schools, however, will not solve these problems.
Integration
To introduce an examination of this term, I wish to refer to an incident in Britain in October 2006. My reasons for briefly changing the area of study are twofold: first, the incident provides an extremely clear example of certain attitudes. But, secondly, it is also a reminder that the problems which beset the French state are not unique: if Britain has managed to avoid some of them, this is only a difference of degree, not an absolute difference in quality.
As many readers will no doubt remember, Jack Straw, then leader of the House of Commons, was visited in his MP’s surgery by a woman wearing a full veil – a niqab – which entirely covered her face. She spoke English well, and had been educated in Lancaster. Perhaps like Chirac considering a veiled schoolgirl, Straw later reported that he felt intimidated, and he asked her to remove her veil. More interesting, he then stated to the press that he considered her veil ‘a barrier to social integration’.147 This is a curious comment: this woman had learnt English, had succeeded in the British school system and had understood the British political system to the extent that she was able to make use of the appropriate administrative and political structures to raise a case with her MP: something which the great majority of the British population never do. In what sense was she ‘not integrated’? At this point British culture comes to resemble French culture: she is described as ‘not integrated’ because she fails to conform to certain assumed norms. And what exactly are these norms? Here British culture grows as vague and cloudy as the speakers in the National Assemblies: those norms are the values of fair play, tolerance, moderation … Perhaps Straw meant that as this woman was wearing a niqab, she would find it difficult to institute the values of fair play by umpiring a cricket match? In truth, these oft-cited values are a remarkably poor summary of the values that govern most British people’s lives, although they may have some relevance as ideals.
Migrants who attempt to accept these lessons concerning ‘our values’ are then trying to live their lives to a set of ideals which the ‘native’ population habitually ignores. Azouz Begag’s political memoirs give countless examples of the moments when, having been characterized as a Muslim and as the child of an immigrant family, he was then required to live to a code of public morality which was more strict than that required for the other ‘native’ French ministers. This double-bind, Catch-22 logic has a demoralizing effect on the person caught in its contradictions. Begag speaks of an almost ‘genetic’ fear.
I was terrified. From father to son, among us, we always have this fear of not being ‘correct’ [comme il faut] in the eyes of the French. We are afraid of hurting others. Afraid of shocking them, of betraying them, disappointing them, of being late. We are afraid of life, of death, of everything. My poor father left to me this genetic agony.148
The examples of Straw’s visitor and Begag’s experiences suggest that we need to rethink the concept of ‘integration’.
A veil-wearing schoolgirl from Rennes observes: ‘They tried to make people believe that we were deviants and that in order to “integrate” us we had to remove our veils. Yet we were extremely well integrated, and taking off our veil was humiliating.’149 Her comments suggest that rather than thinking in terms of a monolithic ‘integration’ process, it would be better to imagine two processes: integration and assimilation. What Straw probably means by ‘not integrated’ is that this woman was ‘not integrated in a form that he considered desirable’. Within this work, I will use ‘integration’ in an entirely value-free sense, to mean a comprehension of the manner in which a society works, or the acquisition of a competence to navigate one’s way through a society, without any cloudy idealization of the values of fair play, toleration, motherhood and apple pie. This process is difficult, but young, ambitious migrants are often able to achieve it. Furthermore, there is the yet more difficult process of assimilation: this is where the question of values becomes important. Here, the migrant makes a choice to ‘become like’: to interiorize the values of the French (or British).
This is central to understanding the public significance of the veil: it is the clearest possible sign of someone who has decided to integrate without assimilating.150
Beurs
Our last key term is less controversial and, to some extent, I include it here simply in order to give information to the non-specialist.
There is a form of French slang known as verlan, based on the approximate inversion of the syllables of a word, which works best for two-syllable words. It is referred to in nineteenth-century novels, such as those of Balzac, and is probably older, for its logic makes most sense in an oral culture, and written examples will inevitably look forced or incomprehensible. Table 1.1 shows some common examples.
Table 1.1: Four French verlan terms
| Orthodox French | Verlan |
| Mec (guy, bloke) | Keum |
| Pourri (rotten, corrupt) | Ripou |
| Juif (Jew) | Fij |
| Arabe | Beur |
One point to stress here is that while these words are a very casual form of slang, they are not insulting. According to legend, verlan was devised by criminals or prisoners to prevent the police from being able to understand their conversations: its purpose was not to offend, but to conceal. In other words, ‘beur’ and ‘fij’ do not belong to that vast litany of hate words which all languages seem to accumulate. On the contrary, it is possible to present a positive reading of ‘beur’: it was a spontaneous creation, which marked the integration of Arab immigrant youth into the structures of French culture. A range of spin-offs evolved: beurette for a young, female Arab, and even beur-geoisie for that strata briefly known in English as Yummies: Young Upwardly Mobile Muslims.
The word beur acquired a political significance, for it is associated with two political movements. The first of these grew out of the banlieues of Lyon, in which a large, second-generation Arab immigrant population was concentrated, and in which there were constant problems of poverty, crime and police harassment.151 An appeal was issued by a local militant, Toumi Djaïja, for a protest march across France, which was rapidly termed ‘La marche des Beurs’. This movement acted as a forum through which the dispossessed beurs of the suburbs could meet middle-class beur professionals. It was through this movement that Fadela Amara first learnt of political organization.152 Mainstream political parties grew interested in this movement, partly because they were genuinely moved by the spectacle of these usually secular, ‘young, generous and apolitical’ marchers,153 whose first demand was entry into the structures of Republic. Robert Castel notes: ‘They felt that they were French, and they knew that they would live in France.’ Their movement marked the end of the old immigrant’s illusion of a ‘return’, one day, to North Africa.154 The parties were also in search of what became known as the ‘Beur vote’: they sought political mechanisms by which immigrant votes could be delivered as elections.155
In December 1984 a new organization was created, SOS-Racisme. This was linked to the Socialist Party and drew together beur militants, anti-racists and young socialists, with the avowed aim of stopping the rise of the anti-immigrant National Front. While this goal was worthy in itself, some aspects of SOS-Racisme’s strategy were less praiseworthy. First, by concentrating solely on the National Front as the source of French racism, it turned attention away from the gentle, moderate, ambient racism that suffuses French society. Secondly, SOS-Racisme’s tactics were often quite patronizing: it is now best remembered for a briefly omnipresent badge, ‘Touche pas à mon pote’ (don’t touch my mate), which was popular among a young, white, liberal audience. Lastly, the movement was firmly controlled by the Socialist Party, which enforced some crucial
