FRANCE: What Immigrants Brought With Them

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Nov 14 2005 (IPS) - The contribution of immigrants to France is immeasurable, and cannot in any case be counted simply in economic terms, experts and artists of Maghrib origin say.

“You cannot express the contribution of our grandparents and parents to the reconstruction of France after the Second World War as a share of the gross national product,” celebrated French documentary filmmaker of Algerian origin Yamina Benguigui told IPS.

Benguigui, 47, said that over the last 50 years immigrants and their children have offered even their lives to France. During the First and Second World Wars, hundreds of thousands of soldiers from former French colonies died fighting for France’s freedom, she said.

Immigrants from the former colonies also made extraordinary emotional sacrifice in adopting the former colonial power as their new home. “You cannot assess the meaning of this gesture in economic terms,” Benguigui said.

Last week she signed the ‘Appel des mères’, a joint declaration by hundreds of women of Maghrib origin calling for an end to the riots that shook France for days after Oct. 27.

The open letter to youth from immigrant families rioting in the poorest outskirts of cities, and to politicians and government, speaks of the riots as a cry of despair by youth ravaged by unemployment and racial segregation.

The unrest in France began Oct. 27 after two children from immigrant families died accidentally in a high-voltage electricity facility in Clichy-sous-Bois, a poor district some 30km northeast of Paris. In the face of rumours that they were being chased by the police, which the police denied, angry youths went on the rampage.

The unrest that followed was then fuelled by comments by French minister for the interior Nicolas Sarkozy that immigrant youth living in such areas were “scum”.

Over two weeks of rioting youth gangs set fire to more than 8,000 vehicles, and attacked hundreds of stores, warehouses and public buildings, including schools and sports facilities. At least two people died, and scores of others, many police personnel among them, were injured. The unrest began in the northeast of Paris, but spread rapidly to the whole of the country.

Addressing the rebelling youth, the declaration by mothers from immigrant famil;ies released last Friday says: “Dear children, France is our country…Please do not destroy it, because, remember, we (immigrants) have helped to build it.”

According to unofficial estimates, from 1945 to 1975 up to a third of industrial production was carried out by immigrant workers. France would not be the economic and military power it is today without the contribution of more than four generations of immigrants and their families.

Industrial production is not all. It is hard to imagine French popular music without Charles Aznavour, the 85-year old singer of Armenian origin. Or French football without Michel Platini and Zinedine Zidane. The former is the child of Italian émigrés, and Zidane’s Berber parents were born in Algeria.

Or French theatre and cinema without Raoul Ruiz, the Chilean-born filmmaker who brought to the screen Marcel Proust’s classic ‘In Search of Lost Time’. Or without Yamina Benguigui. Without her, the French public would perhaps have remained unmindful that thousands of immigrant children are banned from the labour market only because of their ethnic origin.

Her documentary ‘Le Plafond de Verre’ (‘The Invisible Ceiling’) in 2004 showed the stories of hundreds of youngsters from mmigrant families applying for jobs. Most candidates from minority families would meet job requirements, but their applications were ignored. “It was as if an invisible border would stop immigrant candidates entering the labour market,” she said.

Some candidates sent two applications: one with their real data, and another signed under a ‘French’ name with an address in a ‘respectable neighbourhood’. The real applications were ignored, but the false ones always accepted.

“Actually, it is a system similar to apartheid,” Benguigui said.