The Price of Being of Migrant Origin in France: Death

T

he news of Nahel Merzouk’s murder by the police took me back to my primary school days in France. In the early 1990s, as a pupil in a public school in Forbach, Metz, I saw what it meant to be excluded and isolated.

That is why, for me, Nahel’s death was not the first death of a migrant in France, nor would it be the last. In 2005, for example, two young men met a fate similar to Nahel’s. Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré were running from the police after a football match when they hit an electricity transformer in Paris and were electrocuted. There were riots afterwards. It happened again: Nahel Merzouk was killed by the police and riots followed immediately afterwards.

So, what is the basic problem? What is the root cause of the killing of people like Nahel and the events that follow?

The recruitment of labor from the colonial territories: Opening the door to migrants

In order to answer this question properly, it is necessary to look at the process of colonialism or more precisely to review the history of colonialism briefly. In this sense, colonialism,  which started in the 15th century, is the work of Western countries. The slave trade from Africa and the concept of the “attack on Africa” emerged in this context. Today, colonialism has changed its form.

Although it started a little later than Portuguese-Spanish and British colonialism, French colonialism was exceptionally  brutal. After the British Empire, the French colonial empire was the second largest in the world, reaching its peak and expansion between 1919 and 1939. The French colonial territory, including Algeria, amounted to between 8% and 10% of the world’s territory, and continued to exist until the 1960s.

The French treated the peoples of their colonies much more cruelly than other colonizers; those who were not killed, were treated as an underclass. As a result, the French colonies became very poor.  For example, the British colonies of New Zealand and Australia are now very wealthy states, while Algeria, which was subjected to French exploitation, is a poor and troubled country.

The history of French colonialism in Africa is a human tragedy. Starting with the colonization of Algeria in 1830, France began to establish a new colonialism in Africa. The aim was ruthless: to “civilize” African peoples through language and religion. For the French, as for all colonialists, this civilizing goal was, as Jules Ferry, the leading advocate of colonialism, openly declared, “The rights of the superior races over the inferior races.” By the beginning of the 20th century, French colonization gradually extended to most of North, West, and Central Africa, including Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Niger, Chad, and the Central African Republic.

Colonialism, especially French colonialism, gave way to “labor migrations” after World War II. From then onwards, it was a question of providing labor from the colonial territories struggling for independence for the reconstruction of Europe and France, in particular. It should be recalled that, although France withdrew from the countries it had colonized, it imposed two conditions on its withdrawal: first, French should be the official language of the country and the language of education, and second, public education should be compulsory.

By creating the “Community of French-Speaking Countries,” France prevented its former colonies from severing their ties with France. For example, French is the official language of 27 of the 54 countries in Africa. As a result, France had the power to easily carry out many “labor migrations” from its former colonies. Instead of the slaves of the past, especially in Algeria, now, there were the modern-day “workers.”

Slavery underwent a transformation process and took the form of a labor force, but both share a common goal: to exploit the world, and Africa in particular, for the welfare of the West or France in particular. For the continuity of the state’s welfare, migrant labor was brought into the system by extending colonial logic to this new era.

Positioning migrants: Assimilation, integration or segregation?

Despite the importance of migrants as a labor force in the eyes of France and Western countries, the positioning of migrants is somewhat complex. The complexity concerns whether to assimilate, integrate, or segregate migrants.

Assimilation was to be easy in so far as people of migrant origin had to abandon their own culture and become “civilized.” This was already a central step in the colonial experience. If integration were to take place, the situation would be a little more difficult as people with a migrant background would have to be integrated into the existing culture while preserving their own culture.

This means accepting to be on the same level as people with a migrant background—in other words, a step against the colonial logic or the “superior race” mentality. There was also the possibility of segregating those with a migrant background, i.e., making them live in places that were separate and disconnected from society. After all, it was not appropriate for people of migrant origin to breathe the same air as people of the “superior race” and, therefore, migrants belonged in ghettos.

The ghettos, known as “suburbs,” became the address of migrants in France. What was the aim? To assimilate under the guise of integration; if that was not possible, then to exclude migrants, or to ghettoize by segregation.

The suburbs in France have many problems. Their main problem, however, is social isolation or social exclusion. Social exclusion is when a person or group, for one reason or another, is deprived of something; people of migrant origins living in the suburbs in France are deprived of many human rights simply because of their background. For example, the suburbs are areas where even ambulances refuse to go in case of emergency.

Those who live in the suburbs are known to develop their own methods to survive, which they retain even if they later move out of the suburbs. When they face injustice by the police and others, Paris is set on fire.

Being a victim of segregation or a reflection of the colonial spirit: The murder of Nahel Merzouk

The root cause of setting the city ablaze lies in the fact that people of migrant origin, who are not welcome to integrate and cannot assimilate as an extension of the colonial spirit, are segregated from society and subjected to social exclusion.

Τhe political, economic, and social rights that are automatically acquired through citizenship do not apply in practice to people with a migrant background, who are considered “incomplete (second-class) citizens.” Worse still, instead of having rights, having a migrant background is automatically tantamount to being a criminal, making people with a migrant background the usual suspects: in the case of theft, traffic offences, drug dealing, manslaughter, or similar crimes, having a migrant background is tantamount to being guilty without the need for any evidence.

It is precisely because of this humiliating and exclusionary treatment as “incomplete citizens” that in another French city, a young person demanding justice for Nahel stated, “Police violence happens every day, especially if you are Arab or Black.” It is partly because of this “incomplete citizen” status that people of migrant origin, and especially young people, distrust the police and have no faith in justice or law enforcement. As a result, the “resistance” or “escape” of young people, who are in a state of constant stress and, in the long run, resentment, often ends in death.

Nahel’s death is neither the first nor will it be the last. In the West, and especially in France, human rights do not apply to people of migrant origins who have gone from being slaves to migrant laborers.