It is hard to imagine student protesters from the Sor­bonne marching down the street between Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, the decrepit Paris suburbs where riots first broke out last year among the disaffected youth of France’s poor immigrants.

Yet this is exactly what Sema, a 26-year-old unemployed mother of two in Clichy-sous-Bois, would like to see. “If those students came up here and saw what it was like, they might still be protesting, but at least they would have a better idea of why,” she says.