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The problem lies somewhere between the french citizens' racism fighting the immigrants attempt to assimilate and the immigrants not wanting to assimilate all that much.
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i dont think this is accurate--the situation from which all the trouble that is now happening flows is the mode of spatial segregation france chose--which was a state decision--it was a state decision to construct banlieux in the outer reaches of the paris region, encourage almost entirely immigrant folk to live there and then to abandon these places once the labor market collapsed--starting in the middle 1970s.
the spatial arrangment functions as a kind of natural horizon for kids born within it.
in terms of segregation, these cites are on a par with the worst types of american spatial discrimination---in terms of infrastructure collapse, many of tehse places are kind of like east palo alto ca. was a few years ago. they get almost no support from the french state in terms of infrastructure---i dont know what the policy logic was that shaped this set of decisions, nor do i understand what the folk who implemented them imagined would happen to those who lived there in the longer run--maybe it was kinda lilke the bushwar in iraq in that there was no long term thinking at all, and the results are, here and there, disaster.
i dont see what sense it makes to pretend that these space arrangements do not exist, nor do i see what sense it makes to skip over it as a factor and move straight to speculating about motive--seems to me that you will not understand anything by doing that.