By Paul Oriol
Assimilation, French style, continues to function. Under the citizenship code, 100,000 foreigners each year disappear from the statistics. Mixed marriages, social mobility and cultural integration mean that assimilation occurs, as it probably always did, through succeeding generations. Gradually, these foreigners become French like everyone else.
The obstacle to this integration, as always, comes not from overseas but from French society and some French citizens, in their rejection of a certain category of foreigner. Disadvantage in employment or housing, which has always existed and been resolved by upward mobility and gradual "disappearance", may, however, become permanent because of the high visibility of the new immigration — physical, cultural and religious.
Racism against the Spanish, Italians or Poles is no longer possible in daily life, so successful has been their integration. It is not the same for immigrants or even French citizens originating from the Maghreb or black Africa.
Their very integration may be held against them! As the poet says, "I wear my roots on my head, like an upside down tree". Any success may be turned against them as undeserved and as depriving a "French person" of that success. Especially if "events" fuel psychosis on the housing estates. Today, "immigrant" in France means North African, and in particular Algerian. The memory of the Algerian war is still there. And Islam, which has not found a place in France, has to fight to make one.
The principles of republicanism have failed in the face of the reality of colonialism. And as in the past, there is a great risk that some may seek a different lifestyle. Two at least are currently put before them. A return to Islam for some, for others joining gangs in the suburbs, US-style, or maybe a combination of the two. More than Islam itself, which could eventually become part of the cultural landscape, it's these groups of young people who feel rejected that are a problem.
Integration may work, statistically, but some young people from a migrant background are totally excluded from this society. How can they be made to feel a part of it? We need to teach and remind people about republican values. And apply them, on the housing estates as well as in our institutions.
But that will not be enough if unemployment continues, if there is a parallel economy based on drugs, if social services continue to be dismantled, if whole areas are left to themselves, if repression is the only answer to undesirable behaviour, and if the new diversity, in particular Islam, is not accepted.
But there also needs to be genuine economic integration. How can this be possible at a time of savage economic rationalism meted out by the ruling elite, and when economic statistics are given more worth than human factors?
[Abridged from Rouge et Vert. Translated by Brendan Doyle.]