What’s happening in France has little to do with Islam and with immigrants, as some stated here in Italy. What’s happening in France leads us to a series of reflections about Europe, where the real problem is social discrimination. Discrimination, racism do strongly exist in Italy as well.
We talked about this topics with Alessandro Dal Lago (Professor in cultural sociology at the University of Genoa – Department of educational studies).
We focused on what’s happening in France and we talked about the so-called “multiculturalism”. We about all discussed about the role of schools in areas where “new citizens” are immediately discriminated and discrimination comes at first in schools.
Question – When a person was born and lives in a territory is he/she immediately a citizen?
Answer – Being a citizen is a sort of utopia, in vertical stratified societies parts of the population are cut out, especially nowadays. And this happens everywhere in Europe.
What’s happening in France shows the fiction of French citizenship, which is only formal. We are talking about French citizens that come from families that have been naturalised many years ago. We shouldn’t forget though that Tunisian and Moroccans originally were citizens of the French “empire”. This is why many families have been French for generations. Anyhow these people are only formally French citizens. Interviews, data prove of a situation of full discrimination. Young citizens are left behind at school and older ones are cut out from labour market.
The problem lays here!
When’s someone a citizen? When recourse and life projects can be share and are shareable. In Europe this does not happen. European citizenship is pure fiction and it is fiction to the most of the population in France, for instance. France depicts itself as an egalitarian country, the so-called Republique, but this is not real.
Question – The French system is actually being under discussion everywhere in Europe. Many say that French multiculturalism failed its goals, do you agree with this?
Answer – No, I don’t. Multiculturalism is not the problem. In France no-one has ever talked about multiculturalism, which is a rather recent issue that comes from British countries. Multiculturalism is in Canada, in USA, in Uk – maybe, surely not in France. France is the country of republican universalism where everyone is equal and culture does not count.
Anyway, culture – I mean religion more than life styles – does not enter the interpretation of French recent riots. Other matters count much more: the youngsters’ culture, their life styles, which have very little to do with the stereotyped image of culture.
For instance the reaction of mosques and Imams to what’s happening clarifies what I am actually saying. We in fact need to say that in France – and in UK as well – organised religions work as a system of control. This in a way happens also in Italy. When few weeks ago the debate in Italy focused on the Muslim school of via Quaranta, Milan, I thought that our politicians – both right wing and left wing ones – would separate eventual “Muslim extremists” (we’ve never seen them in Italy so far) from “moderates” in order to have these control and organise their “community”. Recent French events are interesting because they show how entire areas of youth population that have very little to do neither with religion nor with the problem of culture. I completely disagree with the interpretation “they drug smugglers…. They are young boys that live in situation where there probably are drugs markets, because these are the only possible markets in such situations.
They are French citizen, they have different faces and they all are rioting against a system of enclosure and not against culture. Multiculturalism that is facing a crisis is ours, I mean the standard stereotyped idea of citizens that organise themselves. French rioters do not care about religion.
I believe that this is the interesting face of what happens in France, the only positive aspect of recent facts.
Question – We were stricken by the fact schools were the first buildings that were set on fire. They were sort of seen as the symbol of a society that does not function. How important is to work within the schooling system? What about Italy?
Answer – The Italian situation is very different. In Italy there is not a tradition a “shared” citizenship, there’ not even the fiction of civil equality. Children of migrant citizens are without rights. We cannot even imagine how excluded, cancelled and discriminated foreigners are in Italy. Foreigners in Italy are only workers. If they remain unseen, they are tolerated but there is a widespread institutional racism.
For instance, the story of Bologna’s “car windows’ washers”… It really does not count much from a strictly material point of view, but its symbolism is incredible: in order to solve the problems linked to normal urban trouble – faced everywhere in Italy above all by young citizens – the first action is against “windows’ washers” or against Rumanian irregulars. These facts depict a situation.
In spite of the fact that repression was minimal, the symbolism of the event show the exclusion where migrants live.
In Italy there no formal or social citizenship. The live in a non-place of society, they simply do not exist.
This is what I think, young citizens may one day get sick of the situation…
In Italy naturalisation is almost impossible, it comes after ten here of residence and after a very tough bureaucracy. Italy is one the most racist country in Europe. Society is split in two: Italians and foreigners. It may happen though that the youngest start reacting against this and that they stop living in the invisible areas of our society.
Schooling. In France schools teach the fiction of egualitarism.Inside banlieues schools are abandoned, ethnical and pupils are sons and daughters of old generation of migrants.
In Italy things are different, foreigners are accepted and tolerated in elementary schools, sometimes this happens also in junior high schools, but this is it. We cannot keep living through direct Lega’s racism nor through the non-direct racism of all other political and social movements. We cannot accept welfarism, nor the idea “we only want good moderate Muslims”. These message will not take us anywhere!
Question – We do not want to be banal, but could we use the Los Angeles ’92 slogan “No Justice No Peace when we talk about French riots?
Answer – I think we can. Because back in 1992 Los Angeles riots were against the exclusion of many American citizens. I think French and Los Angeles riots are somehow similar. France is facing a problem of justice in the sharing of resources, this is to say on how much is spent in different areas of towns, In Italy the problem is a little deeper, though. When we talk about exclusion we talk about the “lack of rights”. Exclusion in France is absolute. These boys live in a different world. This is why they burn cars, schools, etc. They burn the symbol of mobility and of the relation with the town. It’s just like what told in Kassovitz’s film (La Haine) produced in 1995.
We should read French riots in terms of social justice and not in terms of multiculturalism.
Italy,…, racism and exclusion are so radical that sooner or later there will be some sort of re-action. In Italy it’s not a problem of exclusion but a problem of slavery.
From this point of view – the social and political interpretation of these phenomena – the word “justice” is necessary.