Un article en anglais

Un article en anglais rédigé pour l'IFP qui explique les différents modèles d'intégration en Europe. (rédigé en mars 2006)

Througout Europe : Different Models, Different Problems ?

Luc CAMILLERI - The riots in French suburbs have enlighted different ways of integrating immigrants (having or not the nationality of the country and of any generation : first, second or third which mainly concerns France) in the countries of Europe.
These models find their roots in the history of countries. France, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Portugal have a deep colonial past which explains that they were concerned earlier to immigration. Reason why, France is the country in Europe with the biggest number of immigrants (from 6 to 7 million which represent about 10% of the population). While countries like Italy, Finland or Sweden had their wave of immigration much later and in a smaller dimension. For the last, it was mainly due to the end of the Communist era in Europe and Russia.

But integration doesn’t only concern people coming from foreign countries these last 50 years, it also concerns ethnic groups living within countries and who are more or less well-accepted by the traditionnal population. The most striking example is in Central Europe with Romes that are often “ghettoized” in far-suburbs.

Two dominant and totally different models show their limits in Europe : the “French model” of egality for all and the “British model” of communautarism.

“In France, everybody is a son of the Republic”, this could be a good sum-up of the idea of the French integration. Everything is done to give everybody the same chance (police, teachers) so long people assimilate French culture and habits. Positive discrimination cannot exist with this model as a law (while some private institution allow this positive action, see Sciences Po). It tends to erase any particularities so as to obtain a population with the same rights. But two main factors limit this approach. First, a deep-rooted racism that prevent from having the same opportunity according to your origin. If you are “Beur”, your candidature for a job will not generally the same weight compared to a “white” one. Reason why, De Villepin wants to generalize anonymous CV. And second the big waves of immigration in the 60’s and 70’s have created ghettos, the french “banlieues” with huge areas of living-towers (known as HLM, low-cost accomodation).

On the contrary, in Great-Britain, the model wants every community to express itself with its own culture. And it gives a much bigger room in the public sphere (medias, political life) to immigrants and people of foreign origins (which is absolutely not the case in France, even if some efforts were done lately but surely not as a tendency but to show there is no discrimination). For example, 23 of the 117 personsof the municpal council in Birmingham, the second-city of Great-Britain, have a foreign origin. So in this model, ghettos shouldn’t exist but it obviously create tensions between every community that never mix and even not feel essential to learn English since they live among themselves.

Between these two extremes models, there is a rise of a third voice, the one of volunterism. Not necessarily positive action, but delibarate will to mix everybody without anihilating everyone’s culture.

In Italy, the official line is to give everybody the chance to share the differences, which doesn’t avoid tough “banlieues” in Torino or Bologne.

In Finland, every new suburbs is divided : 40 % of flats for immigrants (mainly from Russia, Estonia and Somalia) and 60 % for co-propriety, but with no apparent differences between living-standards. And one year of learning Finnish is offered, which is sometimes not enough and pupils have to follow regular school while they don’t speak the language...

In Germany, a clear preference is given to immigrants having German roots (even far in the past like some people from Kazakstan), and all the Turks living there for more than 40 years are excluded (these are the “Gastarbeiter”, invited workers especially in the building industry).

In the Netherlands, 10 % of deputies have foreign origins. But problems exist and some recent reports show that there could be a rising of violence, especially in some poor suburbs where a majority of Morrocans live. And the government tries hard to stop the immigration to avoid such problems.

More and more the question of an European identity is asked. While it seems obvious that nobody wants to lose one’s identity (even for a republican ideal), there is strong need to find something in common. This could be a task for the European union to gather all the people accepting differences. This could help changing the mentality and create new living spaces.