The point of the previous posts was to lay to rest some of America's most orientalizing narratives about France. It is important to convey the notion that no, life is not so rosy in France, especially if you don't live in the heart of Paris. You just have to take the RER (the commuter subway line) 5 stops away from the city limits, and you'll basically be transported into an alternate reality. In fact, the next time you fly to Paris, pay attention to the landscape when you ride the B line from Charles-de-Gaulle to St-Michel-Notre-Dame. You will see industrial wastelands, beat out 1930's red brick warehouses, immense housing projects from the late 1940's whose windows are dotted with satellite dishes (usually tuned in to Arabsat2B on the C-Band - for all the sat geeks out there). You will also pass by the Aulnay-sous-Bois station. This is the site of an old Peugeot factory.
This is how the dots connect : throughout what a famous local economist called the "trente glorieuses" (referring to the thirty years of economic boom that followed the end of World War II), French industrialists recruited many workers from the vast reservoir of the colonial empire. When the empire collapsed in the late 50's, French industrialists kept on with their policies of "inviting" workers from France's former dominions. Many of these workers were employed in construction (famous all around the world for its reliance on day laborers), as well as in many jobs that French people did not want to fill (for instance, Parisian trash collectors are overwhelmingly from Mali). Many were also recruited by car manufacturers, who used to run enormous assembly plants in the immediate vicinity of France's largest market, Paris. Citroën on the Quai de Javel in Paris and in Aulnay-sous-Bois (now operated by Peugeot), Renault in the Billancourt Island and Flins. The French industrialists did exactly the same as they had for their previous generation of employees: they settled the guest workers close to the production sites. The same thing happened in Lyon, with the chemical industry, or in the North with the steel industry, as well as in the many other regions of France where large numbers of workers were needed. And it's not that the French did not want to work, or did not care for factory jobs - no, it was mainly a demographic issue. In the 1950s and early 60s, as a result of two world wars in twenty-five years, France was basically shorthanded. Importing workers from North and Sub-Saharan Africa was the only practical solution. And so it came to be that ironically, the French boomers came of age at the tail-end of the 30-years long growth cycle.
These immigrants from Mali, Senegal, Niger, Congo, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are the unsung heroes of post-war France. (They're also the unsung heroes of the Free French Forces - without the African soldiers, de Gaulle would have achieved nothing - but that's another story.) They are the ones who rebuilt the French industrial machine, and kept it humming well into the 1970s. They are the ones who took the worst jobs, the most dangerous and exploitative jobs. They are the ones who sweep the streets and collect the garbage. They are the ones who open their stores on Sundays. They are the ones who suffered from brutal police repression during the Algerian war (let's not forget the massacre of October 1962, where for weeks dead and disfigured bodies were found floating downstream). They are the ones, along with their children, who are currently being singled out as not French enough by Nicolas Sarkozy, the big-business conservative candidate for President.
So this is the background, and why in France it is such a stigma to be from the suburbs. In the 1970s, industrial jobs started their slow and painful exodus. In 1974, the deliverance of work permits to foreign low-skill workers was discontinued. Only the families of those already in France were allowed to join them. One wonders, if this policy based on basic human decency is what Sarkozy alluded to when he spoke yesterday of an "uncontrolled immigration policy since 30, 40 years." Or was he referring to these guest workers who rebuilt France, while living in abject conditions of poverty, exploitation and alienation? Or was he referring to their contribution to post-war France, when he stated in Nice a few days ago that French colonization had not been such a bad thing after all... And by the way - oh, the humanity! - Sarkozy is himself the son of a Hungarian aristocrat who found refuge in France after the war. Nicolas Sarkozy's real name is Nicolas Sarkozy de Nagy-Bocza. Straight out of a Harlequin romance. And pretty funny, considering that Sarkozy de Nagy-Bocza wants to establish a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity. Vos Papiers! as the French copper say to the immigrant...
Deindustrialization and the neo-liberal turn are at the root of the revolt of November 2005. Back in the 70s and 80s, many of the guest workers lost their jobs. Those who were lucky enough to keep their jobs quickly found out that it would not be so for their kids. The dwindling demand for low-skill labor, combined with the rapid retooling of the French economy into a service-based economy, led to profound social unrest. Those of the French baby boomers with low skills, now in their most productive age, ended up competing for the same low-paying jobs as the first- and second- generation laborers of foreign heritage. This is still going on nowadays, and explains in part the xenophobia of the French lumpen, as well as the enduring success of that slightly ridiculous character, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
The most recent inflexion in the current electoral campaign derives directly from this rather unfortunate situation. The low-skill French population is being divided and parceled out into competing, targeted constituencies. Post-modern identity politics for the cynical politician. Sarkozy's rhetorical turn towards not-so soft racism is a direct appeal to those low-skilled, disenchanted and disenfranchised baby-boomers. Those "French" people who saw their jobs and their relative prosperity go away thanks to globalization. In a way Sarkozy embraces the notion that somehow the specifically social problems of France are rooted in racial differences. To do such a turnabout, he has to forget and recast the very policies that his political side (the party of big business) championed back in the days. And by the way, the other side - Ségolène Royal - is desperately trying to placate the same chunk of voters. She is doing it somewhat differently - it's the left-wing version of racism : citizenship is a process, Republican values must be taught, and don't you dare wear that headscarf in the classroom!
So the election will be played out on the expanding fringes of the French political spectrum. Because now the French middle-class is also feeling the pressure of globalization. Diplomas ain't worth what they used to, government jobs are being privatized and hard work and dedication won't necessarily buy you that tract house. Those closest to the low-skilled fraction of the workforce are particularly anxious for their future (this was the whole point of the demonstrations in March 2006 around the reform of the standard employment contract). The French are learning the hard way that in the fabless zones of the global knowledge economy, your prospects are pretty bleak if you're not over-educated and well-connected. Basically, without a modicum of what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called social capital, you are destined to service jobs and logistics.
It is entirely logical, and tactically correct for the big-business candidate to exploit and turn these anxieties into racial issues. It is a way to sidestep, confuse and redirect the debate away from a rational and realistic consideration of France's predicament. This is the same candidate who claims with a straight face that he will singlehandedly lower the exchange rate of the Euro versus the Dollar. The truth is he can't and he won't, and he would not if he could. Because at heart, Sarkozy is a free-marketer. Case in point : while spewing racially charged epithets and deliberately pitting anxious lower-class disaffected French citizens against one another, he also announces that he will abolish the inheritance tax. The tough-on-crime-and-brown-people cartoonish figure hides a supply-sider neo-liberal who will methodically reduce the State to its primary regalian functions: to police and imprison (the printing money part is long gone). We are pretty well acquainted with that type of politics in the US.
Finally, it is interesting to note the current change in the theme and rhetoric of the campaign. The abrupt resurgence of racial issues is probably tied to extensive and in-depth pollling (in both camps). I guess that they are both trying to woo Le Pen's voters. Sarkozy is more aggressive at the moment because rumor has it that the Interior Ministry secret polls put him and Royal within the margin of error. The same rumor suggests that Le Pen will call on his supporters to vote for Sarkozy - but since his base is notoriously fickle, it is crucial for Sarkozy to build up his petit-blanc, redneck credentials.
Both camps assume that the runoff will be a classic left-right showdown. They have calculated that there are more votes to gain from Le Pen than from any other candidates (such as Bayrou, whose constituents will most likely come home to Sarkozy). So this is their game plan for the runoff election.
