Nous Sommes Toutes, Les Enfants Des Immigrés!

The year was 2002 and I was on a week-long trip to Bourg-en-Bresse in eastern France, under the auspices of a 'Young Caretakers of the Environment' conference. Do I care about the environment? Yes, as a matter of fact, I try to do my bit. I recycle, turn off lights when I'm not in rooms and appliances when they're not being used (televisions on standby are a pet-peeve of mine). But truth be told, on this occasion my motivations weren't the sort that would bring a ringing endorsement from Al Gore. A friend and I signed up primarily for a week off school and so that we could, we hoped, meet some lovely French girls. As it turned out the only female that paid us any attention on the trip was the leather-skinned teacher of another set of exchange students from Greece, who took a particular shine to my friend!

However, my abiding memory of the trip is neither our environmental campaigning and utterly humiliating attempts to chat-up French girls, nor is it the fact that I spent the first day with my host family in bed with some form of sinusitis (not, and I'll never live this down, sun stroke as I was led to believe, but that's a post for another day). It is in fact the events which gave this post it's title.

The title is part of a chant that reverberated through the halls of the school we were in, and soon after the streets of Bourg itself. The chant in it's entirety goes like this: 'Premiére. Deuxième. Troisième génération. Nous sommes toute, les enfants des immigrés!' For those of you not versed in French it translates as 'First. Second. Third generation. We are all the children of immigrants!' The reason that the students were taking to the streets, and we of course were only too glad to join them, was that Jean Marie Le Pen, the controversial right-wing politician, had polled second in the first round of voting for the French presidential election.

I remember being blown away at the time by how passionate and relatively organised the protesters were. Up to that time my only other experience of a protest had come the previous year, during the teaching strike in Ireland, when we had half-heartedly staged a walk-out from class. And if memory serves correctly, as we were only Junior Certs at that time, we loved the protests as they more often then not meant days lounging around outside!

The reason this experience came to mind is the ongoing protests that we've had in Ireland over the last number of months. It's not that these protests were insignificant, but they do tend to pale in comparison to those in other countries. Take the recent student protests for example, the issues both here and in the United Kingdom were relatively similar, but as the links illustrate the protests certainly were not. I'm not suggesting that there has to be violence to make a protest significant, but there is an undeniable difference between the two, and it does seem as though Irish society lacks that aggressive edge.

The country as a whole has never been more enraged at politicians, at bankers, at developers and at the regulators, it's positively palpable. Yet, there's no riots in the streets, no burning of cars, etc. Sure there are protests, but these are in the main respectful and peaceful. Don't get me wrong I'm not advocating violent protest, but leaving aside a few minor incidents, I'm surprised by it's absence.

One thing I did notice during the Irish student protests was the slogan on the t-shirts they wore 'Eductaion not Emigration'. That got me thinking again about the French demonstrations and the fact that the chant pointed out that we're all the children of immigrants. This made me think of all the new places Irish people would now be settling and possibly staying to raise families, for let's not forget every immigrant is also an emigrant, and it's these emigrants that will form whole new immigrant populations all over the globe. And it was all this thinking that reminded me of a cartoon I drew a while back:

"They'll be back!"

                 Government plans to reverse emigration are roundly criticised.

Martin Turner I ain't, I appreciate that, but this is my own protest at the fact that so many of my friends have already left in search of work and more of my generation will undoubtedly follow, possibly including myself. But for now I dedicate my cartoon to all those who've left our shores in search of better opportunities.

No doubt if and when you do eventually come home, there'll be plenty on kettles on the boil.