The Spider-Man of Paris Is Just One of Many
Many people who have run the undocumented immigrant’s obstacle course successfully are potential heroes.
Skilled.
Photographer: AFP Contributor/AFPMamoudou Gassama, the Spider-Man of Paris who saved a four-year-old boy by climbing spectacularly to a fourth-floor balcony, is pretty much the worst kind of immigrant as far as European populists — and, indeed, European governments — are concerned.
He is a 22-year-old Muslim male from the southwest of Mali. A civil conflict smolders in the country’s north, but that wouldn’t qualify him for refugee status. He’s rural, uneducated and unqualified. He arrived in France illegally, after sailing to Italy from Libya, likely assisted by that country’s people traffickers. He has spent months in France as an undetected economic migrant of the kind construction bosses like. He’s worked for cash on construction sites and slept on a mattress between two bunk beds in a 160 square foot room in Montreuil, a Paris suburb, or banlieu, that’s home to up to 10,000 other immigrants from Mali, out of some 76,700 natives of that country who live in France, according to the United Nations. Parts of Montreuil have a reputation as no-go zones.