Society since 1940

The surge of economic growth that lasted from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s brought extensive changes in French lifestyles and in some of society’s basic structures. As the century neared its end, most French people had come to enjoy greater comfort and security than their forebears; they took for granted automobiles, modern household appliances, and vacation homes in the country, which had been regarded as luxuries not too long before. The French had been converted to installment buying and supermarket shopping; they spent less on food and drink and more on health and leisure. Thanks to the social security system that was expanded after World War II, they were better protected against the hazards of illness, unemployment, and a neglected old age.

The most striking structural change taking place in France was rapid urbanization. The farm population, which stood at about one-third of the total population in 1940, fell to less than 5 percent in the 1990s, yet farm production increased as modern techniques spread, making France one of the world’s leading agricultural exporters. In the industrial regions, modern technology and a new managerial spirit brought France to the threshold of the postindustrial age. The proportion of unskilled workers declined in favour of technically trained specialists, and even more dramatic was the explosive growth in the number of white-collar employees and middle-level managers. At the base of this social pyramid was a new proletariat of immigrants from southern Europe and Africa, who provided the manual labour that most French workers were no longer willing to perform. In the 1990s these immigrants constituted between 5 and 10 percent of France’s population, and their presence fed social and racial tensions, aggravated by widespread joblessness.

Anti-immigrant resentment spurred the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, which called for casting out aliens and reclaiming “France for the French” but benefited more from morose protest against the sitting government than from prejudice. In 1999 the Front, which had always stood more for protest than principle, succumbed to internal dissensions and broke apart, but it experienced a dramatic rebirth under Le Pen’s daughter Marine. The challenge for French society in the 21st century came from a Europe without borders or national currencies—where workers, students, businesses, and immigrants from beyond the European Union could move freely from one country to another.

High culture has always seeped into popular culture and coloured it, perhaps more so in France than in other countries. Today, in France as elsewhere, the reverse is also true: the culture of everyday life encourages dislocations that elude socioeconomic and national boundaries. Differences of taste or of opinion, once dismissed as superficial, aggravate moral and political rifts. Sponsored by past Socialist governments as popular art, rock music in the 1960s called yé-yé (yeah-yeah) and hip-hop music and graffiti art at the end of the 20th century were perceived by some as playful and by others as threatening. In the 21st century multiculturalism was both welcomed as emancipating and scorned as divisive, as was the diffuse anti-Americanism, which for many stood in for antimodernism. All these disruptions were by-products of accelerated societal change.