This is the desolate picture painted by a study carried out by five French researchers in several small towns in the Parisian suburbs ANSAmed
In the suburbs just a few dozen kilometres from Paris which seem as though they were a thousand miles away from the French capital, amid traffic, high-rise buildings and neglect, the rules of Islam dominate over the laws of the Republique, and whoever continues to live there feels as if they were in exile, forgotten by the state. This is the desolate picture painted by a study carried out by five French researchers in several small towns in the Parisian suburbs. In Clichy-sous-Bois and Montefermeil, the Republique is “a concept that is far away. Islam is present, first and foremost,” Le Monde wrote today, reporting the results of the study, headed by political affairs expert Gilles Kepel. For precision, these are the towns that exactly six years ago burned for weeks following the death of two youngsters of North African descent who were killed in a police chase. According to Kepel, a Political Science professor, in recent years these towns have seen an exponential increase in “halal”, and not just in the food sector: “Halal indicates what is permissible in private and social life, from behind closed doors for a husband and wife to the refusal to sign children up for school lunches,” the scholar told Le Monde. Islam is a refuge from a sense of abandonment, of “social, political and economic disgrace”. There are a dozen mosques which can accommodate 12,000 worshippers between Clichy and Montfermeil. Marriages between Muslims are the standard here. The traditions of Ramadan are practiced by the majority of men. All fast food establishments offer, and sometimes even exclusively sell halal meals and sandwiches. “These identity-based demands are a way to obtain integration into society,” Kepel explained. The researchers explained that in order to change the situation, it would not be sufficient to destroy the seedy buildings populated by immigrant families, whose children at this point are French, for all intents and purposes. Nor would it be enough to give them residential homes surrounded by nature, if in those places drug trafficking were still to continue, and, if in order to travel the 23km that separate Chene Pointu from Paris, it continues to take one hour and fifteen minutes, changing modes of transportation four times. Things will remain the same without work (in some suburbs, unemployment rates are among the highest in all of France) and if there are few young people who manage to complete their studies.
