The recent vicious arrest of Morocco’s international soccer star Mbark Boussoufa by the Belgian police brought to the forefront, once again, the issue of racism and xenophobia against people of “color” in Europe. According to Mr. Boussoufa, Brussels Police handcuffed and threw him to the ground during a police “identity Check” round in a café in the heavily North African neighborhood of Gare du Midi in the Belgian Capital. The Moroccan national, who currently plays for Anderlecht soccer club, described the incident to the Belgian press as an act of police brutality with racist overtones. Around the same time, Brussels police shot to death a Moroccan laborer on his way to work. Mohamed Saoudi, who lived in Belgium for more than seventeen years, led a peaceful life with his family and had no prior running with the law. Belgian police is currently investigating both incidents. The cases of Boussoufa and Saoudi have one thing in common: the victim was a North African. Unfortunately, these incidents are not the exception but rather the norm in today’s Europe. Spanish police’s recent “Hunt for the Moroccans” campaign is yet an other example of the charged attitudes of several European countries against immigrant from North Africa. Even tough the Ministry of the Interior denied it; the Spanish police are undertaking an arrest and removal campaign specifically aimed at Moroccan migrants living in Spain. By targeting people based on their skin color, Spanish authorities are in violations of several International and European human rights treaties. As the Spanish economy keeps collapsing, immigrants will get the blunt of the blame for unemployment.
In France, the social and economic situation of second and third generations of immigrants is alarming. While most of the first and second waves of laborers from North Africa came invited to work in France as guest workers helping the rebuilding of post-war Europe, the off springs of these modest workers are born and raised in France and thus French citizens in every sense of the term. If France was willing and delighted to receive the thousands of Algerian and Moroccan “ouvriers”, Paris lacked a comprehensive policy for the assimilation of immigrant’s French born children into the French society.
France along with other European countries purposely targeted the uneducated and the least cosmopolitan of the North African population for immigration. The least educated the immigrants, the more abuse he or she can tolerate; that was the motto of the European immigration policy of the sixties and seventies. Lately the chickens came home to roost. Because of lack of formal education, most of the older generation of immigrants was not equipped to raise their children in a foreign culture. Aggravating the situation, a good number of North African workers who arrived in the sixties did not speak local languages making it difficult for them and their families to navigate local laws putting their children at a disadvantage in schools. Several European governments, including France, were slow in implementing good faith measures to help children’s of immigrants prepare for their future in a European context. Today, we see the results of an ill conceived and half hearted immigration policy colored in racism.
As an example, in France, years of institutional neglect and discrimination against non-white French in the job market have pushed countless number of youth’s descendant of immigrants into the arms of crime or religious fanaticism. The frequent outbreaks of violence in immigrants “ghettos” are testaments to the failure of European governments, Socialist or Conservative, in solving the crisis of unemployment among young people of North African and African descents.
On the face of it, the problems facing the old versus the new generation of immigrants are different, but at a closer these hurdles look the same. Both generations have been facing years of official indifference, “use and discard” discriminatory state policy, and non-acceptance by some segments of the “native” societies. These impediments to assimilation are hard but not impossible to overcome. Political courage and true leadership on both sides of the immigration debate are a must to solving the hardships facing second and third generation of immigrants. By the same token, Muslim religious figures in Europe must be flexible and open minded to be able help their folks face the realities of living in a western society without giving up their core religious beliefs. The current economic slowdown will definitely make a bad situation critical.
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