Hopkins students who studied abroad in France came back noting striking similarities between the anti-immigration sentiments and legislation in the United States and in France.
Paris study abroad students had experiences not only of wine tasting and French pop music but also of the increasing xenophobia against immigrants, the Roma population, Muslims, Jews and others.
In July the French government initiated a program to repatriate thousands of Romanian and Bulgarian Romani, forcing at least 1,230 individuals to leave France.
Sarkozy has pointed to the illegal Romani camps as sources of prostitution, crime and exploitation and although the Romani have the right to enter France because they are members of the European Union, under French immigration rules staying longer than three months requires having work permits and residency.
Angelica Buerkin, a senior who spent the past year in Paris, said that the majority of French people disapprove of the government’s new legislation.
“The French people are embarrassed about what Sarkozy is doing, paying the Roma to leave and there’s nothing stopping [the Roma] from coming back,” Buerkin said.
“French people had just seen what had happened with [immigration legislation in] Arizona and were critical of it and so people are really embarrassed about what Sarkozy is doing.”
Buerkin also added that while the French do not agree with the policies they do not feel there is anything they can do. That being said Buerkin noted that in some ways the French are less tolerant of different ethnicities.
“There’s more a pus h towards assimilation in France. There are fewer mixed couples and mixed groups of friends,” she said.
Buerkin explained the intolerance of the French people towards others besides the Roma as due to France’s devotion to secularity. “French people have most problems with anyone who’s really religious, it’s fanaticism in general. The French are very proud of being a secular society,” she said.
“It’s more the religious fervor not that people are Muslim or Jewish or anything,” she said.
Sarah Grant, a senior who spent last spring semester in France, added that the subject of race is generally not spoken about.
“In France it’s against the law to take polls on race so there’s no real conception of racial percentages,” Grant said.
Emily King, a senior who also spent her spring semester in Paris, added that preserving an identity is extremely hard for Arabs and Muslims.
“You have to be so committed to being French,” King said. “It’s supposed to make everyone equal.”
In King’s opinion this emphasis on being French is the largest difference between racial treatment in the United States and in France.
“Because America is such a melting pot we don’t have that identity problem that the French have, but people in America get upset and frustrated about economic factors and jobs,” she said.
Grant also explained the urban design of Paris as being problematic in physically segregating different racial and religious peoples.
“Paris is basically a giant circle and on the left side you have the very wealthy whereas the right side is where the immigrant population lives,” she explained.
According to Grant, unfortunately the buildings on the right side of Paris are affordable only to the very wealthy creating a large homeless problem as there are no houses to offer the poorer immigrants.
King related a personal experience in which she was exposed to French racism. “This really rich Caucasian guy warned us against ‘les beurs,’ a name for second generation Arabs in Paris because they’re really sketchy,” King said.
She said that she was shocked, especially when he compared the Arab population and French sentiments against them to American feelings and treatment of African Americans.
Grant had a story of intolerance from the immigrant side in which a student who was placed in the upper right part of Paris was targeted by Arab immigrants.
“She was running by a canal and a little Muslim girl pushed her into the canal. When she got out, the little Arab girl and a gang of Muslim guys on motorcycles circled her for about 20 minutes,” Grant said.
She said that apparently none of the French bystanders to the scene offered the student any assistance either. The police later informed the student and her Program Advisor that she was probably assumed to be a rich Parisian elite and so the Muslims reacted against her.
Lori Citti, the Study Abroad Programs Director at Hopkins, stated that Hopkins students have not mentioned any personal experiences regarding racism but that the study abroad office follows the developments in legislation and issue of xenophobia closely.
“We will have a speaker from Paris in mid-October who will be talking about identity and anti-semitism in France, which has some interesting parallels to the current situation with the Roma, Muslims, and other minority issues in France,” Citti wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
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