From Clichy to cliché
Six years on, the banlieues are still a world apart
Oct 15th 2011 | PARIS | from the print edition
IN THE autumn of 2005 car-burning and riots in the banlieues, the public-housing projects that ring French cities, prompted the declaration of a state of emergency. Since then, as much as €35 billion ($48 billion) has been spent blowing up grim 1960s tower blocks and replacing them with lower-rise housing, with landscaped paths and trees. New plate-glass office blocks have sprung up in low-rent business centres. Has this improved the lot of mainly Muslim people in the banlieues?
Gilles Kepel, an Arab specialist, and a team of researchers, spent a year in two, north-east of Paris: Clichy-sous-Bois, where the 2005 riots began, ruled by the left; and Montfermeil, ruled by the right. They hung out in schools, housing projects, fast-food joints, mosques and sports halls, interviewing 100 locals. Their conclusions, in a report for the Institut Montaigne, are striking. The banlieues are becoming “more isolated”, and marked by an “intensification of Muslim identity” in reaction to unkept promises of integration.
The report notes a tendency for Muslim children to opt out of school meals because of a lack of halal food. The researchers say leaving to buy a kebab impedes “socialisation” in the schools. People also express “very strong” hostility to marriage with non-Muslims. Almost all regularly attend mosques. The study links the growing grip of Islam to the state’s failure to promote integration. New back-office jobs in the Seine-Saint-Denis department require skills that are in short supply among Clichy school-leavers. A sense of isolation prevails. It takes longer to go by public transport from central Paris to Clichy, 15km (9 miles) away, than to Lille, 220km to the north. “Islam,” argues Mr Kepel, “is acting as a substitute for the role that isn’t being played by the republic.”
The report has prompted indignation. The French school system has not given up, insists Luc Chatel, the education minister. Laurent Mucchielli, a French specialist onbanlieues, said the report, from a liberal think-tank financed by business, played into the hands of the right. There is a fine line between pointing out subtly how Islam is ordering life in the banlieues and whipping up crude fears of Eurabia.
The French are prickly about such empirical studies, and not only because they may be exploited by the far-right—Marine Le Pen of the National Front rails against the “occupation” of the streets by Muslims during Friday prayers. But cultural explanations of immigrant behaviour also collide with belief in the integration model. This assumes that all newcomers adapt to France, not the other way round. By law, no ethnic statistics can be collected, so nobody can talk about ethnic factors. Last year Hugues Lagrange, a sociologist, reported that black youths with origins in Africa’s Sahel (eg from Mali and Mauritania) were more likely to be involved in crime than those from other parts of Africa, including the Maghreb. He suggested family patterns, including polygamy and absent fathers, were a factor. He was accused of stigmatising black Africans.
Not everything in the banlieues works against integration. More minorities are getting involved in local politics. Turkish entrepreneurs are doing well. In a surprising twist in Clichy, says Mr Kepel, a drive-in McDonald’s restaurant has thrived despite refusing to produce halal food, whereas local halal rivals, such as Beurger King (a play on beur, meaning French-Arab), have closed down. An emblem of American cultural imperialism, McDonald’s in Clichy serves up to 2,000 clients a day, employs over 50 staff, often recruited from among the local jobless, and promotes social mobility in a way that most French institutions struggle to match.
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