How about the suburbs…

In our society, there is a problem. More and more people still think that immigrants are responsible for a large part of violence and petty crime, and that they exclude themselves from us by gathering in ghettos. Where does this idea come from? Why is there violence in suburbs, and can we really talk about "ghettos"?

ONLY IMMIGRANTS?

A lot of people have a prejudice about delinquents. They think criminals are unemployed, drug addicts, young people without any landmark, violent, wear brand clothes and trainers and above all, immigrants.
But if we go in what they call ghettos, we could notice that there is not only immigrants: there are French people too.
In France, in 1990, out of one hundred people living in the big suburbs of more than one hundred thousand inhabitants, only 8.2 were immigrants.

A CLOSED WORLD

In those ghettos, people probably live in their own world: some very little restricted areas.
It's yet true that out of one hundred immigrant people, 57.5 live in a block whereas, out of one hundred French people, only 41.2 live in a block of flats. So, there is an over proportion of 16.3 points of people who live in block of flats among the immigrants - compared to the proportion of French people in the same situation.
However they don't live there because they have chosen it. No! We - has the French government- have created estate houses for poor people with bad income and resources.
Don't forget that out of one hundred immigrant people, 39.7 live in their own house against 22.6 who live in council houses. We can thus say that the proportion of people living in their own house is higher by 17 points to the proportion of those who rent a flat or council estate.

PETTYCRIME AND VIOLENCE

We often don't understand where all violence and resentment come from. It's firstly due to the envy of challenge, and also to a need to express themselves. Immigrants think they are being rejected and have a feeling of "racism" coming from the society.
But perhaps we should help them in order for them to stop committing crimes, by supporting them in their studies for instance, setting up prevention strategies and building on a fair and efficient repression system.

FRENCH OVER ALL!

We also have to remember that shouldn't be considered as immigrants since they aren't: they are often immigrants' children's children, who were born and brought up in France. They actually are French citizen!!!

We are now in 2002 and some conservative people still think that immigrants are at the origin of suburbs violence.

Can't we make this obsolete prejudice stop?

 

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