As disparate historical figures as
Marc Bloch, an historian, scholar, and a Jew, and
Toussaint L’Ouverture, a black and a slave until he was
forty-five years old, subscribed to the principles of the
French Republic—liberty,
equality, fraternity — until
the end of their lives. In his written commentary about
the capitulation of France to the Nazis, Bloch laments the
fact that civilized France allowed the Vichy government
and Hitler’s Germany to lead it into slavery. Marc Bloch’s
great-grandfather fought in the revolutionary army in
1793, and his father fought in 1870. He fought in the
First World War. By World War II, Bloch was the father of
six children and fifty-three years old. He joined the
Resistance in Lyon, was hunted by the Petain police, the
Militia, and the Gestapo. Bloch was captured, tortured,
and executed by the Gestapo. Comforting a sixteen year-old
boy by telling him that it wouldn’t hurt much as they both
stood before a Nazi firing squad, Bloch’s last words were
“Vive la France!” Toussaint L’Ouverture, a slave in the
French colony of Saint Domingue inspired by tales of the
French Revolution, led a revolt in 1791.
France abolished slavery in 1794. When Napoleon moved
(unsuccessfully) to reestablish slavery on the island in
1802, L’Ouverture again led the blacks in revolt, singing
the Marseillaise from the bush as they prepared to battle
republican troops. L’Ouverture was eventually captured by
Napoleon and incarcerated in a prison in the Jura. He died
of starvation and cold as Napoleon continually ordered the
guards to reduce his allowances for food and firewood.
Inspired by the French Revolution, Toussaint L’Ouverture
commanded the only triumphant slave insurrection in
history, followed in 1803 by the creation of the first
independent black state in the Americas. To the end, he
dictated letters to Napoleon, declaring his loyalty to the
French Republic and his total commitment to the principles
of 1789: liberty, equality, and fraternity. It is these
universalist concepts that inspired both Bloch and
Toussaint as they coped with betrayal, persecution, and
death at the hands of citizens of the nation in which
these beliefs were born. These principles made these men
more than just members each of a pariah people; this
Revolution made all men believe they were members of the
human race.
The ambivalence of France towards immigrants and
particularly towards recent immigrants and citizens who
are non-white and non-Christian has its origins in the
Revolution itself. The contradiction between universality
and particularism is at the heart of the tension between
the universalist principles of the French Revolution and a
nationalism that promotes ethno-cultural exclusivity in
French society. Although national policy for integrating
immigrants has been historically grounded in the French
Revolution and republican ideals, economic trends, and
political movements, a major function of immigration in
France is also to fulfill a labor need without threatening
the jobs of French workers. Inherent in this immigration
were recurring conflicts involving foreign labor and the
conditions under which it might be allowed to remain in
the country. What determined the need for a consistent
policy was the realization by 1925 that foreign labor had
become a necessary feature of the French economy.
Historical Perceptions of Immigrants
France has the
distinction in Europe of having the greatest number
of immigrants over the last two hundred years. It is
estimated that of the fifty-seven million inhabitants,
fourteen million have either parents or grandparents who
were of immigrant origin. France’s low birth rate during
the nineteenth century, substantial casualties during
World War I, and the expanding post-war industrial economy
made it necessary to recruit economic migrants who came
for work and a higher standard of living. Approximately
100,000 foreign agricultural workers entered each year
from about 1850 until after the Second World War. Foreign
workers, mostly Belgian and Italian, numbered almost
380,000 in 1851, and over one million by 1881. These
migrants worked in textile factories, in mining, in
building trades, and in agriculture in Lille, Lyon, Rouen,
and Paris. In the early twentieth century, Italians and
Belgians came for work in industries such as coal, steel,
and textiles. Poles came during the inter-war period to
work in the mines. Italians migrated to escape the
dictatorship of Mussolini, Spanish Republicans came to
escape retribution, and during the twenties, thirties, and
forties, Armenians, Russians, and Jews came to France.
Between the world wars some 500,000 single Algerian males
came to work on a rotation system whereby they would be
periodically replaced by fellow villagers or relatives.
After the Second World War, immigrants from Tunisia,
Algeria, and Morocco were the most numerous. By 1982, the
Algerian population in France had increased to 805,000.
Claims by French politicians that there was an almost
seamless integration of Spanish, Italians, Belgians, and
Poles into French society as compared with the integration
of late twentieth century immigrants from the Third World
are based on a reinterpretation of the history of European
immigrants in France. Between the 1880s and 90s, French
workers attacked Belgian miners in the Pas-de-Calais.
Italians were pursued by an angry mob in Marseilles in the
summer of 1881 who demanded that they shout “Vive la
Republique!” During the 1920s, Italians and Poles were
seen as “ethnically distinct,” along with Arabs.
Culturally different, they were viewed as difficult to
assimilate. Italians were said to be a danger to the
French people because they spread disease, were over-sexed
and morally deviant. Poles in Paris in 1922 were said to
be filthy and criminally oriented. Twenty-three thousand
steel and mine workers were laid off and deported as
redundant labor in 1931 from Longwy mines. More than
120,000 Polish coal miners of Pas-de-Calais were forcibly
repatriated with a luggage limit of thirty kilos because
they were redundant labor. In 1927, French medical
students demonstrated against 4,000 foreign medical
students because of the possibility that they would apply
to be naturalized. In 1933, in order to minimize
competition with French doctors, propaganda against
“incompetent” foreign doctors precipitated a law that
prevented them from practicing in the public sector for
five years after naturalization. By 1934, quotas had been
established denying work permits to foreigners in 533
categories in order to eliminate competition with
Frenchmen. In 1934, “redundant labor” could be deported
and one-third of the foreign male workers were repatriated
during this decade. During the 1936 Popular Front
government, the extreme right characterized foreign
workers from Russia, Spain, and Germany as socialists and
Jews, as dregs, mold, and dung. In 1939, 200,000 members
of the Spanish Republican militia were held for fifteen
months in concentration camps after entering France. Many
died of exposure. During the Paris summer of 1942, the
Vichy regime oversaw the deportation of 42,500 Jews, 6,000
of whom were children, to Auschwitz and, overall,
one-fourth of the Jewish population, approximately 76,000,
was deported to Nazi death camps.
From Cosmopolitans to Frenchmen
During the 1970s,
the centrist right President Valerie Giscard
d’Estaing promoted the official view of France as
egalitarian, welcoming, and diverse. President Giscard was
concerned about the levels of racial prejudice but was
confident that this would improve once the French
population was made sensitive to the issues and needs of
immigrants. The assumption was that the government elite
was not racist, and in its official capacity as upholders
of the principles of the French Republic, it was
responsible for guiding common Frenchmen and popular
opinion away from feelings of racial hostility.
The perspective of the French political and cultural elite
is that France is a society of openness and universalism
in which the ideas of individualism, liberty, and
opportunity define the French nation. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s
efforts to represent a segment of the population through
the agitation of restrictive immigration and citizenship
policies eventually prompted a strong counter response on
the left and among the internationalist-minded elite in
support of traditional policies of assimilation and
integration. Many in the French elite, those who run the
institutions, do not perceive France as exclusionary with
a national identity based on a particular ethnicity and
culture in spite of some government policies that support
a more narrow view. This exclusionary perspective, if
believed, would limit France’s influence in the world and
jeopardize the integrity of its institutions. The elite
believe that the grandeur of France is based on its
political, cultural, and intellectual expansiveness. This
perspective continues to prevail among the majority of the
elite in spite of persistent opposition from elements of
the popular culture.
The Revolution is the reference point for the philosophy
and organization of the French nation. It is the key to
comprehending the depth of the universalist goals the
nation has set for itself in terms of the political and
social incorporation of newcomers. It is also the
reference point for understanding the rights and
responsibilities of citizenship. But the Revolution also
established expectations and loyalties that would, as it
progressed, undermine cosmopolitan principles and lead to
the exclusion of people who were not French or accepted as
French.
During the Revolution, France developed a national
consciousness of its particular position in the world as
the leader of the struggle for liberty for all humanity.
However, the potential for counter-revolution, civil
unrest, and economic crisis began to undermine
cosmopolitanism and restrict the unity of man to a
position of citizenship and human rights within national
boundaries. The source of the contradiction is the
declaration of universal rights within a particular
nation. Human rights become national rights and national
rights imply the exclusion of non-citizens. The
revolutionaries believed in universal principles but they
achieved political prominence by promoting the idea of the
French nation within territorial boundaries. By 1793,
participation in revolutionary politics by foreigners was
restricted and the revolutionary government was harassing
foreigners by way of surveillance, requiring visas and
passports, interrogation, incarceration, and expulsion. By
1795, as the Revolution progressed and the fight to
sustain the Republic intensified against domestic and
foreign enemies, the rhetoric transformed from universal
rights to the rights and responsibilities of a citizen
within the nation.
The execution on August 10, 1792, of King Louis XVI, the
strain of diplomatic relations with Europe, the economic
crisis and civil unrest continuing through the Terror
generated a heightened level of paranoia, producing the
institutionalization of xenophobia in the harassment of
foreigners. The continuity of the treatment of foreigners
under Napoleon was greatly influenced by methods from the
Old Regime. The refinement of the system of police
controls and surveillance of foreigners that firmly
established the almost autocratic right of the French
government to decide on expulsion, mass arrests,
passports, and registers, is part of the Napoleonic
legacy. Bonaparte institutionalized the separation of
French citizens from foreigners in the Civil Code. The
universal community of citizens became the exclusive
community of French nationals, and those outside the
national community were foreigners.
General Profiles of Recent Immigrants
The second half of
the twentieth century saw the darkening of major
French cities and their suburbs, particularly Paris, Lyon,
and Marseilles, with the increased immigration of
non-white, Third World people, both citizens and
non-citizens. Immigration, race, ethnicity, religion, and
the inability of non-whites to assimilate into French
society became increasingly explosive issues that were
exploited by elements of the extremist right. Slowed
economic growth, unemployment, and intense competition for
work exacerbated ethnic segregation and political
exclusion.
Metropolitan France is now home to one-quarter of those
who were born in Martinique and Guadeloupe. The DOM-TOM (Departements
d’Outre Mer et Territoires d’Outre-Mer) population is all
French citizens, primarily from the islands of Guadeloupe
and Martinique in the Caribbean and Reunion in the Indian
Ocean. The French government encouraged migration in the
wake of a post-war labor shortage in Metropolitan France.
Recruitment was also intended to continue the process of
assimilation, especially in Guadeloupe and Martinique, to
avert possible political unrest in response to
unemployment and underemployment and also to circumvent
U.S. economic incursions into the islands. During the
sixties, these black migrants were seen as posing less of
a threat than those from North Africa because of the
“frenchness” of the Afro-Caribbeans. The government
attempted to offset any xenophobia by promoting this
migration as Caribbean nationals freely moving within
French territory. Before this effort, there were
approximately 40,000 DOM-TOMiens already residing in
France employed as domestics, in maintenance, in civil
service, and in industry. Aside from these occupations,
the government recruited workers in the building trades,
in customs, and conscripted recruits for the military. At
the time, this migration was perceived by the government
as permanent because family migration and unification were
encouraged and subsidized. As French nationals, they are
allowed to work in the public sector, unlike foreign
immigrants. But, like foreign immigrants, they occupy
low-level positions. The rate of employment is slightly
lower than the national average but unemployment for the
children of those originating from the DOM-TOMs is double
the national average. Discrimination is considered the
primary reason that unemployment for children of migrants
from the DOM-TOM parallels that of non-citizen immigrants.
These Caribbean French nationals live largely in the Paris
region —the center of state employment—in La Goutte d’Or,
Seine-Saint-Denis (where the Paris riots of October 2005
began), or Belleville.
The sluggish economy during the seventies preceded a
change in policy to replace foreign immigrants with
nationals from the DOM-TOM. But, by the end of the
seventies, there was less need for workers in the public
sector and a rise in discrimination towards DOM-TOMiens.
By the beginning of the Mitterrand government in 1982,
policy focused on assimilating and integrating the DOM-TOM
population that had already settled in France. And, by
1983, government policy began to focus on developing
employment opportunities and increasing social benefits in
the DOM-TOM in order to limit the in-migration of DOM-TOMiens
to France.
Immigrants from the DOM-TOM are French by cultural
affiliation and nationality and to a great extent embrace
French cultural practices and values. But, darker
complexions tend to be equated with immigration/foreigner
and the “immigration problem,” and are thought of as
non-European. Europeans from Spain, Italy, or Portugal are
more often than not assumed to be French nationals, an
assumption that is also based primarily on skin color.
Thus, the negative emphasis on the darker races tends
often to render irrelevant the country or territory of
origin and citizenship status. An individual or group can
experience discrimination and exclusion whether or not
they originate from any former colony or from an overseas
territory or department considered part of greater France
and whether or not they are citizens, legal residents, or
undocumented immigrants.
Sub-Saharan Africans in France numbered 240,000 in 1990,
up from 82,000 in 1975. Most were from former French
colonies as well as from Zaire (former Belgian colony) and
Mauritius (former colony of Britain). Ninety percent of
the women and two-thirds of the men work largely in
low-grade, low-paid urban service sector jobs such as
street vending and cleaning. They are two-thirds of the
total number of vendors and street cleaners. A
considerable number of them are undocumented because of
the practice of polygamy, which makes it difficult to
collect accurate figures of exactly how many live in
France. An average family numbers eight, making it
difficult to locate housing that is large enough and
families can afford. Thus, ethnic enclaves of sub-Saharan
Africans develop as word spreads among them of
neighborhoods where housing a large family is possible.
Most of them live in Saint-Denis and Paris.
Of the three countries that represent the Maghreb--Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria–immigrants from Algeria
constitute the largest and oldest group. They came as
manual laborers after the Second World War, settling in
urban industrial cities such as Marseilles, Lyon, and
Paris. Algerians have experienced economic exclusion and
social marginalization as the result of the loss of jobs
requiring manual skills in an increasingly
technology-driven labor market.
The harkis, those Algerians who fought on the side of
France during the Algerian War (1954-1962), fare as poorly
as other migrants from Algeria. After escaping execution
in Algeria and arriving in France, the harkis, who are
French nationals, were housed largely in dilapidated army
barracks and then subsequently relocated into better
housing. Notwithstanding their support of France against
other Algerians, the harkis and their descendants, who
number about 500,000, are still not accepted in France as
French and are severely marginalized. They continue to
live in “micro-concentrations” and, at times, experience
an unemployment rate of up to 80 percent among young
adults age 18-25.
In the 1960s, Moroccan immigration coincided with the need
for manual labor in the automobile industry. Moroccans
also outnumber other national groups in their
participation in agricultural labor. Following their labor
patterns, there are concentrations of Moroccans in western
suburbs of Paris, the rural southwest, and Corsica, where
they compose about fifty percent of the population. The
most recent Maghrebis immigrants are the Tunisians.
Similar to their predecessors, they are manual workers and
they reside in Paris, Lyon, and in the Marseilles area,
where their labor concentration is in the building
industry.
Living Conditions - Housing
The majority of
immigrant workers until the 1970s lived in hostels
for single men, shanty-towns on the outskirts of major
cities, or in deteriorating apartment buildings located in
declining neighborhoods. By the mid-seventies workers
began to rent apartments in government housing,
Habitations à Loyer Modéré (HLMs), intended for immigrants
and families of low and moderate income. These were built
largely on the outskirts of large cities such as Paris,
Marseilles, Bordeaux, and Lyon, some distance away from
markets, cafés, and shops. The HLMs were built in suburbs
(banlieues) which were subsequently designated Zones à
Urbaniser en Priorité (ZUPS). The apartments were to be
allocated in such a way as to avoid ethnic concentrations.
Often poorly constructed near railroad tracks and
highways, this housing was noisy and inconvenient to
public transportation. In order to avoid an
over-concentration of immigrant families, the government
established a quota system whereby it paid a special
allotment to an HLM authority to disperse its immigrant
population among buildings in a development. Instead,
immigrants and foreigners have been concentrated in
certain older and degenerating HLM high rise buildings,
giving the impression that HLMs in banlieues are occupied
by poor or unemployed immigrants who cause the decline of
their own housing. The poor locations and deplorable
conditions of some of the developments discouraged many
Europeans from accepting apartments in them. The HLMs
became associated with downward mobility and HLM
authorities rented their quota to immigrant families and
left the remaining apartments empty. The empty apartments
began to be used by jobless youth to store stolen
merchandise and to engage in other criminal behavior.
Foreigners, who are six percent of the overall population,
comprise eighty-one percent of the inhabitants of economic
priority zones. Banlieues (suburbs) have come to indicate,
in U.S. terms, an inner-city neighborhood complete with
the lowest socio-economic groups, the unemployed, poor
school performance, and crime. HLMs are “mono-ethnic”
concentrations and have, since the seventies, been areas
of violent confrontations between unemployed youth and
police. Segregation in racially constructed communities
contributes to the social isolation of immigrants. These
economically and socially disadvantaged districts are
examples of exclusion in French society.
Assimilation has, as we have seen earlier, not been an
easy and seamless process for Europeans, even of Catholic
background, nor has it been easy for those who are
non-white from the Third World. Throughout the history of
immigration in France, there has been conflict of varying
degrees between French workers and labor migrants. Low
demographic growth and the ebbs and flows of industry
determined the pace for the in-migration of workers to
France. But, it was also the ebbs and flows of industry
that determined solidarity or conflict between French
workers and foreign workers. The “sub-class of foreign
workers” who were once necessary for the economy has, to a
considerable degree, become the sub-class of physically
distinct citizen workers who as redundant labor are often
unemployed and sharing public welfare benefits with the
majority population.
Citizenship Status
Until 1993,
children of foreign parents automatically attained
citizenship at the age of eighteen (age of majority), if
they were born in France or if they had lived in France
for five years before reaching eighteen. And, each year
about 24,000 youth became citizens in this fashion. If one
parent became naturalized then the children automatically
became French nationals. This allowed an additional 12,000
children annually to become French nationals. Children
born in France were legally French if one parent was born
on French territory. Children whose parents were from
former French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa or Algeria
automatically possessed French nationality.
As part of the 1993 reforms, Article 23 of the French
nationality laws was amended to exclude sub-Saharan
Africans from former French colonies and their children
from automatic French nationality. This law also required
that children of Algerian descent would have to have at
least one parent living in France for five years prior to
their birth in order to have automatic French nationality.
Any child born in France can acquire French nationality by
completing the proper documentation when they are between
the ages of 16 and 18.
The Racialization of Immigration
By the end of the
1960s, the term “immigration” itself began to be a
euphemism for the social integration of the post-war
population from Africa. By the mid-1970s, the concept of
culture had replaced race and racism in the language of
differences based on ethnicity. According to this view,
culture replaced instinctive hereditary behavior and it
was culture, not biology, which also modified inherited
instincts. If culture and not race establishes the
foundation for ethnic difference, then it is possible to
be opposed to people who are different based on their
culture and not their race. This distinction was important
in order to promote the political goals of the National
Front. Eliminating the fear of being labeled racist opened
the possibility of attracting right-leaning voters from
other parties, particularly those who were unhappy about
issues involving immigrants and immigration. Disliking
what was foreign could then be based on a natural
avoidance of cultures different from one’s own. Exclusion
could be justified, not on race or racism, but on the
natural selection of individual cultures and survival of
the fittest among them. One could avoid being openly
racist, and yet subscribe to doctrines of racial
superiority and suggest the elimination or expulsion of
some supposed inferior group based on differences of
ethnicity and culture. The current Minister of the
Interior, Nicholas Sarkozy has also suggested that those
of “immigrant” backgrounds who participated in the riots
of Fall 2005, be deported. The reference to second
generation immigrants is generally a reference to French
citizens -- children born in France or its territories and
educated in its school system. The persistence in alluding
to them as “immigrants” is based on the fact that they can
be identified as non-white.
In the early 1980s, Jean Marie Le Pen exploited and
intensified anti-immigrant sentiment in a more openly
hostile fashion. Substantial support for the National
Front comes from relatively affluent areas of Paris and
Lorraine where workers are skilled, self-employed,
upwardly mobile shop-keepers and business and home owners.
National Front supporters are not “destitute and
despairing,” but tend to be the “dissatisfied” middle
classes. Voters come from the established parties on the
right, are former abstainers and young voters as well as
defectors from both the socialist and communist parties.
Significant to Le Pen’s success has been the ability of
the National Front to attract the traditional constituency
of young working class males away from the parties of the
left. The racialization of immigrants was precipitated by
economic contractions, the perceptions of alien cultures,
and the unassimilability of non-European labor. One of the
primary beliefs of the Front is the denial of the
universalist tenet that all humans share a common origin
and that all men are created equal, but are separated by
the communities and cultures in which they were nurtured.
As part of its political agenda, the National Front
advances a social inequality that would give “national
preference” in jobs, housing, and education. Rising
unemployment, crime and delinquency, suburban poverty and
riots, and decreased expenditure on social programs were
and are still all blamed on immigrants and immigration.
Social and economic problems in French society tend to
focus on the density of the immigrant population and away
from the globalized economy, the lack of social programs,
and the reduced ability of the state to solve economic and
social problems.
2005 - 2006 Civil Unrest in France
Between October 27, 2005 and March 28, 2006, France
experienced intermittent political and labor unrest among
its youth. In the Fall, the demonstrations and riots were
initiated primarily by underprivileged immigrant-origin
black and Arab youth in the “banlieues” or ghettos. In the
Spring, protests and labor strikes were led by university
students, laborers, and union leaders, basically
middle/upper middle class, angry about the possibility of
employees having to relinquish established guarantees
against abusive treatment and firing without legal
recourse.
2005 Fall riots
On October 27, 2005, two “immigrant-origin” youths were
electrocuted climbing a fence of an electric substation as
they were running from police. Both youths, one of Malian
heritage and the other of Arab Tunisian background, lived
in the economically depressed Paris suburb of
Clichy-sous-Bois. Random searches and identification
checks by police are frequent and there is widespread
perception in the banlieues that the police are racist,
abusive, and operate with impunity. These deaths and
perceptions sparked 20 nights of rioting, fighting with
police, and the torching of some official buildings and
thousands of cars by mostly immigrant-origin youth in
banlieues throughout France. As earlier noted, the
banlieues are suburbs of French cities where the majority
of “immigrants” reside, isolated from the shops and
municipal services of central cities and where the rate of
unemployment at 20 percent is more than double the French
national average. Economic and social exclusion based on
race and national origin of ancestry (ie. surnames), and
lack of prospects for upward mobility plague this
population, even those who may be well educated.
Government response ranged from punitive to conciliatory.
After the twelfth night of rioting, Prime Minister
Dominique de Villepin announced curfews as an option for
town officials. The next day a national state of emergency
was announced and Nicholas Sarkozy, Minister of the
Interior, declared that foreigners convicted of rioting
would be deported. On the fifteenth day of unrest French
president Jacques Chirac admitted to social problems
including unemployment, crime, poor housing, and the
bigotry faced by non-white and Muslim background French,
and promised that his government would develop new
programs and opportunities for these youth.
Azouz Begag, Minister of Equal Opportunities (a position
created in response to previous social disturbances in the
banlieues) urged that statistics on religion and ethnicity
begin to be collected in order that accurate data can be
kept on the French population at large and particularly
the economic and social progress of immigrants in the
banlieues. The collection of data that defines French
people in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, etcetera, is
in opposition to the French Republican ideal of “citizen”
of the Republic, equal and without distinction. The irony
is that economic and social exclusion is obscured by the
definition of “citizen” established by the Revolution, as
simultaneously many citizens are being excluded from
exercising their rights in the French Republic.
2006 Labor protest
The Contrat première embauche (CPE - First Employment
Contract or Beginning Workers Contract) requires a
two-year probation period for employees under the age of
26 and gives employers the right to terminate employment
without notification and with no requirement to offer a
reason or explanation. Currently, employers must give
notice with justification and are subject to litigation.
The bill would allow lowering the age for youth working at
night from 16 to 15, fourteen year old adolescents to
become apprentices, and the revocation of family welfare
benefits if a child fails to attend school. Part of the
rationale behind the formulation of the CPE in the winter
of 2006, was the alleviation of the high unemployment rate
among the young, and particularly among “banlieue” youth
after the Fall riots forced the government to once again
look at the discrimination and economic exclusion often
faced by this population. Unemployment in the banlieues is
typically twice the national average and is seen as the
primary cause for lawlessness in these neighborhoods.
Proponents of the bill claim that the employers’
unencumbered ability to fire will be an incentive to hire
more young people. In turn, an increased number of youth
with no previous job experience would acquire training and
skills that would allow them to gain future employment.
Opponents allege that replacing the traditional
three-to-six month probation period with one that lasts
for two years after which an employee can be let go
without justification invites abusive behavior on the part
of employers including sexual harassment, reduction of
wages, and job insecurity. Some opponents have suggested
that banks would be less willing to give mortgages and
landlords would be reluctant to rent to persons working
under CPE contracts. Inherent in these demonstrations was
the expectation that the government was not supposed to
design multi-tiered job systems which at the outset
designate some jobs as less secure thereby encouraging
systemic inequalities. The massive demonstrations prompted
the Chirac government to withdraw the CPE law on April
10th in order to develop a compromise plan to reduce
unemployment among the young.
The Debate Continues
The political basis
for the development of the French modern
nation-state was the desire for political equality and the
passion for the elimination of social distinctions based
on birth. There was also an objective economic and
historical incentive for the French to centralize
government operations and form a state. Thus, the
prolonged revolutionary struggle that made it necessary
for the state to eliminate all feudal representatives
between itself and the population. The Revolution
underscored the class nature of French society, setting
the foundation for the modern awareness of economic and
social class structures in Western societies. Although
this shift from feudalism to a modern centralized
nation-state widened the political base, it did not
adequately address strategies for a more equitable
distribution of material wealth. Deprivation and penury,
therefore, persisted among the French working classes and
were the source of future political and economic
struggles.
Particularism camouflages racism in dominating an
economically subordinate group. The application of this
perspective to transcontinental labor is an effective
means socially to differentiate elements of the working
class in order to reinforce the structure of dominance. “Racialization,”
as Maxim Silverman defines it, serves to entrench the
position of the majority group so that their social and
economic condition remains unchallenged. This phenomenon
of exclusion illustrates the continuation of former
colonial relations of power through the economic and
social exclusion of migrant workers and people from former
colonies. And although these most recent working class
immigrants are non-white, every group of immigrant workers
for the past 100 years has, to varying degrees, been
perceived to be culturally alien and economically
marginalized. Third World immigrants who are non-white,
even though many of them are citizens, are cast as
incompatible parts of a unified whole, based on supposed
cultural differences, actual differences in ethnic
appearance, and their status as chronically unemployed.
One of the major challenges currently confronting French
society is a recasting and redefinition of those who
compose the “whole” of its national community, especially
in hard economic times.
Since the Revolution there have been intermittent
adjustments as to who would have access to citizenship and
nationality and who would be excluded based directly on
one’s economic function and usefulness. Universalism means
that all humans have certain inalienable rights, but
particularism means that not all people have the right of
citizenship. One could be a French national and not have
the right to participate in the political process: slaves
in the colonies, colonial subjects, poor Frenchman,
servants, and women. The conflict between universalism and
particularism is an enduring historical process for both
the nation’s populace and its elites as they continue to
confront issues involving new immigrant populations,
changing economies, and altered perceptions of nationhood
in a global context.
It was the ideals of sovereignty, democracy, freedom of
religion and speech, and equal justice before the law, as
counters to the actual behavior of men, that awakened
revolutions which produced radical change throughout the
Continent and the Americas. These ideals electrified the
peasants of Europe, Toussaint L’Ouverture and the slaves
and colored men throughout the Antilles, as well as Marc
Bloch and the Resistance. But the development of ideal
democracies requires more than universal principles. It is
necessary to consider everyday economic and social
conditions to determine who is able to profit from
democratic rule and who is left out. It proved easier
during the French Revolution to codify political justice
than pass legislation to eliminate wide disparities of
wealth. The Revolution did not go far enough. As a
bourgeois revolution it guaranteed political rights but
stopped short of guaranteeing economic equality. And
universal principles, paradoxically, make economic
inequality more difficult to address because they
emphasize political equality and ignore real material
differences that impact on the ability of an individual to
integrate fully into the society.
The social unrest experienced in France during 2005-2006
begins to address the precarious nature of political
equality when material differences are engendered and
sustained by economic exclusion. The common strain between
the disadvantaged protesters from the banlieues who rioted
in the Fall and the students and workers who went on
strike and protested in the Spring is the belief that
liberty, equality, and fraternity are based on economic
opportunity and the right to work. These protests were
grounded in fear of economic insecurity and frustration
over the lack of employment opportunities. For many of the
Fall 2005 protesters the values of the French Republic are
ignored and sabotaged by economic exclusion and racism.
For the Spring protesters advocating its repeal, the CPE
represents the disintegration of the sense of solidarity,
the disruption of the idea of a shared destiny, and the
corruption of the ideals of the French Republic. In spite
of the dissimilar backgrounds of the protesters, there
seemed to be a common expectation that it is the
government’s responsibility to create the economic and
social conditions that sustain these values.
Notes
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