Urban Rioting as an Indicator of Crisis in the Integration Model for Ethnic Minority Youth in France

Abstract

France used to be proud of its ability to integrate the children of migrants. In fact, the French Republican model facilitated the assimilation of migrants rather than their ghettoisation. During the years of economic growth, businesses, trade unions and political parties contributed to a successful assimilation process. However, after the first urban riots occurred in a suburb of Lyon during the summer of 1981, two months after the election of ex-President François Mitterrand, a divorce occurred between the children of immigrant families and the institutions of the Republic, including local ones. The palliative remedies of a declining welfare state contributed to the growth of conflict between youth living in poor urban projects (cités) and institutions—above all the police—which produced the riots of 2005. While they have been widely treated as a call for cultural difference within a communitarian framework, these outbreaks of violence can also be viewed as a very strong paradoxical expression of rebellion for assimilation, defined as the right to be a citizen of France notwithstanding ethnic origins rather than an object of discrimination.