In France the immigration problem is a every day work for government. Now the Interior Minister Claude Guéant, François Fillon and other politicians criticises the foreigners Muslim and Jewish food traditions for example. But they criticises many other things. It can be attributed to nearly elections.
The American Press are, for the most part, neutrals and never really show their opinions about the subject.
However, France is considered as a laic country that ensures to respect the separation between church and state, and despite this fact religious things are into the heart of the debate before the presidential election. Indeed the issue of Immigration is instrumentalized and mainly used for political matters in order to obtain a part of the French electorate.
This type of debate comes at a time of crisis, when unemployment is at its highest point, when it is important to revive the economy through employment, but the debate is always refocused on less important issues like halal foods for instance. This topic was launched in order to stigmatize (because now a part of the debate is oriented on animal suffering), and once more to hide the real debate.
To conclude, the immigration issue, in France, is very critical in the sense that there are very influential lobby that feed the political and media fields, and hurls polemics soon as the speech of a politician is controversial. Some US papers remind the benefits of immigration (and that the French president has benefited from this immigration).
Webography :
- http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/03/06/3092008/french-prime-minister-calls-for-end-to-ritual-slaughter
- http://articles.cnn.com/2012-03-07/world/world_europe_france-politics_1_marine-le-pen-president-nicolas-sarkozy-francois-hollande?_s=PM:EUROPE
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/french-pm-seeks-to-ease-concerns-over-comment-about-ritual-slaughter-of-animals-for-meat/2012/03/07/gIQAhjKFxR_story.html
- http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/too-many-foreigners-in-france-sarkozy-says/?scp=1&sq=French%20immigration&st=cse
Elian ORIOU
Pierre-Marie PLANS
The articles you've selected seem quite factual. One reference to Carla Bruni does criticize her 'populist' pose quite effectively however.
ReplyDeleteYou've highlighted the apparent paradox of separation of Church and State and the importance of religious issues such at halal, mosques, etc, in the current election. This could be interesting to explore for a final project. Sue
I like your critique of the press around election time. It is a very interesting topic to explore because the media greatly effects the election and people's perception of the candidates. It is fascinating to hear how the press has taken religious issues and made them important to the elections, especially since immigration is such an important topic now. However, I do think the American press is biased in some ways as opposed to neutral. Certain news organizations are more likely to lean left or right, and that determines what view they will take on religion and what they are more likely to report on.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the fact that some politicians with the election try to have the most vote and we can see with our article that Sarkosy's political party want to recover the votes of National Front by stigmatizing a part of the French population. Instead of talking about the real problems of French population like unemployment the government tends to divide the population.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. According to me, press is too powerful, and has too much influence on policy. Because their point of view is not neutral, and because they decide on what subject we have to focus, we waste too much time on not very important topics, whereas we need to focus on crucial subjet (like immigration)
ReplyDelete