Has France Abandoned Marseille? – Originally Published: Marseille, 2021

Marseille is the second largest city in France, the oldest city in France, and the least French city in France. Ask any French person what they think of Marseille, the answer will be the same: “This is not France”. Said with a mixture of disgust and indignation, as if you’d offended the entire nation by reminding it of its unwanted Mediterranean tumour they’d rather cut off and cast into the ocean. They’d keep the Calanques though. But they’re not wrong – Marseille is not France, and I love it for that.  

What drew me here? Was it the city’s shady and dangerous reputation? No. Then perhaps it’s unique urban multiculturalism? Again no. Then it must be the history, that juicy mashing of Gallic, Greek, Italian, and French legacies left to us in pottery and stone? Surprisingly not. Actually it was the sun. And the wine. Not sorry. Nestled between Montpellier and Nice, Marseille enjoys the same warm spring days, glittering blue Mediterranean, pale pink rosé that is the foundation of that hyper-commercialised French Riviera package, the ideal southern lifestyle. And yet Marseille is ignored. Bypassed by the famed Autoroute du Soleil which ferries tens of thousands of French, Dutch and German tourists to sunburns and langoustines each year, the few cars that do turn off the A8 are undoubtfully heading to picturesque Aix-en-Provence, or the influencer infested refuges of Cassis or La Ciotat. Hidden from the city by the Parc national des Calanques, a mere 20km away from Marseille, these charming and undeniably beautiful towns are a socio-economic world away from the nearby metropolis. So, what’s wrong with Marseille? Well nothing actually. Except that it wouldn’t pass for a Hollywood setting of a French romance/drama. Oh, and its poor. And black. And yes, to some extent, dangerous.  

In 2018 Marseille made global headlines when two buildings in the city centre collapsed. One was derelict, the other, tragically, was not. Eight bodies were found in the rubble. A student, a painter, an unemployed African male with no papers, and an immigrant woman – mother to eight children. And this to occur after 40,000 such buildings had already been declared unfit for habitation. That’s 10% of the city’s housing. In the ensuing protests against the city council and the state of housing, a balcony collapsed injuring three more. Anger focused upon the conservative mayor of Marseilles, Jean-Claude Gaudin, who had held office for twenty-five years until 2020. But he is just a prominent face in this whole rotten story. Slumlords who roll dice over the lives of (mostly immigrant) families. Decaying buildings packed with desperate tenants in an inhumane game of sardines. And bureaucracy. Faceless, unyielding bureaucracy that at the best of times is just an annoyance, an afternoon of papers and tiring back-and-forth’s. But bureaucracy which, in cases like this, is life-destroying. Not just for the victims and families of the deceased, but just as much for the living.

A report in The Irish Times (link below) cites:  

Emilie and her partner had purchased a fifth-floor apartment with a balcony and sea views two years earlier. The city demolished their home on the day of the collapse. Emilie’s employer gives her a day off each week to deal with the bureaucracy. She fought for months to have their property loan put on hold, and to obtain compensation from their insurance company for the furniture that was destroyed. The government is now demanding the couple pay property tax on their apartment which no longer exists. 

French bureaucracy is notorious, at times ludicrous, and it does present real obstacles to change. However it is the same bureaucracy that supports France’s social welfare system, one heavily relied upon in a city where unemployment is nearly 50% higher than the national average. A city with a 25% poverty rate, and that amount again in so called ‘invisible poor’, the people living just above the poverty margin. Half the city is poor, the other half is working class. There is wealth of course, you can see it in the bougie cafés in the 6th arrondissement, in the gated houses snaking towards the mountains, and in the iconic tourist trap of Le Panier where I live. Yet in a city where the richest 10% earn fifteen times that of the poorest 10%, the streets belong to everyone. The Vieux Port is the de facto town plaza. Around the base of Fort Saint-Jean where I spend my evenings there are impressive stone walls and gently sloping embrasures which make very comfortable drinking booths, especially in Covid times. Here you will see young families and tourists giving the occasional drunk a wide berth, teenagers surrounded by bicycles and electric scooters, young people smelling of weed midst a nest of empty bottles and men fishing from the litter-strewn rocks. There is always someone playing music on a portable speaker. During rush hour you can stand outside Marseille-Saint-Charles, the train station, and survey the bedlam. Mopeds driven with as much skill as MotoGP bikes dodge spotless BMW’s and Mercedes’. Ascending from the depts, crowds of workers come past in waves, delivered by metro every two minutes. You can see the Port d’Aix down the street, Marseille’s Arc de Triumph. Unlike its Parisian cousin it is surrounded not by camera-wielding tourists, but by scores of unemployed men smoking, playing music, playing football – all men. Everywhere there are beggars. The noise is catastrophic. It’s hot, and the air is heavy with fumes, weed, and spices. It is chaos, and it is inescapable.  

But this is just the Marseille I live in. It’s the Marseille of the impoverished expat, at home in a colourful world of immigrants and cheap wine where everything has just the right amount of grit to satisfy my down-and-out adventurism born of a privileged western upbringing – relatively speaking. My Marseille is not the one of news headlines, human trafficking and murders. Ten minutes’ walk from my apartment I find myself in the 3rd arrondissement, the poorest department in mainland France. Here, I am definitely an outsider, as would be any white French person in their mid-twenties. The disparity in wealth and ways of life is striking, as is my ignorance of the customs and cultures that surround me. Yet the criminal city of Marseille is as inconsequential to these families as it is to me. Yes, organised crime exists here. But you’re not going to see it unless you go looking for it. 2012-2015 saw a homicide rate of 2.7 per 100,000. Baltimore’s is close to 50, though perhaps that’s an unfair comparison. For the majority of people living here, the crimes close to home are the same as in any large city: theft, robbery, and drug related problems. Paris closely tails Marseille in residents experience of criminal activity with a few exceptions: corruption and bribery is considerably higher in Marseille, but polling shows that ‘worries being subject to a physical attack because of your skin colour, ethnic origin, gender or religion’ are drastically lower in Marseille. Whilst this may not be so important, or even conceivable, to me and most white men in Europe, it is a major concern for many – namely anyone who isn’t white, European, and a man. 
 

Marseille is not a racist city, at least by European standards. Does that mean racism is non-existent? Of course not. But the Marseillais take pride in their city’s polyethnicity. Gentrification has taken place in some areas, notably the residential 6th arrondissement, but by and large the city remains a multi-national jumble. I buy my bread from a Tunisian, beer from a Lebanese, vegetables from a Spaniard. Meat is mostly halal. My neighbour Phillipe is Algerian. In a nearby square Indians play cricket on Sundays. You are as likely to hear Arabic on the street as French. From street-side shops the adhan plays on the radio. And everyone eats pizza. It is a glimpse past Le Rassemblement National propaganda, past the rising far-right, into a true multi-ethnic multi-religious society. If the future of Europe is to be found anywhere, it’s here. 

But that’s why it’s forgotten. In Marseille, you are Marseillais first. Here you could imagine it said ‘What have the French ever done for us?’. Or the Romans for that matter. Not the Greeks though – they’re great. And there it is, there’s the root of it. Marseille was founded as a Phocean city state. It predates France. For two thousand years the families who settled, worked and lived here died as Marseillais. Who cares where you’re from. If you live here, you’re one of us. You may come from some far-off corner of the globe, be categorised as French, Algerian, but if you want it, this city is yours. And uncountable thousands have made it so, much to the exasperation of the French, and the Romans before that. Massilia was so anti-Roman that particularly troublesome consuls or irritating politicians would be appointed governorship of the city by the emperor, a convenient method of quietly disposing of them. To keep the rebellious population in line, it is said, the forts protecting the port would have their cannons pointing at the city, not the sea. And yet the spirit of the city which could not be tamed gave the nation’s national anthem its name – La Marseillaise. Marseille has always stood for France, but independently. It is France, but it is Marseille first. It’s its own unique phenomena, and that is why it is rejected.  

I can only offer my perception of the matter, that is to say one of an outsider. And at risk of offending my French friends, what I have to say is in no way representative of them, or I am sure, most French people. Marseille has a history of being dangerous – a large port city with a huge immigrant population, go figure. In the last century the city was a hotbed for the Corsican mafia, and the French Connection. But the Marseille of today is a city with a different take on France. Here, French people live with Algerian neighbours, their kids go to school with Moroccan kids, they work with Vietnamese colleagues and buy halal meat. In Marseille everything is jumbled up, confined within natural boundaries by the mountains and the sea. Integration here is a historical institution, a necessity for the functioning of the city. This is painfully at odds with the rest of France, where cities are divided on ethnic and economic differences. The poverty in Marseille is inescapable because the city is simply too small. It cannot offer the same white upper-middle class bubble to enjoy the sun in as the other Mediterranean cities. Is it pretty? Not really. It is gritty and unapologetic. But it is alive, welcoming and vibrant.  

Things are changing however, and I may be part of the problem. So far the city has seen little urban regeneration, something it desperately needs in light of the 2018 disaster. But things have been changing. Tourism is on the rise. Attitudes towards the city are changing. There are fears of accelerated redevelopment which would push low income households out of the city centre. My neighbour Phillipe has to go back to Algeria, taking only what he can carry, and Kiki his dog. Rising rents and private developers coupled with the city’s laziness to tackle slumlords and lack of facilities are in danger of splitting the city in line with conventional socio-economic divisions. My small but recently renovated apartment in the up-and-coming Panier district, I am sure, housed a family in the not so distant past. Given the area, most likely an immigrant one. Now it houses three twenty-something year old expats for €890 a month. And it’s 34sq/m – that’s small for that price. But that’s what’s on the horizon. The great irony is of course that we could not live here were it not for Covid – it’s meant to be an AirBnB. So maybe in twenty years time Marseille will have changed, become like Nice or Toulouse (or god-forbid, Paris). Maybe it will be the place to be, a safe, expensive, bougie city on the pristine Mediterranean sea, full of uniform looking people eating uniform food and talking about uniform things. Or maybe Marseille will kick back. Maybe here a case can be made for the benefits of tolerance, inclusion and anti-right wing activism. Flawed and impoverished, yes. But in its own chaotic, colourful and easy-going way, the city works. It’s a big ask, and maybe a touch idealistic, but it gives me hope. Has France abandoned Marseille? Yes, but Marseille was never France’s to abandon. So don’t be put off by what people say. Take the plunge and try to see the city on its terms, through its own eyes. Come to Marseille. Open yourself up to new experiences, new people, a new way of doing things. Or perhaps it’s the oldest way of doing things. Everyone enjoys the same sun here. Soak it up, kick back, talk to people and laugh. Become Marseillais for a day.  

Links to articles:  

“We recommend you don’t go near this dangerous and corruptly run city”. The stereotypical and inexcusably racist perception of Marseille: https://www.iconicriviera.com/crime-in-marseille/  

Crime comparison Marseille/Paris: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=France&country2=France&city1=Marseille&city2=Paris&tracking=getDispatchComparison  

“Corrupt, dangerous and brutal to its poor – but is Marseille the future of France?”:https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jun/08/corrupt-dangerous-brutal-poor-marseille-future-france  

“Avant l’effondrement des immeubles, la gestion de l’habitat par la mairie de Marseille déjà critiquée”: https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2018/11/09/gestion-de-l-habitat-indigne-la-mairie-de-marseille-etrillee-par-l-agence-regionale-de-sante-avant-l-effondrement-des-immeubles_5381423_3224.html  

“A year after fatal building collapse, something is still rotten in Marseille”: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/a-year-after-fatal-building-collapse-something-is-still-rotten-in-marseille-1.4073527  

“Long integrated, Marseille spared from unrest”: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10045042  

“La pauvreté s’aggrave à Marseille”: https://www.la-croix.com/France/Exclusion/pauvrete-saggrave-Marseille-2018-10-04-1200973739  

“As Slums Teeter in Marseille, a Poverty Crisis Turns Deadly”: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/world/europe/france-marseille-building-collapse.html