Special report: France’s riots. An underclass rebellion

Neither de Villepin nor Sarkozy speaks the right language

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 Tarterets. 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 on next page). 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 Bebear, 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 euro60m ($70m) to renovate its worst estate, Les Pyramides. Two towers in Les Tarterets, 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, Specialites 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 Generaux, 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.

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."