Julie Yelle on the Integration of Muslim Youth in France

By: Julie Yelle

October 1, 2006

As home to an estimated four to five million Muslims, the largest Muslim population on the European continent, France faces a distinct challenge to address the question of Muslim integration into its society and political landscape. The status of Muslim youth in France, as a demographic group seeking out opportunities in education, housing, and the job market, is of particular interest. The relation of their religious identity to their integration into society takes on heightened importance during this phase of transition into their individual niches in society.
While French Muslim youth come from multiple national backgrounds and adhere to widely varying levels of religious observance, they share an overwhelming desire to assume an integral role in French society. After the banning of headscarves in educational institutions, the largely Muslim youth-led riots in the banlieues of Paris last November, and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy’'s controversial dismissal of the rioters as “racaille” (scum), the challenge of Muslim integration into French society seems to be more relevant than ever. What progress has been made in that arena in recent months? What obstacles to integration remain? These questions have loomed in my conscience for quite some time, and even more so since my arrival in France (albeit only a little over a week ago).

Stagnation of the French economy has trapped many of the Muslim naturalized citizens of France and their descendants in the country's lower socioeconomic ranks, resulting in the socioeconomic grievances that most intellectuals agree were the driving factors of the Parisian riots. Unemployment affects an estimated 30 percent of French citizens of Algerian and Moroccan descent compared with 10 percent of the population at large, and Muslims, who make up 7 to 8 percent of the total French population, may account for more than 50 percent of France'’s prisoners. The image of French citizens of Arab-Muslim descent in the minds of many Franco-French citizens has thus unfortunately become tainted with stereotypes of delinquency, and the youth of this demographic group are often viewed with suspicion and have a harder time accessing the benefits to which they are in theory entitled.

My host university Sciences Po, one of the elite grandes écoles of France, has recently created a special admissions track in an effort to recruit promising students from less affluent areas in order to balance out some of the inequalities in educational opportunities. I had the opportunity to see the personal impact of this new policy on at least one student whose acquaintance I made, a Muslim girl of Moroccan descent from an area outside of Paris designated by the French government as one of the zone's d’éducation prioritaires (ZEPs, or priority education zones), where many French citizens of foreign descent live in low-income neighborhoods. While being able to see concrete results of a policy designed to make opportunities for higher education previously reserved for the elite more accessible to talented students of any background was very rewarding, I note that the hesitations of some policymakers to contain some validity as well. Sorbonne professor Jean-François Amadieu has voiced concerns that adding a special admissions track for students from depressed neighborhoods allows the university to avoid addressing the broader issue of revising its main admissions procedures. Additionally, I have noticed during several conversations my classmates and I have had with townspeople from the region that my classmates who were admitted to Sciences Po through special admissions tracks have had to stress several times that their admissions tracks were not easier but simply different in order to facilitate their ability to apply.

The vast majority of Muslim youth in France with whom I have spoken have aspirations indicating their desire to embrace their civic roles in French society, and while it has been said that “the only distinctive political trait of French Muslims is their relative disengagement,” I believe that the current under-representation and disengagement of French Muslims can be overcome as long as the French political elite embrace the issue with the serious consideration and concrete proposals for a solution that it deserves.
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