I'm returning from a series of biz trips that put me in a couple pockets of the French diaspora -- Brussels (the EU/French quadrant in particular) and just this week, Monte Carlo... So, 'twas interesting to see this interesting article on a anti-establishment, immigrant French rapper -

Born in Cyprus as Mélanie Georgiades, raised in a Paris suburb, Diam's incarnates a new generation of French artists with immigrant roots who are claiming France as their own.

..."The France of the baguette and the beret is not my France," Diam's, 26, said in a recent interview in a Right Bank café. "I don't relate to that France. It doesn't mean anything to me. I like to eat kebabs. I wear hoods."

..."If you're French, you're French and that should be that," she said. "Telling a 12-year-old boy that he needs to integrate is putting a doubt in his mind. It's telling him: You're not really from here."

She admits that she is stereotyping the other France.

"And why shouldn't I? They constantly stereotype us," she said, adding that the situation has worsened since the 2005 riots, with suburban youths facing suspicion, fear and downright hostility. "We don't fit into their France."

Now I'm far from a Franco-phile and, am quite ready to believe that French society has inflicted a wealth of minor and major misery upon poor Diam.   Heck, as an immigrant to the US there are lots of little slights I notice which I imagine my native-white brothren probably aren't aware of...

BUT the civil society libertarian in me is more than a little disturbed that the essence of France,  for her, comes down to... the welfare state.

.."If there is one thing that defines my French identity, it is our welfare system - you have to go abroad to understand that," Diam's said. "When I pay taxes, I think about the fact that they pay for the welfare system." 

The problem, of course, is that it's the a priori social fabric which enables a particular welfare state and not vice-versa.  One creates the wealth necessary for the other to spend or squandor as the case may be.   Further, the whole notion of the state birthing society has a precarious history to say the least.   Alas, if Diam is indicative of what a new generation now asserts constitutes French-ness, that country's gonna be in a whole lotta hurt.