead to

some harmful and/or desperate behaviors from this part of the

population, such as burning cars, drug or weapons trafficking…

* (Series of riots, considered as ethnical with a strong

economical and social dimension, mainly led by young

immigrants who are mostly unemployed, school leavers, who

believe that they have no place in a society where poverty

continues to increase while large industrial companies are

 

regularly earning more and more profits.)

Is there any proposed solutions ?

Fortunately, politics are trying to promote constructive

solutions that will advance the economic mobility and social

inclusion of immigrants. For example, the use of “positive

discrimination” (also known as “affirmative action” and “reverse

discrimination”) has been spread in the last years. This highly

controversial concept basically mean that the government

allowed some policies and practices to favor groups (mainly

ethnic groups and women) who have historically experienced

disadvantages (usually in the fields of employment and

education).

Also, I believe that the french government will try to keep

avoiding communautarism* as illustrated by the law which forbids

the Islamic veil in school in 2008 and the burqa in all public places

in 2010. Indeed, this should not be considered as anything

against religious freedom but more like an action in favor of 

integration.

A new law has recently been accepted in France, giving voting

right to strangers on some local elections (under certain

conditions), this raised a big debate among the politics,

particularly in the extreme right wing party which is really against

any more flexible integration policies.

* (France sees as morally unacceptable the maintenance of 

separate communities such as Jewish, Arab, Polish, Greek… This

policy, called “communautarism” is very unpopular and largely

rejected. In France, no group can declare religious freedom or

respect of religious traditions as a mean for maintaining a

lifestyle, schooling or social customs that would be visibly

different than that of the majority.)

 

What is your personal opinion ?

In my opinion, any kind of initiatives that can help reducing this

ethnical malaise should be at least considered in some political

decisions, we should try to reduce the gap with those people who

feel left out and excluded of the society.