Paradoxical Integration_INT_OPN

Category: Interest
Subject: Racism / Multiculturalism
Source: Times of Malta

Ranier Fsadni writing in The Times of MaltaThe violent rioting in France, which has involved looting, violence and destruction, has now seen emergency laws invoked. The riots and their spread have drawn a shocked European attention to a landscape of poor housing estates and multi-ethnic deprived neighbourhoods and raised questions about the prospects of multiculturalism in Europe. But these events cannot be explained by stock explanations – of either the left or the right.

When the far right crows that the riots show the failure and futility of multiculturalism it ignores some of the objective features of the French situation.

The rioters represent a minority of French citizens of immigrant background. Many of them are juveniles, school drop-outs, whose behaviour has shocked their communities and which has been condemned by their religious leaders. Some of the rioters, a fraction, are criminal delinquents and another fraction does not have an immigrant family background.

Above all, the idea that the rioters are rejecting some European idea of authority in favour of the authority of their own “indigenous” culture is mistaken twice over.

First, as the study of various groups of alienated youth of immigrant background in Europe shows, such youth tends to be alienated by all authority – including their own traditional religious authorities.

Second, it is not clear that Europe offers any model of cultural authority. Widespread relativism, at least in its pop TV-discussion form that moral judgements are not true or false but expressions of individual feeling or desire, offers no authority that can be accepted, let alone rejected.

Nor should a focus on the initial causes of the rioting make us forget that the riots, while obviously not caused by the French authorities, were inflamed by certain official decisions. When the Home Affairs Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, with his eye on his presidential prospects, called the rioters “vermin”, he incited the sympathy of the wider law-abiding community for the young rioters who are justifying their vandalism and violence as a response to institutionalised racism. The wider community, again, has been estranged by the police decision to tear-gas a mosque: a decision made for security reasons but mistaken, and no apology has been offered.

The analysis of one of France’s leading students of teenage criminality, Hugues Lagrange, emphasises the lack of hope engendered by 20-30 years of educational failure and high rates of unemployment in poor neighbourhoods. Part of Mr Lagrange’s analysis does confirm the claims (of “the left”) that these are the results of insufficient integration – say, by an education system that does not adequately cater for the special needs of children of migrants. Dyab Abou Jahjah, president of the Arab European League, a movement growing in Belgium and the Netherlands as well as in France, speaks of an alienation caused by systemic denigration and unjust discrimination in schools and at work, the resentment of being treated as second-class when you are a fully fledged citizen.

Interestingly, however, Mr Lagrange sees the problem as being in part the unintended consequence of highly successful integration: the mobility of those who flourished in the education system or who made money, escaped their shabby neighbourhoods, leaving what remained to become an environment of failure.

This paradoxical consequence of successful integration is confirmed by other sources. In recent days the president of a women’s rights group for French Muslim women, of immigrant background, has confirmed that most women like her are not only “integrated” but happy to be French citizens, enjoying civic and political rights that they would not have in their parents’ or grandparents’ countries of origin.

And the European experience of Muslim migrants suggests that the greatest difficulties have to do not with the first generation, which is generally eager to settle down peacefully in its new homeland, but with the second and third generations: the causes for alienation clearly cannot be blamed straightforwardly on the cultural background. Other factors must be sought and addressed.

One of these factors has to be immigration policy itself. It would be futile for Europeans to clamp down on immigration when Europe’s current economic need for it is analogous to the need that countries like Canada and Australia had a few decades ago. Those two countries, however, had a more systemic policy than the Union has now. It is such a policy, of controlled immigration, a control that addresses not just numbers but informal agreements with countries of origin, which the Union needs to formulate. The aim would not be to suppress multiculturalism but to practise it well.

Paris in flames: the limits of repression

Category: Interest

Subject: Racism / Multiculturalism

Source: Opendemocracy.org

An article by Patrice de Beer in OpenDemocracy

A week after the riots in the Lozells area of Birmingham, England, between people of African-Caribbean descent and those of Asian origin, the northeast Paris banlieues (suburbs) of Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil exploded in violent confrontation between police and black and Beurs (north African) youths. There have been clashes for six nights in a row – extending on the night of 1-2 November to the suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois. They involve the stoning of police vans, the burning of dozens of cars, attacks on firemen, and the vandalising of a police station, a post office, and a city hall. The disturbances have gone as far as a bullet being fired at a police van and a tear-gas canister being thrown at a local mosque during evening prayers – in the midst of the Muslim fasting month, Ramadan. As in Birmingham, rumour was at the heart of the unfolding events. On 27 October, two teenagers – Ziad Benna and Bouna Traore, sons of working-class African Muslim immigrants – were electrocuted while hiding in an electric substation. The circumstances of the incident are contested; it was quickly alleged – though by politicians rather than police, who strenuously deny the claim – that they had tried to escape a police check.

This is not the first racial riot – and it certainly won’t be the last – in the suburban ghettoes of France or other European countries. Youth violence, and more particularly violence in immigrant communities – legal or illegal, involving French citizens or not – has been here for a long time, and seems here to stay. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French interior minister and candidate to succeed president Jacques Chirac at the Elysée palace in 2007 – the two men hate each other despite belonging to the same UMP party – has adopted a repressive, law-and-order, zero-tolerance strategy towards the banlieues.

The rhetoric is as polarising as it is simple: it threatens evildoers (“them”) with jail sentences if they dare threaten the law-abiding citizens (“us”). Until now, this hyper-mediatic policy has paid off, helping make “Sarko” – himself the son of an Hungarian immigrant – one of the most popular politicians in France.

But today, in a tense situation of racial unrest, unemployment, loss of faith in politics and a bitter pre-presidential fight within the Union pour un Movement Populaire (UMP) as well as the Socialist party, Sarkozy’s strategy is losing steam. Crime may be down statistically , but it remains as visible as ever, and only a third of physical assaults are recorded. The number of cars burned might be down, but the vehicles look as disturbing as ever on a TV screen.

Daily “misbehaviour” – the politically-correct word for petty violence – might be unacceptable to many, but the cowboy-like behaviour of police launching armed operations in banlieues look no more acceptable, especially if they prove ineffective; or when they go too far, like firing tear-gas at a mosque.

It seems more obvious than ever that violence attracts more violence, and that it becomes a vicious circle where violent police repression of local riots nurtures even more violence and in turn even more repression. It is true that, in the banlieues as in the more affluent inner cities, people fear petty crime, drug-peddling, and carjacking by jobless youngsters. But nor do they like being fingered by police and politicians as potential criminals because of their appearance or creed. The only Beur member of government, Azouz Begag, “minister for social promotion and equality of opportunity”, criticised Sarko for his provocative words: “You must not call youngsters ‘scum’, tell them that you’re going to hit them hard. You must try to appease the situation,” he said, adding “I use the verb ‘clean up’ for my shoes or my car, not for neighbourhoods”.

Repression has shown its limits. Not that it is useless or harmful, as any government has to protect its citizens against crime. But a repressive policy cannot compensate for racial and social integration, nor offer an answer to discrimination, the housing problems of ghettoised suburbs and (above all) to the unemployment which hits the immigrant population even harder than the majority of job-seekers. Histrionic posturing to attract voters in pre-electoral times can cause more harm than good especially when the very social structure of France is at stake.

Copyright © Patrice de Beer, Published by openDemocracy Ltd.

Video to shed light on Italian refugee camp (INT)

Category: Interest
Subject: Immigration25.10.2005 – 09:50 CET By Teresa Küchler

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – A cross-party group of MEPs will broadcast a film on Tuesday (25 October) showing how the Italian refugee camp on the island of Lampedusa was cleared before the arrival of a delegation from the European Parliament.

The film from inside the camp by Italian undercover journalist Mauro Parissone, will be shown at a joint hearing with the socialist, liberal, leftist (GUE) and green MEPs with the banner “The Real Lampedusa: what the Italian government tries to hide from the EU”.

A delegation of MEPs visited the camp in September having earlier announced that they intended to gather evidence to confront the Italian authorities with allegations that they are expelling immigrants without having tested their legal status and keeping them in inhumane conditions.

When the MEPs arrived in Lampedusa on 15 September, only 11 people were in the compound. Inhabitants of the island told MEPs that the immigrants had been flown out, most likely to Libya, three days earlier.

However, Mr Parissone, present on Lampedusa well before the MEPs arrived has said he has managed to capture the evacuation of the camp on film.

Inside Lampedusa

He is not the only one to have done some undercover work.

Earlier this month, Italian reporter Fabrizio Gatti from left-leaning magazine “L’Espresso” entered the camp posing as Bilal Ibrahim el Habib, a fake Kurdish refugee.

After a week-long stay in the camp, Mr Gatti, who will be present at the hearing in Strasbourg, reported that the Italian police beat, verbally abused and stole from the immigrants.

Sicilian magistrates have opened a criminal investigation about the reported events on the camp.

But the Italian government maintains that immigrants at the centre were treated humanely and with Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli accusing the reporter of inventing his story.

Some Italian MEPs have also been critical of media coverage of the island.

According to Italian daily “La Repubblica”, Northern league MEP Mario Borghezio has been reported as saying that the Lampedusa centre is a “five-star hotel” while MEP Stefano Zappala, from the Italian governing party Forza Italia warned against making snap judgements.

He has argued that the European Parliament should take account of the national context of the complex issue of immigration – including humanitarian, social and security aspects.

Lampedusa is a small island located in the middle of the Sicilian Channel, 200 km from Sicily and 120 km from Libya, and geographically a part of Africa; with a population of 5,500.

The island has become an important outpost for people trying to reach Europe via Libya.