Immigration thoughts...

It's no secret--internationally or within these borders--that France has a lot of problems with its immigrant population. During the 1900s, the first large wave of immigrants came in the 50s during the post-war boom. These immigrants were Europeans coming primarily from Italy, followed by those from Spain, Poland, and Russia. They worked in factories and were the target of discrimination at that time. During this time the French government built the first of their "HLM" (habitation de loyer modérée=low-rent housing) for this population. But the 60's saw the French loss of their north-African colonies--Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia--and many French who had been living in these colonies returned to France. While Morocco and Tunisia won their independence without a war, Algeria was a under the French strangle-hold of a colonial system that France was intent on keeping (not surprisingly, also among the world's top five oil and natural gas producing countries). Algeria was designed to be a "little France" across the Mediterranean; the government was run by all French officials, and France's colonization approach of "intregrationism" meant that the language, education, arts, government, and even architecture were all "French" in nature. Yet while the Algerians were to be "incorporated" into the French empire, a huge divide existed between the French in Algeria and the "indigènes"--natives, literally, who were not citizens but "subjects," thereby not entitled to the same rights or civil liberties. Additionally, the cultures just didn't mix. On one hand you had the French intellectuals in their grand houses with large vineyards, demanding secularism and espousing "liberté, égalité, et fraternité"; on the other hand, the Algerians were of a nomadic, Muslim, traditional culture of farmers and herders. The cultures were completely different, and there was a definite choc des civilisations. The entire history of France in Algeria (1830-1962) is particularly bloody, and the independence war was no different, and when the Algerians finally won, the French were forced out of the country by the new government.

The French government intervened enormously to aid their returned countrymen: helped them find work, apartments, education for their children, etc. This was not the case for the second large wave of immigrant factory workers: those from North Africa (primarily Algeria). From the late 50's to '74, France experienced a large economic boom, requiring another huge importation of workers in the 60's and 70's, and the Algerian men arrived to fill those positions. Since they came without their families, in 1974 France passed a law, Regroupement Familial, which authorized the arrival of the worker's wives and children. But the government did little to prepare for this opening of their borders. (Just to clarify, when these immigrants arrived, their visas and identity cards were all stamped with the word "indigène"--a system that carried over from the colony and continued to deny these immigrants citizenship and all that came with it.) Because there was insufficient housing for all these immigrants, shanty-towns sprung up all around the outskirts of the cities where the workers were employed. The government then very quickly put up more HLMs where the immigrant families were moved to when the shanty-towns were razed.

Just taking Paris as one example, the "civil unrest" that occurred a year ago took place in the banlieu, suburbs where the HLMs exist. The population living in the HLMs is still primarily from the former colonies. Kids born in France are French, but their parents are from the "indigène" system. And in France there are so many ways in which this great divide is still evident. These kids grow up speaking Arabic at home and French in school; they aren't Algerian or Moroccan or Sénégalese, but they aren't accepted as truly French either; they still take trips back to Africa to visit their grandparents; their mothers make couscous and cover their heads; they are seeking acceptance to a system that fought so hard to keep them under the French "pied-noir" (black boot...a term referring to the colonists who lived in Algeria); it's no wonder all the French rap comes from the banlieus; they are Muslim and do "sawm"--Ramadan--but rarely go to the mosqué; they smoke and drink when with their French friends, but would never let their parents know they break such rules; their names always give them away.

From North Africa and the Middle East, a Jew, Christian, and Muslim could all have the same name--Mustapha al-Mamoun--but only Muslims refuse to change their names to fit a different culture. This is obvious just looking at the writers' names from these countries: Ismael Ait-Djefar, Kateb Yacine, Assia Djebar, Tahar Ben Jelloun...and then Albert Memmi. Albert is a French name. And he's a Jew from Tunisia. Yeap, he speaks Arabic, yeap his family has lived alongside the Muslims and Christians and Coptes...but his family gave him a French name. Without fail, there is always a way to tell. And that has made discrimination very easy...and very obvious.

Some perspectives want to target Islam as the biggest reason that France's immigrants don't integrate as well as, for example, the Mexicans in America who are primarily Catholic. One organization, "The Middle East Forum: Promoting American Interests" even voices an opinion that, unfortunately, many wouldn't even see as radical: "American minority groups share many basic values with the rest of the country; in contrast, French minority groups tend to have alien values, to think of themselves as a new nation, and even to have hopes of superseding the present Judeo-Christian nation of France." But this morning at the news kiosk, I bought one of France's Le Monde newspaper's publications: Le Monde des Religions. It's a publications series they are doing on 20 keys to understanding the world's main religions. They've already done Christianity, Judaism, and the religions of Ancient Egypt. This month it's Islam. On French radio, you can find 2 Arabe music stations, 1 West-African station, and 2 Caribbean stations. The French "diaspora" is large...and diverse...and I've not even mentioned the French presence in Asia, North, or South America. And for such a little country, it's no surprise that they're struggling in their post-colonial position of now being the hub of immigration for those leaving France's former colonies. Islam is not the problem. A country can't invade another country and expect not to have lasting effects that, eventually, will manifest on their own soil. Interestingly and thankfully, there is an effort here that involves a solid base of teaching, learning, AND preservation.