Phineas Rueckert is a Paris-based journalist. His writing has appeared in Vice and Next City.
Left-winger Gabriel Boric became Chile’s president two years ago on a wave of popular mobilization. But with a constitutional rewrite in tatters, plans to reform the country’s privatized pension system pose a tough test of his ability to make lasting changes.
Paris’s flashy new venues for the 2024 Olympics depend on the rather less glamorous labor of undocumented migrant workers. Their recent strike action showed how much the Games depend on them — and won them the right to regular migration status.
A new security law from Emmanuel Macron’s government will roll out an AI-based biometric categorization system. The law is billed as a measure for the 2024 Paris Olympics — but also allows a vast expansion of intrusive surveillance.
Emmanuel Macron promised he’d shorten France’s two-million-long waiting list for public housing. But the promised construction boom hasn’t materialized — and even poorly maintained housing is becoming ever more unaffordable.
Emmanuel Macron promised to end homelessness in his first year in office — but over his five-year term, it actually increased. Now, with the Left leading polls for June’s parliamentary elections, Macron’s failure on housing is coming back to haunt him.
French Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel is running for the presidency — and even polling ahead of the long-powerful Socialists. But a campaign heavy on identity also shows that the old workers’ parties are struggling to speak to a changed working class.