"There are 7,000 people here. Seventy percent are unemployed. Six hundred and fifty families receive the state minimum living wage." Manu Daher, a social worker in La Castellane, a housing project in the French city of Marseille best known for having spawned legendary footballer Zinedine Zidane, reels off a list of statistics that paint the image of a typical French banlieue, or housing project.
Sitting at his desk, he runs through the typical career prospects of young people growing up in the grim estate of high-rise apartment blocks, which is home to 24 communities, mainly first- or second-generation African immigrants. "If you're a girl it's secretary or a cleaner. For boys it's mason, security guard or electrician."
He deliberately omits another option - one that pays far more than the minimum wage. Eight marijuana syndicates and one cocaine syndicate are run out of La Castellane, with children as young as 13 paid to act as guetteurs (lookouts). Posted outside the entrance to each building, youth in jeans, baseball caps and hooded tops with the hoods pulled over their caps scan the horizon for police cars as deals go down in the shade of a tree or a hallway. With the starting salary for a guetteur running at 80 euros (104 dollars) for a half-day and 120 euros for nights, the temptation for children to stray is strong.
"We try to fight it but we can't save everybody," says Daher, a stocky Franco-Lebanese father of three, who admits he too flirted with petty crime before being rescued by a social worker. As France gets ready to vote for its president on April 22, the plight of the banlieues - which burst onto the international consciousness in 2005 when youth of mostly North African origin rioted for three weeks - is back in focus.
Back then President Nicolas Sarkozy was a tough-talking interior minister, promising to take a "power hose" to "scum" youth in troubled suburbs. After becoming president in 2007 he pledged to pour money into education, transport, security and housing as part of an ambitious programme called Espoir (Hope) Banlieues.
Some of the grimier apartment blocks around Paris were torn down and replaced with low-rise units, and new "schools of excellence" were created but most of the plan was never implemented. In Marseille, police are battling a wave of gangland killings that, while mainly targeting drug bosses, has also seen children in the suburbs targeted or caught in the crossfire.
In November 2010, a 16-year-old guetteur was killed and a 11-year-old boy seriously injured after a gang sprayed the entrance to a tower in the Marseille estate of Clos de la Rose with bullets. Last year, a 17-year-old guetteur was shot dead in La Castellane. In both cases the killers used Kalashnikov assault rifles.
The social centre tries to keep children on the straight and narrow, by offering them workshops in video production, rap, cookery and football. But it's always a battle to get the government funding. "Politicians know nothing about our life here," says Fatima Hani, the national secretary of AC Le Feu, a human rights collective in Clichy-sous-Bois, the Paris suburb where the 2005 riots began.
"They promise us the sun and the stars, but in the end of the day they do nothing," she sighs. Latifah Chouaref, a 19-year-old student in Clichy-sous-Bois, said she expected the next president to prioritise education and "come here regularly to speak to us."
On Tuesday, Sarkozy made a lightning campaign stop to a housing project near Clichy-sous-Bois that was kept under wraps until the last minute for fear of protests over his "scum" remark. Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande lingered longer, spending two days in the north-eastern Paris suburbs over Easter where he stressed the importance for young people to cast a vote.
"The vote of a suburban youth is equivalent to the vote of a CAC 40 boss," he told a rally of about 2,000 people, referring to the 40 biggest companies on the French stock exchange "Don't let others decide for you," he urged. "Some may be richer than you but you, you are far more numerous than them."
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