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>For all the rhetoric on the right about how people from other cultures are not "suitable" for "western" countries - some of the proudest citizens and torch-car

>For all the rhetoric on the right about how people from other cultures are not "suitable" for "western" countries - some of the proudest citizens and torch-carriers for tradition, are foreigners. That's not quite right--the premise you're I think you're alluding to is that certain cultures themselves are not compatible with the values of Western society. But people like the bakers featured here, who choose to assimilate headfirst instead of creating an enclave of the country they left behind, can prosper. >“Whoever wins the contest is a winner,” M’Seddi said. “He’s a champion, whether he’s descended from immigrants or not... That’s someone who’s passionate about French culture, who has become integrated as a French person. We need to make people proud to be French.”

tomlockwood 7y ago
What do you think isn't quite right? The article states that the bakery was in an area with a large "tunisian origin" population - which I think the right might say is an enclave - and if their views had more nuance they might say was a cheap area where immigrants tended to settle.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  Rent is surely one of many factors but there are other factors and consequences of a population group concentrating in one area, it's not in a vacuum. If those immigrants by and large do not assimilate into French/Western culture, then in that case they are indeed forming an enclave. Since the individuals in this story are eagerly assimilating, they are independent of the questions of whether these immigrant enclaves are real or whether they're compatible with French culture. They're only a counterexample if you conflate mainstream right-wing expectations of immigrants with hardcore Stormfront narratives, e.g. that foreigners are mentally inferior and incapable of adapting to a different culture.
  - tomlockwood 7y ago
    I'm eager to hear what you think I'm incorrect about. Clearly the baker in the story, who wins, lives in what most people would call an ethnic enclave (if such a thing exists). There's an expectation on the right that it's easy to identify when an immigrant is "one of the good ones" but that identification tends to be done at a comfortable distance, that doesn't tell people on the right anything about the people they're actually judging. As a result, the default view is that immigrants often aren't integrating, and that's bad. That's not a stormfront view - that's a very mainstream right wing view. The truth is that immigrants often desperately want to integrate, and that culture, and even celebrating and maintaining one's culture, is not incompatible with integration. People can and do have both. St Patrick's day doesn't stop people from celebrating the 4th of July. The difference between integrating and not integrating, from the signals given off by the right, is approximately 50-60 years. Suddenly, the Irish in NYC have all mysteriously integrated for some reason, when back in the 1850s they weren't integrated. So strange how that works, right?

tomlockwood 7y ago

What do you think isn't quite right? The article states that the bakery was in an area with a large "tunisian origin" population - which I think the right might say is an enclave - and if their views had more nuance they might say was a cheap area where immigrants tended to settle.

homonculus1 7y ago
Rent is surely one of many factors but there are other factors and consequences of a population group concentrating in one area, it's not in a vacuum. If those immigrants by and large do not assimilate into French/Western culture, then in that case they are indeed forming an enclave. Since the individuals in this story are eagerly assimilating, they are independent of the questions of whether these immigrant enclaves are real or whether they're compatible with French culture. They're only a counterexample if you conflate mainstream right-wing expectations of immigrants with hardcore Stormfront narratives, e.g. that foreigners are mentally inferior and incapable of adapting to a different culture.
- tomlockwood 7y ago
  I'm eager to hear what you think I'm incorrect about. Clearly the baker in the story, who wins, lives in what most people would call an ethnic enclave (if such a thing exists). There's an expectation on the right that it's easy to identify when an immigrant is "one of the good ones" but that identification tends to be done at a comfortable distance, that doesn't tell people on the right anything about the people they're actually judging. As a result, the default view is that immigrants often aren't integrating, and that's bad. That's not a stormfront view - that's a very mainstream right wing view. The truth is that immigrants often desperately want to integrate, and that culture, and even celebrating and maintaining one's culture, is not incompatible with integration. People can and do have both. St Patrick's day doesn't stop people from celebrating the 4th of July. The difference between integrating and not integrating, from the signals given off by the right, is approximately 50-60 years. Suddenly, the Irish in NYC have all mysteriously integrated for some reason, when back in the 1850s they weren't integrated. So strange how that works, right?