The Soapbox

Right from the start, the first sentence of Dominique De Villepin encapsulated what would be his continuous argument before Christiane Amanpour. In front of the CNN journalist, on the 29^th of November, the French Prime Minister kept playing down the extent of the riots while denying their ethnic origins and focusing on the social roots of the issue.

One cannot but be stricken by the current political answer the French government is giving to those riots: after having overcome an obvious political cacophony, the ministerial team agreed to interpret the “troubles” as the manifestation of social exclusion and to enact controversial measures to solve social depravation and discrimination. On the other hand, the new strong policy undertaken towards immigration, initiated last week by both the Prime Minister and the domestics minister, draw the attention to what could be one of the indirect sources of the riots: the failure of immigrants’ integration. Do the riots call into question the traditional French model of integration? The thorny issue currently at stake divides the political class, regardless of party adhesion, and announces the necessary and delicate debate France will have to accept for the coming elections in 2007.

As for the chronological framework of the riots, the crisis begin on the 27^th of October, when two teenagers died by electrocution, after having tried to escape what they wrongly believed was a police pursuit On the seventeenth of November, the French government announced “back to normalcy”.[1] What are the consequences of the crisis? 9,193 cars burnt, 2,921 arrests… and a significant political earthquake.

At the end of November, The Parisian published a revealing poll: more than two thirds of the French population deemed that the French President, Jacques Chirac, hardly has a grasp on the political events at stake in France or in the world, a situation which cannot but prove embarrassing in a country where the Constitution grants the Chief of the State a prevailing role in the institutional system. Because he refused to speak out during the first week of troubles, Jacques Chirac enshrined a feeling of aloofness, as if he meant to let his younger collaborators deal with the problem. Two of them particularly stood out thanks to the crisis: Dominique de Villepin, Chirac’s traditional dolphin, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the controversial minister of Interior issues. Both of them agreed in restoring “the republican order” in the suburbs, and in displaying a vast array of police forces and firemen. Both of them competed in delivering reassuring press conferences to alleviate the anguish of the population. But how different were their styles!

On the one hand, the Prime minister incessantly referred to the quiet mastering of the issue by the government, betraying no emotion, no particular resentment. On the other hand, the State minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, nourished many polemics by employing an allegorical and tough language against the “hooligan” of the suburbs, suburbs which were portrayed as needing to be “cleaned”. Obviously, straightforward and provocative vocabulary prompted angry reactions from the youth of the deprived neighbourhoods, and Nicolas Sarkozy was accused of fuelling the tensions instead of taming them. Let us mention the humorous denunciation of his policy made by a former socialist minister of Economy, Dominique Strauss-Kahn: alluding to the measures taken by the right-wing government to curb violence at night, he wondered to whom the curfew should be applied, intimating that each person likely to worsen the situation had better be confined.

Nonetheless, the decried agitations of the Minister of Interior have proven to be popular: while a steady majority approved of the government’s measures to re-establish order, he remains the first politician trusted by the French in order to solve the suburbs crisis (53 % believed that he could tackle the crisis[2]). Contrary to what would be expected, this popularity tends to be viewed with suspicion even in the ranks of the right wing party of the government. Within the UMP (Union pour un Movement populaire), voices spoke out to question the populism and endless use of the media by Nicolas Sarkozy. How to account for this attitude? Keeping in mind that the next elections will be held in 2007, and that the parties are currently electing their platforms and leaders, the crisis can be considered a fabulous opportunity for the would-be candidates to assert their own personalities and their own programs.

Indeed, this race toward individual success while talking about the riots is to be linked with the current political situation: within the UMP, only a few people believe in the re-election of Jacques Chirac as an eventual candidate for the right wing party. Who will be appointed to be the UMP candidate for the presidential campaign of 2007? A sour and veiled rivalry is beginning between the two favourites for the succession of Jacques Chirac. The Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, embodies the mainstream, level-headed and imposing bearing of the classical right tradition. On the contrary, Nicolas Sarkozy has managed to impose on the political class a sharply different style of communication, of management, of method. Proud of displaying a energetic new team, (whose efficiency is taken for granted on grounds on their youth!), the Minister, who is at the same time president of the UMP, clearly chooses to differentiate himself and calls for a true change of policy within his own party and in the country as a whole. During an interview with the French magazine L’Express, he asserted he would never enable the rule of fear enforced by the “mafia and the bearded ones”. Hardly had anyone before him dared to address the social and ethnic issue of the suburbs in such a direct way: for the best or the worst?

The more social the interpretation of the riots, the more leftist the speaker must be? The socialist party accused the current government of having diminished the subsidies previously given to neighboured associations meant to occupy the youth of the deprived suburbs: when busy, the latter do not hanger around and engage in petty (or more serious) crimes. The explanation of the National Front, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, stands poles part: the extreme right wing politician trumpeted himself on his website, asserting that he had been warning France of the danger of Islam for decades[3]. While the French channels and radios deem it unnecessary to invite him, the BBC delivered an interview of Jean-Marie Le Pen in which the latter expressed once more his will to “send back home” all the immigrants and French of foreign origins, who are, “of course,” to be held responsible for the troubles. The very controversial philosopher Alain Finkielkraut asserted to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the issue was nothing but an “ethnic-religious revolt”.

As always, the truth may be more subtle and more complex: 60 % of the people arrested in the riots were under 18 and, since statistics based on ethnical or religious belongings are forbidden in France, the exact proportion of Muslim teenagers engaged in the riots may never be known exactly by the public. Still, there is no denying that a large majority of the convicted people were “French from north African origins,” or immigrants. Does it mean that Islam is the cause of the riots? Certainly not. In fact, many rioters did not even express a political or social claim, and did not seem to have a precise point while burning cars, public buildings, and sport facilities. The other inhabitants of the suburbs were the ones who spoke out to convey the youth’s dismay, their drift, and their lack of confidence in future. Even if it remains impossible to defend the “breakers,” there are still elements which deserve to be taken into account in order to explain their actions: many of the people of foreign origins settled in those poverty-stricken areas depict their daily lives as a perpetual struggle against discrimination in the form of racism. As far as they are concerned, they interpret the riots as resentment against a society that is at a loss to provide an entire category of citizens with work, with fulfilment, and with wealth at a time when the majority engages in frenzied consumption. Islam or foreign origins cannot be the impetus of the riots: they were prompted by economic and social exclusion.

As a result, Dominique de Villepin promised on CNN an “equality of chance for everyone,” and laid the emphasis on the special attention that needs to be given to education and job access. The government will concentrate more human, material and financial resources in the high schools of deprived suburbs (reinforcement of the existing system of ZEP, area of priority education); it will grant more funds to develop social clubs whose purpose are framing teenagers of those neighbourhoods; teenagers who did not feel comfortable at school will have the opportunity to join the job market at fourteen years old and work as apprentices in the manual field of their choice; and justice will strengthen its fight against discrimination. Even if the political and the political powers are supposed to be completely independent, there is no denying that the political events had a tremendous impact on the judicial power. Symbolic measures in the courts tend to be enforced more and more. While the riots crisis was fading away, a breakthrough in the judicial field was accomplished on the 29^th of November, when a mayor was sentenced to three years of impossible election for having indirectly prevented a legal immigrant couple from buying a house in his town. This last measure epitomizes what seems the real contradiction of the government attitude related to the aftermath of the crisis: while asserting the social roots of the riots and passing several acts to show their awareness of exclusion, many actions undertaken deal more with racial and religious integration than with social deprivation.

III. Tackling the roots of the crisis: the French model of integration into question?

Indeed, one of the most striking political consequences of the crisis revealed itself to be the approval of a harder political stance against immigration. On the 28^th of November, the Prime minister united no fewer than fifteen ministers in order to devise a new program in order to regulate immigration. Nowadays, 100,000 people are entitled to legally enter the country, a figure deemed too high judging by the unemployment level.[4] The three main ways to enter France are through the status of international students, thanks to marriage with a French citizen and through the process called “family rapprochement”.

50,000 foreign students arrive each year in France. Not all of them go back to their motherland. Since this method can be misused in order to counter immigration procedures, the government has decided to select international students and reserve itself the right to restrict entry to “high potential” youth: in order to filter applicants, the PhD students and post graduate ones will be favoured. As for the marriage process, it is a well-known fact that the spreading of “white marriages” was a tremendous factor in the ever increasing number of people establishing in France. Until today, the foreign spouse or husband of a French citizen had the right to settle in France, and ask for the French nationality after two years of common-life. In order to fight against “white marriages,” the government thinks of prolonging this duration to four years. If the marriage is contracted abroad, the French consul will have the right to express doubts about the sincerity of the alliance before it is completed, and will be entitled to refuse the “staying card” (French equivalent for the green card) in France for the non-French person. Today, 34,000 marriages are contracted abroad: the typical scheme involves a young man returning to his motherland to find a pious, compliant and ethical assorted young girl he will be able to establish in France, either through the marriage process if the husband possesses the French Nationality, or through the “family rapprochement” procedure. Established in 1974, this system concretely enables the immigrant who has been living legally in France for more than one year to make his wife and children settle in France. In order to diminish the huge amount of immigration due to this procedure, the government has proposed changing the timing from one to two years before granting the family a legal staying in the country. [5

Reluctant to allow his “best enemy” Dominique de Villepin take the lead on the issue, Nicholas Sarkozy came up with a program in order to curb illegal immigration, and set himself the goal of taking back to the border 25,000 people a year (5,000 more than in 2005). Moreover, as soon as the riots ceased, he urged the “Préfets”, administrative representatives of the government in the provinces, to expel all the immigrants who had been proven responsible in the outburst, regardless of their possessing a legal “green card.” 120 immigrants have been convicted for disturbing civil order and security; however, since the law protects them in many cases, only a few expulsions, maybe ten, will be able to be carried out. Indeed, minors or people who arrived in France before the age of thirteen benefit from high degrees of protection. Nonetheless, the symbolic value of the message was clear, and apparently satisfied the French electorate. Even if some humanitarian associations denounced the philosophy of the measure, 63 % of the French people supported the act. In the perspective of the elections of 2007, there is no denying that Nicholas Sarkozy knew how to take advantage of the crisis. The more recent polls are clear: within his own party, 84.5 % of the militants see him as the best candidate for the presidential elections. The Minister even managed to seduce 50 % of the leftist voters, who approve of the actions undertaken by the minister though they are socialist sympathizers.

There is no denying that the riots made the political class and the whole population ponder more deeply the issue of the so-called suburbs. Yet, this issue has been an underlying problem for decades. Maybe the point of the troubles was to exemplify the urgency of a plan to tackle the roots of exclusion: is the French model of integration out of date? How to concretely answer the crisis? Here again, two voices stand in opposition within the ruling government : while Dominique de Villepin keeps on defending the secular and social State which characterises what is often dubbed “the French model,” Nicholas Sarkozy conjured up the option of “affirmative action” and of putting into question the traditional vision of the Welfare State. According to him, new challenges have arisen and the republic must take them into account, and must accept the need to adapt to them in order to remain efficient. What the French model of integration is, its current ordeals and whether it could stay accurate today will be the topic of the next article of this series devoted to French politics.

[1] The subjective criterion used to create this framework relies on the number of cars burnt by night: fewer than one hundred cars by night. Before the first of November and after the eighteenth of November, isolated acts of vandalism occurred, but may not be included in the climax of social unrest France knew as “the riots”.

[2] Poll made by the French national statistics service at the end of November 2005.

[3] I do personally advise everyone to have a look at the website of the National Front and see the video clip of the party : « Le Pen had forecast it ! », which was created for the European elections of 1999.

[4] The last months, the level of unemployment has slightly decreased under the psychological level of 10 %.

[5] All those acts need now to be voted by the National Assembly in June 2006.

Aurélie Castel is a junior from Sciences Po, in Paris, France. She is majoring in Politics.