Paris is Burning

Alienated Youth Take to the Streets as France Struggles with Integration

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Illustration by Sarah Hotchkiss
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BY ARIANA BALESTRIERI

Last October, I visited the local police station in the 9th arrondissement (where I lived for a year) to file a report after having been pick-pocketed. Seated in the hallway, a makeshift waiting room, I surveyed the sterile and shabby interior of the station where the all-white staff busied themselves, glancing only briefly at the officers so as not to catch their hard gazes. As I was led into another room, I passed a holding cell, where I saw half a dozen young men sitting behind bars. None of them seemed older than twenty-five and all were of North African descent. A few minutes later, as I filed my report next to a man making an identification, I caught sight of the computer screen he was looking at and the thirty-some odd faces of previously detained Arab boys and men, some appearing as young as thirteen, none older than their late twenties. I was astounded by what I saw, feeling that I was a witness to evidence of discriminatory police practices, one of many aspects that shape the marginalized role of young North Africans in Paris. My visit to that police station a year ago was quickly recalled to memory when I heard news of rapidly spreading rioting in France.

The images from Paris, and now twenty other cities in the country, of cars and buildings set aflame and battles between masked rioters and the national police may shock the international community. But to the young communities of French North and West Africans who experience daily tension with the police in areas disproportionately monitored by authorities, the eruption of violence two and a half weeks ago in Clichy-sous-Bois is no surprise. Clichy-sous-Bois is one of the poorest municipalities of the 700 cités (suburban housing projects) across France. Situated on the outskirts of Paris, this district has long suffered from diminishing government investment and the fraying of its social fabric. Clichy-sous-Bois shares with the hundreds of other cités nationwide social tension that has long been building. The immigrant and minority populations residing in these suburban peripheries have long shared resentment towards socio-economic neglect on the one hand and heavy police surveillance on the other, as well as resentment towards the French nationalist culture that stigmatizes minority identities.

Seulement Un Morceau De Sucre

The violence that quickly spread through France began after the death of two boys in Clichy-sous-Bois. Zian Benn, 17 years old, and Banou Trauré, 15 years old, died last month after jumping a fence to enter an electrical transformer building, while they were running from police officers checking for their immigration papers. Libération, a French leftist newspaper, reported that the police officers were warned by radio that entry into the site would be lethally dangerous. In response, the officers peeked over the wall to check for the boys, and seeing them gone, left the scene, leaving the boys in mortal danger. In the absence of aid, Benn and Trauré died when electrocuted by a transformer in the electrical relay substation.

The following Saturday, one thousand people marched together to mourn the boys' deaths, wearing t-shirts that read "Mort pour rien"—"Dead for nothing." Indeed, Benn and Trauré's deaths were the unfortunate results of an everyday reality of heavy police surveillance in these cités. Later, the grief expressed by the Clichy-sous-Bois community was replaced by anger, and subsequently rioting began. The French government responded to the initial outburst by sending 400 CRS riot officers, the national police, into the neighborhood.

Since then, rioting has commenced in numerous poor suburbs, or banlieues, surrounding Paris and other cities all over France. On November 8, French authorities declared France under a state of emergency, putting into effect a law of April 3, 1955 never before applied to mainland France. Curfews have also been established in certain areas where violence is most widespread.

Despite Minster of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy's focus on two deaths that have occurred during the riots, the target of widespread violence does not appear to be civilians but public and private property. Thousands of cars and numerous schools have been destroyed in recent days, symbols of a society from which the young rioters feel alienated.

The participants are young people, mostly boys and men between the age of twelve and twenty-five. Most are second or third generation French-born children of North African families. Last Thursday, Libération reported that 2,033 young people have been arrested or detained by the national police.

Some onlookers perceive the rioting as an Islamic movement since most of the participants are Muslim, but local Muslim religious organizations say that religion has nothing to do with this youth revolt. Members of the Muslim Association of Rosny, who have formed patrols to try and disperse youth in Seine-Saint-Denis, just northeast of Paris, reported to the Parisian newspaper Le Monde that the Arab youth are a generation who do not identify closely with traditional Muslim culture.

These young rioters are being labeled criminals and delinquents by a government intent on restoring order, but the destruction that has spread across France is the result of deep feelings of societal alienation and anger at conditions of everyday life in the banlieue. The second and third generation French-born Africans and North Africans are frustrated by the French model of citizenship that, on the one hand, expects individual integration into society and adherence to a secular nationalist culture and, on the other hand, denies these communities basic socio-economic inclusion.

Communities living in the banlieues are neglected by fiscal policy. Social subsidies to these areas have seen twenty percent annual cuts since 2003. Unemployment is double and triple the national average in these areas and those employed sometimes work for the lowest wages in the country. Cuts in funding have also crippled job training and housing development programs, according to an article from Zmag.org, a website for alternative news sources.

Cuts in education and job programs have created an overwhelming sense of hopelessness felt by youth in these poorer regions. In an interview with Libération, Serge Damiens, an educator from Lille, remarked: "The burning cars, that doesn't scare me the most. What worries me is the little ones who go to school, but. who. risk falling into a downward spiral." Damiens added as advice to youngsters, "Even if they don't want you at school, show that you can stay there."

Others express strong skepticism at the possibility of transcending the socio-economic barriers. Agnès Faulcon, director of a social center in Clichy-sous-Bois told French newspaper L'Express, "They tell parents to make sure to keep their kids in school, not taking into account the type of life lived in neighborhoods where there is misery. How do you tell a kid of ten or twelve that can make 50 bucks a day trafficking that it's better to stay in school to make a living?"

Even if successful in school, young French people of North and West Africans descent face grim prospects in the job market. In an interview with Le Monde Claude Bébéar, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the AXA Group, a prominent multinational investment company, attested to the widespread racism in job screening. Bébéar stated that businesses will often reject resumés of applicants with Arab names when they have the same qualifications as competitors with traditional French names.

In response to the riots, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has presented a plan which outlines funding for "sensitive areas" to begin in January of 2006. But many claim that promises of money are not what the banlieues need. Julien Dray, spokesperson of the French Socialist Party, attested to the absence of real commitment to investing in the social infrastructure. Dray criticized erratic government policy that has subjected the banlieues to withdrawl of funding, ineffective quick fix programs and empty promises.

Qui Aide La Médecine À Couler

Perhaps more disturbing than the riots were Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy's racially loaded comments after the flare-up. Sarkozy made headlines declaring he would "karcherise.la racaille," translated by English news sources as "clean the ghetto of scum." But this translation obscures his meaning. According to Doug Ireland, journalist for Znet.com, karcher refers to a system of cleaning a surface by sandblasting or water blasting. The use of this verb in respect to la racaille, a term comparable to "thug" and used as a derogatory reference to young people of North African descent could give the impression of ethnic cleansing.

Sarkozy later wrote an opinion piece for Le Monde where he employed even more frightening terminology. He described the rioters as "delinquents" and "rascals," irrational individuals "who no longer hesitate to. destroy, pillage and burn." Sarkozy vowed to control these perpetrators of acts of "savagery."

Sarkozy's proposed solution of community policing in these areas with officers who are responsive to the community's needs would seem like a bad joke to those constantly threatened by police brutality. In the past week, Sarkozy added to his "zero tolerance" policy the threat of immediately deporting rioters who are foreigners, including those with papers. As pointed out in a Le Monde article, the state does not have the capacity to review all the hundreds of cases of the detained to verify whether they are eligible for deportation. Sarkozy's deportation threat is thus not a viable policy, but yet another verbal threat to the North African community, one heard regularly from the mouths of police. It is the threat that led Zian Benn and Banou Trauré to run and hide from the police; it is the threat that led to their deaths.

In hopes of winning the spotlight in the scramble for the 2007 presidential elections, Sarkozy will continue expounding on the tactics most effective to restoring order and Villepin will elaborate on plans for future social investment. It is unlikely, however, that the banlieue youth will feel less alienated in French society. Sarkozy's loaded political rhetoric has served only to reinforce resentment towards stereotypes of North African youth as criminals, illegal aliens and social deviants. And with 56% of the country in support of his tactics according to a poll taken by Le Figaro, the prospect of widespread change in cultural attitudes seems bleak.

Granted citizenship at birth without the same means to socio-economic well-being as the majority of their compatriots, it seems banlieue youth will continue walking the blurred line of citizenship drawn in the sand. In the coming weeks, as riots are tackled, violence will be disbanded, but underneath restored civil obedience will remain a sense of alienation much more difficult to dismantle.

Ariana Balestrieri B'06 is a regular Mary Poppins.

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