[Mb-civic] Immigrants' bitterness boils over in France - H.D.S. Greenway - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Immigrants' bitterness boils over in France

By H.D.S. Greenway  |  March 21, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

ONCE AGAIN Paris is the scene of violent demonstrations, but this time 
it is the young with jobs that they want to protect who are 
demonstrating. Last time it was the sons of immigrants without jobs, and 
without hope of jobs, that began far more serious riots that spread 
quickly across France. It wasn't about religion, although most of the 
rioters were Muslims. The fire last time was a cry against poverty, lack 
of opportunity, discrimination, and social injustice that mark the lives 
of many immigrant communities across Europe.

I recently spoke with Claude Dilain, the mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, 
where last autumn's riots began, to find out what he had learned from 
those November days. ''It's not for me to learn, it was for French 
society to learn something," he said in a tone of controlled anger. 
''For 20 years France has refused to see the reality of the suburbs," he 
said, ''the hypocrisy, the self-serving hypocrisy."

The face of immigrant France had been hidden away in the dying suburbs 
of France, and when mayors tried to draw attention to the problems they 
were told it's just your local problem, the mayor said. ''But I think it 
is a national problem."

The mayor described a France in which moving from one socio-economic 
level to another is becoming ever more difficult, especially in 
immigrant communities, even for those born in France. ''I am very 
pessimistic about the willingness to change, and what French society 
needs to know is that if they want to keep people down they must expect 
explosions."

Clichy-sous-Bois still has no police station of its own, Dilain said. 
The nearest one is in the next town. Also, there is no train to take 
people to work. One has to take buses to get to the train in the next 
town, and the service begins so late in the morning that low-level jobs 
that might start immigrants on the road away from poverty are less 
obtainable.

There is 24 percent unemployment in Clichy-sous-Bois, according to the 
mayor, against a national average of 10 percent. ''Some of the kids have 
good diplomas," Dilain said. It was not just a matter of not having a 
good education, but a problem of ''having not such a good color of the 
skin or a good address."

This is not the way it is supposed to be in France. The ideals of the 
French Revolution, ''liberte, egalite, fraternite," still rule public 
policy. Everyone is supposed to be absolutely equal in France. It is not 
supposed to matter what color or religion you are. Everyone who is a 
French citizen is automatically equal under French tradition and law.

As France's minister of equal opportunity, Azous Begag, a writer from 
Lyon of Algerian descent, told me, you cannot have affirmative action in 
France because ''it's impossible to have ethnic monitoring in this 
country." There are no racial, ethnic, or religious differences 
recognized in France. But the truth is far from the ideal, he said.

Listen to the words of Hibat Tabib, an Iranian immigrant and lawyer whom 
I met in the nearby suburb of Pierfitte, where the unemployment in the 
immigrant housing projects is 35 percent compared with 20 percent for 
the town.

''There is no equality because of discrimination, he said. ''People 
coming with the same equal talent don't have equal opportunity. If you 
have a North African name you don't get the job.

''Equality doesn't exist in political representation. Of the 35,000 
municipalities in France there is not one mayor from an immigrant 
background. Not one. In the National Assembly there is not one delegate 
from an immigrant background. Not one." In Germany, France, and Holland, 
immigrants and their children can be found in parliaments -- even in the 
British House of Lords.

''We are French citizens but never treated as French. We have a whole 
generation of people in France who belong to nowhere," he said. ''Not to 
France. Not to the home country."

There is not much fraternity either because if there is no equality how 
can you be brothers? And without equality and fraternity you cannot have 
real liberty. The riots of the suburbs may be over but the bitterness 
has not gone away.

France is not alone in its troubles absorbing immigrants, but perhaps it 
is more painful in France because the ideal is so high, and therefore 
the gap between the ideal and the reality so wide.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/21/immigrants_bitterness_boils_over_in_france/
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