The idea is striking: the French suburbs, the banlieues, are notorious for high crime rates. However, according to Van Gennip, work can help people “get on the right track,” she said in an interview with this site.
“There is a really high youth unemployment rate in France, especially in the banlieues,” says Van Gennip. “Much higher than we know here. I could imagine that we invest in those French or, for example, Spanish school-leavers to let them work here in the hospitality industry or horticulture.”
Right-wing parties such as the PVV, FvD, JA21 and BVNL (van Wybren van Haga) speak of it as a disgrace. “It’s getting crazier,” Geert Wilders tweeted. ‘One day the farmers have to be destroyed, the next day mega asylum seekers centers are being built and today we are going to bring French unemployed from the dangerous banlieues here.’
Van Gennip says in the first place that he feels responsible for the more than 1 million Dutch people who are on the sidelines or who could or would like to work more hours. They have to get started first. But given the shortage on the labor market, the Netherlands will also need labor migrants in the future, she says.
Joost Eerdmans of JA21 wants to debate with Van Gennip. “This is asking for trouble. A bizarre plan.”
This is what Frank Renout, our correspondent in France, says about Van Gennip’s plan:
Help French banlieue youngsters ‘on the right track’ with a job? In France they wish the Netherlands every success. Politicians here propose to send the army into the banlieues. In any other way, crime and drug trafficking would no longer be solved there.
‘Banlieue’ literally means ‘suburb’ and there are many hundreds of them in France. Good and expensive, and bad and dangerous. Minister Van Gennip seems to be aiming at the bad suburbs with her ‘help on the right path’. But is anyone in those neighborhoods waiting for a job in Dutch greenhouses or catering?
French youngsters in problem neighborhoods go the wrong way when they are surrounded by people who have already gone astray. Their brothers and friends earn a lot of money from drug trafficking and crime. They drive expensive cars and wear designer clothes.
And the French government has let it exist for decades. The banlieues live in their world, most politicians in a completely different one. If you stick your head in the sand in Paris, you won’t see any of the problems on the outskirts of the city.
The nuisance in the banlieues mainly affects the residents themselves. Because just to be clear: those problem young people are a major problem, but they are also only a minority of the inhabitants of the suburbs. Most people who live there just go to work every day and do their shopping. They just have to step over the garbage that isn’t collected or take their kids past dealers when they take them to school. And if someone is attacked or stabbed again, hardly anyone calls the police anymore: they are not trusted.
There is one category of young people who may well be listening to Van Gennip: the discriminated and ambitious youngsters in the banlieue. Scientific research shows that Farida from poor and black Saint-Dénis has much less chance of a job than Jean-Pierre from rich and white Neuilly. Even with the same good education and the same beautiful resume, Farida hardly ever has to come for a job interview while the carpet is rolled out for Jean-Pierre.
But that Farida does not need to be helped by the Netherlands: she must above all be taken seriously in her own country.
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