Immigrants' bitterness boils over in France

ONCE AGAIN Paris is the scene of violent demonstrations, but this time it is the young with jobs that they want to protect who are demonstrating. Last time it was the sons of immigrants without jobs, and without hope of jobs, that began far more serious riots that spread quickly across France. It wasn't about religion, although most of the rioters were Muslims. The fire last time was a cry against poverty, lack of opportunity, discrimination, and social injustice that mark the lives of many immigrant communities across Europe.

I recently spoke with Claude Dilain, the mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, where last autumn's riots began, to find out what he had learned from those November days. ''It's not for me to learn, it was for French society to learn something," he said in a tone of controlled anger. ''For 20 years France has refused to see the reality of the suburbs," he said, ''the hypocrisy, the self-serving hypocrisy."

The face of immigrant France had been hidden away in the dying suburbs of France, and when mayors tried to draw attention to the problems they were told it's just your local problem, the mayor said. ''But I think it is a national problem."

The mayor described a France in which moving from one socio-economic level to another is becoming ever more difficult, especially in immigrant communities, even for those born in France. ''I am very pessimistic about the willingness to change, and what French society needs to know is that if they want to keep people down they must expect explosions."

Clichy-sous-Bois still has no police station of its own, Dilain said. The nearest one is in the next town. Also, there is no train to take people to work. One has to take buses to get to the train in the next town, and the service begins so late in the morning that low-level jobs that might start immigrants on the road away from poverty are less obtainable.

There is 24 percent unemployment in Clichy-sous-Bois, according to the mayor, against a national average of 10 percent. ''Some of the kids have good diplomas," Dilain said. It was not just a matter of not having a good education, but a problem of ''having not such a good color of the skin or a good address."

This is not the way it is supposed to be in France. The ideals of the French Revolution, ''liberte, egalite, fraternite," still rule public policy. Everyone is supposed to be absolutely equal in France. It is not supposed to matter what color or religion you are. Everyone who is a French citizen is automatically equal under French tradition and law.

As France's minister of equal opportunity, Azous Begag, a writer from Lyon of Algerian descent, told me, you cannot have affirmative action in France because ''it's impossible to have ethnic monitoring in this country." There are no racial, ethnic, or religious differences recognized in France. But the truth is far from the ideal, he said.

Listen to the words of Hibat Tabib, an Iranian immigrant and lawyer whom I met in the nearby suburb of Pierfitte, where the unemployment in the immigrant housing projects is 35 percent compared with 20 percent for the town.

''There is no equality because of discrimination, he said. ''People coming with the same equal talent don't have equal opportunity. If you have a North African name you don't get the job.

''Equality doesn't exist in political representation. Of the 35,000 municipalities in France there is not one mayor from an immigrant background. Not one. In the National Assembly there is not one delegate from an immigrant background. Not one." In Germany, France, and Holland, immigrants and their children can be found in parliaments -- even in the British House of Lords.

''We are French citizens but never treated as French. We have a whole generation of people in France who belong to nowhere," he said. ''Not to France. Not to the home country."

There is not much fraternity either because if there is no equality how can you be brothers? And without equality and fraternity you cannot have real liberty. The riots of the suburbs may be over but the bitterness has not gone away.

France is not alone in its troubles absorbing immigrants, but perhaps it is more painful in France because the ideal is so high, and therefore the gap between the ideal and the reality so wide.

H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.