For many immigrants and their children and grandchildren in France, it's hard to feel like equal partners in the republic's promises of liberty, equality and fraternity. Slapdash immigration policies, persistent racism and skewed economic opportunities have helped create hundreds of grim housing projects and suburban ghettos: nether worlds of tension and confrontation that now loom large in the presidential campaign, with memories of the riots that swept through the country in 2005 as a fiery backdrop.
A bit of history: in the decades after World War II immigrants were brought to France as manual laborers. Most came from former French colonies in northern or western Africa, and they were largely satisfied when they found themselves in gleaming new apartments on the periphery of France's main cities. But subsequent generations, mostly born in France, still live in those same monoliths and budget cuts over the decades have brought increasing neglect. Hundreds of thousands of people now live in these troubled areas where unemployment is twice or three times the national average. For young people the rates are even worse, and a sense of anger, abandonment, and alienation reigns.
Added to the problems of class and race is the matter of religion or, perhaps more accurately, religious and cultural traditions. Most of the immigrant laborers who came to France during the height of post-war reconstruction were from Muslim backgrounds. Today, Islam has the second largest following of any faith or creed in France, after Roman Catholicism, ahead of Protestantism and Judaism. How can Muslims, Jews, and largely lapsed-Catholic French people live together? How much can these groups adapt to each other with respect and tolerance?
Leftists, whose unions initially embraced the immigrant laborers, see the relative failure of integration as a natural result of social injustices at home in France and, to a lesser extent, as a sort of payback for French colonialism. They tend to focus on education as the key to integration. French conservatives (and this is very broad-brush, to be sure) tend to see the issue as one of protecting French traditions and identity, and the solution as a matter of law enforcement.
For decades, far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen has fed off of popular fears about immigrants, crime and "chaos" in the suburbs. Conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy is cherry-picking from British notions and France's far-right on the issue, with stated goals ranging from strengthening moderate Islam to instituting a French version of affirmative action. He also talks of reforming French work contracts to make it easier to fire - and hire - and he highlights his past crackdown on lawbreakers. Ségolène Royal emphasizes the need to resolve the root economic problems in the suburbs, strengthen families and educate the young as crucial steps toward pacification and assimilation. She also emphasizes respect for law and order, and recommends what sounds like a military-style boot camp for young first offenders.
Unemployment in French ghettos ranges from 20 to 40 percent. France is home to an estimated 4 to 6 million Muslims--most of whom are considered lapsed, or 'holiday Muslims'--giving it the largest Muslim (and Jewish) population in Europe. The official numbers are vague, however, because French law prohibits the government or employers asking about racial or religious backgrounds. France is one of just two major European countries whose population is growing. It is therefore less reliant on immigration to sustain its economy in the future. France has between 1,500 and 1,700 Muslim places of worship (as compared to 40,000 Catholic churches.) Dozens of places of worship have endured penetration efforts by radical Islamists, according to French authorities, who have acknowledged surveying mosques.
