Sometimes understanding the past problems gives you a clearer picture of present and future problems and then that way changes can be slowly made. The book sounds interesting but with a bleak outlook, but I might have to buy it... no chance of it turning up at the book swap.
"A snippet" However, the rights enjoyed by European immigrants were never handed on to Arabs. In the late 1950s, Algeria exploded, and after a long, bloody war, in which torture was freely used, and horrifying reprisals became commonplace on both sides, the French colons were forced to leave under the most humiliating circumstances. Their forced return coincided with the arrival in France of a large North African migrant workforce, who were housed first in shacks, then segregated within newly constructed tower blocks. Desperate banlieue kids adopted English football clubs ("French football is shit," one of them tells Hussey), hip-hop argot, and, when this got them nowhere, fell prey to violent antisemitism and an admiration for Osama bin Laden. As one might expect, that got them into the hands of the police, who infiltrate these gangs. At least 70% of the inmates of French jails are said to be North Africans.
Book Description on Amazon
Beyond the affluent centre of Paris and other French cities, in the deprived banlieues, a war is going on. This is the French Intifada, a guerrilla war between the French state and the former subjects of its Empire, for whom the mantra of 'liberty, equality, fraternity' conceals a bitter history of domination, oppression, and brutality. This war began in the early 1800s, with Napoleon's aggressive lust for all things Oriental, and led to the armed colonization of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and decades of bloody conflict, all in the name of 'civilization'. Here, against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, Andrew Hussey walks the front lines of this war - from the Gare du Nord in Paris to the souks of Marrakesh and the mosques of Tangier - to tell the strange and complex story of the relationship between secular, republican France and the Muslim world of North Africa. The result is a completely new portrait of an old nation. Combining a fascinating and compulsively readable mix of history, politics and literature with Hussey's years of personal experience travelling across the Arab World, The French Intifada reveals the role played by the countries of the Magreb in shaping French history, and explores the challenge being mounted by today's dispossessed heirs to the colonial project: a challenge that is angrily and violently staking a claim on France's future.
Val says and it does not touch us here in SW France, unless we want to read about it.
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