France

A major study from France’s premier public research institute found “a society profoundly marked by long-term immigration,” with around a third of the population estimated to have been born abroad or to have been the child or grandchild of immigrants.

Research from the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris has perhaps provided the clearest picture of France’s demographic makeup, a country officially governed by a colourblind doctrine that prohibits the collection of racial or ethnic statistics in its census, making systematic tracking of immigrant groups difficult.

For several weeks, France has been experiencing a series of violent incidents, particularly affecting major cities and their outskirts. Shootings, gang-related killings, attacks involving minors—recent events are fuelling a sense that crime is now out of control and that armed violence is becoming increasingly commonplace. In the space of a few weeks, several cases have made the headlines: the murder of a 13-year-old boy in Villefranche-sur-Saône in April, the shooting that left the Moulins district of Nice bloodied on May 11th, and most recently, the death of a 15-year-old boy in Nantes during a shooting on Thursday, May 14th. These are no longer isolated incidents but rather a significant trend: the grip of drug trafficking on cities, made possible by the growing involvement of minors, is colliding with the authorities’ inability to tackle either the causes or the consequences of this crisis head-on.