Traditionally, the sons and daugh­ters of each wave of immi­grants clim­bed some grades of the social scale. That’s what hap­pe­ned to the Polish, Italians, Spanish and Portuguese. They were pro­gres­si­vely « inte­gra­ted », first in the upper layers of the wor­king class and then in the petty bour­geoi­sie : shop­kee­pers, fore­men, exe­cu­ti­ves, tea­chers, doc­tors, lawyers, etc. Since the middle of the 1970s, this pro­cess has been bru­tally stop­ped and that may be one of the sour­ces of the reli­gious iden­tity crisis of the des­cen­dants of North African migrants.

France has known a cer­tain eco­no­mic sta­bi­lity after the Second World War. The Republican model was based on strong forms of social pro­tec­tion (social secu­rity, pen­sion and health sys­tems, etc.) and a regu­lar pro­gres­sion of employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. But since the 1970’s, the unem­ploy­ment has grown dras­ti­cally (around 10 % today on a natio­nal basis, but up to 20 or 25 % in cer­tain regions) and crea­ted a fee­ling of inse­cu­rity : one cant hope any more to stay in the same fac­tory or com­pany for 30 or 40 years ; it’s dif­fi­cult to leave the tower blocks and find a credit to buy a small house in a « better » dis­trict ; today, a young worker spends years and years jum­ping from one badly payed job to ano­ther ; the pers­pec­tive of a gro­wing qua­li­fi­ca­tion has disap­pea­red, etc. All these social dif­fi­culties are gene­rally not blamed on capi­ta­lism ; migrants and their des­cen­dants have become the sca­pe­goats of all sorts of social frus­tra­tions for which they have no res­pon­si­bi­lity. And hos­ti­lity against Islam in the wor­king class is often a poli­ti­cally cor­rect way of expres­sing racist fee­lings.

The des­cen­dants of North African immi­grants shared the « social ascen­sion » ideal dif­fu­sed by the Republican pro­pa­ganda. They expec­ted a lot from the school system and French society. With the crisis, they became stron­gly disi­lu­sio­ned. As they have much more dif­fi­culties than the other French citi­zens to get a qua­li­fied job, a decent hou­sing and to become inte­gra­ted in the wage-ear­ners world, they are more and more attrac­ted to a mul­ti­cultu­ra­list model (in French we prefer the dero­ga­tory word « com­mu­nau­ta­riste » which means « closed in his/her com­mu­nity »), because they think it may work better than the Republican-secu­la­rist model.