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The charred remains of cars and businesses in Parisian suburbs stand as a testament to French youth's alienation. Thousands of people are engaging in illegal acts. I do not condone these acts; I aim to put them in historical context. Immigrants from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and elsewhere arrived in France between 1956 and 1974 in search of a better economic future and to quench the thirst for cheap labour in the booming French economy. The parents and grandparents of today's unemployed rioters arrived at a time of full employment, allowing many of them to gain a modest toehold in the country. In the absence of a vibrant private housing sector, the state built millions of housing units, in large estates that sheltered 6,000 to 60,000 people. Today, a 10th of the population lives in public housing with all the charm of Moscow's Brezhnev-era monstrosities. In the city of Nancy, there is a 430-metre-long building that contains 7,000 residents.

Extreme problems called forth extreme solutions, and city planners' errors were literally cast in concrete. Most French housing estates are located far from the hustle and bustle of the central city. Jobs are as scarce as hope. As jobs evaporated during the 1980s, native-born white French citizens abandoned public housing to immigrants. Whereas Toronto has small pockets of self-segregated ethnic communities (which tend to disperse over a generation or two), Paris has entire suburbs, with hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in almost complete isolation from the mainstream, decade after decade.

The French government refuses to recognize ethnic communities as legitimate actors - it would prefer that they simply disappear quietly into the mainstream. North Africans are expected to jettison all their cultural and religious baggage at the border, and pretend that their ancestors are the Gauls. Multiculturalism is dismissed as a dangerous Anglo-Saxon import, or even the path to Balkanization. Sixteen-year-old girls donning head scarves seem to threaten France's century-old official separation of church and state. The head-scarf ban was interpreted by Muslims as an attack on their religion and way of life, a sign that they are not welcome in France.

Indeed, they are not welcome: Opinion polls tell us that most French people believe there are too many Arabs in France. Apart from a couple of councils for integration and for the Muslim faith, dating back to 2003, the Republic tolerates no intermediary bodies that might stand between the individual and the state. The French believe that multiculturalism would only privilege individuals by association with their ethnic, religious or racial roots. There is no such concept as Algerian French. By contrast, one can be Chinese Canadian and still be considered a full citizen. Before immigrants to Canada become equal in the economic sense, their culture is already considered equal in the theoretical sense. The one helps lead to the other.

Canada is no bed of roses for thousands of recent immigrants toiling at minimum-wage jobs, but history suggests that, in the long run, many of them will enter the lower middle class. And, as the French riots suggest, no jobs are worse than bad jobs. Multiculturalism embodies a message of hope and puts a high ideal in our sights. France tells newcomers that their past belongs in another country. Most Canadians see immigrants in a positive light - they add diversity to the cultural scene, they spice up our cuisine, they make important economic contributions, they will help pay for the boomers' pensions. In the context of chronic high unemployment, a large chunk of the French-born majority sees immigrants as threats to its share of a limited system of spoils.

In France, well-intentioned labour laws, high payroll taxes and red tape have slowed job creation in the low-wage sector. Hiring and firing is a costly and time-consuming affair. Consequently, many firms simply do not bother to hire. North Africans are the last hired and first fired. Wages and vacation time are increased for the comfortably employed insiders, a moat is dug around the city, the drawbridge is raised, and those left knocking at the walls are denounced for refusing to support a system that excludes them.

More than two million jobs are subsidized by the French state. But these programs skirt around the key problem: the failure of the French private sector to create jobs. Youth unemployment has been 20 per cent to 30 per cent since the early 1980s. In Clichy-sous-Bois, where the riots began, it is between 30 per cent and 40 per cent.

Canada had a reckoning with its economic problems during the 1990s. In the short term, many people were hurt. But our long-term economic future looks relatively bright compared to that of France. The youth of Canada have hope because they can get jobs. Obviously, racism exists in Canada, but where is the equivalent of France's unabashedly xenophobic National Front party, which received 5.5 million votes in 2002? Which political party in Canada is led by a man who plasters city walls with election posters vowing: "When he [this leader]comes, they [the immigrants]are going?"

France is still waiting for a politician to lead them back to full employment - without which there isn't a glimmer of hope in the French suburbs. The recent inflammatory remarks of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy may spell the end of his presidential ambitions. (He has called the rioters "scum" and "rabble.") But Mr. Sarkozy is also the only prominent French politician courageous enough to confront the French with the gravity of their economic problems. (He has advocated reforms that would weaken the power of the trade unions and open more opportunities for immigrants. He has also called for affirmative action in hiring and anonymous resumés to reduce discrimination.)

Amazingly, there isn't a single member of the National Assembly from mainland France who is a visible minority, even as 9 per cent to 10 per cent of the population is Muslim. If there were one such politician, perhaps he or she could visit the suburbs and deliver a message of hope. Until then, it will fall to Mr. Sarkozy to ask the French people, "What kind of a social model tolerates 10-per-cent unemployment for a quarter of a century? How long can this continue before we wake up?"

Timothy B. Smith is an associate professor of history at Queen's University and the author of La France injuste (France in Crisis), to be published in January.

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