The Best Hope for France’s Young? Get Out(nytimes.com)

  "And then there is France. In the realms of cultural, 
  diplomatic, linguistic or economic policies, the French
  have long and eloquently insisted on their nation's 
  "exceptionalism." Yet a new form of exceptionalism, 
  no less eloquent, though far more brutal, now burdens 
  them: since 2011, France has seen at least a dozen men
  and women who have either set, or tried to set, 
  themselves aflame.

  The cradle of the Enlightenment, France now glimpses 
  a very different light, one that makes visible the 
  darkness of its economic and social malaise.

  The series of self-immolations has ranged across the
  country, from Flanders in the north through the suburbs
  of Paris to the Pyrenees in the south. No less varied 
  are the workplaces to each of these suicides: a lycée
  teacher, a carpenter, a company manager. Moreover,
  there is a mix of class and ethnic backgrounds: among 
  the victims are so-called "français de souche" (white 
  and native born French) as well as foreign nationals
  who had lived for years in France.

  Beyond the static of differences, though, one can see 
  common and disconcerting themes. In all of these cases,
  the victim was either unemployed or employed in a 
  position whose pressures ultimately grew intolerable.
  In the town of Beziers, a mathematics teacher slightly
  more than a year ago set herself on fire in the 
  school's courtyard--an "act of desperation" that 
  investigators attributed to "professional reasons." 
  Last summer in the Parisian suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie,
  an unemployed man, learning his welfare benefits had
  come to an end, immolated himself outside the local 
  unemployment office. In 2011, a France-Telecom employee
  in the southern city of Orange set a match to his 
  gasoline-drench clothing in a parking lot near his 
  office building--one among several suicides at the 
  company since it began to lay off employees in its 
  effort to restructure."