French elections: 'Here, immigration really and honestly isn't an issue'

Melissa Thackway has lived and worked in the vibrant Goutte d'Or area of Paris's 18th arrondissement, where 35% of the population are of immigrant – mainly Algerian and west African – origin, for more than 20 years now.

A teacher, documentary-film maker and specialist in French-language African cinema, she will, like most of her corner of the capital, be voting for François Hollande. In the first round a fortnight ago, 58% of voters in her local polling station cast their votes for Hollande, with Nicolas Sarkozy collecting 9.4% and Marine Le Pen 2.4%.

Thackway says people here are "very definitely" concerned by the presidential election. "They're very, very mobilised, even quite young voters from the immigrant community."

The area has seen large-scale urban regeneration over the past few years – new social housing projects replacing rundown 19th-century apartment buildings, a music centre, a library, a new cinema complex currently being completed in the old Luxor picturehouse at Barbès – at the initiative of the Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe.

"I think people plainly see what politicians, in this case Socialist politicians, can do when they put their mind to it," says Thackway. Plus, she says, there's "immense disappointment" with Sarkozy, who five years ago made "very encouraging noises" on discrimination and diversity that have since proved hollow.

"He appointed a minister for diversity," she says. "To be fair, the Socialists were really behind these issues; there's long been a failure in France to acknowledge the republican model of integration is fine in theory, but disguises terrible problems of inequality. It was infuriating to see a conservative take the lead.

"But I think Sarkozy's whole discourse since, and the outrageous remarks of some members of his government, show it was all electoral opportunism. Nonetheless, a lot of disenchanted people here bought into it. They're now massively disappointed."

The incumbent president, Thackway says, has managed to turn immigration – and more specifically the fear of Islam – into "the dominant theme of this election", while "what most people are really worried about is unemployment and the economy. Here, in one of the most ethnically mixed areas of Paris, 'immigration really and honestly isn't an issue."

In the school her daughter attends, a large majority of children do not eat pork, Thackway says: "But pork is served, as one of the choices, for the 10 or so who do eat it, and no parents have ever complained. Nor have any parents ever demanded halal. Those tensions genuinely just don't make themselves felt here."

That is not to say everything is rosy: there is poverty and high unemployment in the 18th, an area comparable in many ways to London's Tower Hamlets. But few here, she says, are fooled by the scaremongering attempts of some politicians to turn this election into a referendum on immigration.

Outside a polling station on the Rue Saint Mathieu, Ratiba, 34, agree: "I'm not saying there isn't discrimination. Of course there's work to be done. But it's not going to help setting communities up one against another, is it? That's what Sarkozy's done."

Jon Henley will be tweeting pictures and interviews using the hashtag #France2012tales, and posting Facebook updates at facebook.com/jon.henley100.

If you have any suggestions for people he should talk to or places he should visit, you can reach him through Facebook, on Twitter at @jonhenley, or by email at jon.henley@guardian.co.uk