Emilie Dubois : What is the issue ?

Im 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 cant graduate from school because they cant achieve what theyre expected to do and in most of the cases, they cant 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,

lets say roughly, anything different from what theyre 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.