The French abscess

Curt Mudgeon

November 2005

Think of a country where the work week is short, yearly vacation rights range from five to eight weeks, the age of retirement is sixty or less, higher education is free, and generous social programs include a system of universal health care.  Its climate is temperate, free of hurricanes and tornadoes, and arable land is plentiful.  Earthquakes are extremely rare and always benign.  The country’s tradition of fine wines and cuisine is the envy of the world.  Its citizens are said to place a higher value on overall happiness than on material success and to live accordingly.  Because they have plenty of leisure time, they can take advantage of the many cultural activities subsidised by their benevolent government, including movies, theatre, art exhibits, and grand celebrations.  Commenting on President Bush’s re-election, one John Depp, a native of Kentucky and motion-picture actor, confided that he was awfully glad to live in France and not in the USA, as reported in a French press always eager to affirm Gallic superiority.

This idyllic image of France, which American liberals like to contrast with our society purportedly ruthless, morbidly competitive, and engaged in an obsessive pursuit of success, is of course entirely mythical.  In reality, France has been plagued for a good thirty years by systemic problems of which the recent riots are only symptoms.  On both sides of the Atlantic, pundits have proposed analyses of the situation that too often reflect parochial viewpoints and ignore the specifics.  Beside the matter of unassimilated immigrants turning against the host country, the circumstances of the uprising have much to do with France’s institutions, the nature of the governing elite, policies, ideology, and popular mentality.

Since January 2005, the same gangs that rioted have torched thirty-seven thousand cars.  They have also routinely set alight buildings, committed assaults, rapes, and other serious crimes.  The current situation is not surprising, as it is only the continuation of a decade of uncontrolled criminality in communities of immigrants and children of immigrants from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and French overseas territories.  This long-festering deterioration did not make the front pages of the national press, which seems more preoccupied with the petty palace intrigues of the political elite than with the social decay of suburban ghettoes.  It did not either appear to have caught the attention of the government, which is not surprising, given that long-standing French reluctance to acknowledge failures.  Also at play were a politically-correct timidity in addressing racial questions, along with the fear of confronting a malevolent minority entrenched in lawless enclaves and bent on subversion.  Regardless, for a good ten years, the torching of cars by an Arab Muslim minority has been part of the “normal” French social landscape.

In modern times, France has experienced substantial waves of immigration, including Italians and Belgians in the second half of the nineteenth century, Italians and Poles after World War I, and Spaniards in the 1930s.  In the post-World-War-II recovery, the government welcomed an influx of Spaniards, Portuguese, Arabs from North Africa, and blacks from former colonies.  These waves, which supplemented France’s low birthrate and provided cheap manual labor, generally coincided with economic or political conditions in the immigrants’ countries of origin.  It would be an exaggeration to say that the French embraced the newcomers, who were scorned as dirty, stupid, or worse, and were subjected to open discrimination.  Yet, in spite of these difficulties, most of the immigrants from European countries entered the society’s mainstream fairly quickly, within a span of two generations.  They had on their side a willingness to work hard, ambition, a determination to become French, and the realization that education was a powerful motor of social promotion.  It also helped that their cultural background shaped by Christianity was in that respect quite in tune with the tradition of the host country.  In addition, their racial makeup did not clash with the French varieties. 

By contrast, many immigrants from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and French overseas territories, who did not possess such a commonality of background, resisted the changes in their customary ways that would have eased their integration.  In particular, Muslims from North Africa were ambivalent about espousing the mores of a country that for all its claims of secularism was a product of Christian tradition---a country of infidels.  Moreover, memories of the French-Algerian war, the last colonial war waged by a Western nation, had left an imprint of prejudice and resentment in both populations.  Two generations later, unable or unwilling to follow a model of integration similar to that of European immigrants, many blacks and Muslim Arabs live in suburban ghettoes, where unemployment is sky-high, subsistence depends on public assistance, crime is rampant, the family structure has collapsed, and gangs of uneducated, antisocial juveniles run unchallenged.  Immigration programs of family reunification absurdly extending to cases of polygamy have unnecessarily swelled the numbers of this unassimilable population, a predominant segment of which has French citizenship either by birth or by naturalization. 

Obviously, the French government bears much responsibility for the current trouble, first, by tolerating uncontrolled immigration, second, by contributing to the formation of isolated suburban ghettoes through ill-advised housing programs, and third, by stubbornly championing economic and social policies guaranteed to produce both high unemployment and disincentives to work. 

As the chronically lackluster French economy did not make it easy for immigrants of little talent and motivation to get steady jobs, many of them soon found out that generous unemployment benefits and welfare programs allowed for a quality of life not only adequate but also far superior to that which they had known at home.  In a familiar pattern, their progressive takeover of the poor districts of the big cities was followed by a white flight that accelerated urban blight and the emergence of overpopulated, insalubrious ghettoes.  Instead of recognising the roots of the problem, successive governments theorised that a solution was tied to improving the lot of the poor with the development of low-cost, large housing projects to replace the inner-city slums.  As plans of urban renewal and considerations of cost placed these developments on the fringes of big cities, the urban ghettoes moved to suburbs to become even more isolated from the mainstream population.  Youths raised in this environment, some of them having never seen their parents hold regular jobs, formed gangs.  The situation has become so bad that the police cannot maintain any semblance of order in the housing projects.  Actually, calls to the police are often setups to drop cinder blocks on the officers from the roofs of the buildings. 

Predictably, the troublemakers blame this state of affairs on racism, which, they say, keeps them unemployed, and denounce the government failure to enforce much-touted programs of social “solidarité.”  This is a bit of an exaggeration.  It is true, however, that the antisocial behavior that prevails in the suburban ghettoes and is in large part responsible for lack of education and employable skills has become associated with ethnicity.  Now, whether antisocial behavior is a reaction to racism or to some insuperable cultural chasm remains an open question.  As to the “solidarité” argument, it only reflects the French mentality of entitlement, an autochthonous trait that immigrants have been quick to catch on.  In any case, the general population has a hard time accepting that unassimilable generations of alien ethnicity, persistently on the dole, would complain.

If France’s average unemployment rate, now at ten percent or higher, were lower, it is highly probable that some of the alienated youths would more easily find entry-level jobs able to open the door to better jobs and, ultimately, to better chances of assimilation.  But French unemployment is a systemic problem.  High taxes to pay for countless social programs, regulations discouraging the creation of new businesses, the heavy burden of mandated employee benefits placed on employers, and the cost of firing bad employees have stunted the French economy and the ability to create jobs.  Ignoring that only a growing economy can reduce unemployment, successive governments have tried various schemes that were supposed to work “in theory”---the French are fond of theories.  In particular, the thirty-five hour week, based on the fallacy that employers would hire more workers, was a spectacular failure because employers could not bear the loss of productivity and the high costs of additional employees.  The net result could be measured by an increase of productivity per capita---and complaints of stress---but without economic growth.

Clever social scientists have expounded the theory that France had inaugurated a new, modern philosophy of life.  Observing that technological advances and attendant increases in productivity offer a choice between economic growth and greater leisure time, they deduced that most of the French, having reached a satisfactory level of prosperity, had wisely picked the second option.  In a way, the gurus were right, considering that the yearly paid vacation in France is in the range of five to eight weeks.  It would seem, however, that the “wise” choice is somewhat disaffirmed by incessant strikes, protest marches, and general discontent.  Yet, many a Frenchman, even though he might have some reservations about his own level of prosperity, would say that the social scientists’ theory represents his own views.  This kind of mentality, blind to economic realities, will not help solve the problem of the ghettoes where the unemployment rate is two or three times the national average, and “leisure time” is plentiful.  

Sooner or later, the French will have to acknowledge the failure of their economic and social policies and effect drastic changes.  Unfortunately, the governing clique, which is composed almost exclusively of alumni of the École Nationale d’Administration, is not likely to come up with fresh ideas.  The ENA, created in 1945 by De Gaulle, was intended to churn out administrators able to implement the vision of the head of state.  Soon, the administrators found out that they could run for office and win, but political power did not instill in them the qualities of vision that characterise leaders.  The governance of these bred-in-the-bone, unimaginative administrators has been driven for decades by street protests and strikes. Mr Sarkozy, current Minister of the Interior, who is not a product of the ENA, may be an agent of change, as he will likely run for the presidency in 2007.  He suggested earlier this year that France should take a look at “the Anglo-Saxon economic model” to find a cure to unemployment.  He was quickly rebuked by President Chirac who declared that the models of Britain and the United States were not applicable to France because France had a special tradition of its own.  Mr Sarkozy, whose responsibility includes law and order, ranks high in current opinion polls for his tough stand against the rioters.  Yet, the socialist dream is very much alive in France, and it will take more than some politician’s fleeting popularity to pull the country out of its economic funk.

At the height of the riots, a few voices clamored for the rebellious ghettoes to be placed under the authority of imams in charge of enforcing Islamic law.  Others demanded that imams negotiate a truce between the French authorities and the mobs. Obviously, such appeals, which smacked of separatism, were unacceptable.  They show, however, that the loss of control over the troubled suburbs could be easily exploited by Islamic fanatics bent on terrorism.

There is a lesson for us to draw from France’s troubles.  Tolerating unrestricted immigration, legal or illegal, bears the seeds of serious problems in the short and long terms.  At last, we may have reached the point where public pressure will make politicians address the matter of securing our borders.  At the same time, the flow of legal immigration must be regulated to make it amenable to assimilation.  That will require laws to end abusive programs of family reunification and the nonsense of citizenship by birth accorded to the children of illegal aliens by a misinterpretation of the Constitution.  Finally, we have to re-affirm our melting-pot ideal, which through thick and thin had helped us achieve the amazing task of creating a nation, not just a state, out of disparate masses of newcomers.

Mr Depp’s enthusiasm for the French way of life seems to have cooled a bit.  The riots got him so worried that he considers moving out of the country.