The new French government, set up to rescue French politics following a massive "No" to the EU constitution, didn't pause long before hardening the line on immigration, Maria Gabrielsen reports from Paris To use the chief architect's own words -- those of Nicolas Sarkozy, who is back as the interior minister -- the new policy would be of "a chosen immigration for a successful integration" . The plan is to favour labour immigration over family reunification immigration, pointing to Canada, Switzerland and the UK as exemplary models. Controls on the border would be tightened in order to improve the integration of those who are already here. Cécile Jolly, a counsellor at the prime minister's planning office, is critical. She sees this as just another media trick to give the impression that something is being done on the integration front. "The flow of migration into the country is already quite weak, but with the media focussing almost exclusively on the problems concerning the newly arrived immigrants, people have the impression that this is where the problems lie," she explained to Al-Ahram Weekly. "The real issue is the persisting integration difficulties of the second and third generation of immigrants," she said. Kassem Mirama, a Syrian entrepreneur, sees it slightly differently: "I think this is a way of saying that with the enlargement of the European Union, France now prefers welcoming immigrants from Eastern Europe, at the expense of people from Africa or the Arabic countries." The French model of integration is built on two pillars: the republican ideal and the model of universal citizenship. Its specificities lie in the non- recognition of different communities in the public sphere. It is the individual who is integrated, not the community. Religion belongs to the private sphere; in the public sphere all are equal, all are French. Religious and ethnic belonging is not taken into account in the population census. There is no official record of, for example, how many Muslims there are in France. The estimated number is around 4-5 million. Cécile Jolly explains that this is closely linked with history: "The memory of the Vichy regime during WWII plays a central role. There is a deep fear of seeing records of different communities being used for criminal purposes." One of the main motivations for holding on to this model today is to avoid the creation of community-specific ghettos, which is seen as a block on integration. In the Anglo-Saxon model, however, recognition of everyone's particularities is at the centre of the integration process. The question that has been asked in France lately is precisely that of the freedom to be different. Traditionally, equality in the public sphere is seen as a vector of freedom. But today, some argue that the freedom to be different is at least as important, and that it tends to be destroyed by this model. The most controversial issue has been the right, or otherwise, of Muslim girls and women to wear the veil in public places, especially in schools. According to French law, since the public school is secular people are not allowed to show any sign of religious belonging there. The explosion of this issue triggered much fervor, the veil and other visible religious signs finally banned in schools last fall. The application of the law went much more peacefully than expected. The debate, however, encouraged the creation of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), with the idea of furnishing Islam an official voice, and to co-opt hard-line groups in order to temper them. Many applaud this initiative, and even more so after the council's first full elections at the end of June passed smoothly and resulted in giving more seats to moderates. Kassem Mirama considers this council at best as a long term project: "I think this council was created more to control Muslims than to integrate them; the politicians prefer to survey the Muslim community than to let them organise freely." Others fear that this initiative is incompatible with the French principle of non- recognition of religious communities in the public sphere. "If one creates an official council for the Muslims," Cécile Jolly argues, "there should be a possibility to create one for the Jews and the Christians as well. But do we want this kind of fragmentation of politics?" Yet isn't French society already fragmented? Jolly responds: "What we see today is the development of a new type of discrimination: geographic discrimination, which is at least as important as ethnic discrimination. A young man living in the 16th district of Paris (one of the richer areas of Paris) won't have many problems when looking for a job, while a young man from the area of Saint-Denis (one of the poorest areas with a high rate of criminality) will have big problems just because of his address." The level of unemployment in the most "problematic" areas may be more than double the national average of 10.2 per cent. Initiatives are taken to integrate young people from these areas into the more prestigious universities, but they remain of limited impact. In an article published by Le Monde, 1 July, a young man of North African origin living in the area of La Courneuve, a remote area of Saint-Denis, complains: "You can't get out of here. When you're looking for a job or an apartment, it is already difficult when you're of foreign origin. When in addition to that you say you're from La Courneuve, it's over. People get scared." The lack of mobility in French society in general is a major problem, and it strikes the immigrant population first. Camille Chu Van, an anthropology student from French Caledonia says that when she first came to France, she was shocked by the importance of social class. "I came from a society with almost no social classes, but here in France, if you don't have the right language, the right habits, the right education, the right contacts, it is very hard to climb the social ladder. This kind of cultural capital is of course less accessible for immigrants or children of immigrants," Chu Van said.
