Vive l'immigrant?

France's presidential candidates are courting newly empowered immigrant voters.

from the April 3, 2007 edition

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Immigration is a hot topic in the hotly contested French presidential election. The issue is integrating France's ethnic Arabs and Africans, many of them Muslims – and also legal residents. If done right, France could be a European trendsetter.

France is not a perfect parallel for Europe. Its immigrants are multi-generational, stemming from the colonial era. Many are French citizens by now; about 3.5 million are legal residents (200,000 to 400,000 are illegals). Europe also has millions of Muslims in its midst, but Germany's ethnic Turks, for instance, arrived as guest workers. Most are not citizens.

And yet the challenges are similar whether it's the Netherlands or Bri­tain: clashes over religious dress and practice, over political extremism and violence, over economic and social opportunity.

In France, the difficulty of integration was underscored by the riots of 2005. Youths from primarily Arab and African suburbs (akin to low-income projects) rampaged in areas throughout the country.

Since then, conditions haven't changed for the suburban dwellers, many of whom are children of immigrants. They're still grossly under-represented among the French political, cultural, and business elite.

And they're disproportionately unemployed. In some suburbs, the overall jobless rate is 20 percent, and more than 40 percent for working-age youth (it's 8.4 percent for France as a whole).

But there's a potentially earth-shattering shift occurring in the suburbs. The immigrant communities are empowering themselves politically. An election that's perceived as one of generational change has upped voter registration all over France. It's soared in immigrant areas, with no one sure what the impact will be.

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