Threat to Culture Feared : North Africa Immigrants a Volatile Issue in France

It takes only a few moments and a short stroll in downtown Marseilles to pass from the old-fashioned French atmosphere of the fish market and the bouillabaisse restaurants to a frenetic neighborhood of Arab butchers and robed women that looks more like Algeria than France.

This downtown neighborhood of mosques, of cafes monopolized by men, of bazaars that sell World Cup soccer sweat shirts with Arabic lettering, is known officially as the Belsunce, but many people in Marseilles bitterly call it the Casbah, after the famous Arab quarter of Algiers in the days when the French ruled Algeria. No one who shops in the department stores downtown can miss the Belsunce. It borders the main street of Marseilles.

The visibility of this North African neighborhood makes it the most obvious symbol in France of a national problem--a festering resentment in French society against what is seen as a large and increasing number of immigrants, especially those from North Africa. Many problems are blamed on them: crime, drugs, the decline of schools, the deterioration of houses.

The immigrant problem has become an acrimonious political issue in France and will surely take votes away from the Socialist government in the parliamentary elections scheduled for March 16.

Even after the elections, it will continue to be a troubling and divisive issue in French society, raising difficult questions about racism and about the force of assimilation in France.

Many French complain that Arabs hang on to their customs no matter how much they may annoy the French. Many French women complain about the Arabs’ lewd remarks and about being grabbed by Arab men who come from societies that treat women outside the home with little respect. Exasperated by all this, the French will often mutter what has now become a cliche, “They are more at home here than we.”

The comment conjures up images of a society that is gradually losing its Frenchness to hordes of Muslims. The weekend magazine of the right-wing newspaper Le Figaro reinforced that fear recently with a cover story titled, “Will We Still Be French in 30 Years?” The cover showed a bust of Marianne, the symbol of the French republic, covered in an Arabic veil.

With liberal extrapolation of statistics, the article purported to prove that by the year 2015, a quarter of the population of France would be of non-European, mostly North African, mostly of Islamic descent. The article was denounced as false and racist by Premier Laurent Fabius.

According to estimates by the Ministry of the Interior, there were 4.2 million immigrants living in France at the end of 1981, or 7.8% of the total population of 54.3 million. On top of this, according to the 1982 census, there were 1.4 million foreigners who had acquired French citizenship, an additional 2.6% of the population.

In short, a little more than 10% of the population were foreign-born. Many, however, were Portuguese, Italians and Spaniards, who stir little emotion.

The real concern of the French are the non-European immigrants, especially the North Africans, mostly Algerians. The government statistics do not break this down exactly, but estimates based on the statistics indicate that there were almost 3 million non-European immigrants in France in 1982.

A little more than 2 million of them were North African. The North Africans thus make up only 3.7% of the total population of France but, in the view of many native French, create most of the problem.

France has had a long history of absorbing immigrants, especially after the two world wars when it needed foreign workers to meet shortages of labor. Immigration is limited strictly now, but many of the North Africans were recruited in the 1950s and 1960s to fill factory jobs.

Roundup of Jews

The record has sometimes been spotty. There were anti-Italian riots in Marseilles at the turn of the century, and the World War II Vichy government had a shameful and significant role in rounding up mostly foreign-born Jews for deportation to extermination camps.

But many French have long felt pride in the ease with which immigrants are assimilated into their culture, even black immigrants from Africa. But there is a feeling in France now that the North Africans cannot be assimilated.

In a magazine article written just before he died late last year, the renowned French historian Fernand Braudel paid tribute to some great French immigrants--scientist Marie Curie, playwright Eugene Ionesco, painters Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine. They symbolized the ease and the benefits of assimilation.

“To mix with us,” Braudel said, “that is what we asked of the new arrivals, that is what we expected of them.” But North Africans, he said, are different.

“I have nothing against the mosques that are going up in France in large and frequent numbers,” he said. “But they are the sign of an assimilation that is refused, that is impossible, that is, at least, very slow and difficult on the part of North African Muslims who have come here only in search of work. Islam is not only a religion. It is an old civilization that, far from being dead, is a way of life.”

Philippe Sanmarco, the Socialist deputy mayor of Marseilles, and the grandson of immigrants from Italy, is troubled by this kind of philosophical debate.

“We are the French Republic,” he said in a recent interview in the town hall by the old port. “We fought in the 19th Century to remove the hold of the Catholic Church on France. You have the right to practice any religion you like in France so long as you don’t break the laws.

No Separation of Church, State

“Of course, if French Muslims tried to impose fundamentalist Islam on us, I would fight that. They come from countries where there is no separation of church and state, and we have to educate them to understand the separation here. But practicing Islam does not bother me.”

The call for assimilation does not impress many immigrants from North Africa.

“It’s not a question of assimilation,” said Tahar Rahmani, 30, an Algerian-born French citizen who heads a foundation helping young immigrants start small businesses. “It is necessary to integrate ourselves into France but not give up our own culture. I, for example, observe both Christmas and the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed. I am well integrated into French society. But we talk of integration, not assimilation. That is a big difference.”

The large numbers of immigrants have become a tense political issue, exploited in the last few years by Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right National Front. Le Pen shocked France by winning 11% of the vote in the election of French deputies to the European Parliament in 1984.

He has not done as well in the elections and public opinion polls since then, but his party has become an important force in cities like Marseilles, where the immigrant population is either large or very obvious. In the first round of last year’s local elections, the National Front won 26.4% of the vote in Marseilles, taking first place in five of the local cantons.

All parties, including the Socialists, now agree that illegal immigrants must be deported and that unemployed immigrants must be encouraged to return to their native countries. But Le Pen has made immigration his main issue. His angry rhetoric strikes a chord with those French who think that North Africans are becoming more at home in France than the French.

Test of Frenchness

For example, Le Pen would submit the children of immigrants to some kind of test of Frenchness before granting them citizenship. Under present law, a child born in France of foreign parents can have French citizenship at the age of 18 on request. “I want to separate citizenship from birth,” Le Pen told a group of American and British correspondents recently.

The other parties do not go that far, but Jacques Chirac, the mayor of Paris and the leader of the Gaullists, has also tried to make immigration an important issue. “I blame the Socialists,” he said recently, “for an ideology and laxity that has created the tension over the presence of foreigners on our soil.”

Echoing a standard cry of the right, Chirac attacked the Socialists for dropping the old French police practice of stopping anyone in the street at random to check their identification papers.

On top of this, Chirac opposed the policy of giving immigrant mothers the same grants that go to French mothers for a third child. “The birth rate of native France is plummeting,” Chirac said. “It is necessary to help our demography rise again.”

The immigrants are berated as the cause of many ills in the society. The criticism is far from subtle. Le Figaro’s weekend magazine recently illustrated an article titled, “Marseilles: Capital of Fear and Violence,” with an enormous color photo of Muslims praying in the streets of the city. The article said that 65% of the robberies and attacks in Marseilles were committed by Algerian immigrants.

Crimes by Immigrants

Official statistics make it clear that immigrants account for much of the crime in France. More than one in every four prisoners in the Paris area, for example, is an immigrant. Statistics can be amassed as well to show that schools decline and housing deteriorates in immigrant neighborhoods. There is a question, though, of cause and effect.

“Immigration is not the problem,” deputy mayor Sanmarco said. “Poverty is the great problem. Look at the deterioration of downtown Marseilles. It has been going on for a long time. Parking was difficult. Driving in narrow streets was difficult. Merchants moved their stores to shopping centers on the highways outside the city.

“Landlords refused to repair and renovate apartments that the law kept in low rent. Who was going to live in these apartments where the toilet is outside, where the roof leaks in the rain? The poor. And the poor are the immigrants. They are not the cause of the degradation of the downtown. They are the result.”

The issue of immigration is compounded in France by a deep abhorrence by many French for the idea of racism and by guilt feelings over the complicity of the French government during World War II in the German extermination of more than 70,000 French Jews, most of them foreign-born. Many French do not want to feel that they have become racist toward North African immigrants.

These feelings have helped spawn a dramatic movement called SOS Racisme that is trying to beat back racism in French life. Founded by a group of youths led by Harlem Desir, a young man of Caribbean and French descent, SOS Racisme filled the Place de la Concorde in Paris last summer with 300,000 fans for a rock concert dedicated to the struggle against racism.

SOS Racisme’s badge--it bears a hand signaling stop and the legend, “Don’t Touch My Buddy”--became a chic item for many Parisians to wear last year.

The mood reflected by the success of SOS Racisme probably accounts somewhat for the halt in the rise of popularity of Le Pen and his anti-immigrant movement last year. But in the long run it is far from clear whether the good feelings evoked by SOS Racisme are strong enough to drive away the resentments that many French feel about the immigrants, especially the North Africans, in their midst.