Immigrant Riots

[Az]

Az, I'll ask you why so many people couldn't be integrated, then. Why is only a specific part of the French population (the one living in the cités) that suffers from such a collective laziness?

Because they came from a social-cultural background that is deeply incompatible, and people living in ghettos are living in pools in which the 'old country' is alive and well? Heck, I see this with my fellow immigrants a lot - even my father - they're not flexible and aren't willing to play by the new rules - most of us ARE flexible, however, and we break through.

I'm not saying that personal motivation doesn't count at all. There are several examples of ghetto childrens who had social and economic success. However, to achieve something when you're form the ghetto, you need three times the motivation and the work than when you're from a nice background to begin with.

Considering how most of the muslim youth have a relatively strong family structure, if their parents and their culture would have a respect for this, they would get it. They would push their kids to university and learning, or at least would instill the values of getting to and through university, getting a job, etc.

There are plenty of bostacles to overcome:
- overcoming the peer-pressure that pushes toward the bottom

Yep. And this is where the "good old learning values from the family" come to play with good immigrants. too bad these people don't have it. Now it's only their "fault", not their fault, but the problem primarily lies with them, not with the french government.

- overcoming an education that is worse in the ghetto than elsewhere (the level of the students is so low, that the aims of the teachers are forced to be lower)

I am not sure how your education system works, but isn't it possible to move districts? In any case, I went to a school with a 90% immigrant population. We succeeded - because we've had the motivation of own families, even with the nihilistic peer pressure to fail.

- overcoming stigma that you'll get from people out of the ghetto (because of your clothing, because of your maners, because of your accent)

If you go to a job interview dressed like Jay-Z - thou shall not be surprized.Also, You don't have any stigma by getting into uni ( it's done by computer here, for example) Again, it's up to you.

- overcoming racial stigma, if you belong to the "minorités visibles" ( @ word)

Again, we coped.

- Overcoming the lack of middle-class culture, of a network of relationships*, of knowledge about the good studies and good jobs**, of money etc. that comes from the parents.



*this may sound absurd, but a network of relationships is very important. About 60% of all jobs in France are obtained through relationships (the piston that immensely discriminates between the new entrants on the labour market that have well-connected parents, and those who don't have any useful connections)

It's probably higher here. Still, Russian immigrants, the major amount of them arriving since 1991, have got jobs, cars, appartments ( not social ones).

**Again, this may sound absurd, but there is a strong unequality about the choice of studies in France. The rich and the cultured will almost always push for their children to go to uni, and to good ones at that. The uneducated will tend to consider their children's studies as an achievement rather than as the norm. Besides, in poor neighborhoods, the educational system will orientate students much more often toward non-prestigious vocational training, and much more rarely toward the superior unis.

Again, a problem of the immigrant culture and mentality - the people who have to want to succeed first and foremost are themselves. The government should do as much as possible, but primarily, it's always about them.


In conclusion:
I haven't seen any reason to think that the immigrants in France ate any more **** than me and my fellow immigrants in Israel - They've had both a fair amount of material support, probably more than we have had, and they have an opportunity to fit under the common banner of the republic, like countless waves of immigrants did before them, just like we have had with judaism. Then, when I look at the results I come to the inevitable conclusion that the immigrants to france are bad immigrants, compared to us. That they have no right to complain about the French government, since they DID recieve a fair amount of distributive economic justice, certainly enough to make many other immigrant populations to get on their feet. Thus,while I don't think that playing the blame game is even nearly productive, I certainly think that it takes a big tablespoon of Hutzpah to take a conscious political stance that blames the french government as opposed to the immigrant society itself. Mindless rioting I can understand - it a possible natural result of growing up in crap. It's when this rioting is helped with a shoddily built, ad hoc theoretical, ideological basis, that makes legitimate claims of racism and discrimination cheap and worthless, this is when I get angry.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Az
Considering how most of the muslim youth have a relatively strong family structure, if their parents and their culture would have a respect for this, they would get it. They would push their kids to university and learning, or at least would instill the values of getting to and through university, getting a job, etc.

In France, most ghetto youth doesn't have a strong family structure. There is an overwhelming divorce rate. There is a tradition (in Algeria and in some parts of Africa where immigrant parents come from) to consider that, when you entrust the education of your children to someone else (in our case the school), you entrust all the education to them.
Besides, while some families quickly adapt to the model of a small family with few children (apparently, most Arabs do, and the whites are already in that model), some other families remain huge in a small housing, which is a pressure for the kids to go work quickly.

There are plenty of bostacles to overcome:
- overcoming the peer-pressure that pushes toward the bottom

Yep. And this is where the "good old learning values from the family" come to play with good immigrants. too bad these people don't have it. Now it's only their "fault", not their fault, but the problem primarily lies with them, not with the french government.

It's not only that. I have a friend who grew up in a family that emphasized studies (his two sisters are studying in doctorate), and yet he fell to the nihilism just like his brother. He has now wisened up, and through sheer willpower has extracted himself from his cité to become a construction worker, even though he'd clearly have potential to work in a much more rewarding job.

He and his brother are examples of people who had good values in the family, and yet who fell for the bad values of the cité*. It is my contention that:
1. It shouldn't happen that the peers you meet overwhelmingly belong to a nihilistic counter-culture, thus stunting your chances.
2. If peer pressure can destroy the chances of someone with a good family, there are reasons to believe that another kind of peer pressure would raise the chances of someone who has a bad family (see the example of my other friend now studying to become a project leader in construction).

With these two ideas in mind, it sounds obvious to me that we should destroy these concentrations of people living in bad cultures, from a Republican perspective, and scatter them among neighborhoods that have good cultures. If we actually want to integrate them, instead of just saying that it's their "fault", we have to cope with the specific current problems. And the concentration, IMO, is the problem #1.

- overcoming an education that is worse in the ghetto than elsewhere (the level of the students is so low, that the aims of the teachers are forced to be lower)

I am not sure how your education system works, but isn't it possible to move districts?

It's either expansive (private schools), or complicated. And as I said, there is a strong unequality wrt the complex intricacies of the school system.

- overcoming stigma that you'll get from people out of the ghetto (because of your clothing, because of your maners, because of your accent)

If you go to a job interview dressed like Jay-Z - thou shall not be surprized.

That's where you don't understand. Many suffer stigma even when they make an effort, because their politeness and society's general politeness are very different things. Two examples:
- I was speaking to an employee of the employment agency. She received a young guy who couldn't find a job. As he entered her office, she understood why: he had his sportwear, hood on the head, and a jean about 20 cm too low. He also had the classical racaille accent. She told him: "with your looks, it is not surprising that you don't find a job. When going to an interview with an employer, you have to make an effort, to be polite". He replies: "Come on, I'm being polite b!tch".
- Two days ago, Sarkozy came on TV to answer the question and remarks of several people facing him (political opponents, association members, people living in the cités). In the show, there was one young guy with the typical cité outfit. He didn't utter one single cuss word, but he did speak with his strong accent, and he was insisting for Sarkozy to answer his question (Sarkozy is an expert at dodging questions), and he was very insistent. Sarkozy brutally told him that he and his ilk would go nowhere if they are so rude. The journalist agreed. I don't think the guy could have been any more polite with the rules of politeness he learned.

- overcoming racial stigma, if you belong to the "minorités visibles" ( @ word)

Again, we coped.

Do you reguarly get rejected from jobs, from housing, or from frigging nightclubs because of your physical appearance? Do you get hassled by the police infinitely more than the person right next to you because of a difference in physical appearance? Wow.

Again, this may sound absurd, but there is a strong unequality about the choice of studies in France. The rich and the cultured will almost always push for their children to go to uni, and to good ones at that. The uneducated will tend to consider their children's studies as an achievement rather than as the norm. Besides, in poor neighborhoods, the educational system will orientate students much more often toward non-prestigious vocational training, and much more rarely toward the superior unis.

Again, a problem of the immigrant culture and mentality - the people who have to want to succeed first and foremost are themselves.

You can repeat it as a mantra, but in this case, it is simply not true. The unequality about the intricacies of the school system is strong everywhere (it's obviously even stronger when you're, say, an illiterate Malian). There is an elite path, a middle path, and a sucky path very early on in our education system, even though vocational training first really appears in late junior-high.
The inequality is also geographically strong: when you're from the bourgeois areas of inner Paris, your chance to get one of France's most prestigious uni are immensely overrepresented, because it is a very realistic concern for your educational team. When you're from the middle-class suburbs, your educational team will think in terms of getting you to a nice uni. A really prestigious uni is an achievement the school is proud of. When you're in a ghetto, your educational team will first and foremost think of teaching you essential skills to get a job. Nobody there thinks of prestigious schools as a realistic aim (we have adisors who explain which course of studies the student might want to choose: they almost never speak of prestigious schools there), and uni is an achievement already.

Most parents obviously can't fill the gaps of the educational system when it comes to the frigging intricacies of school. Not only immigrants, but all parents with little education.
As a result, you have a very strong social reproduction in the choice of studies' paths. Most engineering students are children of engineers. Most marketing students are children of capitalists. Most medicine students have doctors as parents.
The parents who are most favored in this unequality are children of teachers (<-------- ). Because the teachers know that the school as arcane intricacies, they know that many aims are realistic even if it doesn't sound like it, and they generally push for their kids to study well (after all, they owe their nice status solely to their education, education is their whole life).

So, when you say "The government should do as much as possible, but primarily, it's always about them", you are right that there are individual differences. But these individual differences get strong effects because there is a broad social problem in France that must be tackled in a political fashion.

In conclusion:
I haven't seen any reason to think that the immigrants in France ate any more **** than me and my fellow immigrants in Israel - They've had both a fair amount of material support, probably more than we have had, and they have an opportunity to fit under the common banner of the republic, like countless waves of immigrants did before them, just like we have had with judaism. Then, when I look at the results I come to the inevitable conclusion that the immigrants to france are bad immigrants, compared to us.

That's probably true. However, they're here, their children are here, and they're French. The young people that got arrested are overwhelmingly citizens of my country. So we have an actual problem, which cannot be solved by rants.

That they have no right to complain about the French government, since they DID recieve a fair amount of distributive economic justice, certainly enough to make many other immigrant populations to get on their feet. Thus,while I don't think that playing the blame game is even nearly productive, I certainly think that it takes a big tablespoon of Hutzpah to take a conscious political stance that blames the french government as opposed to the immigrant society itself.

Simple. The "immigrant society" as a problem is not something we can solve. For decades now, we have made immigration much more difficult, and immigration is now fairly insignificant in the population growth anyways. So, if we are looking for solutions, instead of rants, we should look where solutions are.
For years now, our government had been a morals teacher, explaining that disrespect toward your fellow citizens was bad (this was adressed to the disrespectful ghetto-dwellers as much as to our racists). These nice little speeches resulted in nothing.
For years now, our government has had a very strict repressive approach. The idea was that, if you bash their heads enough, they won't cause trouble anymore. Considering that those are the worst ghetto riots we ever had, we can safely dismiss this "solution" as a failure.
So, we have to look for solutions. My contention is that the concentration of poverty and counter-culture in gigantic complexes centered on themselves is the main problem. Others think the main problem is employment, racism, unsafety, you name it.

Mindless rioting I can understand - it a possible natural result of growing up in crap. It's when this rioting is helped with a shoddily built, ad hoc theoretical, ideological basis, that makes legitimate claims of racism and discrimination cheap and worthless, this is when I get angry.

If this is aimed at me, there is nothing ad-hoc in what I'm sayiong. I've been saying it for 5 years now. Your rant, however, rests on little knowledge of the matter.

"It's society's fault" was a popular catch-phrase back in the 80ies. It's now way out of fashion. Everybody in the political scene understands that you can't make them into useful members of society without their own input. However, everyone who looks at the situation without a "they're Arabs and thus they suck" mindset, understands that there are real collective problems occuring in the ghettoes, and that these collective problems have to be solved by collective action = politics.


* You might think that he has a weak willpower for him to fail so easily to peer pressure. However, that peer-pressure is fairly convincing. In his case, he lost his innocence at 8 (someone tried to chop off his balls to get avenge himself from his brother). He lost his father at 9. From 8 yo on, the only way he could use, to assert himself out of his family, was to show he was strong. Whenever there was a problem (from noisy neighbours to death threats), there had to be a confrontation of strength. When you grow up in a society where strength is the single most important issue, the values of the Republic are something completely abstract that don't belong to the real world. "Peer pressure" here has a deep meaning: it means that the entire rules of social life are pitted against the Republican values.

[Az]

Besides, while some families quickly adapt to the model of a small family with few children (apparently, most Arabs do, and the whites are already in that model), some other families remain huge in a small housing, which is a pressure for the kids to go work quickly.

It's a pressure for kids to do whatever they need to do, not to work quickly. The interpretation is just as important as the reality, in this case.

It's not only that. I have a friend who grew up in a family that emphasized studies (his two sisters are studying in doctorate), and yet he fell to the nihilism just like his brother. He has now wisened up, and through sheer willpower has extracted himself from his cité to become a construction worker, even though he'd clearly have potential to work in a much more rewarding job.

You see? his two sisters managed to pull through! They'll make good money, and do just fine. As to him falling out - I know people like that as well - and basically, it was their own decision to go down the bad path. And no, I don't believe in 'freewill'- But you can only go so far as to the conditions you can grant to people.

He and his brother are examples of people who had good values in the family, and yet who fell for the bad values of the cité*. It is my contention that:
1. It shouldn't happen that the peers you meet overwhelmingly belong to a nihilistic counter-culture, thus stunting your chances.
2. If peer pressure can destroy the chances of someone with a good family, there are reasons to believe that another kind of peer pressure would raise the chances of someone who has a bad family (see the example of my other friend now studying to become a project leader in construction).

Sometimes it can, some times it can't - and it swings both ways, you're right. In any case, my point is that although the riots are not something surprising, I don't think there is any legitimacy at all in them, and the failings of the immigrants are their own, first and foremost.

With these two ideas in mind, it sounds obvious to me that we should destroy these concentrations of people living in bad cultures, from a Republican perspective, and scatter them among neighborhoods that have good cultures. If we actually want to integrate them, instead of just saying that it's their "fault", we have to cope with the specific current problems. And the concentration, IMO, is the problem #1.

I agree that the approach is faulty- but don't blame the government for not trying. Most of us never got any socialized housing, just an assistance to rent - and some were housed in shacks in the countryside. I agree that immigrants must be spread, yes, but when people don't move out of their hood for a couple of generations, that's not the government's fault any more.

That's where you don't understand. Many suffer stigma even when they make an effort, because their politeness and society's general politeness are very different things. Two examples:
- I was speaking to an employee of the employment agency. She received a young guy who couldn't find a job. As he entered her office, she understood why: he had his sportwear, hood on the head, and a jean about 20 cm too low. He also had the classical racaille accent. She told him: "with your looks, it is not surprising that you don't find a job. When going to an interview with an employer, you have to make an effort, to be polite". He replies: "Come on, I'm being polite b!tch".

Am I supposed to shed a tear for him? Am I supposed to get all "but that's the way he's used to speaking"?

- Two days ago, Sarkozy came on TV to answer the question and remarks of several people facing him (political opponents, association members, people living in the cités). In the show, there was one young guy with the typical cité outfit. He didn't utter one single cuss word, but he did speak with his strong accent, and he was insisting for Sarkozy to answer his question (Sarkozy is an expert at dodging questions), and he was very insistent. Sarkozy brutally told him that he and his ilk would go nowhere if they are so rude. The journalist agreed. I don't think the guy could have been any more polite with the rules of politeness he learned.

That's bizzare, but I am not sure what this proves: That Sarkozy is a racist? Is that it?

Do you reguarly get rejected from jobs,

Once, yes, but when they understood that Russian immigrants are excellent workers, they've switched their mind rather rapidly.

from housing,

What housing? the amount of government housing we have is small ( it is privatized to tenants gradually over the years ).

or from frigging nightclubs because of your physical appearance?

Yes, if we're dressed like Russians - no, if not.

Do you get hassled by the police infinitely more than the person right next to you because of a difference in physical appearance? Wow.

Yes, yes, of course. And considering some immigrants, that's not really surprising.

You can repeat it as a mantra, but in this case, it is simply not true. The unequality about the intricacies of the school system is strong everywhere (it's obviously even stronger when you're, say, an illiterate Malian). There is an elite path, a middle path, and a sucky path very early on in our education system, even though vocational training first really appears in late junior-high.
The inequality is also geographically strong: when you're from the bourgeois areas of inner Paris, your chance to get one of France's most prestigious uni are immensely overrepresented, because it is a very realistic concern for your educational team. When you're from the middle-class suburbs, your educational team will think in terms of getting you to a nice uni. A really prestigious uni is an achievement the school is proud of. When you're in a ghetto, your educational team will first and foremost think of teaching you essential skills to get a job. Nobody there thinks of prestigious schools as a realistic aim (we have adisors who explain which course of studies the student might want to choose: they almost never speak of prestigious schools there), and uni is an achievement already.

Most parents obviously can't fill the gaps of the educational system when it comes to the frigging intricacies of school. Not only immigrants, but all parents with little education.
As a result, you have a very strong social reproduction in the choice of studies' paths. Most engineering students are children of engineers. Most marketing students are children of capitalists. Most medicine students have doctors as parents.
The parents who are most favored in this unequality are children of teachers (<-------- ). Because the teachers know that the school as arcane intricacies, they know that many aims are realistic even if it doesn't sound like it, and they generally push for their kids to study well (after all, they owe their nice status solely to their education, education is their whole life).

Your educational system is bizzare.

So, when you say "The government should do as much as possible, but primarily, it's always about them"

, you are right that there are individual differences. But these individual differences get strong effects because there is a broad social problem in France that must be tackled in a political fashion.
[/q]
And what is this problem? Racism? That's the only thing keeping these immigrants back?

That's probably true. However, they're here, their children are here, and they're French. The young people that got arrested are overwhelmingly citizens of my country. So we have an actual problem, which cannot be solved by rants.

Whether they're citizens, speaks little of their nationality - The real test of nationality is whether you consider yourself part of it, and whether the other nationals consider you part of it. If both conditions are met - then you're part of that nation. I don't know whether these two conditions are met.

Simple. The "immigrant society" as a problem is not something we can solve. For decades now, we have made immigration much more difficult, and immigration is now fairly insignificant in the population growth anyways. So, if we are looking for solutions, instead of rants, we should look where solutions are.

Yes, yes, you should. Trying to placate the rioters isn't a solution - first pacify the riots - then approach the problem with a comprehensive solution.

For years now, our government had been a morals teacher, explaining that disrespect toward your fellow citizens was bad (this was adressed to the disrespectful ghetto-dwellers as much as to our racists). These nice little speeches resulted in nothing.

And it was right.

For years now, our government has had a very strict repressive approach. The idea was that, if you bash their heads enough, they won't cause trouble anymore. Considering that those are the worst ghetto riots we ever had, we can safely dismiss this "solution" as a failure.

It had a very strict repressive approach? How's that, pray tell?

So, we have to look for solutions. My contention is that the concentration of poverty and counter-culture in gigantic complexes centered on themselves is the main problem. Others think the main problem is employment, racism, unsafety, you name it.

The main problem and question is, whether they want to assimilate into France. If they will, those problems will go away. If they won't you'll just get wealthier rioters who are in touch with their nationality ( Hint: not french), and want stuff that you could never have contemplated before Yes. Wealthy people riot. It was a real *cough* riot to see some of our BMW driving, Gucci-wearing, son-of-a-lawyers throwing Molotov Cocktails. Hillarious. They're also the majority of suicide bombers, btw - students, nurses, oh and, of course, idiots.

If this is aimed at me, there is nothing ad-hoc in what I'm sayiong. I've been saying it for 5 years now. Your rant, however, rests on little knowledge of the matter.

Actually, I wasn't aiming that at you, but I think I've hit a sensitive point. . Seriously, though, I was speaking of all those 'interviewees' from the riot they show that try to explain why people are rioting.

"It's society's fault" was a popular catch-phrase back in the 80ies. It's now way out of fashion. Everybody in the political scene understands that you can't make them into useful members of society without their own input. However, everyone who looks at the situation without a "they're Arabs and thus they suck" mindset, understands that there are real collective problems occuring in the ghettoes, and that these collective problems have to be solved by collective action = politics.

Collective problems that aren't only due to the fact that these are ghettos - but also due to mentality of their inhabitants.



Again, I am not playing the blame game - I am against it. But if the immigrants, ( and what seems to be their children and the children of their children ), want to, and want to blame France on their problems, I am telling you this right now - they're full of ****.

Now, how to rectify the situation? I think that my position on this is clear - Assimilation, period. This includes spreading them around, yes. But this also includes a stronger nanny state, that will not only nurse them, but will make them sit in the corner as well, if you catch my drift. Just so that you know, the value of being strong, isn't just an economical issue, either. Hundreds of millions of people around the world have traditions of intrasocial thuggery and ultramachoism - thus I am not sure this is because of poverty, either.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Az
You see? his two sisters managed to pull through! They'll make good money, and do just fine. As to him falling out - I know people like that as well - and basically, it was their own decision to go down the bad path. And no, I don't believe in 'freewill'- But you can only go so far as to the conditions you can grant to people.

If you're telling me that you can succeed with a strong willingness to get out, the answer is "well, duh." With a strong willpower, you'll be able to resist the multi-layered pull to the bottom that the ghetto-dwellers experience.
But if you look at the asterisk in my previous post (a short depiction of what my friend had to go through from 8 to 17, which are the years when an individual discovers society), you'll notice that the pull to the bottom is very strong. His sisters probably didn't grow up in a world where they always have to show toughness, what with them being girls.

Sometimes it can, some times it can't - and it swings both ways, you're right. In any case, my point is that although the riots are not something surprising, I don't think there is any legitimacy at all in them

Me neither. IMO, the rioters are thugs. They burnt the cars of people who need them to work. They burnt public facilities that made life in the ghetto a bit easier. They brought a police that is even more brutal than usual in the ghetto, exposing innocents to police brutality.

However, the one good thing about these riots is that France now questions where it went wrong. We are questioning how we have allowed such catastrophic hotbeds of crap to develop.

and the failings of the immigrants are their own, first and foremost.

Explain me why there are non-immigrants among the rioters then. Or alternatively, explain me why the immigrant-heavy parts of inner Paris (which are also poor), or of Marseilles, barely revolted.

The riots are ghetto-riots. They are not "immigrant riots", even though the matter of racism is relevant to the mix of problems.

I agree that the approach is faulty- but don't blame the government for not trying. Most of us never got any socialized housing, just an assistance to rent - and some were housed in shacks in the countryside. I agree that immigrants must be spread, yes, but when people don't move out of their hood for a couple of generations, that's not the government's fault any more.

Since you don't want to play the blame game, I wonder why you insist so much at saying "this is the immigrants' fault"

Am I supposed to shed a tear for him? Am I supposed to get all "but that's the way he's used to speaking"?

You are supposed to understand that he grew up in a powerful counter-culture. You are supposed to understand that the social norms we take for granted are completely alien to him. You are supposed to understand that it is a problem that has to be dealt with, instead of being abandoned. No matter whether "it's their fault" or not.

That's bizzare, but I am not sure what this proves: That Sarkozy is a racist? Is that it?

No. The guy was also too pale for me to tell whether he was a Gaul or an Arab. This is, however, an example of the complete rift between mainstream culture (Sarkozy, but also the journalist) and the cités.

In my posts in this thread, I've insisted that the stigma wasn't only racial, but that it was also related to class. That pale guy, with his cité outfit, with his cité accent, with his cité mannerisms, sounded rude to Sarkozy and to the journalist (and probably to many people watching the show) despite his best attempt at being polite.

This is indicative of the rift between the cités and the rest of society, and this is indicative of the stigma these people suffer from, from simply being what they are.

Analogy: For the sake of argument, imagine that the French mainstream suddenly decides that southern Frenchmen (currently a group for which there is no negative stigma) are scum, and begin to associate a bunch of negative stigma as soon as they hear someone with a southern accent. Imagine, we immediately assume the guy is lazy, violent, and out to get us upon hearing him speak. Imagine the employers refuse to employ southerners, because their accent would scare off their customers. Imagine private homeowners refuse to rent to southerners because they assume they'd see their housing ruined. And imagine that know-it-alls tell them: "if you want to succeed, just imitate Paris' accent, lazy bums."
You can now imagine that the southerners will be pissed off.

Guess what: in this analogy, I've depicted the stigma met by most people from the ghetto. Regardless of skin colour. Add racial hatred on top of it, and you have a serious collective problem.

What housing? the amount of government housing we have is small ( it is privatized to tenants gradually over the years ).

If you want to be out of the hood, you have to go to private housing. Not only do you have to give good guarantees about your ability to pay in the long run (and job-uncertainty is a real problem in the ghetto, even among those who are employed), but you also have to cope with the racism of the tenant, and with the distrust toward your ghetto mannerisms.

In the current situation, the demand for housing is so strong that the owners, whether they rent or sell, can choose who will get to live in their private housing. Ghetto-dwellers are very disfavoured about it, even when they have the money.

Do you get hassled by the police infinitely more than the person right next to you because of a difference in physical appearance? Wow.

Well, I've met some Arabs who also accepted being hassled more than whites, what with terrorism and all that. However, this feeling isn't shared among all the Arab citizens in the coutry of Egalité. The resentment about it is real, and it is even present among many whites who take interest in the cités issue.

And what is this problem? Racism? That's the only thing keeping these immigrants back?

Definitely not the only problem. As said, my contention is that the main problem is their counter-culture, which is now fed by the fact they are living in self-centered communities where nothing else exists, and in which the situation is dire because of a slew of problems (mass poverty and unemployment, racial and class hate against them, insufficient education, etc).
Some other people are saying the main problem is unemployment. Some other people are saying that the main problem is unsafety. Some other people are saying that the main problem is immigration.
Pretty much everybody agrees, however, that there are structural problems that must be tackled. The right-wing government has finally brought in some actual money to help tackle them. It's 20 years too late, but better late than never.

Whether they're citizens, speaks little of their nationality - The real test of nationality is whether you consider yourself part of it, and whether the other nationals consider you part of it. If both conditions are met - then you're part of that nation. I don't know whether these two conditions are met.

It depends on the people. But this is a serious problem for most. Many first-gen French citizens have grown up in a family that remained very close from its country of origin: the language at home is the native language of the parents, they go every year to the bled (the place of origin) in vacation. Many girls avoid hurting tyheir parents with their choice of boyfriend or of husband. On the other hand, they have also grown up with the school, which is teaching the values of the Republic. They have grown up with consumerism on TV. They have grown up with French music, rather than with the traditional music of the home country. They speak French with their friends. They are aware that the bled is poor and sucks. They call their cousins (whose parents have stayed in the bled) with the derogatory word bledeux.

You may say it's all the parents' fault, for not having embraced the French way of life, and for having not kissed their old way of life goodbye. But unlike many Jewish immigrants in Israel, most of our immigrants didn't intend to start a new life in France. Most of them came to France to make money for the family (which stayed in the bled at the beginning), and to retire in the home country. Like most economic immigrants do.
However, with the families coming to France, with the immigraiton becoming more longlasting, with children being born in France etc, we have French children living in families that are clearly foreign in their mind. And it messes up the children.

There are three big ways such a child can take after that:
1. The child embraces French culture, and leaves most of his parents' culture behind. This is often a very difficult moment for the family, sometimes seen as betrayal.
2. The child remains in that limbo between French and parents' culture. This void is filled with the counter-culture I harp so much about.
3. The child decides to fully support the parents' culture, and it often means a rally on religion and tradition. Incidentally, this scenario has become increasingly frequent these last years (in the 80ies, most 1st gen citizens wanted to be #1, but the racism paved the way for #2. Now that it is increasingly clear that #2 leads to nothing, #3 is making quick progress).

Yes, yes, you should. Trying to placate the rioters isn't a solution - first pacify the riots - then approach the problem with a comprehensive solution.

I haven't heard of any person, or of any political party, that doesn't want the riots to be pacified first. The problem lies with the "comprehensive" solution. From Sarkozy rightwards, the long-term solution is only to bash skulls, to expel foreigners, and to kill evildoers.

It had a very strict repressive approach? How's that, pray tell?

The amount of Brigades anti-criminalité (BAC) has increased, as well as the amount of police officers. The BAC, who intervene on the scene of petty and medium crime, are now armed with rubber bullets, with which they systematically threaten.
There are simplified judicial procedures, so that petty crime can be punished in a very short time. The laws have been made harsher.
It is now possible to put minors in jail, and it happens fairly frequently.
Te cops have received strict insturctions not to show any tolerance for petty crime. The time of arrangements between cops and petty criminals is over. Especially when you consider that most cops in the cités are young, and like most young workers aren't at ease with "interpreting" the written rules.

Collective problems that aren't only due to the fact that these are ghettos - but also due to mentality of their inhabitants.

Yes. We are in agreement from the beginning it seems (however, I argue that it is not solely a migrant thing - non-migrants can act and have acted the same). I'm arguing that this mentality, or this counter-culture as I put it, has been originally created by a slew of problems (lack of roots, unemployment, racism, insufficient education, dysfunctional values from the country of origin, whatever). However, this monster of a counter-culture now has a life on its own, and even if you solve the problems that have created them, you won't kill that monster that easily.

However, if we put an end to the concentration of these people, and if they have diverse role models to look from, this counter-culture can be vainquished.

Remember, this discussion started when you asked what geography had to do with it. There

[Pekka]

Spiffor, I'm not saying I would, but when the revolution comes I promised to take care of few commies even though it would mean pulling strings and risking my own authority and power, but you have to start keeping it real or I can't take care of you. I'm saying, I might be able to keep your cells warm, 2 meals a day, and MAYBE even magazines to read and a blanket. With your pace, I might have difficulties with them medical privilidges, see a doc every month.. you see I have to pay that sucker to come every month, otherwise you're seeing a doc once a year! You want that? Of course not. So how about them rubber bullets.. let them fly.. Just stop questioning everything, there's a purpose and that is to provide punishment to fools. All I'm saying is, if you want to be taken cared of, you better support them bullets right about now.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

heres an exellent article by the economist

[quote]


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France's riots

An underclass rebellion
Nov 10th 2005 | CORBEIL-ESSONNES AND EVRY
From The Economist print edition


EPA
EPA


The unrest in France's cities shows that social and policing policy has failed, as well as integration

THEY rammed a car into the local McDonald's, set it alight, and scarpered. In the daylight, the charred skeleton of the roof now hangs precariously beside the empty children's slide. Across the road, riot police face a group of hooded youngsters outside the treeless estate of Les Tarterêts. Amid this destruction, a billboard on what remains of the roof carries a painfully incongruous message: “What you were not expecting from McDonald's”.

For nearly two weeks, the unrest that began in one suburb north-east of Paris has spread around the capital's periphery and, lately, to scores of cities across the country. In scenes that have rocked France and are broadcast nightly on television, more than 6,000 vehicles have been set alight in nearly 300 towns; over 1,500 people have been arrested; one man has died.

It is the worst social turmoil the country has seen since the student-led unrest of 1968, and the government has appeared powerless to contain it. It took President Jacques Chirac ten days to appeal publicly for calm. After an emergency cabinet meeting this week, Dominique de Villepin, his prime minister, declared a state of emergency, invoking a 1955 law that allows a curfew to be imposed in troubled areas and which—with unfortunate symbolism—dates from the war in Algeria.

Two incidents triggered the rioting. On October 27th, two teenagers—one of North African origin, the other of Malian—apparently believing themselves pursued by the police, were electrocuted in an electricity substation in the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. A few days later, as trouble spread, a riot-police tear-gas grenade ended up—under unexplained circumstances—inside a prayer hall in Clichy. With no official explanation for either episode, rumour and indignation spread in equal measure.

This rapid domino effect reflects two broader failings and two policy problems. First, the mass unemployment that persists in a welfare system supposedly glued together by “social solidarity”. Second, the ethnic ghettos that have formed in a country that prides itself on colour-blind equality. These problems have been worsened in recent years by a deliberate hardline policing policy, and by disputes over how best to accommodate Islam in France.

The bleak high-rise estates that encircle the French capital have long been neglected in more ways than one. Physically removed from the elegant tree-lined boulevards of central Paris, they house a population that is poor, jobless, angry and, mostly, of north African or west African origin. France's overall jobless rate of nearly 10% is worrying enough; its latest youth unemployment rate of 23% is among Europe's worst (see chart). In the “sensitive urban zones”, as officialdom coyly calls them, youth unemployment touches a staggering 40%.

For all young people in France these days, proper jobs are scarce. As Mr de Villepin has acknowledged, 70% of all new contracts are now only temporary, and half of those last less than a month. For young people, the figure is four-fifths. The reason is what economists call an “insider-outsider” labour market: full-time permanent jobs are so protected by law that employers try not to create many, preferring instead temporary workers or interns whom they can shed more easily when times get tough. This suits the insiders, particularly those on sheltered public-sector contracts. But it leaves a whole swathe of youngsters with the very sensation of insecurity that the social system is designed to prevent.

Integration's failings

Worse still, for those whose name is Hasim or Omar, or whose address carries the 93 postcode of Seine-Saint-Denis—the department covering the northern Paris suburbs, including Clichy-sous-Bois—securing even an interim job is a struggle. Since official French statistics do not record ethnic origin, figures are imprecise. But according to a report last year by the Institut Montaigne, a think-tank, the unemployment rate of “visible minorities” is nearly three times the national average. Young women seem able to get and hold down jobs; but many job applications from young men end up unread in the bin. This is why Claude Bébéar, the president of the Institut Montaigne, has proposed that CVs should be anonymous.

Discrimination against minorities is particularly awkward in France because its model of integration does not recognise that such minorities exist. Some 40-50 years after emigrants from its north African colonies stepped off the boat in Marseille, there is no hyphenated term for their French-born children or grandchildren. Hence the continuing, but inaccurate, use of “immigrant” as a proxy. Yazid Sabeg, author of the Institut Montaigne report, prefers “visible minorities” to cover the estimated 5m-6m French residents of north African origin (or roughly 10% of the population), who are mostly French. France, he says, needs to acknowledge its multiracial complexion by adapting its vocabulary, rather than hiding behind “the myth of republican equality”.

This is not just a matter of semantics. France's integrationist approach relies on individuals clambering up the ladder by themselves. Yet this meritocratic theory clashes with the reality of segregation and poverty. The current riots, says Manuel Valls, mayor of Evry and a Socialist member of parliament, “are the consequences of 30 years of ethnic and social segregation” resulting in what he calls “territorial apartheid”, combined with the “bankruptcy of the model of integration: in France, our social elevator is blocked.”

France has never been shy to articulate what the country stands for and what it expects of its citizens. The ban in 2004 on the Muslim headscarf in state schools, not to mention the frequent expulsion of radical imams, make its philosophy crystal clear. Given the fresh emphasis on citizenship in multicultural countries, this is in some ways a strength of the French system. Yet, at the same time, the failure of minorities to get far up the social ladder shows the limits of the French model.

At the top end, the contrast with multicultural Britain is noticeable. There are now 15 British members of parliament from ethnic minorities, including Muslims; some of the best-known broadcasters are black or brown. In France, aside from those representing its overseas territories, there are no minorities in parliament. French television news anchors are almost exclusively white, as is much of the police force. Role models with credibility tend to be entertainers or sports stars. As Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister and head of the ruling UMP party, often says: “If we want young Muslim offspring of immigrants to succeed we need examples of success, and not only from football.”

France has no monopoly on isolated ghettos with high unemployment. But this trouble has been long brewing. Even before the riots, car-burning had become a ritual gesture of criminal defiance in the suburbs. In the first seven months of this year, an astonishing 21,900 vehicles were torched across the country, up on the previous year. Two further factors seem to turn general malaise into chronic violence: a zero-tolerance policing policy and the stigmatisation of Islam.

Frustrations on the ground

To see how the two are intertwined, consider the neighbouring suburbs of Evry and Corbeil-Essonnes, south of Paris. Each is home to rain-streaked concrete high-rise estates; multiple faiths, tongues and colours; and the usual cocktail of joblessness, broken families, truancy and drug-dealing. Each has also, however, embarked on big renovation schemes for their worst housing projects. Evry has secured €60m ($70m) to renovate its worst estate, Les Pyramides. Two towers in Les Tarterêts, in Corbeil, are due to be demolished.

It took a week for the riots to spread there from the northern suburbs. By Monday, 416 cars had been burned and 116 people arrested in the department of Essonne, which covers these two suburbs. Two primary schools were torched in Evry, as was the McDonald's in Corbeil. The police discovered a store of over 100 Molotov cocktails, along with petrol canisters and balaclavas, in a warehouse located—believe it or not—underneath a disused municipal police station in Evry.

Not far from that stash, young men eating kebabs and frites at the Etoile Sandwicherie Patisserie, Spécialités Turques, are quite clear about the causes of the violence. “It's Sarkozy's fault,” says one. The police harass anybody “with the wrong skin colour,” adds another. Further down the road, at the mosque, a young man mopping the steps agrees: “The police don't leave us alone,” he says. “They stop you for no reason.”

One complaint against Mr Sarkozy is his choice of words. To call the rioters “scum” may go down well on the right, but was sheer provocation for the youths on the streets. The other broader grudge against him is his tough policing methods. These were introduced in 2002, when he was first made interior minister, to counteract a widespread feeling of insecurity. Mr Sarkozy cracked down on illegal immigrants and prostitutes, forbade “hostile gatherings” in the entrance halls of buildings and armed the municipal police with Flash Ball rubber pellets.


Yet the price is that young minorities feel victimised as never before, rather as Afro-Caribbean Britons did ahead of the 1981 Brixton riots, which led to a shake-up of British policing. Official complaints are few, as many are afraid to lodge them. But given the rage felt against les keufs (street slang for les flics, or cops), copycat riots, however mindless, became a chance for young minorities to get their own back.

The role of Islam in the rioting is more complicated. Some commentators see signs of a jihad on the streets of Paris. Ivan Rioufol, a columnist for Le Figaro, called it “the beginnings of an intifada”. Yet intelligence sources suggest that this is not organised violence but anarchic rioting, helped by internet and mobile-phone contact. Roughly half of those arrested have been teenagers, most of them in their own suburbs, since they lack the transport to go anywhere else. Even in Evry, where the petrol-bomb store was uncovered, officials say that the teenagers involved were petty criminals, not radicalised fanatics. This was the angry rebellion of a beardless, Nike-wearing teenage underclass.

Many of the country's Muslim clerics agree. “This is not about Islam,” declares Khalil Merroun, rector of the Evry mosque. “The rioting youths have no notion of Islam or what the Koran teaches.” The Union of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF), a hard-talking group, has issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims from taking part in the violence. Some local Muslim associations have been organising night-time patrols to try to calm the rioters.

At the same time, the Muslim background of many of the rioters is a factor. France boasts Europe's biggest Muslim population, and has had more trouble digesting this minority than any that arrived before it. Young Muslim men in particular seem to feel emasculated by their failure to get jobs like their sisters, victimised by the police and unrepresented by the society they live in. Ready potential recruits, in other words, for seductive ideologies such as radical Islam.

Of the country's 1,500 or so mosques or informal prayer places, some 50 are run by radical Islamists, according to a report last year by the Renseignements Généraux, a domestic intelligence-gathering service. Of those, 30 are in or near Paris. Officials are particularly concerned by French Muslims now in Iraq, and by recent converts, especially those who found their faith in prison; over half the country's prison population is Muslim, according to a study by Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist.

It was partly to try to bring Islam out from the shadows, and to co-opt its tough-talking leaders, that Mr Sarkozy set up the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) in 2003. The idea was to give Islam an official voice, and to temper it by offering recognition. In one sense, this has worked. Although the component factions on the council have spent much time squabbling, the CFCM helped the government with its headscarf ban by deciding not to contest it. Even the UOIF's decision this week to issue a unilateral fatwa was a useful appeal for calm. But the worry now is that radical groups, unrepresented on the council, may exploit the current anger.

While the suburbs burn

When the French rejected the European Union constitution earlier this year, it seemed at the time to be the final humiliation for Mr Chirac. Less than six months later, his government has been making headlines around the globe for its inability to control the riots. The referendum rejection was seen as a wake-up call for the governing class from an electorate that was fed up and fearful. Now France has delivered one even more shrill.

Even assuming that the rioting begins to work itself out, no mainstream politician is likely to emerge unscathed. The far right will surely gain support. But the Socialist Party has been too split to offer any sensible suggestions. And the centre-right government has been left looking impotent, confused and more engrossed by the undeclared contest between Mr de Villepin and Mr Sarkozy ahead of the 2007 presidential election than by the need to formulate social policy.

For Mr Chirac, the riots have underlined how removed he appears from the daily lives of people only a few kilometres from his doorstep. In his 11th year in the presidency, the sudden discovery of the blighted suburbs appears disingenuous. Mr de Villepin comes out little better. In October, having faced down striking workers, he had appeared to gain authority. But the riots have diminished it. His decision to declare a state of emergency was greeted as too late or too drastic; his promise of more policemen, more jobs, more apprenticeships, more money sounded all too familiar.
Reuters
Reuters

Neither de Villepin nor Sarkozy speaks the right language

Harder to judge is how Mr Sarkozy will fare. His social-policy mantra is “firmness but fairness”: acting tough on security while being fair towards minorities. This is how he explains the logic of his policy of cracking down on illegal immigration with one hand, while with the other advocating “positive discrimination” to promote ethnic minorities. Such ideas have the merit of raising hard questions about racial equality in France, though they are viewed as “unFrench” by both left and right. When Mr Sarkozy named the country's only “Muslim” prefect, and labelled him as such, he was lambasted for pushing the country towards multiculturalism.

So far, Mr Sarkozy has managed to tread a road between what might be called social authoritarianism and progressive liberalism. But he may get tangled in their contradictions. The political right certainly approves of his tough talk. And he has at least had the courage to head to the suburbs at night to try to calm things down. But he has been no more effective at that than anyone else. A poll carried out for Paris-Match magazine during the rioting suggested that his popularity had dropped relative to Mr de Villepin's.

Back in Evry, frustration runs high on all sides. At the mosque after midday prayers, one man considers the burning of McDonald's fair game—“It's American”—but is outraged at the torching of the primary schools. In the town hall, officials are distressed that their efforts to improve the worst estates have not deflected trouble. All agree that something in France has to change. “If the young are to get to love France,” reflects the mayor, Mr Valls, himself of immigrant Spanish origin, “France has got to learn to love them.”


Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

and another one

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Charlemagne

Minority reports
Nov 10th 2005
From The Economist print edition



Where Europe fails in its treatment of minorities compared with America

AFTER Hurricane Katrina, Europeans rushed to congratulate themselves on avoiding the misery they saw on the faces of survivors. Such isolation and deprivation, they said, could never happen here. After two weeks of rioting in France, Americans are mockingly retorting that isolation and failure occur everywhere—and not only, some might add, in France. Britain saw immigrant riots in 2001. The Netherlands has radical Islamists who commit political murders.

Whether Europe or America really has the better record on accommodating ethnic minorities is an issue that may be debated ad infinitum. But the riots in France point to one particular area in which Europe has been unusually bad: integrating immigrant families from the second and third generations.

In America, the education levels, English-language skills and intermarriage rates of immigrant groups rise over time. So do income, home-ownership and political representation. This is the natural course of assimilation. But it does not seem to work in Europe. Some European countries (including France) do not collect ethnic-based statistics, so hard evidence is tricky to come by. But most indicators of second- and third-generation assimilation in Europe are disquieting. There are few North African or Turkish representatives in French or German politics. Most young men arrested after the French riots have been sons or grandsons of immigrants from the 1950s or 1960s. The murderer of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch film-maker, was described by the chairman of a parliamentary commission as “an average second-generation immigrant”. Europe, it seems, has done less than America to assimilate the children and grandchildren of newcomers. Why?

The answer depends on another question: what makes immigrants adapt? Some people stress the role of the host country, and argue that European policy has been worse than America's. Certainly, European policy has been all over the place. In France, anybody can be a citizen, and there are no recognised group identities. The ban on the Muslim headscarf in state schools exemplified this assimilationist tradition. Germany, until 2000, was the opposite: nobody could become a citizen if they were not of German extraction, even if they met the usual conditions (such as being born in the country of parents also born there). Britain and (until recently) the Netherlands were different again: they have sponsored a tolerant multiculturalism, in which minority groups are encouraged to celebrate their distinctiveness, so long as they accept that others can do the same.

After the events of the past two weeks, some Europeans are arguing that the British approach is the better one. Yet Islamic extremism exists in both integrationist France and multicultural Britain. Neither France nor Britain has avoided segregation in immigrant areas, although Germany has. America is moving away from multiculturalism, which dominated in the 1980s, to greater assimilation (some states ban Spanish as a language of instruction, for example). The correct conclusion is not that one model is best, but that policy may not be what makes the difference.

Perhaps it is culture that counts. Maybe Muslims are unusually retentive of their original culture. Certainly, they are the targets of increasingly radical propaganda, demanding that they separate themselves from the decadent society around them. And many Muslims discourage their sons and (especially) daughters from marrying outside their faith or ethnic group. Since intermarriage influences how quickly second- and third-generation immigrants assimilate, this cultural preference may make it harder for Europe to integrate, say, North Africans than it is for America to integrate Hispanics.

But do not make too much of the difference. Hispanic intermarriage rates in America, though rising, are lower than mixed marriages in many multicultural parts of Britain. Americans worry about the different culture of Latinos just as much as Europeans do about North Africans. So even if immigrants in Europe raise cultural barriers to assimilation, this is hardly unique. What matters are the forces that work to overcome those barriers. Two stand out: work and home-ownership.

The work advantage

Work is the archetypal social activity. It provides friends and contacts beyond your family or ethnic group. If you start your own company, it pulls you further into the society around you. And here is a striking difference between Europe and America. Unemployment in France is almost 10%. Among immigrants or the children of immigrants, it is at least twice and sometimes four times as high. In contrast, unemployment among legal immigrants in America is negligible, and business ownership is off the scale compared with Europe.

The second big motor of integration is home-ownership, especially important in the second and third generations. This gives people a stake in society, something they can lose. Thanks to cheap mortgages and an advanced banking system, half of Latinos in America own their own homes. Britain, after its council-house sales and property booms, also encourages house ownership. In contrast, most of the blocks in the French banlieues are publicly owned.

Between them, a job and a house help to create not only more integration but also greater social mobility. Latinos supported America's turn towards assimilation because they feared the trap of Spanish-language ghettos. But the banlieues are full of people who have grown up without jobs, or any hope of getting a better income or a better place to live. For them, integration is a deceit, not a promise.

A job and a house will not solve everything. The father of one of the July 7th London bombers owned two shops, two houses and a Mercedes. But if you want to know why second- and third-generation immigrants integrate more in some countries than others, jobs and houses are a good place to start.


Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

[Spiffor]

Nice articles

[Datajack Franit]

No, that's just D.F. 's fixation with Islam, which causes him to post comments like that, regardless of the facts.

FACT: islamic riots spreading all over Europe


yeah go and post some more crap abour multiculturalism, possibly about something that has nothing to do with integralist Islam, who cares- oh and don't forget to feed us with our daily spoon of unrequested culture

But of course, he's the offspring of immigrants and gay, so he can't be prejudiced in any way.

I have the right of telling what I think it's the truth that some people like you seem to refuse to accept. But I am sure you will be able to perform a google search on something absolutely out of contest, and copy/paste it into this thread

[DanS]

A job and a house will not solve everything. The father of one of the July 7th London bombers owned two shops, two houses and a Mercedes. But if you want to know why second- and third-generation immigrants integrate more in some countries than others, jobs and houses are a good place to start.

Personally, I think unemployment is the overriding reason for these riots and a more general sense of failed integration. In the US, immigrants have no lack of jobs, even if those jobs are on the sucky end of the scale. Indeed, they might have more jobs than they should be expected to handle. High unemployment is a policy choice with strong support in France but no support in the US. The immigrants' bread was not being buttered in their home countries, but they are in the US, which leads to a positive feedback loop to compensate for the assimilation into US society and an active giving up of the old life.

All is not sweet and light for immigrants or their children in the US, and these negative factors might forestall any immigrants lashing out against American society. I have already mentioned the fear of deportation, but also I note that the US has some tough streets that are very rough in comparison to France's worst.

That's what I started this thread to say. I think this was an effective thread.

[Colon™]

I wouldn't underestimate house ownership. Owning a house allows you to mortgage it to start a business, aside of being an investment on its own.

[DanS]

The problem with home ownership is that high home ownership rates often lead to high unemployment rates. The US has been able mostly to avoid this because homes in the US are a lot more liquid than in most other countries.

If I had a policy choice between high home ownership rates for my immigrants and low unemployment rates, I would choose the low unemployment rates.

[Colon™]

Why would high home ownership rates lead to high unemployment rates?

[DanS]

I cross-edited you.

[Colon™]

Not sure if there would be more labour mobility if you'd have less house ownership. With social housing you often got long waiting-lists, which discourages getting a new one in another city. At least that's the case in Belgium.