Immigrant and the City

Not for the first time, the unrest has highlighted tensions between wealthy big cities and their grim ghettoised banlieues, home to immigrants from the Maghreb and West Africa who have never been fully integrated into French society and have become an underclass for whom hopelessness and discrimination are normal.

It has also raised troubling questions about the government8217;s role, and especially of Nicolas Sarkozy, chairman of the governing centre-right UMP party and the man most likely to challenge Mr Chirac for the presidency in 20078230;

His language is always forthright8230; But it has been intemperate too. Using the word 8220;scum8221; to describe the rioters was incendiary, especially after an earlier controversial comment about 8220;cleaning up8221; crime in other urban areas.

Overreaction can have grave consequences, and the minister was right to admit that a police tear-gas grenade mistakenly hit a mosque. It is heartening too to hear of Muslim community elders ordering youths home8230; Mr Sarkozy talks of 8220;zero tolerance8221; of crime, but in the long term it will take equal opportunities in education, housing and employment to keep the riot police off the meanest streets.

Excerpted from an editorial in the 8216;Guardian8217;, November 3