Attal spoke about “abnormality” as one of the criteria for change in the highest government agency in France in 2024 (French)

Before the current French President, Emmanuel Macron, entered the Elysee Palace, field studies conducted by the Montaigne Institute revealed that the percentage of boycotts by voters in the poor suburbs of the 2017 presidential elections amounted to 48%, compared to 29% throughout the country.

This percentage was considered a natural reflection of a deep crisis of confidence in those areas towards the authorities, due to the failure of successive policies towards the majority of immigrant origins in those neighborhoods.

The French are awaiting how this dilemma will be dealt with, after the rise of the youngest Prime Minister in the history of the Republic, Gabriel Attal, who has immigrant origins and is seen as one of President Macron’s closest associates and his standard-bearer.

Right-wing politics

Before entering the Elysee, Atal had already presented reform plans to the Ministry of Education under the banner of “reducing the social gap” in educational institutions, by offering to restore the school uniform, provided that this measure undergoes a trial period in about 500 volunteer schools, to test its impact on the success of the school uniform. school year.

But in the eyes of observers, the most complex test facing Attal will be related to the extent of his ability to dispel the gross differences between social conditions in the suburbs and the rest of the regions in France.

While the Prime Minister was expected to give a dose of revitalization to the left's slogans and values, his public policy speech was not without nods to the right to the point of speaking in its own vocabulary.

This includes his talk about defending “French identity and pride” and broader measures to control the system and “contain lost youth.” He even increased his talk about “abnormality” as one of the criteria for change in the highest government apparatus in France in 2024.

Previous demonstrations in Paris to demand better wages (Anatolia)

Unemployment grants

After the step to reform employment insurance - which is among the social reforms that were approved at the end of 2021, and included a tightening of restrictions on the use of compensation for job seekers and the unemployed - Atal wants to go further, which is to review the process of calculating unemployment grants for job seekers, as the beneficiaries of Social grantees are obligated to engage in professional activity and receive training for a period of no less than 15 hours per week.

At the beginning of 2024, the government launched a platform to register beneficiaries of these grants and link them to the new conditions. Therefore, the unemployed and job seekers will not receive social grants automatically, but according to a new contractual form with the state, which is a demand that the right-wing movement has often promoted in the past.

The government says that the aim of this step is to pave the way for reintegration into the labor market, because social grants will not be sufficient for the individual to live outside the circle of need.

But in practice, this measure is seen as a blow directed at poor suburban neighborhoods, or “priority neighbourhoods” as they are called, in that a quarter of these areas benefit from “active social solidarity” income, which is almost double the rate in the rest of the country.

Big differences

The matter is not only related to the decline in opportunities in the labor market, but these regions already suffer from widespread disparities in income rates compared to the rest of the regions in France.

Statista, a French statistics platform, describes the suburbs as a social rift and a mirror of the absence of social justice.

Its combined data reflects the clear gap in the level of the average income of 1,168 euros per capita in the suburbs compared to 1,822 at the national level, and in the level of the poverty rate of more than 43% in the suburbs compared to 15% at the national level, and also in what is linked to the unemployment rate of more than 18% in the suburbs compared to 7%. At the national level.

Michel Kokorev, a researcher in sociology at the University of Paris, told the Oronews network that there is a kind of racial barrier in France, “despite its reputation as a country of human rights and the cradle of the Declaration of Human Rights, the rule of law, democracy, etc.”

Kokorev gives an example of this in his comment: “In fact, finding a job when your name is Boubacar, or of Malian origin, is still much more complicated than if your name is Bernard and your parents were born in Brittany (the northwestern region of France). It is a country of equality on paper.” Inequality and injustice in reality.

Social indicators

In parallel with the changes to the government apparatus and the policies announced with the new Prime Minister, official institutions did not delay in presenting social indicators, which particularly included the situation in the suburbs.

Data from the Statistics Authority of the Ministry of Interior indicate an increase in all types of crimes and misdemeanors committed in the country in 2023.

Battery crimes increased by 7%, and rape crimes and attempted rapes increased by about 10%, while murders and attempted murders continued to rise since 2020, as the number of victims of these crimes exceeded a thousand last year, while more than 4,000 people were subjected to murder attempts.

Although crimes of theft and sexual violence on public transportation declined in 2023, the Interior Ministry pointed out that the majority of the perpetrators of these crimes are between 15 and 24 years old.

In parallel, targeted thefts of industrial and commercial establishments tripled, and car theft cases increased by 27%.

Suburban obsession

The French authorities' greatest concern remains the situation in the suburbs, which represents the greatest challenge for the new Prime Minister.

Returning to the events that followed the killing of a young man of Algerian origin, Nahil, who was shot by a policeman in the city of Nanterre, riots and deliberate vandalism by angry protesters from the suburbs increased by 140% in the period between June and July 2023 compared to the same period the previous year.

These protests prompted the authorities to mobilize about 45,000 police officers to control the regime.

It is feared that these indicators by the Ministry of Interior are a prelude to a more extreme policy towards more than 5.2 million residents of the poor suburbs, and to more restrictions on immigrants in general, under pressure from the extreme right.

Pour oil on the fire

In his conversation with Al Jazeera Net, Abdel Majeed Marari, a lawyer specializing in international law and director of the Middle East and North Africa department at the AFDI human rights organization in Paris, explained that the appointment of Attal does not send a message of reassurance to these regions, and does not indicate the government’s desire to reconcile with part of the people. The Frenchman, even if his origins are immigrants, are active citizens in several vital sectors and high positions in the country.”

This human rights activist did not hesitate to describe this appointment as "pouring oil on the fire."

Marari cites this as Atal's hardline positions on immigration and the Muslim minority, in addition to the steps he took to reform the education sector, including a project to ban the abaya in schools under the pretext of "protecting secularism."

He told Al Jazeera Net, "These reforms have proven their failure, as evidenced by the successive strikes in the sector, which reflects the continuation of the crisis. Also, his declared positions in his new position could ignite a social war."

In his declaration of public policy, Attal pledged to apply authority “everywhere, in the classroom, in the family, and in the streets.” He also announced his intention to adopt a system of educational sanctions directed against minors with criminal records, which would amount to participation in performing “services” to society. There will also be a similar step toward Fathers of minors who "evaded their obligations."

Marari returns to looking at these reforms and plans as an extension of the right-wing policies that characterized the immigration law reform project, stressing that “the reforms in the immigration law project have proven that they are not in line with the constitution and the values ​​of the Republic. They will not solve the problems of the French.”

Although the Constitutional Council has already expressed its reservations about about a third of the article in the controversial immigration bill, the Attal government will likely move forward with plans to reduce compensation for unemployment and social assistance grants and review health coverage rights.

Reform intentions

These plans are not consistent with the government’s intentions announced years ago to allocate investments amounting to 12 billion euros until 2030, to improve the standard of life in the suburbs.

In this regard, the director of the Arab Center for Western Studies in Paris, Ahmed Al-Sheikh, tells Al Jazeera Net, “The most dangerous thing about the immigration law is that it takes French society away from its real problems and from thinking about ways to solve them, and this law and others are linked to the political conflict.”

Al-Sheikh continues in his observation, “Immigration problems are being exploited and used for purposes that go beyond the problem of immigration and immigrants, who in the end are scapegoats twice, the first time when they left their homelands under pressure from authoritarian regimes supported by European countries, and the second time when they were used to cover up the real problems plaguing French and European society, which... It makes him gradually move away from the values ​​of freedom, equality, fraternity, human rights, and even rationality.”

Source: Al Jazeera + websites