Ah, slappy…? :eek:
Kind word–that’s a Mod.
Because it still sucks less than the place you used to live in. These are desperate people living in relatively bad conditions with little work. Its amazing to me France let them come to the country in the first place. What’s the incentive to allow a very large group of people who are quite different in terms of social thinking into your country?
Is there a Colonial aspect? Indians move to Trinadad because of the British colonial influence. France used to have colonies in North Africa, did they not? Vivhy France and Casablanca for example. 
The only way they’re forced to live there would be because this kind of housing is cheap, hence might be the only one affordable for an immigrant with a low paid job. Or maybe because landlords are unwilling to rent to immigrants. But there certainly isn’t any such obligation.
There are some case when a foreigner can have a right of residency but no work permit, for instance people who applied for political refugee status and are waiting for a decision on their case, and refugees. And they could stay in this situation for a while. Otherwise, no. Actually, currently, in most cases, you’re obligated to have already found a job to legally immigrate.
It doesn’t make sense to me at first glance. The only case where I could imagine they could have such restrictions are some public centers that provide collective housing to single immigrants (their name escapes me at the moment), more or less like a college dormitory, but it’s not exactly an usual housing nowadays.
Besides, something rings wrong in this statement, because french unions aren’t really similar to american unions, and an union can’t have a monopoly on a given activity (they can’t even have a monopoly in a given company and normally there are several unions in the same company).
Not sure what you’re refering to. Regarding the questions you asked, it would be none since there doesn’t seem to have any serious basis for these statements. If you’re asking if only muslim/north african are rioting, then, mostly yes, but most immigrants in France came from North Africa (actually, now, the largest number of immigrants come from China, but North and West African still constitute the bulk of the immigrants/ childs of immigrants)
Despite your statements being off base, that’s still mostly the issue. Except fot the “new country” part, because the rioters are for the most part second or third generation immigrants who were born here and are french citizens.
Actually, France not only let them (I’m refer to the parents/grandparents of the rioters) come in, but made them come in by boatloads until the economical crisis of the 70s, because the economy was booming and workers were needed.
Since, most immigrants from these countries have been illegal immigrants who eventually managed (or not) to have their situation regularized (amnesty, marrying, etc…). Legal immigration has essentially stopped since the late 80s/ early 90s as a result of increasingly restrictive immigration and citizenship laws.
During the same period immigration from poorer european countries (Italy, then Spain, then Portugal) dissapeared because these countries became wealthier and in the case of Spain and Portugal democracies.
I know. I was referring to my choleric outburst which required his intervention, not to the firm smack (or should that be slap?) of mod discipline which he applied.
I guess I really should enrol in that ‘remedial post composition for those who can’t construct a clear sentence’ class - maybe after my tantrum management class is finished :smack:
Yes, the bulk of the non-white population are from current or former French overseas territories and the largest single group are of Algerian origin, either recent immigrants fleeing the civil war and attendant poverty, or linked to those who fled to France in the early sixties. From International Herald Tribune
The French government is now dusting off a law dating back to that conflict to deal with the current situation. Plus ca change, again.
clairobsur, can you give us a first-hand account? Are you seeing any of the violence? What’s the opinion of how the gov’t is handling things?
I’d be hard pressed. As I mentioned in previous threads on this topic, I had not followed any news for a couple weeks, and I heard about the riots for the first time… on this message board!! And only some days ago.
So, I couldn’t tell whether or not the response of government was appropriate previously, because I don’t know what they did until these last days. And I didn’t see any violence, because I live in Paris proper and apart from apparently less than a handful of cars burned once, there hasn’t been any violence at all in Paris itself, only in some subburbs.
What I already wrote a number of time is that it’s a long standing issue. There has been similar events, on a regular basis, for a long time, but until know both localized and not lasting for more than a couple days. All these problems, both those faced by these youths those they cause have been notorious for years.
I’ll be in Paris in a couple of days and staying in the 6th, one of the nicer areas of downtown. I was just talking to someone at the hotel where I will be staying about an unrelated issue and I asked her about this. She said that outside of those suburbs, where you wouldn’t want to go even on the best of days, you would have no idea that there were problems if you weren’t watching it on CNN. People are walking around at night and enjoying the city as usual.
Over the last couple of days there has been a noticeable police presence downtown. I was wandering around Ille de la Cite last night and there were a lot of police cars with flashing lights. This morning there were three paramilitary with machine guns outside of the Montparnasse train station. According to the news, this is due to rumors of riot plans from intercepted text messages and web site postings. All was calm last night either because of an overreaction of because the extra security worked.
Paris is a big city, things can be happening somewhere and you would have no clue it’s happening if you were in another spot. I walked around that city for 3 days before I even saw the Eiffel Tower.
I was listening to BBC world service radio earlier this week, and they talked to a guy who did this little experiment. He used his name, a typical white French name and sent out a set of resumes for a decent job and noted how many responses he got. He then changed it and used a African/Arabic name and did the same thing and got noticeably less responses, if any. Someone above asked why they can’t get jobs, well when things like this are happening it makes it even harder. No, this isn’t a scientific poll or economic report and it’s just one guy, it’s simply something I heard on BBC and thought I’d relate to you all.
I’m not bashing Paris–I love Paris, my absolute favorite spot in the world.
Now, and for some time, there are riots in Belgium and Berlin.
Berlin? The only thing that I heard was that seven cars were set on fire on wednesday night, but nothing since then.
Judging by your location, you’d know more than I. I guess my English failed me-I’m notmuch of a writer. I was just trying to say it’s not just in France. I wasn’t equating the degree of what is happening in France with the degree in other locales.
Just that curiously, there are some riots/disturbances in the other spots in Europe.
Day 18 and they are down to a mere 200 car fires a night. Since French youths normally burn 100 cars on an average Saturday night it could be said that things are returning to normal(?). This has nothing to with poverty and everything to do with a breakdown in social structure within the poverty stricken French Muslim community.
I say this knowing my parents probably had a harder time surviving the Great Depression than the disaffected French youth have today. The difference is a mindset or belief that hard work will eventually pay off. Some of this is certainly a function of French culture but, IMO, it is mostly the result of a complete breakdown in the social training normally passed down through familiar interaction. In short, it is Lord of the Flies, Parisian style.
Although burning cars seem to get a lot of attention it is the burning infrastructure that gives a better window of what being attacked. Schools, public transportation, and public housing. Everything the poor need to succeed in life. It’s a classic battle that is fought by people who condemn themselves to failure. They are told they will never succeed and fulfill that prophecy by refusing to try. It’s a classic example of what happens when good intentions run amok and it happens in every country that tries it.
The French attempted to salvage an immigration problem that arose when their economy tanked in the 80’s. There were no longer jobs for the cheap labor they imported in the 70’s so they were left holding the bag when unemployment soared. The standard government fix for massive unemployment is to enact social care laws. What inevitably happens is a long-term addiction to what is supposed to be short-term subsidies. Children of first generation welfare parents become parents themselves and eventually the skills passed down from functional adults are lost. The results are always the same.
This is now a European problem in as much as the European Commission is suggesting a contribution of $58 million dollars toward the recovery efforts. It has taken on the aspect of a natural disaster. I’m not sure how the Euro crowd feels about this considering the lack of participation by French authorities. I’m also not sure if any of the French Newspapers that criticized the rescue efforts in New Orleans see the irony in their criticisms.
There has been indeed an increased police presence during the week-end, because it’s a four days holyday, and they were fearing some more troubles.
However the presence of military with machine guns in the train stations is unrelated. It’s part of the “Vigipirate” plan, put in place during the mid 90s after terrorist bombings, and reactivacted regularily depending on the terrorism alert level (actually it seems that it’s nowadays essentially permanent). I doubt these military are going to deter any terrorist, and assume they’re there only so that people feel safer, but that’s another topic.
Their machine guns aren’t loaded, by the way (but don’t tell it to the terrorists, …nor to the Parisians).
There has been an actual scientific study done, exactly in the same way, and exactly with the same results.
I suspect they are carrying clips with them.
They do. In a sewed pocket they would have to rip off in order to reach the ammunitions.
Which makes a lot of sense, actually. I can’t really imagine a situation where they would be able to prevent some suicide bombing with their machine guns. On the other hand, I can picture a lot of situations where a random guy passing by could end up dead.
I think you may be underrating the impact of percieved differences in opportunity. When everyone is poor, there tends to be greater degree of social cohesion because everyone is facing the same dilemmas. If everyone is wealthy, there tend to be enough luxuries to lubricate any friction.
When you have a big bunch of poor people who live in the middle of a wealthy society and believe they are denied an fair opportunity to participate, it is likely there will be ongoing social problems. When there is an unemployment rate of anything up to 40% among young males in the disaffected group, you are GUARANTEED problems. It’s an old-established sequence which has been played out in the US, UK, France and Australia recently, and probably in many countries where I haven’t heard about it. Good intentions, mindset, ethnicity, hard work, etc. have nothing to do with it, IMHO. It’s like an equation: Relative Poverty + Social Exclusion + Discrimination + Lack of Improvement + Random Trigger == Self-Destructive Outburst of pointless violence. This has been cooking up for over 25 years, so it’s no surprise it’s been pretty large-scale.
Incidentally, I dread to think what car insurance premiums are like in France with that many cars going up in smoke regularly, especially when you consider that Parisians normally drive as if they want to wreck as many cars as possible - maybe this is why Renault have had a profitable few years?