The incidents have spread, and have become locally more violent, but this hides very different trends:
- In the greater Paris area, violence is now going down (426 cars burnt, including 18 in Paris itself, vs 741 the previous night, of which 36 in Paris),
- it has been spreading to many large (and a few small) provincial towns (982 cars burnt vs 554 the night before), with 274 town touched (211 the night before).
- locally, violence has increased, with 36 police officers injured (21 the night before), including 2 seriously by gunshots.
One man has died from his injuries sustained after he was hit on Friday while trying to take out a garbage bin fire. It is the only casualty so far remotely connected to the incidents, although there have been several close calls.
Additionally, a number of “institutional” buildings (schools, town halls, post offices, social security and bank buildings) have been variously damaged.
Obviously, this is big news in France, and there is a clear sense of a major crisis situation, with tremendous political consequences (which I would describe briefly as whether we’ll have a major shift to the hard populist right or not). The only good news I can see is that the only injuries have been counted amongst the police, which means that orders for restraint in the use of force have been given and are followed. The other item is that the increasing numbers of incidents probably reflect some form of copycat action in smaller towns, and the lower numbers around Paris sound like good news.
But hey, I am part of the French chattering elites, so I’ll indulge below in more denial and rationalisation in reaction to an article in the Financial Times (one of the less sensationalist British papers):
Liberté, égalité et fraternité – but only for some
The violence appears to be the loudest wake-up call for France’s ruling class, within which Mr Chirac has long thrived, and which has long lectured others on the success of its social model. Irritation in the French press about the news coverage the riots have received abroad also reflects how humbling they have been been for the chattering classes.
While much of the violence is happening only a few miles from the Elysée presidential palace, Mr Chirac and his ministers have until now preferred to ignore the growing social unrest rather than accept that France’s integration model has failed.
This head-in-the-sand attitude is summed up by the president’s refusal to allow Insee, the state statistics arm, to ask people about their ethnic origins in surveys and censuses, thus preventing anyone knowing how segregated French society has become.
Instead, Mr Chirac clings to the idea that all French citizens are equal under the republic’s revolutionary ideal: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. In practice, this means immigrants are expected to adapt to France rather than the other way round.
This policy worked reasonably well when Italians, Armenians, east European Jews, Spaniards and Portuguese arrived during various periods of the 19th and 20th centuries and assimilated easily.
But the model has broken down for more recent waves of immigrants from former French colonies in north and sub-Saharan Africa. Many found themselves excluded from mainstream society, living in outer-city ghettoes. Their children, most of whom were born in France, find themselves in ghettoised schools and with little chance of gainful employment.
Previous immigrants, too, could easily adapt to France’s insistence on a strict division between church and state. But Muslim immigrants in particular, who make up 10 per cent of France’s population, have had a more difficult time adapting to a secular state – they felt singled out two years ago when the government banned the wearing of headscarves in schools.
As I wrote yesterday, there is a real case to be made for a failure of the French model, in that it puts an undue burden on the youth, and especially on the children of the latest immigrants. But to call this a failure of immigration is unduly hasty.
Irritation in the French press about the news coverage the riots have received abroad also reflects how humbling they have been been for the chattering classes.
Yeah right, irritation is because the elites have been humbled (if only!) and not because the coverage has been sensationalist and driven by schadenfreude or French-bashing (and I am not even talking about the rightwing “Intifada” commentary). A surprising number of comments to my “aunt” diary yesterday basically accused me of rationalisation, denial or worse, just for giving a different point of view to the main viewpoint currently developed in English speaking media. But that coverage is, of course, pefectly impartial and not at all driven by ideology or by country rivalries.
the president’s refusal to allow Insee, the state statistics arm, to ask people about their ethnic origins in surveys and censuses
Amazing ignorance by that journalist. It’s the law! Criticise the law for its blind secularism, but not the authorities for respecting the law! Unbelievable.
all French citizens are equal under the republic’s revolutionary ideal: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. In practice, this means immigrants are expected to adapt to France rather than the other way round.
WTF? France is supposed to adapt to immigrants? What’s that supposed to mean, exactly? The issue is that France is not treating French kids as French kids but as somewhat inconvenient visitors. They don’t want France to change, but to accept them fully.
This policy worked reasonably well when Italians, Armenians, east European Jews, Spaniards and Portuguese arrived during various periods of the 19th and 20th centuries and assimilated easily.
But the model has broken down for more recent waves of immigrants from former French colonies in north and sub-Saharan Africa
Again, what unbelievable ignorance. Assimilated easily? Has this journalist not heard of the affaire Dreyfus? The fascist movements in the 30s? The hate against each of these successive waves of immigrants?
Previous immigrants, too, could easily adapt to France’s insistence on a strict division between church and state.
Italian and Polish catholics? Really? That was not easy then.
I’ll stand by my point. It’s too early to tell if France will successfully integrate North Africans or not, but I am not at all pessimistic that we’re on our way and we will. We only see the non-integrated minority, not the invisible integrated majority.
and please note, as this article reminds us – France has ALWAYS been a country of immigration, and ultimately a pretty successful one. This is not about integration, this is about the macro-economic choices made 30 years ago to protect the middle classes by dumping the lumpen-proletariat, a significant part of which is immigrants and children of immigrants.
The USA has been smarter, by making the macro-economic choice of protecting the rich by dumping the lumpen proleratiat and the middle classes, thus spreading the pain wider…
