Pieter,
there is quite a lot of talk about who is behind it and whether the students have a right or no. In some sense the world globalization is somewhat in fault, because it causes lowering of standards everywhere in rich countries. Europeans were used to social benefits, people in France did not need to work more than 36 hours per week. I feel also for young people because - they may have a difficult start since the older sit already in the comfortable positions and they would occupy these positions for many years to come.
We will see, I am curious about the situation there, how it would really play in a longer run. I heard that many French leave abroad to search for a job, is it true?
Jaga,
I feel for the young people to and my remark about their bourgeois and materialist wishes was not sceptical, it is a honest and good desire or strive
in Europe and America from young urban professionals who want to start a family, want to live in a Middle class subburb, want to be able to afford a nice
family car, and to be financially independant, selfsuficient, and to have
the same living standard as their parents when they were young.
They remember their good youth with their parents in the seventees, eightees and ninetees. So this materialistic and practical demand for a good life is very important for these youth and all the people of their age
in the rest of Europe (so in Holland, Poland and Germany too).
And yes, the French and other Europeans were used to social benefits and
a 36 hour workweek. But our state systems and the social-economical
situation can not hold that luxery anymore, because we loose on competition not only with China and Japan, but also with the USA and
Japan, who are doing it economically much better than Europe right now.
Japan is comming back too, also because of it's asian cooperation with China
(I think). Europe is behind and the Social-democratic and Conservative/Chrisrtian-democratic governments know that they can't efford the very expensive and inefficient social security sytems, which lay a heavy burden
on the state budgets. And that money could be spend on state investments
in the economy, new infrastructures, and Modernisation of harbours, citycentres and airports. In fact many Social-democratic governments follow
the same neo-liberal economical path as their conservative oponents, and in that sense you could not call them Socialists anymore, they are more like the pragmatic Americna liberals (New Democrats).
Although the European leaders seem to have differant approaches than the
Americans, in reality the way they are moving is more towards the American or Anglo-American direction. In France and German there are a generation of British minded leaders in power, both Merkel and Villepin are
more Anglophile than one should think.
So I really believe that there is an Transatlantic mood in Europe, and that there is the dualistic development of both European integration and the maintainance of strong Transatlantic ties, because even in France they admire the Americans and are critical allies.
Jaga, I can hardly imagine that the French leave abroad to search for a job,
because like Poles the French are deeply connected to their country, culture, customs and language. I think that it is even harder for the French to
learn and speak a foreign language than the Poles.
On my work there was a French guy on the helpdesk of computerproblems,
the IT-and automatisation department and he spoke Dutch with such a heavy French accent that it was nearly commical, behind his back
people were making jokes about it. He was talking Dutch like the French
personages of Alo Alo speak English.
To me French in other countries look incertain and have problems with the local customs. The French tend to be very rational, into logics (they have
philosophy as a subject on highschool), very sensitive over stile, and are
very attached to their oral culture of debate, conversation, songs and so
Chançon (Ives Montand, Charles Aznavour, Charles Trenet, George Brassens, Edith Paif, Jacques Brel, France Gall, Julien Clerq, Françoise
Hardy, Michel Fugain et etcetera), their cuisine, their clubs and family life.
I think that Poles are more used to being abroad then the French.
Look for instance at North America, the USA and Canada, in the 17th, 18th
and 19th century the two main groups were French and British/Scotch.
In the competition between the two European settler groups the English speaking won, but in the South a certain French element remained (the Cajun culture in the Mississipi Delta, near New Orleans) and in the North you got Quebec (Montreal). In both regions the French element stayed strong and a sort of strange element in an English speaking ocean.
For about a thousand years the French and Brits were quarelling, having
a long 100 years war in the Middle ages, in which both cultures actually
influenced eachother deeply. It is a hate-love relation, which for outsiders
like us (the Dutch) sometimes seems rediculous and even funny.
The strange thing is that even though the French can be disgusted about
the bad British cuisine in the past from the other side they adobted
many British things and loved it, as being tres chique.
The French aristocracy on the country hunt in British stile, the French
love to drink whiskey (a small one they call "un bébé", a half glas they
call "un foetus", and ofcourse they love a full glass of Scotch), dress
in a British way, copying the British country culture and mixing it with
their French stile and etiquette, so with their wine culture, cognac,
champagne, cheeses, vegetables, meat and french fries, patatoos,
or in the South the Catalan and italian influences.
It is ofcourse hard for a Frenchman to leave France and to come into
the Barbarian society of the Dutch, who have no stile, are rude,
dress awful, speak a weird language and have stange customs like
eating their fries with mayonaise, curry and onions or peanut butter
saus. The same thing with the American and British customs and not
to mention the German ones. It really heart the delicate souls of the
French (I hope that you feel the irony in what I am saying here,
mocking a little bit with the French, but in the same time agreeing
totally with them, because ofcourse stile is everything, and
the esthetical form is the most important thing in life).
Ofcourse in reality al lot of French work, live and study in Germany
(Berlin, Frankfurt, and in the borderregion with France, where a lot
of the Elzas-Lotharingen French have actually German roots, but in the
same time feel very French), in Great-Britain (the financial city of
London, Oxford and Cambridge), the Netherlands and Scandianvia,
Poland, Spain, Italy, Switseland and (French) Norhtern-Africa (Marocco
and Algeria).
Pieter
