French students worry about home

Saturday, November 5, 2005
By Meryl Hyman Harris

Students from France studying locally are worried about their friends in France and the state of their homeland.
 
Marie Grimaldi, 19, who is studying political science at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, said she is worried about the rioting that began in the suburbs of Paris and has now spread to other parts of the country. She is worried, too, about media reports that France is on the decline, a message she thinks frightens people and leads to increased violence between communities there. 

Though he has confidence in new Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, Nicholas Drach, a Parisian studying political science at Manhattanville College in Purchase, said he is trying to reach people at home because he doesn't really know exactly how bad things are there. He is worried, but is trying to remain optimistic. 

"I hope it's going to stop," said Drach, 21. 

The fighting began in poor neighborhoods just outside Paris where immigrants are concentrated, mostly Muslims and Africans. These are "poor areas, and violent areas. A lot of immigrants are poor," Grimaldi said. 

Among 20- to 24-year-olds living in the Paris suburbs, the jobless rate in the 1999 census was 37.2 percent for men and 39.5 percent for women. The national averages were 22.5 and 28.4 percent, respectively. The figures come from a 2003 report for the prime minister by the High Council for Integration. 

Since they first came to France to help rebuild the country after World War II, Grimaldi said, the immigrants have faced poverty and alienation from mainstream French society, and that otherness is still felt by the French-born children of immigrants today. 

Drach, 21, said both the government and the rioters are to blame. 
"The first thing I have in mind is this is all only an opportunity for these young guys to break stuff and to make a mess. These young guys are just kind of lost,'' he said. 

Their problems are real, he said, and the government has not put into place enough programs to help, "but these young guys from the suburbs don't want to get involved. They lack motivation somehow." 

Elodie Botbol, 16, a senior at Solomon Schechter Upper School in Hartsdale, lived until she was 9 years old in what she called "a sheltered environment" in Paris. She still spends her summers there, but feels a certain unease there because the tension between the various groups is palpable, she said. 

"It is really about integration issues that have been going on for quite some time, that France doesn't really tackle," she said. The government "doesn't do anything to help. They don't know how, apparently."