Image: Screenshot/FIFA Channel video
The image of the French team celebrating their glorious world cup victory represents the best of sporting spirit and enthusiasm for competition.
But the 2018 French team is no ordinary outfit.
It is a bunch of highly talented and skilled players who thrilled the world with their scintillating displays on the Russian soccer fields, and won the ultimate prize in the world’s most popular sport with a 4-2 win over unfancied Croatia.
Additionally, the team speaks for the French diversity, a powerful reminder of the wealth and talent that diversity and immigration brings to nations.
The French have been grappling with the question of immigration in recent years as terror attacks have tested the country’s commitment to liberty, equality and fraternity for all. Immigrants of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian origin have a hard time finding recognition as productive members of the country.
The contributions of immigrants often get lost in the anti-immigrant rhetoric that the right political groups employ to paint entire communities in bad light and advance their politics.
Thanks to President Emmanuel Macron ‘s victory in the 2017 election, the majority of French cast off the narrative of fears and xenophobia and chose to stay true to their own values of respect for tolerance and enlightenment.
Yet, France has much to do to cleanse its own soul. The French society has to talk straight. It has a pole-vaulting to perform – end discrimination that immigrants of African descent and Muslims face in professional fields and at multiple societal levels – sometimes ordained by the local governments.
The sheer number of immigrant players in the French team is in itself a story of sporting triumph – 15 of the footballers are of African origin. Mercurial forward Kylian Mbappe, with his Algerian mother and Cameroonian father – symbolizes a huge story of immigrant success.
Mbappé playing against Russia in Saint Petersburg, March 2018 Image Credit: Кирилл Венедиктов/Wikimedia
But Champs-Élysées in the heart of Paris is not the only place of celebration midsummer Sunday evening.
The French victory’s relevance to the international stage is also unmissable.
The world is faced with the largest refugee crisis since WWII and people displaced by stifled Arab Spring movements and Middle Eastern civil wars and African conflicts find few shrinking hosts.
Britain and Germany, the other two large European economies, have also their work cut out for themselves as they seek ways to ensure a steady supply of workers for high growth in the years ahead. Britain’s Brexit from EU, partly a result of views about immigrants, has touched off a storm of implications.
As for the U.S., immigrants with their innovation and hard work remain critical to its advantage over international competitors including China.
Just as the then candidate Donald Trump took the immigration debate to an unusually high level of focus during the 2016 election campaign, the role of immigrants got renewed spotlight when six of the seven American Nobel Prize winners that year turned out to be immigrants.
Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow Photo: Mos.ru/Wikimedia
Indeed the French world cup win appears to be an emulation of what the United States has been savoring for decades with its huge diversity. Some of the top basketball players are African-Americans and some of the eminent scientists, physicians, academics, artists, IT entrepreneurs and engineers that have worked wonders for the U.S. are immigrants.
According to a Pew Research study, the United States will need to maintain current levels of workers influx to sustain handsome economic growth rates. Both highly skilled professionals and workers are vital to the U.S. keeping its economic growth strong in the foreseeable future.
A spate of recent setbacks to globalization, trade wars, travel restrictions and the cut-throat competition for technological superiority have thrown new questions for the world.
Can we afford to deprive ourselves of diversity of talent, cultures, creativity and innovation – the very essence of human capital – in these times of stiff competition?
Peniel Joseph, a professor of history at the University of Texas in Austin, offered some insight in an article posted on the CNN website:
“We can no longer afford to pretend that immigrants entering any nation on earth are not fellow citizens seeking the opportunity to thrive and become citizens of a reimagined world community. France’s World Cup team demonstrates to all how immigration, at its best, holds the key to a liberated and more humane future for us all.”
But tonight is the night of the soccer, and the French players who excelled on the field. This night of success needs to be followed by a sunlit day that keeps everyone clear-eyed about the riches of inclusiveness and pluralism.
