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November 20, 2005
This image caught my eye, given these events that are well described by Alena Lentin.
M.e.Cohen, French Riots
The image represents assimilation to a French republican nationalism that is founded on liberty, equality and fraternity in a fractured globalized world. The bleeding in the image suggest that the limits of liberal tolerance have been transgressed by the rioting that took place in the most underprivileged parts of Paris peopled by the colonized of North Africa who came to work in the low-wage jobs in the French factories.
French "integration" meant segregating immigrants into ghettos, where they could be better monitored by security forces specifically created for such purposes. The French model is one in which immigrants have "to forget their identity" to assimilate. As Anna Lentin says:
France's political culture makes it impossible for anyone who does not completely embrace the values of the Republic to access the public sphere: foreign residents were not even legally permitted to establish associations in France until 1981. The problem is that defenders of human rights and anti-racists tend to belong to that very French group of 'intellectuals' whose lives in the affluent centres rarely coincide with those in the distant banlieues. There is a belief, instilled in France through the public education system, that the values of liberty, equality and fraternity are universally accessible through a commonly applied principle of meritocracy. Those who fail to find a place in this system are professing anti-republican values such as the much dreaded communautarisme of which France's religious Muslims (but not Christians or Jews) are accused.
In this interview with Andre Glucksman about the violence in the suburbs the interviewer points outithat in these suburbs:
"... the unemployment rate among youth is between 30 and 40 percent. The schools are kaput. The youth are living in residential ghettos. These ghettos were built in the 1960s and 1970s for people from the former colonies who were returning to France, they were built for settlers and immigrants."
Glucksman understands this as French integration through negation, then adds that the key is hatred, and he goes on to talk in terms of a nihilistic atmosphere prevailing in France.
Multiculturalism is not mentioned once, even though the youth are rebelling precisely because they desire to be accepted as African-French citizens. Nor is the impact of neo-liberal globalization upon post-colonial France mentioned in relation to the social cohesion of France as a nation-state. Mark Levine suggests in this article that the French nation-state is probably not strong enough to provide the protective power that can act as a buffer against the integration of French economy and society into the global economic and cultural order.
Consequently, it is not just the youth of African immigrants transgressing liberal limits. The petite-bourgeois citizens and retired state employees are only a few steps away from embracing Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National.
What is missing here amidst the ashes of the burnt-out cars is the political insigfht view that integration cannot be one-sided. It must change to a multicultural conception of nationality and recognize African French people as French citizens.
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