Battles in the banlieues: Deep roots for French riots

With nine million immigrants living in France, the state can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the discrimination at the root of the country’s rioting youths, writes Europe Correspondent Ann Cahill.

NOBODY really knows the size of France’s ethnic groups — it is illegal for any census to ask. In the country that gave us liberty, equality and fraternity, all citizens of the republic are French, and officially that is all you need to know.

But organisations like SOS Racisme estimate there are about nine million of what are loosely described as immigrants among France’s population of 61m and about 1.6m of them live in Paris.

They make up about 14% of the city’s population, which is not much more than Dublin’s and certainly a lot less than London, with a third, or Amsterdam’s 47%.

But this week’s riots — with Molotov cocktails thrown at police, shots fired from the growing number of guns and burning cars lighting up the night time — made it appear as though they had taken over the city.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy angrily refused to accept any excuses for the rioters’ behaviour. He described as naive the view that every criminal is a victim of society and that behind every riot is a social problem.

What had happened in Clichy-sous-Bois, and Villiers-le-Bel where he was visiting, had nothing to do with a social crisis but everything to do with wanton violence, he said.

There are many who would agree with him in Villiers-le-Bel where a third of the population is less than 24 years of age. Alexandrine Solal, pushing her two-year-old in a stroller over the broken pavements in the central shopping area, shook her head in disgust. “They are young thugs,” she said when asked if the rioters had a cause.

But outside a mosque, Aboul, who says he helps look after Muslim youths in the area, believes its more complicated than that. “They have nothing to do. The schools are poor. There are no jobs. They are hanging around and they face a lifetime of this.”

Clichy-sous-Bois is worse than many of the banlieues and is something of a forgotten area with few facilities. Even the Paris metro does not come in this direction, leaving a bus as the main source of public transport.

The local mayor, Claude Dilain, is upset so little has changed since the riots two years ago.

“Ours is a population that has been abandoned to its sad fate. Our people feel betrayed. All the conditions are there for it to blow up again.”

The unemployment rate in these areas is up to 40% among the youths, mostly of north African and Arab descent and mostly Muslim. France has the largest Islamic community in the EU with between 4m and 6m.

The French Islamic Organisation — the largest of four bodies representing Muslims in the country — believes the problems are related to poverty and lack of equal opportunity in many of the 751 banlieues that surround France’s largest cities. They say youths who are second and third-generation French citizens of ethnic origin are actively discriminated against.

One response has been the anonymous CV, where clues to a person’s ethnicity are removed before the document is distributed to participating French companies. APC Recrutement has helped pioneer this type of anti-discrimination jobseeking agency. But it will take a long time to change a situation where those of north African descent are 80% less likely to get a job than a white French person.

The state has drawn up a massive programme designed to improve the suburbs including €30 billion worth of works on housing, education, transport and employment projects covering more than 2m residents.

Bodies tasked with changing attitudes have also been set up such as the National Agency for Social Cohesion and Equal Opportunity that will carry out special projects in sensitive neighbourhoods. With the National Agency for Urban Renovation, it will also target individuals’ nationwide who have difficulties integrating. It also aims to fight illiteracy and implement voluntary civil service.

The state also established HALDE, a discrimination watchdog, but its president opposed “ethnic counting” proposed by the Minister for Equal Opportunities, and which would allow for the first time a census of ethnic origin. The courts recently killed the proposal.

But with or without statistics, the French National Body on Human Rights and the Centre for Political Research at Science Politique in Paris say the root causes go far deeper than a response to immigrants.

It may be the spark that ignited riots such as those this week in the suburbs of Paris, but it is caused by an in-built discrimination within French society that affects the populations of these large banlieues where white-skinned people are frequently in the majority.

“The whole urban restructuring of France during the ’70s and ’80s have contributed to creating a very difficult social situation,” said one expert in the area of discrimination.

The way in which Ireland is dealing with its immigration is much closer to the British model. “But it is going to be more delicate in Ireland because it is a small society and these are the countries that face the greatest difficulty in integrating non-nationals.”

The problems for Ireland will arise when the newcomers have lived long enough in the country to look for some rights. “The issues are already arising for Ireland. For instance migrant workers in agriculture and other areas where they are used as part time workers but at very low wages, and there is the possibility of conflict with the local work force,” he said.

However the European Agency for Fundamental Rights reported that new diversity awareness is growing in France, with even the army chief of staff regretting the absence of minorities among the officers.

Trade unions and employers’ bodies acknowledged the right to difference and non-discrimination in an agreement they signed recently. Real-estate agents also signed an anti-discrimination agreement with HALDE.

In the meantime the style of policing needs to change, away from the more military type to community based as Britain learned in the 1980s. But Mr Sarkozy still has to be convinced of this as he has ordered more weaponry for the police, including the latest in non-lethal weapons.