The Front Lines of Globalization

My daughter's friends and house-mates in England, Camile and Radich, are beautiful people and sweethearts that come from the same town in Poland. It is a small town, a lot like Oxford they told me.

With irrepressible enthusiasm and the good humor of youth, Camile shows me photographs of her home town. It is an obviously cultured place where she worked for the first tanning salon in the city; Tanning machines being one of the new things that open boarders have allowed from the west.

Radich is a Chef - a fine, well trained, Chef I am told - and he clearly has ambitions beyond the public house, O'Neils, where he works in Birmingham. Camile works at a local hotel, cleaning rooms - where the rest of the cleaning staff are also Polish.

Many have come here from Poland. Camile tells me that many thousands of young people left Poland, last year, the day it became a member of the European Community and the residency and work visa requirements changed. On their low salaries as Chef and cleaner in England, Camile and Radich expect to earn enough in a few years that they can return home, buy a house, and live the good life.

Camile showed me pictures of her mother and told me the sad tale of when Radich returned home from his initial trip, in which he found a job and a place to live, to take her to the West; leaving her mother behind.

"Why did you leave?" I asked. There are few jobs and no future for young people in Poland today she said. They could never buy a house on Radich's salary as a Chef, and her salary as a receptionist in a Tanning Salon.

Those are the intentions of many: come to England, make enough money to return home, and live happily ever after. How many will actually return home remains to be seen, Camile admits. Many will in fact stay.

The week following my visit to Birmingham a riot took place in part of the city as stories of a black girl's rape at the hands of those in another, nearby, immigrant community spread. Riots happen fairly often in the UK, but they are toned down by the state media (the BBC).

The Thatcher privatized council estates provide cheap housing snapped up by incoming immigrants. The native working class take the money and find themselves back in nonprivatized state accomodations quickly enough. These estates, equivalent to "projects" here, are the seat of unrest. But it is not the natives that rebel - they have had their chance and missed it several times in English history. It is the immigrants that eventually rebel, because unlike the native population they have not been conditioned to accept their circumstances, and the class society belief that breeding is everything and that one should know ones place.

While driving along the "motorway" to Cambridge from Birmingham I listen to a BBC radio commentator talk to a Hindu youth, born in the UK.

"Do you consider yourself English?" he says. "Of course I do!" says the lad. "Would you fight for this country?" With no hesitation he says "Yes, of course!" and then after a brief pause, "... unless the war was with India. I wouldn't want to fight against India," he says. Then even I hold my breath in silence after the interviewer says, "And the Queen? Are you loyal to the Queen?"

Now I am English, and an anti-monarchist I admit, but doesn't this question shock you? The Hindu youth is obviously phased a little by the question too, but recovers well and promptly says, "Yes, I am loyal to the Queen." What else did you expect him to say?

In the early nineties I lived and worked in Paris. In the wake of the cold war, I recall the coaches of East Europeans that would arrive full and leave empty as the people took refuge in the Metro which had begun to fill with men, women and children that made temporary homes there.

Every week or so I would travel into the city from my office in Fontainebleu to meet my advisor or to lecture. My University is on the banks of the Seine across from the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and often I would walk along the Rue des Ecole, pass the Academy and the Humanities department of the Sorbonne, from my research school at the Jardin du Luxembourg. This is the area of Paris that tourists know as the "Latin Quarter."

Each visit to my advisor I was greeted on the steps of Paris VI, by students and activitists with leaflets written in bad English that spoke of injustice and rebellion. But it was not the incoming East Europeans, nor the native French that wrote these badly spelled and badly written pamphlets. It was the previous generations of immigrants, the Northern African Muslims and Communists.

Although it sounds impossible, I didn't notice them at first, the military police, the Gendarmerie, that stood on every corner of central Paris. Each with semiautomatic or automatic weapon, and sat legion in full regalia on riot squad buses on the edge of Luxembourg Square. Any group that overcame the intimidation of this environment, any small gathering of folk that sought to raise a protest, was quickly dealt with and dispersed.

So, is it any wonder that the favorite pastime in the cafes for students and immigratants alike is the discussion of anarchy and alternative society.

I have little doubt that Paris continues to seem like a city under seige on any day of the year, and my only surprise about the ten days of riots that continue is that it has not happened earlier and more widely - in other European states, like England, where socialism has created a new imbalance in the midst of class, bigotry and privilege - and where the front lines of globalization are drawn.