Twilight of the Elites

A passionate account of how the gulf between France"™s metropolitan elites and its working classes are tearing the country apart   Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an "American society""”one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy"™s winners and losers in today"™s France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on "the periphery. "   As Guilluy shows, there is no unified French economy, and those cut off from the country"™s new economic citadels suffer disproportionately on both economic and social fronts. In Guilluy"™s analysis, the lip service paid to the idea of an "open society" in France is a smoke screen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes. The ruling classes in France are reaching a dangerous stage, he argues; without the stability of a growing economy, the hope for those excluded from growth is extinguished, undermining the legitimacy of a multicultural nation.