Inside Washington's Headlines

by Ken Feltman

International Edition

Europe’s future may depend on France’s answer

As darkness fell on Thursday, October 27, in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, 10 or 12 high school boys finished playing spirited and noisy football and started walking for their homes in the housing projects. At about the same time, police were called to a nearby construction site to investigate a possible break-in. Police confronted some of the boys and demanded their identity papers. The boys had no reason to fear the police except for possible inconvenience and humiliation. ID checks are conducted with irritating but inconsequential regularity in neighborhoods such as this one. The area is peopled mostly by immigrant Turks, North African Muslims and Black Africans. Youths say that, sometimes, they are taken to a police station for questioning for no apparent reason. They can be held as long as four hours before release. Occasionally, they must wait for their parents to come to take them home, which can be many hours later.
 

This time, six of the youths were detained for questioning. Perhaps because they were just fed up with the harassment of the repeated checks, some other boys ran. Thinking that they were being pursued by the police, three boys climbed a wall to hide in a power substation.

Not long after that, lights in the neighborhood flickered and went dark. The blackout was caused, police later said, when one of the boys touched an exposed wire. A 15-year-old from a Malian family and a 17-year-old of Tunisian background were electrocuted. Another 17-year-old, a Turkish Kurd, was hospitalized with injuries. The surviving youth said that the three boys had been accused of burglary and ‘feared interrogation.’

Soon, conflicting official statements fueled public mistrust. The official version was disputed, changed, then changed again. Thus began nights of violence and vandalism in France.

A deceptively simple problem

French and American leaders are aware of antipathy between the two countries’ populations. At a dinner I sponsored in September, a French diplomat and two French journalists expressed concern about the widening breach. A senior American journalist echoed the concern. The mutual alienation of French and American citizens has become a concern at the highest levels of both governments.

The U.S. and other nations populated largely through immigration (Australia, Canada, Argentina) have their own serious ethnic and immigration problems. But the recent French riots are unlike anything in their experience. Not even the riots that ignited American cities in 1968 have prepared Americans to understand the complexity of the French (and European) problem.

The problem can be stated in a deceptively simple way: The French have a more complex concept of citizenship. Being French is more complex than being American or Australian.

The youthful rioters were mostly citizens of France, born in France, but not regarded as French. This is not so much due to racism as to the traditional French concept of their nation. Early in European history, the people of a nation usually shared a language, appearance, religion, territory, history, outlook and enemies. So it was with the people who became the French. A Frenchman knew he was French; his neighbors accepted him as a fellow Frenchman. Other European nations share this concept with France and it distinguishes Europe from most other parts of the world, including the Americas.

Citizenship, nationality and ethnicity

European national identities were based originally on ethnicity. Tribal-names-that-became-national-names dot the map of Europe. Denmark takes its name from the Danes, Bulgaria from the Bulgars. France is named for the Franks, a Germanic tribe, and Belgium for the Belgae, a combined Germanic-Celtic tribe identified by Caesar as inhabiting one of his three parts of Gaul.

Over thousands of years people from distant tribes have migrated into tribal areas inhabited primarily by the people of another tribe. We all know this. What we may not realize is how fundamental this ancient tribalism is to the way Europeans think of themselves today. The old tribalism means that today’s French (and other Europeans) have a harder time relating to newcomers.

The original people always have a word to describe these newcomers. Nysvenskar (New Swede) is a Swedish word currently used to describe recent immigrants (often southern-European, African or Asian) and their offspring born and raised in Sweden, but who do not fit the traditional Swedish concept of what constitutes being Swedish. The labeling of newcomers is not a new concept, of course. Ancient Germanic tribes took it a step further and, as they migrated into new areas, called even established inhabitants walha (foreign). The Walloons of present-day Belgium and the Welsh in Britain are among those of Celtic origin who got their current English names from invading Germanic tribes - Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Frisians, Norse - about 15 centuries ago.

Tribes claimed territory when they were strong enough to displace the inhabitants. But many of the recent immigrants to Europe come from former European colonies through a right of citizenship in an empire. Thus, 19th century imperialism also contributes to today’s problems.

The powerful nations began to amalgamate into empires based on the ability of one to conquer the territory of another and not on ethnic sameness. France, for example, assembled a vast empire in Africa and Asia. Like other European empires, the French decided to follow the Roman model: they made many parts of their empire theoretical parts of France itself. Therefore, Algeria became part of France but the Algerians, while made citizens of France, did not become French. The French nation was expanded to take in vastly different peoples.

Then, as the French empire retreated, millions of these new citizens of France, with alien cultures, religions and perspectives, were left behind. Slowly at first, then faster, some began to exercise their rights as French citizens to migrate to France itself.

Unintended consequences

Next, out of the destruction of World War II, the French led their European neighbors in the establishment of what is now the European Union. This Union is trying to erase borders, which compounds the problem that the empires began: People who have no European experience or background, and who may not want to adapt to the European way, are moving into Europe - and into France. Their children and grandchildren are, of course, citizens. But they are not French.

The United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil and other nations built on immigration have a very different model. If being French is rooted in ancient ethnicity, and separate from citizenship, being American is rooted in choice: The immigrant to the United States can become a citizen and citizenship is the same as nationality in the U.S. and other immigrant lands. All immigrant nations have created incentives for foreigners to come, to assimilate and to become citizens.

People in these newer lands of ‘immigrant opportunity’ find it hard to understand the more traditional European model of nationhood. But the model in the immigrant nations seems very strange to traditional Europeans: Nationality is what you are, not where you are or what citizenship you hold.

Assimilating newcomers is difficult for any nation, as the American experience demonstrates. For those nations with a cultural and historic bias against outsiders, the problem may seem insurmountable. But France and her neighbors must solve it to remain competitive in the years to come.

The rate of immigration is lower in Europe than in the immigrant-opportunity nations. While plagued by ethnic tensions, Europe’s nations cannot put their newcomers to work to alleviate critical social problems. Immigrants tend to be younger; they could keep labor costs and prices lower. They could contribute to social programs that are now being drawn down by aging societies. Europe needs to find a way; the newcomers are not leaving.

Being French

The French concept of being French makes assimilation difficult. The French are not alone. Every time a European empire declined, uneasy ethnic alliances spun apart. The Soviet Empire is the latest example. It consumed ancient ethnicity-based states (the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, for example). Then, the Baltic states reemerged with invigorated nationalism when the Soviet Empire dissolved. Yugoslavia splintered as Croatians, Serbs and Bosnians, among other ethnic groups, reasserted their ethnicity, their nationhood and their old animosities. On the other hand, Germans felt the tug of ethnicity across the arbitrary border fixed in the early years of the Cold War; They, and the world, rejoiced when the wall fell.
 

Nothing about the European concept of citizenship is wrong. Nothing about the immigrant-nations' concept is wrong. They are just different, based on the experience of the people through time. Every country suffers periods of unrest, even occasional violence. The question is whether the country is fundamentally changed by the turmoil.

In retrospect, the worldwide student unrest of the 1960s was colorful but brought little lasting change. The riots in American cities following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King exposed the deep tensions in American society and led to fundamental changes in U.S. law and life. Which type turmoil and social unrest will the riots in France turn out to be? Will the riots bring solutions or will the problems continue to fester?

The riots in France call attention to the debilitating drain on Europe’s competitiveness that the failure to assimilate immigrants has become. If France (and Europe) cannot find a way to make productive citizens out of these disaffected minorities, will Europe concede economic leadership to emerging powers with larger, homogeneous populations - such as India and China?

Perhaps the struggle will not be between currently-rich-but-aging nations and poor-but-emerging nations. Perhaps the future will favor the emerging nations and those currently rich nations that can manage immigration productively. Will those rich nations that cannot manage immigration be left behind?

As we await France's answer, we all owe France our concern, good will and help. Any progress France makes benefits everyone.

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