France: the riots and the Republic

The riots of November 2005 among minority ethnic youths in the banlieues of France exposed a racism that scores deep into the French nation. Emergency law was invoked, curfews imposed and thousands of police were deployed. In the process, both the riots and the response to them brought into the open an aspect of France’s secu- lar republicanism that often lies hidden; an explosive mix of poverty, discrimination and Islamophobia. French assimilation is seen to have failed, yet the acceptance of multiculturalism as a social fact is viewed with suspicion.