Niger is a country steeped in poverty and nearly 3 million of its people continuously face severe hunger issues due to climate change and terrorism

If France is burning today, it is essentially because of one phenomenon – ‘immigration’. Built into French society is the presence of many immigrants; almost 4.5 million of them in a total population of 67 million. Most of them are legally in France but remain largely unintegrated; what that means in the context of an advanced society we will analyse later in this essay. We have witnessed frequent implosions of violence by immigrants on one pretext or the other, but France has also suffered violence by ethnic French with no migration background too. It is known to have a restive society, given to battling for its rights a little more vociferously and energetically than what many other societies in Europe do. This goes back to 1789 when the most quoted historic uprising took place in the form of the French Revolution. It gave the world the slogan – ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. Some of that appears rubbed off on the migrants of France and perhaps of some other nations in Europe.

The trigger for the violence in the streets this time has been the shooting of a 17-year-old boy of Algerian descent, Nahel Merzouk by traffic cops who had stopped him for an apparent traffic infringement. A few apparent facts have come to light. The boy was driving without a license and allegedly had a history of crime which was known to the local policemen. There was some apprehension in the minds of the policemen that he would attempt a break to escape prosecution. The French law, authorizing policemen to fire a weapon at an individual fleeing in a vehicle which could be used as a weapon against a crowd of people, was brought into effect in 2017, after a series of terrorist related incidents in which vehicles were used by terrorists to ram into crowds. The most rational thing to do in such circumstances would have been for the boy to offer himself for arrest and the policemen to have used just enough force to ensure he did not escape. However, rational behaviour does not usually take place when a huge trust deficit exists between law enforcers and some segments of society, especially if immigrants are involved, those with a seething antipathy due to ideological and religious identity.

Before getting to analyse France’s immigration issue it’s important to understand the security concerns that immigration brings worldwide. The reasons for mass migration of populations are many. Mostly these are associated with war, political turbulence or extreme poverty. Host countries accept such immigrants from other countries out of empathetic concern but many times it’s also for economic reasons. Availability of cheap labour is usually the temptation. With that comes the subsequent problem of citizenship and equality of opportunities. This becomes the main challenge because the host country’s population usually don’t prefer accepting immigrants as equals although it has no problem in accepting them as cheap labour which gives a fillip to national economies. Here lies the paradox and it gets exacerbated if there are major demographic differences between the hosts and the immigrants. Granting all of them citizenship adds to the pressure on the economy once their services are required to a lesser degree but expectations among them are high. Social sector benefits do not automatically pass on to immigrants and perceptions of discrimination commence with this.

The above explains France’s problem. It’s a religiously diverse country with an interesting demography. In 2019‑2020, 51 per cent of the population aged 18 to 59 in metropolitan France said they had no religion. This religious disaffiliation has been increasing over the past 10 years and concerns 58 per cent of people with no migration background, 19 per cent of immigrants who arrived after the age of 16 and 26 per cent of the descendants of two immigrant parents. Yet, Islam has the second largest following in France (10 per cent) after Roman Catholicism which has 29 per cent. All migrants are not Muslim although a large percentage are. France justifiably adopted an assimilationist attitude toward immigration. Immigrants were expected to learn French and to conform to French values in public. The Muslim element began to challenge assimilation just as France, like other industrial countries, is debating the best way to integrate minority immigrants. Cultural and religious differences have obviously thrown up challenges.

Immigrants are expected to adhere to the host norms, customs, laws and way of life. Ethnic differences are not likely to throw up challenges as serious as religious differences. It’s a fact that the large majority of immigrants from North Africa are followers of Islam. When the first lot of migrants started to arrive in France post the Great War and even up to the Sixties the assimilation of Muslim immigrants was not such a challenge. It’s in the last forty years that things started to change. The original immigrants, the first generation so to say, were grateful for the opportunities. Their children grew up under their shadow and all of them proved to be good citizens. The next or the third generation perhaps had two issues to contend with. First was the fact that even while taking their rights for granted they did not wish to enter low end jobs which their parents had been absorbed into. Second and more important they got hugely influenced by the fanning fires of Political Islam which was beginning to get increasingly uncomfortable with the rest of the world.

So even as France produced some great personalities from among the immigrants such as Zinedine Zidane, Raymond Kopa and Kylian Mbappe, all French iconic football players, research shows that immigrants felt a weaker sense of “belonging” at school than non-immigrants. France had the lowest sense of belonging among first-generation immigrants – and for second-generation immigrants the figure was even lower.

The issue concerning Muslim Immigrants bears the fact that after the advent of a violent political Islam the trust deficit became even more intense and measures taken by host nations to ensure greater security were never taken kindly by these immigrants. Compromises were necessary on both sides to ensure a sense of belonging leading to peace and stability. Issues such as the head scarf ban, Charlie Hebdo cartoons and terrorist actions by Islamic State sympathizers, added to the debilitating influence that the Islamic State had over Muslim youth in many of these countries. This led to even greater antipathy. In such a tense environment only, triggers were awaited to explode the riot bombs as it happened at Nanterre on 27 June 2023.

The writer, a former GOC of the Army’s 15 Corps. Views expressed are personal.

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