Social and Linguistic aspects of immigration - Essay Example

The latter encompassing a birth certificate of citizenship, but one that is subject to disfranchisement by cultural values and traditions. French Muslims, especially the young first and second generation, felt themselves trapped within the bounds of a cultural tradition from which they remained markedly separated from because of their place of birth, and a social environment that ostracized them because of their cultural traditions. The Columbia Journalism Review reported that “Many French watched the television news reports of last year’s riots in the suburbs of Paris with a sense of non-recognition, as though the chiaroscuro footage of hooded figures and burning cars was being relayed from a country thousands of miles away (Harding, 2006).

” This would be the French response, since the French stand indignant at the public displays of social maladies that rise to the surface of the press in other countries on a regular basis, always quick to offer their criticism of a lack of diversity. This is in part what has contributed to the world’s perception of France as being liberal and progressive in its own response to cultural diversity. However, now the world watched as suburbs within just minutes of Paris burned and private property was being destroyed.

Journalist Jeremy Harding commented, “It was hard to connect the barrage of news images with the streets, the projects, and the people I was seeing with my own eyes, on the margins of a capital plunged into anxiety by almost a month of unrest that had spread to many of France’s provisional cities (Harding, 2006).” This was a very empathetic reporting, but the problem it poses, the question it raises, is why were French citizens unaware of the conditions in which the protesters were living, and unaware of the disparity in services and employment that they experienced as compared to the same services