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SPIEGEL Interview With Sociologist Laurent Mucchielli

When Paris Suburbs Burn

In a SPIEGEL interview, French sociologist Laurent Mucchielli talks about the riots in the Paris suburbs and the country's unsuccessful policies for integrating immigrants and their children. He accuses French President Nicolas Sarkozy of using the language of war to characterize the recent riots in a way that could spark even greater violence.

Laurent Mucchielli, 39, of the Center for Sociological Research in Paris, recently co-authored a study on immigrant tensions in France called "When the Suburbs Burn." SPIEGEL spoke to Mucchielli in the wake of last week's riots in France.

SPIEGEL: President Nicolas Sarkozy has characterized the most recent violence in the Paris suburb Villiers-le-Bel as the "dominance of the rabble" and refuses to assign the blame to a social crisis. Is he right?

Mucchielli: No, that's a major mistake. Besides, it is politically irresponsible to consistently treat conflicts as a power struggle. This is the language of war. Even during the 2005 riots Sarkozy, the interior minister at the time, referred to the unrest as criminal attacks and the participants as criminals and riff-raff, and he rebuffed the idea that there could have been social reasons.

SPIEGEL: But not every street skirmish with the police is automatically the result of social conflict.

Mucchielli: Correct, only when it turns into a riot, as it did last week. For as long as there has been urban unrest, the confrontations have always assumed the same pattern: the kids from the suburbs versus the police.

SPIEGEL: What are the causes of these ongoing problems?

Mucchielli: The violence erupting on the outskirts of French cities stems from the disintegration process of gradual "ghettoization." Residents of other neighborhoods also experience injustice and humiliation. They experience daily ordeals in four areas: the relationship with the police, the fact that their children are doing poorly in school, unemployment and their status as immigrants. "We are treated like dogs," say the residents of the suburbs.

SPIEGEL: But that's no justification for the use of Molotov cocktails.

Mucchielli: Very few adults approve of the vandalism when, as has now happened in Villiers-le-Bel, their children's schools and libraries go up in flames or their neighbors' cars are set on fire. They see it as idiotic. And yet they understand that a dramatic incident can be the trigger to release pent-up anger.

SPIEGEL: The government has spent €42 billion ($62 billion) in the past four years on social programs and urban renewal in the suburbs, and it has also supported investments in special economic zones.

Mucchielli: These programs may be helpful in individual cases, but they do not prevent the further ghettoization of the suburbs.

SPIEGEL: Why not?

Mucchielli: Take education, for example. According to our republican myth, if we treat all children alike in elementary school they will have equal opportunities. But the problem is that immigrant children start at a different level, because they come from families in which French, in many cases, is rarely spoken. As a result, by treating different kinds of people alike, we merely reproduce their disadvantages.

SPIEGEL: That's why there are government-funded organizations to help the children by tutoring them.

Mucchielli: But a long-term policy of urban development must eliminate the roots of the problem.

SPIEGEL: Didn't President Sarkozy just institute a plan to fundamentally revitalize the suburbs?

Mucchielli: Throwing money at the problem isn't enough. The question is, where is the money going? Thirty urban renewal plans have been presented since 1977. The renovation or demolition of the huge concrete boxes where many people live can be useful. But parks and attractive streets cannot eliminate unemployment, poor educational opportunities and the second-class status of immigrant children.

SPIEGEL: Fadela Amara, Sarkozy's state secretary for urban policy, who is of Algerian descent herself, plans to present her own plan in January. It's called "Respect and Equal Opportunity."

Mucchielli: That's nothing but demagoguery, just like the politicians' staged visits to the suburbs, where they discuss the residents' problems over coffee and cake. The diagnoses have been on the table for the past 20 years. As of October 2004, we even have a "National Supervisory Authority for Unstable Urban Zones," which keeps itself busy submitting thick reports. What we need is a comprehensive plan of action based on these analyses of the problems involved.

SPIEGEL: The police have been accused of being part of the problem in the suburbs. Do you accept this criticism?

Mucchielli: People aren't upset with the police for intervening, which is legitimate, but about their methods. However, the government opposes, for ideological reasons, the reintroduction of the "neighborhood police" conceived by the Socialists. I'm not talking about police officers that play football with children, but about local security forces whose work is not limited to pure repression. That would be a long-overdue reform.

SPIEGEL: How do you explain the new escalation of violence? Guns are even beginning to replace stones as the weapons of choice.

Mucchielli: The police assume that no more than one or two weapons were used in Villiers-le-Bel. It is correct, however, that last week's violence began with great brutality. This violence stems from the belief that nothing has changed since 2005, and that for these people there is no escaping from the dead end of their lives.

SPIEGEL: Sarkozy continues to emphasize a tough approach. Isn't this a recipe for the next riots?

Mucchielli: It certainly is, and they could be even more violent.

Interview conducted by Stefan Simons

Translated from German by Christopher Sultan