Bonjour tout le monde! I have much to update you on since the last time I wrote, which I believe was my first day here. It's now been four full days that I've been in Paris, though it seems like an eternity since I left. Paris is one of the cities that really immerses you... and with all the metro trips, moped rides, walking "tours" (aka getting really lost), these days can seem really long. Well, I'll get to the update now.
I've had two interviews: one with a professor of European History, Dr. Terence Murphy, who runs the Foundation of the US, a college connected to the Cité Universitaire international school in Paris, HERE.
We had a pretty interesting discussion, although he unfortunately seemed a little unknowledgeable about the topic. He did give me an interesting perspective on elites in the government, who by nature of the education system, essentially determine everything. Basically, if you don't succeed on this mondo bid test at the end of your high school career, you won't be placed in the top schools in France, and won't therefore be able to rise very far. The top 5,000 jobs in France are occupied almost exclusively by the men and women who graduate from those schools... Its a very corporatist structure, similar to Mexico's. Dr. Murphy did a good job connecting this with the plight of immigrants in France... the elites who run government and make education policy haven't really made substantive changes since the reign of Napoléon. So its the immigrants, who are raised in bad homes, in bad neighborhoods, and who are discriminated against, who get the bad grades and don't do well on the end-of-year tests, who lose out.. they, then deprived of both status (not going to the good schools) and money (because they can't get even subpar jobs, thanks to widespread discrimination, not to mention poor school records), they turn to acts of anger and rebellion: crime, riots, a "culture gangsteur"... we see the same patterns in the US, of course... France is actually turning to affirmative action practices to help the situation. You wouldn't think they would, given their reputation for egalitarianism, but I think France is realizing they need to stop the cycles of poverty somehow.
My second interview was with Dr: Christine Marie-Navarro, a prof of French Studies at the American University of Paris. Her father, as it turns out, was Moroccan, and actually fought in the Algerian War in the late 1950s and early 60s. She gave an interesting perspective too... she reminded me of the complexity of identity... her father considered himself absolutely 100% French, but she herself identifies herself more regionally as a Mediterranean. She encouraged to be careful how I focus my thesis... do I mean to study North Africans in France? Because there are Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, all of whom have different cultures, and the identities in fact break down even further... Berber v. Kabylian for example. I really enjoyed this interview. All in French too!
Beyond interviewing, I've been doing a lot of journaling, based not just on my interviews, but on journal articles, and on observations. This is thanks to Dr. Mazzei's suggestion that I record everything I think about or see... it'll come in handy when it comes to actually writing the thesis. I've really enjoyed sitting down at the end of the day, or after a big interview, and writing all my thoughts, perhaps accompanied by a steaming cup of expresso or two.
It helps me to direct my research, so I'm not just stumbling around trying to find something to write about. For example, I was thinking hard about the socioeconomic troubles of the immigrants here... and I thought, it always seem to get worse during economic crises. I remember reading that in the 1970s, after the big gas crisis (called the choc petrolier en français), France began to slide economically. Politicians began to blame immigrants for suffocating the social security system (healthcare, unemployment), and also for taking jobs that should have gone to hardworking French. Boy, this sounds all too familiar these days... I think the French turn to the right in times of crisis. They start talking about cutting government programs, and immigration is always brought up... the burqa definitely wouldn't be an issue now if the economic crisis weren't so in everyone's faces. Which leads me to my third update...
I sent some emails to some French députés this morning (think Congressman), because I had heard to watch a session of Parliament in person, you needed the endorsement of one of them. I didn't think I woudl hear back, honestly, because I imagined they were big and bad and popular and had no time to answer emails (like US politicians). But lo and behold, an hour later, I got an email back from Député François Asensi's office that said he would be happy to grant my request, and that I was to meet at the Parliament building, l'Assemblée Nationale, at 2:30. At this point I was at a cyber café in the middle of town, so I had to scramble around four different metro lines to get back to the apartment, change out of my sandals tee shirt and gym shorts.. I made it there on the dot. I entered the Parliament Hall with all the other visitors... it was an amazingly ornate hall, with lots of paintings of the French Révolution and of Greek gods and goddesses dotting the ceiling. The actual debate took place with a little over 20 députés in attendance... but what it lacked in warm bodies, it more than made up for in substance and passion of "débat." Though the conversation was on simply banning face coverings in public (not directed at burqas or niqabs), it turned into a debate into the fundamentals of the French state... what France stands for, what it "is" qnd what it represents to the world and to the citizens. The politicians were passionate and extremely articulate... I felt like I was at the Constitutional Convention. It was more a debate on political philosophy than anything else. What I got from it was a sense of the importance of the current time period in France... that France is at a crossroads economically, culturally, politically... there are scandals in government, new laws being debated about the direction the quasi Socialist government should take (whether to raise taxes or cut spending or both)... this is just one part of a really complex and comprehensive change taking place, not just in France but all over Europe. It was a fabulous experience, I have so much more to say, but you'll just have to read about it in my thesis!
Tomorrow, I plan on going to La Grande Mosquée de Paris (the large mosque of Paris) to interview an imam in the afternoon... and will also stop over at the Arab World Institute and Library (just built!) to do some study. My goal is to try and do things here that I couldnt do through my laptop sitting my butt in Kent. With the internet, that's not a lot... but just being here, doing some observing, talking one-on-one with people, has enormous value. I hope to come home with more information in my head than before, a better researcher, a better French speaker, but most importantly, a wiser person on how people form their identities and how complex the human psyche is.
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