The increasing number of visible headscarves has been attributed by some to a rise in extremist activity in France, in particular in poor immigrant suburbs.

We were in Les Bosquets, one of the impoverished housing projects that are scattered across the banlieues, the heavily immigrant working-class suburbs that surround Paris.

Ultimately, his ideas could be applied to the new immigrant suburbs of the Midwest or the flood-ruined neighborhoods of New Orleans.

He was arrested a few days later in a two-room ground-floor apartment of an abandoned building in Romainville, another immigrant suburb, northeast of Paris.

Job discrimination was a key complaint voiced by many youths who rioted in immigrant suburbs in recent weeks.

Within the regular police force are security officers of Arab or Muslim origin often recruited from the tough, largely immigrant suburbs of major cities.

Underlying some of that resentment is that groups of young people descend on the Champs-Élysées from the working-class immigrant suburbs on weekend nights.

Once intended to encourage creative input from Lyon's immigrant suburbs, the parade now attracts diverse social strata.

He complained that the immigrant suburbs had been neglected by the current government.

His backing has increased in recent months, a result of the riots that swept through France's poor and mainly immigrant suburbs last year.