Mediterranean Imbalances and the Future of International Migrations in Europe

In France as well as in North America or other countries ofWestern Europe, the share ofmigrating Europeans has become negligible, while the number of migrating Third World citizens has greatly increased. France faces an Africanization and Islamization as the demographic and economic gaps between the two banks of the Mediterranean Sea widen and people move to the North. This shift has a very peculiar meaning for France, which is the leading Mediterranean power and has a particular connection with Africa. Francewas the firstWestern powerwith a strongMuslim dimension (through Algeria, whichwas a French département), and is now by far the most Africaoriented among the member countries ofthe European Community (EC), due to its colonial past in northern and western Africa. After the first oil shock, domestic economic pressures led several members of the European Community to seek a reduction in the number of resident foreign migrant workers. Financial incentives offered to foreign workers in exchange for their return to their home countries did not prove effective. Efforts to reduce the entry ofnew foreign workers were also for the most part unsuccessful, and immigration continued unabated throughout the 1 980s. Thus, the lastdecade sawan increasingAfricanization and Islamization of a growing number ofWest European countries. Among the countries separated by the Mediterranean Sea, a widening imbalance is now apparent; this gap can be viewed from several perspectives—demographic, economic, cultural, and even political. The GulfWar was a culminating point in a process of mounting contradiction between the West and neighboring Muslim peoples. For many urban unemployed youth of the South, who represent a large portion ofme frustrated masses, the defeat of Iraq was a humiliation which warrants some sort of revenge against the