The riots in Paris are being seen by many outside commentators as a clear sign the French have failed in their effort to integrate Muslim migrants. Is this true? The French method of absorbing immigrants traditionally aims at effacing ethnic identity in the one, indivisible, secular French Republic. Until recently it's been difficult to get accurate figures on the ethnic origins of immigrants in France. Multiculturalism has got short shrift - not only immigrant multiculturalism, but also native non-French 'other cultures', such as Brittany, Corsica, the Basque region, Occitania. So determined are the government, the media and intellectuals, even today, to stick to the official assimilationist line, that whenever trouble breaks out in the Muslim-dominated suburbs, rioters are referred to by the euphemism of 'les jeunes des quartiers sensibles' (the youth of the sensitive areas). It is only a few isolated public figures, such as Le Pen, who refuse to use these terms - for their own extremist agenda, of course. Meanwhile, ordinary French people know the code words, are intensely cynical about them, and watch the antics of both government and rioters with increasing impatience.
It is this official approach which is depicted by many non-French commentators as patronizing, parochial and blind. Yet is it? After all, following the London bombings and Theo Van Gogh's murder in the Netherlands, it can hardly be said that the tolerant multicultural line is without its problems. And the truth is that the assimilationist approach has worked in the past, including with post-war North African migrants. France has absorbed many immigrants successfully. It is a multi-ethnic, rather than multi-cultural, country. The most successful of the immigrant groups in the twentieth century - and the biggest immigrant group in France generally - is not the North Africans, but Southern Europeans, especially from Portugal, but also from Italy and Spain. They started coming into France from the beginning of the 20th century - my own maternal grandfather came as an illiterate 14 year old from Portugal at the end of WWI - but the biggest wave of Portuguese migrants came post-war, especially in the 50s and 60s, at the same time as the first generation of North African migrants also started arriving.
These were halcyon years for France, with lots of work, including for unskilled workers, and a palpable sense of progress and hope. Despite this, the first generation of migrants experienced a great deal of prejudice - all of them, North Africans and Southern Europeans alike, being regarded as backward, superstitious, ignorant hicks. This prejudice often persisted into the second generation: for instance, my parents had to elope to get married as my father's family refused to countenance his marriage to an immigrant's daughter. But the third generation of Southern Europeans has almost disappeared into the general population, because of the intermarrying, as with my parents. Very few second- or third-generation French people of Portuguese ethnicity would regard themselves as anything but French. There's no question of divided loyalties, though there's a sentimental attachment to Portuguese things, such as a predeliction for bacalau and fados, and a tendency to joke about the once-hurtful insults (such as 'meteque') that were hurled at migrants and their children (rather like 'wog' has been tamed in Australia).
But whilst those of Southern European migrant origin continue to be spectacularly successful, the same cannot be said for those of North African origin. A March 2004 compilation of unemployment rates amongst 18 to 24 year olds, divided by ethnic origin - and emanating from France's national institute for demographic studies - shows clearly that young people with at least one parent born in Portugal or Italy are not only considerably better off than those with at least one parent born in Algeria, but even quite a bit better off than those youths of French ethnic origin. This is so especially of girls. Though the figures for older age groups change, with Algerian women greatly improving their position after the age of 25 and a clear majority of Algerians aged 35-54 employed, the figures still show a vast gap for them as compared not only with the 'French French' but also with those of Southern European immigrant origin. And this despite the fact that education levels are pretty much identical across the board these days, with as many young people of North African ethnicity completing their 'Bac' and even going on to higher education as in both the general French population and in that of Southern European immigrant origin. Yet it appears that those of North African immigrant origin who have done the best are the generation that went to school in France in the early 60s to mid-70s, the pioneers of North African assimilation, in fact. Today, education is no key to work. What's changed?
As in all Western countries, France now has a distinct shortage of unskilled or even modestly skilled work, coupled with ever-increasing educational expectations. France, which prides itself on being a meritocracy, has slowly ossified into its default mode of hierarchy. Concurrently, a modern intellectual fashion for identity politics has led to a strange political no-man’s land, where the policy of the government is to officially foster assimilation and yet adopt an anti-racist rhetoric which makes placatory gestures towards identity politics, including in education, so diluting the older approach. Then there's the rise in an aggressive Islamic consciousness in the ghettos, which, as in other Western Muslim communities, is not only a religious but a political attitude. The truculence this combination produces in some highly vocal members of the community is hardly attractive to private-sector employers, thus completing a vicious circle. All too often, young people of North African origin who live in those suburbs are automatically put into the 'truculent' bag, regardless of reality. And the government, knowing it can't possibly provide jobs for all or force the hand of private-sector employers, prefers on the one hand to soft-soap the immigrant community with high-minded anti-racist rhetoric, gyms and community centres, whilst having no real idea how on earth these young people can ever be placed in jobs.
To add to this cocktail, there are drugs, boredom and a swaggering popular culture of the 'gangsta', common everywhere around the western world in underclass ghettos, not necessarily immigrant ones. Remember Macquarie Fields? And in France, of course, there's also the traditional revolutionary cult of 'les enragés' (the enraged). Revolutionary agitation is a bug that was caught by the French 200 years ago, and it's never left the French bloodstream. In fact, it could be said that the rioters in Paris and their copycats in the rest of the country are expressing on one level their alienation from French society - yet on another are displaying their assimilation. This isn't yet an Islamist-inspired mob; it is the traditional Paris mob, feared since 1789. And the government's reaction, veering in panic-stricken indecision from one wildly contradictory solution to another, is also traditional. Let's hope they find the right solution. Let's hope that today's radical Islamist ideologues, waiting only for their chance to exploit havoc, don't succeed.
[Sophie Masson is a French-Australian writer.]