Why France? Why now?

As in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, bloggers and pundits are using the French riots - "Paris riots" no longer accurately describes a phenomenon that has spread throughout the country - as confirmation of their pre-existing political beliefs. (Here's the definitive example of this phenomenon.) Conservatives say Islamic militancy is the main problem, even though most of the rioters appear to pledge allegiance more to 50 Cent than to Osama bin Laden (and even though many of them aren't even Muslim). Leftists, meanwhile, stop just short of saying the rioters are advocates for social justice and a "fairer" society - and what better way to show it than to set schools and hospitals on fire?

There are literally dozens of factors which caused this outburst of violence. (Islamofascism and unemployment undoubtedly account for some of it, but certainly not all.) But nearly everyone acknowledges that the country's failure to integrate its growing immigrant underclass - packing them into squalid public-housing estates, with few employment opportunities and where gangs and drug dealers are allowed to ply their trade without interference from the police - is probably the biggest one of all. Today's Washington Post has a good analysis of the situation, though it implicitly places all the blame on "mainstream" French society instead of those who chose - yes, chose - to rampage through the streets:

While many French leaders depict the rioters as simple criminals, political and social analysts and many French citizens see the fires that are burning across the country as reflecting a growing identity crisis in a nation where social policies have not kept up with rapidly changing profiles in religion, race and ethnicity.

"France is in a social and economic crisis," said Michelle Rosso, a 43-year-old music teacher from the town of Bagnolet in the northern suburbs of Paris, where the unrest has been most intense. "It's similar to the U.S. civil rights movement in the '60s. The integration policies of this country clearly do not work."

Most of the rioters are the French-born children of immigrants from Arab and African countries. A large percentage are Muslim. Their parents' generation was invited to France as laborers who were expected to return home but didn't. The new generation is coming of age in the midst of France's worst economic slump in years and during a time when many in the country, which is culturally Christian but officially secular, are increasingly fearful of the growth of Islam inside its borders.

At present, the country has an estimated 6 million Muslims, most of African descent. The fear of losing France's traditional white European identity fueled French voters' rejection of the proposed European Union constitution last summer and has heightened French opposition to admitting Muslim Turkey into the E.U.
[...]
Some political analysts said government officials didn't focus on the severity of the violence in its first days because many were on vacation or at their country houses celebrating the All Saints' Day holiday. As they returned to their Paris offices the following Monday, the rioting was gaining momentum across the suburbs.

Still, President Jacques Chirac did not speak out publicly until Monday evening, the 12th night of violence. He made a three-minute appearance and vowed tough action against the perpetrators.

The really depressing thing is that the situation in Great Britain and the Netherlands, where governments place a greater emphasis on "multiculturalism" instead of color-blind integration, is little better, notes Sandro Contenta in the Toronto Star:

The problem largely revolves around Europe's inability to integrate up to 15 million Muslims of immigrant background.

The challenge is heightened by the fact that the main models of integration — the assimilation model practised in France, or the multicultural one in Britain and Holland — seem to have failed.

"Everyone is trying to sell his model of integration as the right one, but none of them are working. All the models are in crisis," said Olivier Roy, a French scholar of European Islam.

The French model pretends to be colour-blind, insisting that even the collection of statistics on ethnic minority groups would offend its cherished principles of "liberté, egalité et fraternité."

And yet, it has allowed French citizens of immigrant background to be segregated and isolated in impoverished apartment complexes on the outskirts of major cities.

In Clichy-sous-Bois, the northeastern suburb of Paris where the unrest first broke out 12 days ago, unemployment is at 40 per cent — four times the national average.

But a week before riots broke out in France, Britain's multicultural model also showed its strains.

The heart of Birmingham, England's second largest city, was engulfed for several days by race riots between young Britons of black and Pakistani backgrounds. Two people were left dead and shops were trashed.

Phillips, whose agency promotes racial equality, questioned Britain's model of multiculturalism, insisting it had created a society that is "sleepwalking to segregation."

"Some districts are on their way to becoming fully fledged ghettoes — black holes into which no one goes without fear and trepidation, and from which no one ever escapes undamaged. The walls are going up around many of our communities," he warned.

With few exceptions, European governments used Turkish and North African immigrant "guest workers" as a source of cheap labour for decades. Little effort was made to integrate them because of neglect and a belief that immigrants would one day return home.

When immigrants instead brought in their families, and when many more arrived clandestinely, right-wing parties grew popular in the 1990s by declaring their countries "full."

The children of these immigrants were born in Europe, but they often live on the margins of society, facing discrimination, and struggling with unemployment and dropout rates much higher than national averages.

What on earth is to be done about this? In the short term, the French have little choice but to take tougher law-and-order measures until the situation has calmed down. But in the long term, your guess is as good as mine.

Posted by damian at November 8, 2005 08:03 AM | TrackBack