The trip starts in Sevran then. According to a detailed and very interesting survey made by the French demographer Michèle Tribalat, in Sevran the percentage of children younger than 18 who had at least one immigrant parent went from 30% in 1982 to 62% in 2005 to 66% in 2011. This includes of course the European immigrants (like the Portuguese). According to Ms Tribalat, the percentage for the whole population should be lower than 66%. Sevran is not the suburb of Paris with the largest proportion of children having at least one immigrant parent. In 2005 (no data for 2011) the one suburb with the highest percentage, according to her, was Clichy-sous-Bois (which we aren't visiting in this trip), with 76% (as opposed to 62% for Sevran). 16 other suburbs had higher percentages (of children with at least one immigrant parent) than Sevran.
After being addressed in the RER train by a middle-aged Black guy wearing sub-Saharan attire who told us some incomprehensible things about Egypt and China and how we, the West/Egypt, are all going to be crushed by China, or something (
), we finally arrive in Sevran. By the time we arrived in Sevran, the people in the train were largely Black, although there were 4 Russian people in the their early 30s busy chatting with each other in the rows next to us. They looked like local residents (after Sevran there are only bedroom communities on the line, since we didn't use the RER line that serves CDG airport).
1. The town hall of Sevran. They have asked graffers to write "mairie" ("town hall") with graffiti. First time ever I see that in France!
2. The building housing the administrative services of the commune also has a graffiti representing Marianne (symbol of the French Republic):
3. View towards the old village of Sevran:
4. Derelict banlieue.
5. But they are renovating it:
6. And they have already installed the new city hall there (the old one with graffiti is being phased out I suppose).
7. The color of the sidewalk changes, we're already arriving at the border of the commune of Sevran (French communes are so small!) and entering another commune:
8. We're entering the commune of Aulnay-sous-Bois. It is twinned with towns in Morocco, Senegal, and Palestine, as well as a district of Rotterdam that is, I suppose, as full of immigrants as Aulnay-sous-Bois:
9. Gallic rooster on top of the church spire. Reassuring sight of 'eternal France' in the middle of what's supposedly "Eurabia".
10. This church is the parish church of the old village of Aulnay. The town center of Aulnay has now moved to the south of the rail line (we're not visiting it), and the old village nucleus, which is distant from today's town center, is called "Vieux Pays" ("Old Country"). This happens in several communes of those north-eastern suburbs of Paris. With the arrival of train lines in the 19th century, the town centers moved close to the train stations and away from the old village nuclei, which were renamed "Vieux Pays".
11. They are copying the tourist signs of central Paris!
12. Spring at last! Spring at last! :okay:
13. The first nice houses we see since the start of our trip in Sevran. My feeling is the nice houses tend to be inhabited by Portuguese immigrants (as opposed to the less nice houses inhabited by Maghreban, Black, Tamil, Eastern European immigrants). You can tell (I saw that with many of the nicer houses we walked by) because of the names on the mailboxes and because of the cars parked in front, on whose licenses plates they often have (illegally) replaced the logo of the Paris Region with the coat of arms of Portugal. Go Portugal!
14. With horse on top! (it's a weather vane)
15. When you see daffodil, you know it's Spring.
16. NYC is advertising itself even in those distant working-class suburbs!
17. Hotel for insects!
This is the new environmentalist fashion in France now. I had seen them in central Paris, but I didn't know the local municipalities in those less-than-environmentally-friendly far-left communes of the banlieue (we're in the Communist 'Red Belt' here) also liked them!
18. They are renovating some of the infamous 'cités' (council estates/housing projects)!
(to be continued...)
Isn't it much of the basics around here after all?
Linear Mode
