The Irish embassy in Paris is only 14km from the lycée Théodore Monod, a technical college in the immigrant banlieue of Noisy-le-Sec, but the two might as well be on different planets.
The embassy is housed in a 19th century mansion on the elegant avenue Foch. Noisy-le-Sec is a dreary town in the heart of Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest department in France. Known by its postal code 93, Saint-Denis conjures up images of drugs, gangs, violence and radical Islam.
Eight female students from Théodore Monod spent a recent morning in the Irish embassy in preparation for a one-week visit to Dublin and Belfast next winter.
The trip is part of a decades-long crusade by teacher Samia Essabaa, herself the daughter of North African Arab immigrants, to give her students an opening onto the world outside the banlieue.
“It’s hard enough for my students to go outside their neighbourhoods let alone abroad,” Essabaa says.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Essabaa reflected on how she could address anti-Semitism among Muslim immigrant students, who often identify with Palestinians suffering at the hands of Israelis. In 2005, she first took immigrant students to Auschwitz to teach them the reality of the Holocaust. She later published a book entitled Youths from the Housing Projects Discover the Holocaust.
Essabaa raises funds from private donors for two school trips abroad each year, to countries as diverse as Japan, Morocco, Senegal, the UK and US. The French government has three times honoured Essabaa for her pioneering work.
Laura Dagg, head of the economics section of the Irish embassy, befriended Essabaa years ago. Dagg arranged for Josepha Madigan, Minister of State for Special Education and Inclusion, and ambassador Niall Burgess to visit the lycée last February. Burgess promised to receive students at the embassy before they head for Ireland.
The embassy visit provides an introduction to Irish diplomacy and history, but is most of all a source of encouragement for the young women, aged between 16 and 19, and their teachers. Four of the young women’s families hail from Sub-Saharan Africa, four from the Maghreb.
When the teenagers’ parents find work, it is usually as cleaning ladies or labourers. Everything is difficult: housing, money, residence papers, the French language.
I ask Assoidou, a pretty, 16-year-old daughter of immigrants from Mali who wears her hair in beaded plaits, what frightens her most. “Finding a job really worries me,” she says.
The young women wear runners, leggings and jackets. They at first seem intimidated by the splendour of the embassy. On entering the dining room, with its Louis XV oak panelling, crystal chandeliers and polished mahogany table for 16, they raise smartphones to take photos, like tourists.
“When you go to Ireland, you will discover a country that is at the same time young and very old,” Burgess tells them. “The State is young. We are celebrating our centenary this year. Eighteen per cent of our population were born abroad or hold dual nationality, which is enriching and a source of diversity. You will find a country that looks outward; to France, to Europe and across the Atlantic to the US.”
Many of Essabaa’s students come from conflict zones, which explains why they are fascinated by the Troubles, she says. One young woman asks if Belfast is still a divided city. Another wants to know why so-called peace walls have not come down, as they did in Berlin. A third enquires about links between the US civil rights movement and Northern Ireland Catholics.
In a country where a degree from a prestigious grande école is often considered a prerequisite for success, the ambassador’s executive assistant and the embassy’s logistics officer tell how they were hired with only a BTS, a two-year diploma like those the young women work for.
Setbacks are normal, the Irish entrepreneur Conor O’Riain, who heads the green cement company Ecocem and who is helping to finance the trip, says in his pep talk.
“We can become something if we really want to,” Lorshina, aged 19 and a recent immigrant from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, tells me. “The thing that inspired me the most was when he [O’Riain] said we must not fear failing.”
“You must tell yourselves that you do not have to stay [in the banlieue],” the lycée’s principal, Clémence Pontal, says. “The things you learn, your studies, they are the key to leaving.”
“This morning was worth a hundred mornings in the classroom. You’ll remember this,” Essabaa says. The young women nod in agreement.
