The reasons for the civil unrests
I’m French, I’ll try to explain objectively.
First you have to understand there
is a big difference between Anglo-saxon
and French mindset regarding immigration.
Multi-culturalism vs. Integration
• Anglo-saxon prones multiculturality. As far as I know, it means you
can recreate a little part of your country in America or Great Britain (don’t
know for Australia). This leads to Chinatown, Harlem and so forth. Please
notice I have few knowledge about these suburbs and may be entirely wrong.
• French mindset is about integration. You are from a another
culture, you have the right to keep you culture on the private field, but for
everything related to the public space, you must act as a French, wherever
you’re from. It means that if you don’t eat pork because you are Muslim, no
problem. But the islamic law (the charia) is banned from France. The same
goes for female genital cutting (but this is a bad example, as I guess it is
forbidden too in UK and US) or for polygamy, forced marriage…
I’m conscious my examples are not that great but the basic idea remains the
same: Anglo-saxon countries prone multiculturalism while France prone
integration. This does not mean forgetting you culture, just that you must act
as a Frenchman with a background, not as a foreigners in a country.
This did not pose problem when Belgians arrived in France in the 1920’s. This
neither was a (big) problem with the massive afflux of Italians in the 50’s. But
this is now with Africans. Two reasons are:
• different cultures. Both Belgians and Italians are Europeans.
Africans are not. They have different social structures, the importance of the
father is less important in France and fathers have a hard time dealing with
their child having so much freedom (compared to traditional muslim society).
Althoug this is about a Turkish family, on may look at the British movie Fish
and Chips.
• there is much more African immigrants than there used to be
Belgians or Italians ones.
One also have to consider expatriates always act in a much “stronger” way
than indigenous. Compare Turks in Germany and Turks in Turkey, Jews in
Europe and Jews in Israël and, of course, Maghrebines (don’t know for Sub-
Saharians) in Maghreb and France. To a lesser extend, one can consider
Hungarians in Transylvania and in Hungary.
More information, explanations and links on the website on the original blog