Talk:Social situation in the French suburbs

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[edit] Merge

This article could in fact be merged with aire urbaine, which at the moment just gives population numbers, or with the banlieue article, which is just discussing the term. 130.60.142.65 11:53, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I've done my best to clean up the article, as it could have a great deal of public exposure due to the developing situation and high-profile nature of the linking story. However, the whole article smacks of original research and opinion. I attempted to clean it up some and reduce the POV; however, unless someone comes in and does a massive overhaul, supporting the assertions with encyclopedic research, the article should be scrapped. --68.237.14.235 12:12, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

No original research, only sources to be cited; unfortunetely, mine are French and I'm not sure they've been translated or post-synchronised.
Cdang|write me 08:07, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV Template added

I've added the NPOV template. The previous poster is right. This article is filled with original research, speculation, conjecture, opinion purported to be fact, lefticruft, and direct POV. Sources need to be cited. --malber 15:52, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

excuse me, lefticruft? I agree with the 'opinion/speculation' part, however. Go easy on it, it was just rather unceremoniously exported from 2005 civil unrest in France, and some of its references may still be hanging out over there. but, {{sofixit}}, you are free to remove the more speculative passages (just don't blank it altogether please; afaics, most of it is pretty straightforward; I don't think that the "Historical context" is very controversial, for example. dab (ᛏ) 18:32, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure the article can achieve NPOV. Even suggesting that a social situation is the cause for the riots is suggesting that the rioters are not to blame for their actions, but that their actions were the result of socioeconomic factors is POV. Or that the French government should give consessions to appease their Muslim citizens from comitting further acts of violence (you would think the French would have learned the lessons of the 20th century about appeasement) is also POV. Is this really encyclopedic? This article is likely a candidate for deletion. --malber 20:41, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
No way. Suggesting that a social situation is the cause for someone doing X, is NOT suggesting that that certain someone is not responsible for X. Please stop the righticruft. ;) --Leo44 | Talk 21:45, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I do not understand malber. "Even suggesting that a social situation is the cause for the riots is suggesting that the rioters are not to blame for their actions" ? So there are no causes for riots ? People just start feelings riotous out of the blue, all together ? Rama 23:18, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Answer this question: are the rioters responsible for their own actions or did society make them do it?--malber 14:05, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
why? This is not a question Wikipedia is supposed to answer, except by referencing academic discourse on Free Will. It is certainly not the topic of this article. Are politicians who start a war responsible for their actions? I should think so, and the international tribunal seems to think the same (except for US politicians, of course). Should Wikipedia have an article on the Causes of World War I? Certainly. Is there a connection between the two statements? I don't see any. dab (ᛏ) 15:29, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I have no problem with an article about the social situation as an underlying cause for the rioter's rage, so long as it doesn't imply that it is a justification for the rioter's actions. Without sources cited, the article is speculation and original research. The rioters could just as well be acting out of hooliganism and thuggery. This article still makes many assumptions and generalizations that are non-NPOV, and then tries to purport them as fact.--malber 17:04, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
"justification" is a moral judgement. "explanation" is an analysis of causality. If you spot any talk of "justification", I will support their removal. Explanations of the processes that caused people to riot, however, are perfectly at home here. I don't see how "hooliganism" or "thuggery" is different from "rioting", but in all cases there will still be underlying causes. dab (ᛏ) 17:13, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
malber, I think that you tend to see morale where there is none. Studying the underlying causes of a riot is not a way to excuse the rioters; seeing that a riot is occurring is not a condemnation of the rioters. Rama 17:26, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Deletion of article is ridiculous. maybe you would be happy with" muslim riot with no reason" seems to be you to be your aim. I vote this article stays and with the most important of all reasons..... reason its self How about we delete all polictical response cos hell they are all POV pushing. --Whywhywhy 02:23, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Lol, suggestion that there are no social causes to a problem would be non neutral. Suggestion that hooliganism and thuggery have no social causes is also non neutral. Suggesting that suggesting that there are social causes is destroying individual responsability is also non neutral. Social causes help some things to happen, however there's still a choice and a moral responsability for that choice. Suggesting otherwise is like saying, suggesting that advertisement for alcohol have an impact on alcohol usage is suggesting that alcoholics are not to blame.

Hey, don't they "suggesting" like that, else we will run out of this word ! ;) Rama 17:27, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Being French myself and familiar with the situation in the Parisian suburbs, I feel this article to be pretty accurate as for the context of the riots : to me it "explains", but doesn't "justify". However the external link mentioned (editorial in the Jerusalem post) is strongly oriented towards a religious explanation, and, even if religion is to be taken in account, it is more of a peripheric consequence of the ethnic differencies involved than an actual cause of the riot. Many of the youths involved in criminality and violence in the suburban areas of France actually rarely go to a mosque, nor define themselves as pratiquant Muslims. I know the article Is an external reference and I guess POV is tolerated here, however I find it a shame that the only external reference on the topic is a biaised, almost sionist, editorial. Unless we find enough external references to provide a wide array of different opinion as far as the context and possible causes of the events are concerned, I think this link should be, if not removed, clarely labelled as a POV Editorial. --Guillaume Berard 00:40, 10 November 2005

[edit] Pipes / Jerusalem Post Article

I'm not the person who originally deleted the reference to the Jerusalem Post article by Daniel Pipes, but I noticed someone just put it back in. I read through the article and it doesn't seem NPOV to me, and not suitable to be listed as a factual reference. For starters, it's an opinion piece, not a news article. It makes allegations but does not cite any sources. Also, it reads like the author has some kind of agenda to push (alleging some kind of international Islamic conspiracy). We might as well link to Stormfront or some writings by LaRouche if we're going to include that kind of thing. I'm going to take it out again for now. --Chris Thompson 11:31, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Imperfect information better than none

Despite not having NPOV, this article should not be deleted. Interested/concerned individuals deserve to have access to such information. This article certainly advanced my own understanding of the background to the present unrest, and contains information which I could not (easily, or at all) get elsewhere. If those wanting to remove the article can recognise bias, so can I, and I can allow for it. I would rather have biased information AND a lively discussion about it which moves towards NPOV, than no information at all. --User:undefined user 02:23,

agreed

--Gomezzzz 12:11, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. Part of the magic of Wikipedia is that by the very nature there is no guarantee that the information is accurate, but it provides more information than any other medium. It's the responsibility of the active Wikipedia community to make each article as accurate as they can, but it's quite possible for us to fail at that responsibility at any given time. But that isn't any different from the old way of doing things. Britannica was just as fallible; the only difference is that the nature of Wikipedia makes people more cautious. Which, personally, I think is a good thing for people to be. So don't scrap this article. In fact, don't do anything with it unless you're willing to pull your weight and try to improve it.Amargo Scribe 05:35, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Financial and educational situation of the suburb dwellers?

One point I'd like to see added to this article is a description of the financial situation of the suburb dwellers. News reports haven't been terribly informative about this. I've read in several news stories that some families haven't had paying work for more than a generation. How do these families pay rent, buy food, etc.? Are the housing projects subsidized or free? I read in one source that each person earns around 1000 Euros per month from the French social assistance system. Is this accurate? What about families? Does each family member receive the same amount of social assistance money, or is there a reduction for multiple people living together? What is the average number of people living under one roof in the suburbs? (It seems like a lot of these families live under one roof with multiple family members still at home.) What about France's mandatory military service? Do young adults from the suburbs tend to participate in that? (If not, why not?) Do they leave the suburbs while serving and then return after they complete the required service? Also, what about healthcare? Do the suburb dwellers have access to the French public healthcare system, or are there roadblocks (user fees, lack of nearby hospitals/doctors, prescription drug costs, etc.)?

Also, what is the post-secondary educational situation? I've heard that post-secondary education in Europe is heavily subsidized and relatively inexpensive. Is this true of France? What, if any, are the factors preventing the suburb dwellers from getting higher education? Are all the factors economic or social, or are some of them cultural, e.g. does the local flavor of Islam tend to discourage females from pursuing higher education?

I know that's a lot of questions, but if even a fraction of those could be answered, this article would be a lot more useful in helping to understand the social and economic factors at work. Newspaper articles never go into any real detail. --Chris Thompson 11:55, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

This is a lot of questions indeed, I'm going to try to answer them (I'm french and have lived in the Hauts-de-Seine since 1985).

-these areas have very high unemployement rate, sometimes up to 20% more than the national average. It is feasible to survive from social security and unemployement assurance in France, I wouldn't say it is easy, but France has always made a point of keeping a fairly decent welfare system, so I guess families having had no paying work for a generation could be a possible fact, even though it is probably statistically marginal, one of the caracteristics of the unemployement problem in France being that some low end jobs are unstable ("emplois precaires"), thus have a quite high turnover rate, so even if one would be getting most of his revenue from assistance systems, one could and would probably have a few short period of employement over the said generation. One of the problems is that when cumulating the money one gets from the state as accomodation help, unemployement assurance and "allocations familiales" (see below), the amount is not that far from the one one would get working at a minimum wage job (there is a compulsory minimum salary in france, and it is illegal to hire someon for less than it) so "why bother working?" : this argument is often used by the UMP (right wing party, whose Leader is Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister) as a caracteristic problem regarding employement and social security system.

-the housing projects are not free, but relatively inexpensive (even though the living conditions are obviously far from being top-notch) if a family has less than 3 children, it will almost always get money as APL (Aide Personnalisée au Logement, personalised accomodation help), which is calculated according to the global revenue of the household, and can account for as much as a third or even a half of the rent amount. If the family has three children or more, it is not eligible for APL, but gets "allocation familiales" (family allowance), whose amount depends on both the revenu of the household and the number of children, but it is not linear (the difference of amount between 3 and 4 children is higher than the one between, say, 6 and 5). The money is always paid to the houshold, not individually ; 1000 Euros seems a pretty high figure to me, and it is certnaintly not 1000E for each member of the family. However, with unemployement allowance plus allocations familiales/APL, it is quitepossible that a family with low revenue and many children can get 1000 and more euros, but bear in mind that most of the time it barely enables them to pay for food and rent. The average size of a suburban family I do not know, however, given the ehtnic and social background of these families, I would say it is quite high, obviously higher than in metropolitan areas and middle/high class neighbourhoud. Indeed, because of the high rate of unemployement, many families will still have grown-up twentysomething kids living at home, also because children has to live with their parents to be accounted for in the allowance calculations.

-Military service has been supressed in France since 1997. at that time I was glad I wouldn't have to do it, but I guess this as contributed to make the situation for youth in the suburbs worse, as it has always been a way to integrate immigrants and second/third generation immigrants. A sidenote here : the French integration system has always been based on considering people as french citizen whatever their ethnic background is, the bottom line being that everyone is (well, used to be) welcome as long as they were willing to play by the rule and consider themselves as French citizens, adopting the republican values, tradition and culture (through the educational system), also meaning giving up to former, ethnic-related values (a good example is the problem of the islamic Tchador in school, which gave birth to the controversial law on religious symbols). I know the USA model of integration is much more about respecting the cultural differences, even if this means a more divided society : the mere idea of having newspaper, TV or radios in Arab just like there are papers, radio or television channels in spanish in the US would be totally unthinkable in France. Another example is that the collection of racial demographic data is not allowed, the main purpose being to prevent any kind of discrimination (people being first and foremost French no matter what color their skin is) but also preventing affirmative action and positive descrimination.

-The healthcare system in France is pretty much the best (or worst, depending on your philosophy) one could get : no matter what your revenu is, doctor fees and medicine are partially refunded by the social security, between 30% and 60%. here again, low revenue families get CMU ("couverture maladie universelle - universal health allowance), meaning not only 100% of the cost of medical expenses is paid for by the social security, but alos that one does not have to pay upfront (whereas if you have the standard thingy, you have to pay for everything, then send back forms or have your file electronically updated, and then be refunded by the social security).CMU, however only applies to very poor families. This system (which hasen't changed much since the "welfare state" days of the 50's), of course, has a cost, and both people and companies have to paye taxes to finance the social security. Even with those taxes, the system makes a quite large deficit. Even if it has always been a very sensible political issue, (many governments have tried to reform it and failed) the good side of it is that practicaly no one is left behind and people, no matter how poor they are, can always get to a doctor, get medication or get into a hospital if needed, as opposed to what seems to be the case in the UK (I live here now) with the very problematic (or so it seems) NHS.

-as far as the education is concernec, the situation is fairly complex. Lower education is compulsory up to 16 years old (this is also an example of the french integration system, as all kids will have to attend school, a mean of not allowing whole cultural groups to "fall out" and shut themselves to the republican values). Higher education is mainly divided into two different categories : Universities, who are public, free and apply technically no selection at all (I'll explain this later on) and "Grandes Ecoles" who all lead somewhat executive, high wages jobs, some of which are public and free (actually it is never totally free, but the fees are reduced to a bare symbolic minimum. same goes for universities), some others not (the average amount would be around 4500 to 6000 Euros a year, so far less than what some US universities would charge ,and far less than the actual cost of the studies, even private Grandes Ecoles being subsidized by the state). The main problem here is that the public univerity system always makes a point of applying no selection at all, at least as far as getting in the freshman year is concerned : the motto being that even if you don't have very good results in high schools, you can still get in higher education. Of course, these unis are thus often crowded, and this contribute to lower not only the overall quality of the education taught here, at least for the short (2 or 3 years courses) but also make employers less likely to hire people having a degree from these unis as it doesn't really guarantee that the graduate is actually qualified and competent. Grandes Ecoles, on the other hand, lead to middle to high class positions and have a very good reputation amongst companies and employers, however they are fairly selective as one would need good grades in high school and Baccalaureat (French A Level) to get in them. the trick here is that in the end, what higher education one will be able to attend depends higly on what high school one has been to. In the "zones sensibles" (sensitive areas) where the riot take place, the educational system doesn't have the mean to deliver a knowledge whose standard of quality is high enough to enable the students to pretend to anything else than the "useless" universities, even if one is hard working and wants to study. Once in the universities, the same problem applies, as, given the overall amount of undergraduates it generates ,the offer/demand balance as far as emplyement is concerned is such that it can be hard, even almost impossible (depending on the field of study) to get a job if on has no other qualifications or professional experience to account for. The "College" (actually junior high, not college as in the english meaning of the word) and "Lycee" (high school) use a "sectorisation" system, so what high school you will attend depends on the city you live in, and getting around the system to go to another public high school is very difficult. As a result, the range of difference in quality of education amongst public high school is huge (most very high end standard high schools, such as the one in the center of paris, are actually public) on top of that, wealthy parents would send their children to private high school, who often offer a higher level of education thant the local school they would attend, contributing even more to the educational "getthoisation" of suburban areas. Furthermore, if a child cannot attend a higher education or just goes to a uni but then cannot find a job or only a low-wage one, that means he won't be able to climb the social and financial ladder enough to manage to excape the knid of neighbourhood he grew up in, as the difference in rents prizes between those areas and safer, cleaner suburbs or city center is huge. This is why some youth will turn to crime as is seems (and probably is given the difficulty to go through the educational system when coming from these area) an easier way to get an income. And the problem thus gets even worse.

(As you can see from the size of this chunk of text, I frimly believe that more or less most of the unemployement, criminality, non-integration problems in this area somehow results from the flaw of the educational system)

As an interesting sidenote, a couple of years ago the French government decided to apply what I think is the very first case of positive discrimination in the educational system, enabling a given quota of high schools students from ZEP (Zones d'Educations Prioritaires - areas suffering from the educative viscious circle described above, that is most of the suburban areas) to automatically (that is without an exam, or perhaps with a different exam only amongst ZEP students, I don't remember) get into "Sciences-Po" (Institut de Sciences Politiques - Political Science Institute), a high end Grand Ecole that leads to jobs in politics, economy or journalism (it is a bit hard to describe, it kind of leads to everything and nothing at the same time, most of students will actually attend another kind of higher education either before and after science po, such as Law, Journalism or Administrative studies to specialize in a field). Interestingly, most of the french politicians are from ENA, (Ecole Normale d'Administration, which forms most of the high end civil servants : minstry employees, "prefets", diplomats...), and a fair amount of students coming in the ENA do so right from Sciences-Po. This shows obvioulsy that the states want to allow a higher degree of social mix in its future elites, now time will tell if it works.

I've tried to answer directly and specifically to your question. of course this is just my opinion, and what I know of it, this is the reason why I write this here, this is just my POV, a mix of actual facts and personnal opinions, and I miss a few pieces of data and figures to back this up. If anyone (French or not) having more info about this thinks I'm talking out of turn and wants to correct me, feel free to do it.

I'm sorry about any grammar or syntax mistakes and typos, English is not my first language and it's 2 in the morning, I've spend about one hour writing this because I think it is a shame that the international audience seems to miss most of the "big picture" because of what the TV, papers and websites choose to say and leave out. I think describing the riots as a racial problem is missing the point, and I think implying that it is somehow link to the raise of Radical Islamism in these areas is even worse. Therefore, as I've mentioned above in the "NPOV Template Added" section, the link to the Jerusalem post editorial at the bottom of this page seems completely out of place to me. --Guillaume Berard 02:26 GMT 10 November 05

Thanks so much for your detailed answers. That kind of background information is just what I was hoping to read. I found your comments fascinating. There are clearly multiple vicious circles at work here beyond the simple explanations in a lot of news articles. (e.g. Having "adequate" guaranteed government income, health care, and housing probably works partly to discourage people from getting involved in politics and agitating for change, but this ultimately also acts as a roadblock to improving things.) It sounds as if the educational system almost enforces a rigid, implicit class system that is in many ways contrary to the ideals of the republic. I had actually read a bit about that before -- about how most government civil servants in France all come from the same school or handful of schools, creating a kind of socially stratified bureaucracy, but at the time I thought it must have been an exaggeration. I'm going to see if I can do a bit more reading about some of these social forces and maybe put together an addition to the main article, condensing some of your points.
Just a couple more questions: how does education for trades such as plumbing, welding, electrical wiring, construction, etc. work in France? Is education for those kind of jobs available at the free ("useless" in your words) public universities or similar low-cost/free kinds of schools? What is holding suburb dwellers from pursuing those kinds of careers? I'm asking because in a lot of countries, the trades seem to be classic immigrant jobs. Also, is voluntary military service ever seen as a possible way out of the suburbs? Can a person enroll in the military and somehow use that as a stepping stone to getting in to a good university ("grand ecole") like in some other countries? --Chris Thompson 06:07, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
All education is available at free (people have to go to school until 16) except for specific situations. For manual workers (plumbers, butchers etc.), the diploma is called CAP (certificat d'aptitude professionnel, certuificate of professional aptitude), and is prepared in lycées professionels (professional highschools). But there is a lot of "school failure", with a lot of reasons: nobody to help them work (the parents are sometimes uneducated themselves), no affective stability (parents obliged to work far away, not able to care for them), no motivation (even graduated are unemployed), bad conditions to work (noise)...
The suburbs dwellers do follow these careers, they just do not acces the jobs finally...
Army is usually not a stepping stone for university, except for medicine. But the acces to university is very cheap: fees are about 300 EUR a year, the problem is more
  • other costs (renting a room, feeding, buying books); there are usually grants for this (condition is the income of parents, not the school level), and a person having a grant usually pays half fees;
  • self-confidence: when you are brought up in a low social environment, you don't event think you can manage your studies; the opening of a specific exam for entering the ENA (national administration school) for pupils from these quarters shows that this was the main reason why they were "under-represented";
  • anyway, when they have their university diploma, the get jobs like pizza delivery...
Cdang|write me 11:41, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Economic context

[edit] Income

These areas have very high unemployement rate, sometimes up to 20% more than the national average. It is feasible to survive from social security and unemployement assurance in France, I wouldn't say it is easy, but France has always made a point of keeping a fairly decent welfare system, so I guess families having had no paying work for a generation could be a possible fact, even though it is probably statistically marginal, one of the caracteristics of the unemployement problem in France being that some low end jobs are unstable ("emplois precaires"), thus have a quite high turnover rate, so even if one would be getting most of his revenue from assistance systems, one could and would probably have a few short period of employement over the said generation. One of the problems is that when cumulating the money one gets from the state as accomodation help, unemployement assurance and "allocations familiales" (see below), the amount is not that far from the one one would get working at a minimum wage job (there is a compulsory minimum salary in france, and it is illegal to hire someon for less than it) so "why bother working?" : this argument is often used by the UMP (right wing party, whose Leader is Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister) as a caracteristic problem regarding employement and social security system.

[edit] Housing costs

The housing projects are not free, but relatively inexpensive (even though the living conditions are obviously far from being top-notch) if a family has less than 3 children, it will almost always get money as APL (Aide Personnalisée au Logement, personalised accomodation help), which is calculated according to the global revenue of the household, and can account for as much as a third or even a half of the rent amount. If the family has three children or more, it is not eligible for APL, but gets "allocation familiales" (family allowance), whose amount depends on both the revenu of the household and the number of children, but it is not linear (the difference of amount between 3 and 4 children is higher than the one between, say, 6 and 5). The money is always paid to the houshold, not individually ; 1000 Euros seems a pretty high figure to me, and it is certnaintly not 1000E for each member of the family. However, with unemployement allowance plus allocations familiales/APL, it is quitepossible that a family with low revenue and many children can get 1000 and more euros, but bear in mind that most of the time it barely enables them to pay for food and rent. The average size of a suburban family I do not know, however, given the ehtnic and social background of these families, I would say it is quite high, obviously higher than in metropolitan areas and middle/high class neighbourhoud. Indeed, because of the high rate of unemployement, many families will still have grown-up twentysomething kids living at home, also because children has to live with their parents to be accounted for in the allowance calculations.

[edit] Health care costs

The healthcare system in France is pretty much the best (or worst, depending on your philosophy) one could get : no matter what your income is, doctor fees and medicine are partially refunded by the social security, between 30% and 60%. here again, low-income families get CMU ("couverture maladie universelle - universal health allowance), meaning not only that 100% of the cost of medical expenses is paid for by the social security, but also that you do not have to pay upfront (whereas if you have the standard thingy, you have to pay for everything, then send back forms or have your file electronically updated, and then be refunded by the social security).CMU, however only applies to very poor families. This system (which hasen't changed much since the "welfare state" days of the 50's), of course, has a cost, and both people and companies have to pay taxes to finance the social security. Even with those taxes, the system makes a quite large deficit. Even if it has always been a very sensitive political issue (many governments have tried to reform it and failed), the good side of it is that practically no one is left behind and people, no matter how poor they are, can always get to a doctor, get medication or get into a hospital if needed, as opposed to what seems to be the case in the UK (I live here now) with the very problematic (or so it seems) NHS.

[edit] Education costs

As far as the education is concernec, the situation is fairly complex. Lower education is compulsory up to 16 years old (this is also an example of the french integration system, as all kids will have to attend school, a mean of not allowing whole cultural groups to "fall out" and shut themselves to the republican values). Higher education is mainly divided into two different categories : Universities, who are public, free and apply technically no selection at all (I'll explain this later on) and "Grandes Ecoles" who all lead somewhat executive, high wages jobs, some of which are public and free (actually it is never totally free, but the fees are reduced to a bare symbolic minimum. same goes for universities), some others not (the average amount would be around 4500 to 6000 Euros a year, so far less than what some US universities would charge ,and far less than the actual cost of the studies, even private Grandes Ecoles being subsidized by the state). The main problem here is that the public univerity system always makes a point of applying no selection at all, at least as far as getting in the freshman year is concerned : the motto being that even if you don't have very good results in high schools, you can still get in higher education. Of course, these unis are thus often crowded, and this contribute to lower not only the overall quality of the education taught here, at least for the short (2 or 3 years courses) but also make employers less likely to hire people having a degree from these unis as it doesn't really guarantee that the graduate is actually qualified and competent. Grandes Ecoles, on the other hand, lead to middle to high class positions and have a very good reputation amongst companies and employers, however they are fairly selective as one would need good grades in high school and Baccalaureat (French A Level) to get in them. the trick here is that in the end, what higher education one will be able to attend depends higly on what high school one has been to. In the "zones sensibles" (sensitive areas) where the riot take place, the educational system doesn't have the mean to deliver a knowledge whose standard of quality is high enough to enable the students to pretend to anything else than the "useless" universities, even if one is hard working and wants to study. Once in the universities, the same problem applies, as, given the overall amount of undergraduates it generates ,the offer/demand balance as far as emplyement is concerned is such that it can be hard, even almost impossible (depending on the field of study) to get a job if on has no other qualifications or professional experience to account for. The "College" (actually junior high, not college as in the english meaning of the word) and "Lycee" (high school) use a "sectorisation" system, so what high school you will attend depends on the city you live in, and getting around the system to go to another public high school is very difficult. As a result, the range of difference in quality of education amongst public high school is huge (most very high end standard high schools, such as the one in the center of paris, are actually public) on top of that, wealthy parents would send their children to private high school, who often offer a higher level of education thant the local school they would attend, contributing even more to the educational "getthoisation" of suburban areas. Furthermore, if a child cannot attend a higher education or just goes to a uni but then cannot find a job or only a low-wage one, that means he won't be able to climb the social and financial ladder enough to manage to excape the knid of neighbourhood he grew up in, as the difference in rents prizes between those areas and safer, cleaner suburbs or city center is huge. This is why some youth will turn to crime as is seems (and probably is given the difficulty to go through the educational system when coming from these area) an easier way to get an income. And the problem thus gets even worse.

Nice try 4.250.201.248, but a little too personnal ("I guess" and things like that) to be in the article.
Cdang|write me 13:40, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
I started to take your arguments in a new section Critics of the policy to solve these problems (probably to be renamed); it should be clear that there is a controversy on these topics.
Cdang|write me 14:13, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Universities aren't free: fees are about 300€, and a 150€ for social security may be demanded for students who are older than 20. This may be a lot for some students, although those who come from the poorest families may get an exemption. Also, the quality and status of universities can vary a lot, it's not that simple. In many ways, one can say that universities also suffer from ghettoisation: an employer will not consider a degree from the Sorbonne the same way than one, let's say, from the university of Nanterre. —Meidosemme 01:17, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Just rewritten the text as it was massively flawed and factually inaccurate. --Bob 00:38, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] social situation : when ?

Is there any sense in writing this article without a specific date. Should it be edited with each year-day passing ? Should it be the situation in 2005 leading to the civil unrest ? - unsigned

The article is written by volunteers motivated to provide a context to the current riots in France. If you feel motivated to expand the article (using sources is, of course, best) so it is more encyclopedic, complete, or exact; please do so. Prescribing what volunteers are to spend their time on (Everyone fill in social situation data and/or dates ...) isn't nearly as effective as leading by doing. WAS 4.250 15:55, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Editorials

Please do not put far-right editorials which bring nothing to illustrate the subject. See the "freak show point" on Talk:2005 civil unrest in France.

Furthermore, if you do think that an editorial is worth mentionning, it is possible to discuss the subject on the talk page; on the other hand, blindly reverting with the introduction of syntactical errors (doubling the category of the article) and making empty accusations in the comment strikes me as a particularly tendentious hysteria. Rama 13:40, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Daniel Pipes is hardly far right. Why don't you help put up a selection of different editorials about the social situation in france, rather than removing one that you personally don't like. Klonimus 15:44, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I removed the inflammatory and POV editorial for those two reasons --Bob 20:48, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Loss of landmarks — search for new references

I think this part must have some words about the hip hop subculture (French hip hop). A major point forgotten by the press is that a lot of the kids rioting belong more or less to this subculture, listening or singing rap music, wearing streetwear clothes, some of them drawing tags on walls, or practicing breakdance... I think this is even more important that the religious issue, but i haven't the time, the english skill and the factual knowledge to write it in the article (i've just added french hip hop to the 'See Also part. 194.206.158.108 15:57, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

You make suggestions in French, if this makes things easier for you. I assume that quotation of particular rap songs could be intersting, if you have a knowledge of the subject... Rama 16:07, 18 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Hidden Racism

Removed a paragraph from the end as it is out of context with the rest of section. There are no sources quoted, and seems very anecdotal. The language used in that section might make for an interesting discussion, for example how the phrase "french national" is used here to exclude french nationals of north african descent, or the implicit presumption that the immigrant and muslim community are not "against violent crime". On the contrary, the non-white section of the French public seems to be calling attention here to the thuggish and violent behavior of another demographic who carry police batons. The view that the immigrant community is a hotbed of (extra-lawful) violence is worth reporting on, but IMHO not worth re-enforcing

For convienience, here is the removed paragraph:

However, what is often over-looked is that many French nationals are against violent crimes and general thuggery. This is carried out in most instances by male youths of North African descent, feeding the general feeling of anger and fear towards this demographic. Many youths of North African descent walk around with Stanley knives in full display, are vulgar towards the general public and are threatening. Not all do this, but it doesn't help the anti-North African sentiment amongst French people.

216.232.210.12 02:39, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

How do you know that the phrase "French national" is used to exclude french nationals of north african descent? maybe it is the readers opinion that it excludes this demographic, but this is not what it states. Sure, at the end it states that there is an "anti-North African sentiment amongst French people". In this instance, it can be assume to include all French people besides North Africans, but only this excerpt could support your POV. --Bob 00:58, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] merge

I cannot but note that the banlieue article is very short. Normally, the subject matter of this article would just be treated under "banlieue". I think this article should be merged over there. dab (ᛏ) 21:49, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] El cheapo sociology

Parts of this article copy reports from BBC and other media sources that try de facto to do sociology. The problem is, they do not do it properly (that is, following the normal scientific rules) and they over-use innuendo.

For instance, the article quoted a study showing that students of North African origins who attended higher education tend to end up unemployed more often than those of other origins. The conclusion was that they suffered from discrimination.

Needless to say, this is faulty sociological reasoning. One could perhaps draw such conclusions if the same study was done for people with equivalent education. The problem is, not all curricula in French higher education are equivalent with respect to unemployment (anybody with some knowledge of French higher education knows this). Some yield high probabilities of employment, some don't. It would be interesting to see in which proportion the North Africans attend the various curricula. With this information, it could perhaps be possible to infer possible racism afterwards; but without it, it is just shoddy sociology, and true editorializing.

We could also perhaps want to discuss foreign students who register at French academic institutions just in order to get a valid visa or authorization of stay. I do not have statistics on this and won't write about it in the article, but I saw first-hand some lists of students, all with African and other foreign names, who never showed up after registering. It was not a negligible proportion of the students of the university where I worked. Obviously, people who do that, though they may be counted in the statistics of "having attended university", will not easily find a job with their university credentials. Of course, that's anecdotal original research, so I will not write about it in the article. But any decent study of the topic should mention this phenomenon.

Finally, about copying claims from SOS Racisme. I should point out that SOS Racisme is quite close to the PS, the French Socialist Party (for instance Julien Dray, now a senior executive of the PS, was long one of the top executives at SOS Racisme). The PS is currently in the opposition, and is necessarily interested in embarassing the current government. While I do not claim that the SOS Racisme study is flawed, it seems fair to point out their political connections.

To summarize my opinion: we need more quotes from actual professional sociological studies, and fewer from editorials, journalistic sociology, etc. David.Monniaux 10:10, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Politically loaded

I should point out to those who contribute here that this topic is extremely politically loaded in France (that should be obvious, but still...). Thus, one should be very cautious before copying claims from such or such association, group or party, since many have specific political goals and connections.

Thank you. David.Monniaux 10:14, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removing unreferenced statements and errors of fact from the article

This article still has a good bit of "original research" and some statements without refrences. I'm fixing those as well as the factual inaccuracies/errors in grammar that I've come across.

I am removing/revising the following items:

Redundant and awkward: "they said". I am removing "they said" from the bullets in the "Hidden Racism" section. The paragraph references a study; it is clear that the statements made represent information given in the study. The paragraph already states: "The association SOS Racisme, close to the French Socialist Party, has claimed to have found experimental proof of such racism", which makes both attribution of the data and the political leaning from which it comes clear. Also, someone misspelled "said".

Factual inaccuracy: "only US citizens can obtain civil service positions (the government uses subcontractors to employ foreigners" - the Army and many civil service positions are available to those without US citizenship in the US.

Grammar: "In 2005, the unemloyment in the cités reaches 20%". This sentence should use the verb in the past tense. Changed to "reached."

No reference/original research: Many North African immigrants also use the university system to obtain temporary residency permit (Carte de Séjour), registering for the first year of different courses each year." No reference is given for this statement; it smacks of political belief. Perhaps it could be put at the Le Pen paragraph at the bottom, but it does not belong here.

-JFS

the last statement is what is found at the Universite d'Aix-Marseille I, II and III. --Bob 22:26, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge II

Beside being clean up, I agree with the proposal to merge banlieue here, expressed here in the first subsection (titled: Merge). If anyone's up for it... He already got three votes! Tazmaniacs 01:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

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