在2005年的秋天以及2006年的春天，許多法國的城市都被沖突所包圍著。在三月七日和2006年四月初期，法國高校以及大學里的學生都走上街頭。城市的中心被占據，道路出現堵塞，大學里的許多校舍都被封閉起來，私人和公有財產被毀掉。法國青年，做為國際性媒體進行了廣泛的報道，這激起了關于CPE執行的爭議，CPE是第一次關于勞動合同的制定，這項措施包括政府需要對勞動市場解除相關管制。他們的抗議與示威在發生在2005年前段時間的社會動蕩期內，暴亂發生在比較貧困的地區，多數是位于法國境內的城市。在2005年的十月二十五號以十一月十七號之間以及2006年秋天的一段短暫時期內，郊區的一些青年燒毀汽車和洗劫公共建筑物，向警察巡邏車丟炸彈。

In the fall the 2005 and spring of 2006, many of France’s cities were besieged by urban strife. Between March 7th and early April 2006, high school and university students in France took to the streets. The centres of cities were occupied, roads were blocked, university buildings were seized, and private and public property was destroyed. French youth, as it was widely reported in the international press, were provoked into action to contest the implementation of the CPE -the First Employment Contract – (contrat premier embauche) a measure introduced by the government to deregulate the labour market. Their protests and demonstrations were preceded by a period of social unrest that took place in the fall of 2005, when riots erupted in the poor suburbs – les banlieues - of many cities throughout France.2 Between October 25th and November 17th of 2005 and again for a brief spell in the fall of 2006, suburban youth torched cars and sacked public buildings, hurled fire bombs at police cars and wreaked havoc, in general.3

That France was once again beset by demonstrations and urban protest is hardly new in a country that has become accustomed to regular eruptions of mass conflict and often violent confrontations. The so-called student protests in 2006 are clearly not new and they form part of a legacy of student and urban activism that reached an apogee in the heady days of Paris in 1968. Nor are the violent demonstrations located in the suburbs new. Since the 1970’s, following clashes with authorities, state and economic institutions, the urban peripheries have been regularly targeted for various kinds of destruction and young men have engaged in the notorious “rodeos” in their altercations with the police.4 Nonetheless, what was new in 2006 was the scale and intensity of these suburban confrontations which many proclaim to be unprecedented in the long history of contention amongst the notoriously contentious French. 5 kinds of destruction and young men have engaged in the notorious “rodeos”in their altercations with the police.4 Nonetheless, what was new in 2006。

In this paper I wish to explore the political and economic forces which engendered such forceful displays in the fall of 2005 and in the spring of 2006. Many articles in the popular press and in the academy have emerged to analyse and explain the urban unrest over this period of time and they to do so by treating them separately. Analysts either discuss the riots in the banlieu or they discuss the riots of the students. In this paper, I wish to talk about them together as mobilizations which help to illuminate the class structures and relations and subjectivities that have emerged in post war France. I do this to explore the question of why certain members of the population in France were mobilized and while others hardly stirred. This paper is also a reflection upon the material and ideological conditions that produce quiescence amongst members of the population in France, particularly the ethnic Chinese, in a context in which many ethnic minorities of many classes were provoked to engage in the urban conflagration of 2005 and 2006. In those historical moments when social agents become political agents, the question of which classes and categories of people emerge with what kinds of subjectivities and agencies have been at the core of the many studies of resistance and social movements.

Writers from Marx6 and many generations of Marxists from EP Thomson (1963) to Tilly (1986) and more recently Wright (1997) and Gibson-Graham (1996) have been concerned with this issue. The quiescence of a particular category of people is, however, not been the subject of such considerable academic scrutiny. Political inactivity is after all, the default position for most categories and classes of people in their everyday ordinary lives. Nonetheless, my exploration of the problem of the political quiescence of one group people responds to a comment made by Fletcher (2001) that in studies of resistance, while attention tends to be directed more to the question of why some resist and contained within this issue is the analytically more demanding question of why others do not. In both mobilizations in France, it was notably young people – les jeunes – who were provoked into taking different forms of collective action. In the centre of the city, youth from middle class families, members of the bourgeoisie and ethnic majority.was the scale and intensity of these suburban confrontations which many proclaim to be unprecedented in the long history of contention amongst the notoriously contentious French.

members of the future work force in France.9 The explanations offered to me drew on two dimensions of the limits of possibility to define their agency. On the one hand, their responses drew on what informants understood to be cultural values of being Chinese and their responses ran along the line of “The Chinese don’t like to make trouble” and “We tend to respect authority”. On the other, they drew on the structural/material dimensions of their lives, explaining that their modes of making a livelihood preclude an engagement in the political sphere of civil society in general and more specifically in the recent mobilization of young students. Such explanations can be summarised in the idea that “Chinese immigrants are too busy working to get involved in politics” and this explanation was repeated to me over and over again. Further, many informants responded by referring to ideas of belonging and exclusion by stating that: “This is not our country. This is their (the French) country. So we should not get involved in their conflicts” The purely cultural explanations of the political immobility that refer to the essential qualities of obedience and deference to authority as being Chinese are of course belied by the long history of rebellion and revolution in China.

It is also contradicted by the evidence of the recent incidents of uprisings amongst the diasporic Chinese populations.10 The subjectivity of informants cannot be dismissed as a form of false consciousness, since selfperception has a real effect on behaviour, imposing a perceived limit on possibility on human agency. Nonetheless the contradictions between the objective facts of history and subjectivity must be probed. To understand the political abstinence of the ethnic Chinese and the discursive explanations offered by informants in the particular historical conjuncture in which such significant urban conflicts emerged, an attempt must be made to navigate the complex terrain of the relationship between the objective and the subjective. To do this, I draw on Bourdieu’s idea of habitus. Habitus is a concept that is central to Bourdieu’s theory of social action. Habitus is offered in his theory as a way to confront the age-old question of structure and agency. It is a concept which helps to grasp the objective and subjective dimensions of social structures through an understanding of the how agents incorporate a practical sense of what can or cannot be achieved – the “objective possibilities” – based on their intuitions gained through past collective experience.

Habitus is generally understood as a structure of dispositions which reflect a ‘field of objective possibilities’ open to agents at a particular historical moment’ (Lane 2000: 25) In other words it is a system of internalized dispositions that mediate between social structures and practical activity (Brubaker 1985: 758) By using this idea, I wish to suggest that the different positioning of different constituencies of the French population in relation to collective action can be understood by exploring the ‘habitus” of different classes and categories of people 11 I suggest that for different classes, the field of objective possibilities is conditioned by the transformations that have taken place in the relationship between class, livelihood and citizenship in the transition to neoliberalism. My argument is that, the protests of the youth in both the periphery and the centre are a subset of the many demonstrations that have taken place in France to contest the hegemony of a model citizenship premised on the ideals of conservative communitarianism12 that has accompanied the shift from government to neoliberal governance13 in regulating civil society. The possibilities for action are conditioned by the different positions that different groups occupy in the transition. Before discussing how those possibilities have been realized, a brief discussion of the political economic changes which characterize this “historical conjuncture” in France and which make up the political backdrop of the urban mobilizations is in order.

Neoliberalism in France In the early 1970’s, the French economy, like the economies of many other developed nations experienced a series of downturns triggered by the world oil crisis and the increases in the prices of raw materials which in turn led to inflation and unemployment. These downturns in the economy followed on the heels of a 30 year period of relative prosperity widely known as – les trente glorieuses – after the Second World War. During les trente glorieuses, state led industrialization aimed at growth and the construction of a competitive industrial economy out of a largely agrarian economy assured the employment of the French working class. The members of the working class grew as migrants from the provinces as well as labour migrants from France’s former colonies in North Africa arrived in industrial centres such as Paris and Lyon. During les trente glorieuses, the welfare state – l’état providence – reached a mature phase of development and state expenditures were made to ensure social welfare of its citizens. One example of this was the funds that were dispersed to build low income housing for the bourgeoning working class. These projects – the HLM (habitations à loyer modéré) were erected on the peripheries of cities and towns and provided what was at the time relatively “modern” facilities for workers who hitherto lived in old cramped often poorly maintained quarters in the urban centres. The projects were a result of the idea of limitless growth that seemed to prevail in the post war decades of rapid industrialisation and modernization. However, with the end of classical fordist industrial organization and the onset of the era of the globalization of industrial production, growth tapered off and unemployment which is often called chronic in the case of France followed. In France as well as in other nations in Europe and North America, neoliberal prescriptions were seen to be a way of remedying economic stagnation and crises. But in France, the spread of neoliberalism as a set of economic policies has proceeded more slowly and has been less extreme than in many other national contexts.

This is due to what some have called France’s “pragmatic” approach to neoliberalism in which the privatization of national industries has been more aggressively pursued than reductions in taxation and “social expenditures”. The French approach of “pragmatic neoliberalism” stands in contrast to the American or British approach of aggressive cuts in social spending, tax cuts and rapid deregulation of industry. (See Fourcade and Babb 2002 and also Prasad 2005) 14 Nonetheless, France embarked albeit in a gradual manner relative to Britain and the US on the road to neoliberal transformations in all spheres. After a period of “proto-neoliberalism” in the 1970’s in which the political elites introduced limited price controls and discussed but never implemented privatizations, the application of neoliberal policies grew apace. In the mid 1980’s, Chirac, Prime Minister at that time implemented a “first wave of privatization” along with cuts in taxes and social spending to revive a flagging economy.15 In the 1990’s, neoliberalism gathered more force with a “second wave of privatization” and reductions in state spending. 16 The distinctively French character of liberalization strategies prevailed with privatization representing the central platform of the neoliberal programme in contrast to the American or British example of extensive cuts to taxes and social programmes as well as industrial deregulation (see Prasad 2005; Smith 2004). This three decade long fourth with measures programme of liberalization continues into a by Chirac’s government and that introduced increasingly has come to take on the characteristics of those undertaken in the US and UK neoliberal programmes. With the election of Nicholas Sarkozy to the presidency in May of 2007, this programme will likely continue into a fifth decade with harsher measures than those introduced in former governments.

Those measures included the introduction of new laws to deregulate industry and the labour market. (Contrat Nouvelles Embauche). In September of 2005 the French government passed the CNE – the New Employment Contract The CNE allows employers to dismiss employees without reason but it applies only to businesses with under 20 employees. In February of 2006 the French parliament approved the CPE – First Employment Contract – (Contrat Premier Embauche). The provisions of the CPE have been well publicized. The implementation of this legislation would enable employers in large firms and businesses to arbitrarily terminate the employment of employees under 26 years of age and also after 2 years of employment. The CPE which gained world wide notoriety was actually the second law introduced over the course of a few months to deregulate the labour market. Whereas the CPE was meant to apply to large firms, the CNE applies to small firms. It is interesting to note that while the second measure – the CPE – was met with protests and demonstrations all across France after its introduction in the spring, the CNE – the first measure – was passed in September 2005 by the French parliament with hardly any resistance from unions, workers and the French population at large. While, it would be purely speculative to suggest any explanation for the quiescence of the French population at large, my research on the practices of work and ideas of citizenship amongst families of immigrant entrepreneurs in Paris, allows some provisional insights into the question of why one group amongst France’s ethnic minorities, the Chinese remained immobile, while other groups were mobilized.

The Chinese as ideal migrants and model citizens In contemporary France, where racist and exclusionary discourses are directed at many different immigrant groups, the Chinese are often presented and represented as “ideal immigrants” at best or “acceptable” immigrants at the very least.17 In the popular press, the relative acceptability of the Chinese as immigrants has been fostered by articles which stress the profound work ethic that the Chinese possess, as well as their compliance and their tendency toward self-sufficiency.18 In reinforcing the view of the Chinese as model immigrants, the French press has often used rhetorical devices to stress the harmlessness of Asians citing that “the only yellow peril to fear is that of their incommensurable facility to adapt”. So they will bring with them “a commercial success with a mysterious scent”.19 While the popular press may be accused of propagating such exotic but generally positive images of the Chinese, many scholars have jumped into the fray to try to uncover what is often seen through an “orientalist” lens as the mystery of the commercial success of firms and enterprises run by the Chinese. Their attempts to uncover the secrets of this success have emerged against the backdrop of the economic miracles that had been unfolding in East Asia since the 1960's and more recently in China since the 1990’s. These analysts have observed that much of that growth has occurred in the specifically Chinese parts of Asia, like Hong Kong and Taiwan or in part of Asia where large groups of Chinese immigrants predominate. Claiming that businesses and family firms run by the Chinese have formed the backbone of those miracles, analysts have propagated the idea that certain essential features of Chinese culture, particularly a set of Chinese values are especially conducive to capitalist growth.20 Because of the prevalence of such rhetorical devices in the press and media images in France, the Chinese are thought to represent the ideal group of immigrants. Chinese entrepreneurship based on petty capitalism, therefore represents an ideal means for the integration of Asian immigrants. Because of the prevalence amongst the Chinese of what is assumed to be a cohesive set of values which have lead to capitalist growth, it is believed that by and large, the Chinese can be successfully integrated into French society where republican values and ideologies prevail.21 The relative acceptability of the Chinese is often linked to the ways in which they are understood to insert themselves into host societies and it is understood that they do this by incorporating themselves into dense social networks to sustain their economies and communities.

These are the bonds of trust and networks of social relations that are generally referred to by analysts and subjects alike as guanxi (Yang 1994; Gold, Guthrie and Wank (eds) 2002). By navigating through autonomous social and economic networks immigrants can find work in one of the businesses run by relatives, friends and fellow countrymen and women. case in point.23 The small family owned and operated Chinese restaurant or restaurant caterer (restaurant-traiteur) is a In these Chinese establishments new arrivals, legal and illegal immigrants - sans papiers- alike can find work in the kitchens cleaning and preparing food or in dining rooms serving customers. Such small businesses are often themselves established through navigating these networks. Loans acquired through rotating credit societies – called tontinesby the Chinese in Paris help set up businesses and different forms of self – employment.24 Once established, small businesses, like the Chinese restaurant are sustained by exploiting the labour of family members – adults and children alike – and also the labour of illegal migrants who work extraordinary hours during the week and also on weekends and holidays. In many of the small establishments where I conducted interviews the owners of the enterprise tended to be first generation migrants whose sons and daughters were born in France and in attendance in the lycées and universities in Paris.

Habitus and Chinese migrant entrepreneurs The work patterns and patterns of employment allow such small firms to be self- sustaining and flexible in an age when such flexibility is required of firms to be profitable and thrive in context of a the French economy which has embarked since the 1970’s on the path of neoliberal transformation. The restaurant-caterers operated by the Chinese are often family owned and operated with a labour force that are composed both of kin and maybe one or two non - kin employees. For example, the family of Claire a high school student -a lycéenne- owns 2 small restaurants in different districts (arrondissements) of Paris.
After school on some evenings and weekends, she is often deployed to work in one or other restaurant depending on the need for labour. Claire’s older cousin, Lorie 25 also travels between the different restaurants to work during the lunch service in one, then for dinner in another. Lorie has a post-secondary school degree from a business school in France and was obliged by her family to exchange her job in a French accounting firm for work in the family business. In contrast to her previous job, which came with health and unemployment benefits, regular pay, regular hours and a large degree of responsibility, she is now engaged in work in the family restaurant which is both demanding in terms of time and menial. after diners leave. Lorie is expected to show up early, well before customers arrive and work late, cleaning and setting up for the next day She is often helped by her younger cousin Claire who often stays until the restaurant closes, late at night. For social security, both are dependent on the welfare that the family supplies to its members.

The worked that is performed by Lorie and Claire is not registered and not declared to the state. Taxes are not paid, nor are deductions made for any state benefits. Undeclared work in the underground or informal economy has been an effective strategy for the reproduction of petty capitalism in many different contexts.26 Many owners of small restaurants generally favour the retreat of the state from the economy and the strategy of reducing government intervention into the economy is of course one of the pillars of neo-liberal transition. Restaurant owner operators have explained to me that too much state involvement diminishes the rate of profits, which, so these entrepreneurs claim, are often quite marginal in small businesses in the first place. Kew, the Chinese owner operator of a restaurant serving sushi complained about the excesses of the state which intervenes at every stage of running a business To express his objection to the state involvement in the economy, Kew gave an example of what he called “government extortion” – l’extorsion gouvernementale :

In addition to this tax and that tax, I even had to pay a fee to the government to have a little sign for my restaurant put up!!! robbery or is it not? When I asked him about hiring illegal workers in restaurants, he said it was the only way to survive when the state is so involved in the economy. Many owner operators have also commented that informal arrangements through social networks – communitarian ties – are preferable to formal contracts as a means of securing labour. This practice is followed by Kew, who employs 2 non-kin workers in his restaurant and he says that the whole process of hiring is fairly simple and unimpeded by filling out all sorts of forms. He puts the word out to a relative or a friend and eventually someone turns up. There is always a new arrival from China who is looking for work and usually I need help in the kitchen to help to prepare fish and vegetables and wash dishes. Dish washing is not a particularly skilled work so an untrained worker is fine for that kind of work. I did this myself when I first arrived. The preference for the flexibility of communitarian ties over contract is reflected in the comments of another small restaurant owner, Meiqing who owns and operates a restaurant that serves Japanese food on the first floor of an apartment block in a mainly residential area in the northern part of Paris. It is not easy to manage one’s own business. restaurants of.

Scare they suffered a lot because no one would come to eat in their restaurants and they lost lots of money. They had to keep paying their workers. But, they could not lay off their employees. Also, my friends in England who run a larger restaurant had to lay off 10 people. In England the taxes are lower one can both hire, fire and lay.

Off more easily. In France one cannot lay off workers so easily. So for this reason we do not hire many outside the family to work if we can. But le travail en noir (undeclared work) is punished heavily in France, so one must declare some of your workers and some of your hours of work. But because there are no formal contracts and friends of friend or distant kin work for you some arrangements are always made. For example paid employees who may be members of your family and many who are not tend to declare less hours worked, for example 3 hours instead of 10 to 6 instead of 12. In the restaurant business you tend to work long hours but what you declare is less than what you work. Your friends and family will do that particularly if you hire All they need to have someone who has just recently arrived. Most of these recent arrivals will have no skills so can wash dishes for you. week. Work routines in restaurants extend well beyond the 35-39 hours of work legislated by the French state for workers in large public and private enterprises. It not only precludes time for leisure and the participation in community activities but also political activities for both workers and employers alike. That is not to say that participation or indeed non participation in the political life of a country is simply a function of time. But it is to say that the time constraints of the work routine reinforces a disinclination toward creating disturbances in a society in which many Chinese feel welcome though not necessarily fully accepted. The flexible, selfregulating and self sustaining character entrepreneurship based on petty capitalism, represents an important means for the economic integration or the inclusion of Asian immigrants in French society. For many workers in the small businesses run by Chinese, work routines, kin and communitarian ties combines with a culture of entrepreneurship that prevails not only amongst owners, but also amongst workers. While operators of these businesses complain of the high degree of responsibility and risk involved in running like us is the ability to work long hours during the day and a long.

Independent ownership, freedom and autonomy. When I asked Kew if he preferred to be an employer or an employee he comments: It is better to be a boss – patron – than a worker. There is no one looking over your shoulder. In response to the same question, Meiqing who worked as a seamstress in a textile factory until the mid 1980’s replied: I often think I would prefer to be an employee – a worker – because you take fewer risks and have less worries. But when I think about what happened to me and I think again. You are vulnerable and it is also risky. I was employed in the textile industry when I first arrived in France. In 1986, clothes industry began its decline, the prices had fallen and I began to worry that we would not always have work. Then someone I know – a distant relative – told me about a job that was available as a waitress in a restaurant. I went for an interview at the house of this relative who was the mother of a distant aunt who owned the restaurant and I got the job. For a while, I held down two jobs. In the morning I worked sewing clothes in a factory and in the evenings I worked as a waitress. And then finally I quit the factory job because the wages were so low and many were being let go anyway and so I worked full time as a waitress for 6 years. Now I have my own restaurant with my husband and we can manage things on our own. We have certain responsibilities to our customers but essentially we are free to run the business as we like, make changes that suit us and our customers and respond to changes in tastes in the market. We rely on our own hard work and the hard work of members of our family – our nephew who helps us in the restaurant after school and our niece and my mother-in-law who looks after our children when wehave to work. each other.

These We don’t ask anyone for anything but can count on examples of the social and cultural practices of small entrepreneurship incline migrants toward quiescence in the noisy political forum of France. Moreover, the consonance of the material circumstance of their lives with the ideological apparatus of neo-liberalism militates against alliances formed with other classes in contemporary France. freedom, autonomy and self-reliance embedded in the The ideas of culture of entrepreneurship are the precisely the ideas that underpin liberalising economies and are promoted in neoliberal models of citizenship. In the specific case of migrant entrepreneurs who are Chinese, this quiescence is underpinned by practices of owners and operators of family enterprises who propagate and reinforce the patriarchal structure of the family enterprise by disseminating and a set values such as obedience to authority, deference to power which is glossed as distinctly Chinese, by the Chinese as well as nonChinese (see Yao 2003). For workers who tend also to be family members, the social, economic and value structure of small entrepreneurship mitigates against alliances with other workers and their struggles in a country undergoing political and economic changes associated with neoliberal reform.

Habitus, conjunctures, class and contention Four decades of neoliberal reform in France had different consequences for different classes of migrants and different immigrant groups. For many migrants from North Africa whose labour helped fuel the industrialisation of France during les trente glorieuses in post war decades, precariousness.29 the economic policies of neoliberalism have meant increasing economic and social Privatization and de-industrialisation has meant a drastic fall in the number of jobs available in industry which had a drastic effect on the descendents of migrant workers, who came of working age during the era of the post-fordist transition.
Reached figures as high as 20 percent, twice that of the national average. In certain cités, the housing estates, where increasing numbers of new migrants have settled, the figures have been even higher, with unemployment among young residents on average above 30 percent, and as high as 85 percent. Cuts in public expenditure has meant that the deterioration of the cités and old worn out buildings have been closed without being replaced by new structures. This has resulted in increasing overcrowding and squatting. In suburban cités this socio-economic marginalization has been reinforced by spatial isolation. The development of the urban transportation network has failed to keep pace with the growth of the suburban population and nearly 60 percent of these suburban municipalities lack their own train station.

The result is the relative physical and symbolic separation of cités from each other and from Paris proper. Urban peripheries have also been increasingly militarized since the mid 1990’s and the declaration of the “war on terror”.30 Built by planners in the 1950’s some writers have argued that they were constructed to purge the cities of the poor and to isolate them to proclaim that the state is engaged in an effort not just to keep working class immigrants on the outside social and economically, but they are part of a programme to decimate the working class in France (Wacquant 2005; Stovall 1990). The riots in the banlieues that have been persistent feature of life in the cités since the 1970’s are part of an effort to contest their annihilation. While the merits of this view can be argued, at the very least the riots can be understood as an attempt by young working class members of visible minorities in France to be recognised as insiders and to be able to enjoy the rights and benefits of citizenship that insiders enjoy. This claim to be recognised as insiders works against what some have called the “symbolic violence” perpetrated on immigrants in the act of misrecognition. 31 In the many accounts of the riots that occurred in the suburbs of Paris in 2005, for example, journalists and politicians repeatedly and mistakenly describe second and third generation immigrants as “foreigners” or “outsiders” – les étrangers . These second or third generation “immigrants” are as I mentioned earlier French born citizens, descendants of immigrant parents – the jeunes ethniques.

By contrast, riots of the youth that began in late February and continued into the spring of 2006 have been discussed as the protests of the "insiders”.32 In many media reports they are discussed as the “privileged” or the “élites” of France. As citizens of the republic, they were stirred to defend their rights and entitlements that include the right to work that came to be threatened under the provisions of the CPE. 33 By all accounts, the actions of the young secondary school and university students had a clear and manifest political purpose – to force the government to repeal the CPE. By contrast, various reports are quick to point out that the protests of the young men in the banlieues lacked manifest political programme.

They were seen simply as a means by which the youth of the banlieues vented their anger and frustration against the state, its power and unemployment. programme. The The confrontations in the banlieues were thus in the spring were discussed as characterized as riots – les émeutes – and riots which lack a focus or political confrontations “demonstrations” or “protests” and as such protests, such actions have a clear political focus.34 Yet as the demonstrations in the spring unfolded – the “rioters” of the fall – the “outsiders” – joined the “protesters” of the spring – the “insiders.” Outsiders and insiders acted in concert to force the repeal of the CPE. While there are many differences that can be drawn between the actions taken up by the jeunes who inhabit the cités in the banlieues of France and those of the young lycéens, it can be argued that both groups to some extent share a larger political purpose. Apart from striking a blow to the continuing efforts made to deregulate labour, the protesters are engaged in a collective struggle to contest the transformation of the relations between the state and its citizenry under neoliberalism. Citizens, young and not so young, unemployed and employed alike are struggling against a transition from government to governance and contesting the acceptance of a new idea of citizenship to define the basis for inclusion and participation in French society. But the unruliness of working-class jeunes ethniques in the banlieues and young students can be juxtaposed against the quiescence of the Chinese
entrepreneurs and workers.

Chinese immigrants then continue to bedescribed by journalists and politicians alike as model immigrants and also model citizens. To propose the Chinese as model migrants and model citizens in this context suggests that integration and citizenship implies acquiescence and a non-deliberative stance toward the terms of inclusion under neoliberal governance. These are the terms, which immigrants who do not make “model” immigrants are rising to contest. Their militancy seen in combination with the actions of students are challenging the application of the model of the market to the governance of society and a model of citizenship whereby the citizen must be autonomous, self-governing and must rely on the market to guarantee their “interests” rather than the state to guarantee their “rights”.

Conclusion In this paper, I have explored some of the implications for different classes of immigrants, ethnic minorities and the ethnic majority in France of living and working in a context in which a model consensual citizenry is being pursued. I have done this through an exploration of the habitus of different classes of migrants to explore the conditions of possibility for political action in the context of neoliberal transition in France. I have been particularly concerned to examine the immobility of the Chinese jeunes ethniques in the context of the mobilization of the youth belonging to many different ethnic groups. I have argued that the status of the Chinese as “model immigrants” is linked to the ways in which Chinese migrants are understood and also understand themselves to be inserted into the host societies. Much scholarship and many popular accounts have stressed an image that they do so by negotiating family relations and dense networks that are embedded in a set of values associated with being Chinese. While these networks and relationships have long been a feature of Chinese migration, the emphasis placed on them in many current accounts has acquired a deeper significance in the contemporary context when liberal democracies are undergoing neoliberal transformation.

It has acquired immediacy particularly in an era when exclusionary discourses have emerged which consistently emphasise the undue burdens posed by increasing flows of migrants on the institutions of civil society and the state. France is a nation in which there are heated arguments about the relationship between immigration and citizenship. Models of citizenship are vigorously debated between left, centre and right.35 The views propagated by the popular press and certain schools of scholarship on the relationship between Chinese values, entrepreneurship and immigration validate certain ideals in the model of citizenship advocated by the left and the right. Prevailing images of the Chinese appeal to a republican ideal of citizenship advocated by the left and centre, in which assimilation in the public sphere is promoted and multiculturalism in the private sphere is tolerated. On the other hand, Chinese immigrants are thought to live up to the communitarian ideal of citizenship advocated by the right. model which promotes civic participation through self-reliance.

This is a Chineseimmigrants are thought to possess what is often called the valued “social capital” and therefore can rely on their own resources and tax the resources of the state for their own reproduction.36 Immigrants who have social capital can eventually become model citizens and rely on their own resources. Because the Chinese possess social capital, they represent the exception to the exclusionary discourses that are generally directed at immigrant groups. Chinese exceptionality, then, serves as a justification for exclusion other immigrant groups who are deemed not possess “social capital” and so it serves to fortify the walls surrounding “fortress Europe”. However, it also ironically serves as a means for the exclusion of Chinese immigrants themselves, whose subjective perception of “not belonging” in France converges with objective conditions of discrimination in a labour market that is highly segmented by ethnicity, despite the success of the French model of integration for jeunes ethniques, the French born descendants of immigrants.

It also perpetuates enclaves of de-politicised polities, a form of integration that ultimately implies subjection and non-deliberative stance toward the terms of neoliberal governance.

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Paper presented at the IMISCOE (International Migration and Social Cohesion Network of Excellence of the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme) conference. Panel title: Migrants and Mobilization” Organizers: Davide Però (University of Nottingham) & John Solomos (City University, London) Brighton, University of Sussex, Sept 6-9th 2007. I thank Pauline Gardner Barber, Don Kalb, Luisa Steur and the anonymous reviewers of Focaal for their comments on this paper. Research upon which this paper is based has been generously supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Wenner –Gren foundation for Anthropological Research and Trent University.

In the fall of 2005, the eruptions were triggered by the deaths of 2 youths who were burned scaling the walls of a power plant while fleeing police whom they thought were chasing them. Riots of youth living in suburbs continued in 2006 and erupted frequently in various locations through out Paris immediately preceding the presidential election in spring 2007. (See Le Monde March 28, 2007 “Heurts entre jeunes ET policiers à la gare du Nord, neuf interpellations Angelique Chrisafis “Trapped in squalor, young voters long for a candidate to give them hope” Thursday March 29, 2007 the Guardian “Rodeo” is a term used by young male participants in the confrontations in the suburbs.

It refers to the tactics of protest which typically involve stealing a car, engaging the police in a chase, abandoning and then torching the stolen car. For a discussion of urban violence see Wieworka (1999)

The reputation of the French for contentiousness has been the subject of much scholarship. See Marx and Engels (1930) Jeunes ethniques is a term used by Begag (2007) to describe members of minority ethnicFor an important historical account see Tilly (1986) populations, whose grandparents immigrated and settled France and whose life experiences are often contoured by a process of ethnicization and also stigmatization despite being born in France and being culturally French. generation” of immigrants.

These groups are often referred to as the “third Begag (2007) further subdivides jeunes ethniques into two further categories dérouilleurs (movers or literally de-rusters) who have experienced social and geographic mobility and rouilleurs (rusters) who have not experienced such mobility having grown up in the 1990’s in the midst of economic recession. They make up the disaffected young people who participated in the riots in the suburbs and have been called members of “underclass” of unemployed or underemployed Roy (2006) examines significance of transnationalism in sustaining migrant livelihoods in France. The research has involved interviews with workers and owners of small scale family based enterprises in the restaurant and retail trades in urban centres in France.
Although there are various forms of communitarianism (see Delanty 2000) what is common to all is a repudiation of individualism and contractualism. Communitarians are opposed to models of citizenship premised on the idea of individualism in liberalism. . They also reject social democratic forms of citizenship in which citizenship is reduced to a formalistic relationship to the state as one of rights and duties (see also Shaffir ed., 1998). For debates on citizenship in France and especially the discussion on Left and Right version of communitarianism, see Feldblum (1999: 65-68).

Governance essentially refers to a non –hierarchical mode of governing which is contrasted with the mode of organising public power in which authority is centralized and exercised hierarchically. It refers to a range of new arrangements and practices such the fragmentation or sharing of public power amongst different tiers of regulation. There is an emphasis on encouraging policies to be formulated and implemented away from the centre. This is often referred to as the ‘hollowing out’ of the state through the ‘agentization’ of government. It also refers to the privatization of the provision of utilities and services. Analysts note an increasing reliance on partnerships, networks and novel forms of consultation or dialogue. Governance implies collective problem solving in the public realm in which public realm is a domain of strategies, techniques and procedures through which different forces and groups attempt to solve problems and implement programmes.

According to Prasad (2005) the differences between France and other nations in the approach to implementing neoliberal change must be understood as related to the fact that state interventionism in the political and economic spheres of the country is higher than in, for example, the US and the UK. Also in France, as Esping Anderson (1990) has pointed out the welfare state was developed by the Right and has been based on the principle of social insurance for the middle classes and not on the redistribution of wealth between classes, welfare policy and also tax policy and welfare state policy is rooted in electoral interests and therefore less able to be reformed. Industrial policy is not so rooted, and so is an easier target for reform.

This was precipitated by the signing of the Maastricht Treat in 1991, and fiscal reform was required to participate in the European Monetary Union. With Chirac as president and Juppé as prime minister, France’s tax structure was made more regressive and 12.6 % of the workforce has been moved from the public to the private sector.

The Chinese are seen for example to “work noiselessly, night and day like bees in a wellFlé (1985) contains numerous examples of media rhetoric used to portray enclosed hive”.

The 1980’s and he 1990’s. These concerned focused mainly around Muslims in France who were perceived as unwilling and unable to adjust to the cultural norms in France. Hargreaves (2007) and Tribalat (1996) point to evidence that this perception is not warranted and argue that while integration amongst descendants of immigrants has taken place, discrimination persists.

Resemble Chinese restaurants in Toronto and New York having kitchens and a serviced dining area, the restaurant-caterer is a hybrid of a restaurant and delicatessen, called a traiteur in France which has pre-prepared dishes displayed in a refrigerated glass case for the purposes of take-out –pour emporter. Restaurant-traiteurs will often have a few tables and a kitchen where orders from a menu are prepared for customers who wish to eat on the premises. Other establishments are traiteurs only, with pre-prepared foods mainly for take-out. Many traiteurs tend to have no tables. Some can accommodate the rapid consumption of meals that have been reheated in a microwave by providing a counter space. Restaurant-caterers and caterers only tend to be small operations while restaurants proper tend to vary in size from small establishments that seat 20 or so around five or six tables to very large establishments that seat hundreds of diners. While Chinese restaurant-caterers are scattered throughout Paris, most are concentrated in the 3 Chinatowns of Paris. In many establishments identified as a Chinese restaurant (un restaurant chinois), and Chinese caterer (un traiteur chinois), menus are not restricted to specifically Chinese items and pan-Asian dishes are served. The presence Thai, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian as well as Malaysian dishes on Chinese restaurant menus reflect the provenance of the migrants who make up the population of Asians in Paris, all of whom are frequently glossed by insiders and outsiders alike as “Chinese.”

Tontines are an investment vehicle that is an odd mixture of group annuity, group life insurance, and lottery in which investors each pay a sum into the tontine. The funds are invested and each investor receives dividends. Usually the scheme involves an arrangement that is made upon the death of an investor so that when an investor dies his or her share is divided amongst all the other investors. This process continues until only one investor survives who receives all of the remaining funds. Amongst the Chinese in Paris what is called a tontine resembles more a rotating credit society, in which investors each advance small loans to the borrower, who repays each investor with interest according to a pre-determined schedule. The death of investors seems to not figure in the arrangements in a prominent way. For a discussion of the ways in which tontines are organised amongst Chinese immigrants in Paris see Pairault (1990).
Because of the deprivations that arose in developing countries due programmes of Labour structural adjustment and stabilization imposed upon them by international financial institutions in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the nature of migration to France changed. migration to France became immigration to and labour migrants from North Africa remained in France. Also in the wake of structural adjustment and stabilization and the restructuring many economies of developing nations, new migrants began to arrive in increasing numbers.
These observations are noted in Silverstein (2005) According to Bourdieu symbolic violence refers to ...gentle, invisible violence, unrecognised as such, chosen as much as undergone, that of trust, obligation, personal loyalty, hospitality, gifts, debts, piety” (1990:127) Silverstein (2005) borrows this term and has recently called this designation an act of “symbolic violence” and this “symbolic violence” has been particularly perpetrated upon young French citizens who live on the peripheries.

Where a larger political programme was attributed to the acts of violence in the banlieues they were presented, at least in initial reports, as some form of anti-western Jihadism. See for example, Fouad, Ajami “The Boys of Nowhere” US and World Report I, 21 Nov, 2005, Alain.