[nicky g]

"It sounds like a lot of the arabs and protesters in France were the children and grandchildren of collaborators with the French during the fight for Algerian Independance - so in many ways, they were dispossessed from the Arab world for siding with France."

Depends what you mean by a lot. Many of the harkis went to France but I doubt they made up anything like a majority of Algerian immigrants, so I'm not sure they can be used as an explanatory factor for trends amongst immigrants. Most people went for economic reasons. There was already a big immigrant population pre-independence; indeed the FLN (Algerian independence movement) had a large, active wing in France - some argue that it essentially started there.