Again, it would seem, Paris is burning. The month-long protest against a proposed batch of labor reforms turned violent over the weekend.

In graphic scenes that recalled the student revolts of 1968, police began facing off with protesters in the capital and elsewhere across France with tear gas, firecrackers and stun grenades. Cars were set on fire, and young people threw bottles and rocks at officers, some of whom were seriously injured.

Paris’s Place de la Republique, the de facto center of this amorphous national protest, was transformed into an eerie spectacle of shouting and smoke.

In the months leading up to the protest, the pedestrian square had become Paris’s chosen site of collective mourning after the Nov. 13 attacks and the assault on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. But Republique has become a stage in its own right, a public portal where people come to criticize everything wrong with contemporary France.

This increasing tension comes at a time of considerable social and economic malaise in France. The unemployment rate here is hovering slightly above 10 percent, just below its record high from the mid-1990s. With only one year left in office, François Hollande, France’s Socialist president, faces a staggering unpopularity both inside and outside his party.

The government’s proposed labor reforms are intended to address the unemployment crisis: They would loosen some of France’s famous worker protections in the name of stimulating job creation. But these changes are also aimed at helping salvage Hollande’s reputation.

As he said earlier this year, if he “turned the unemployment curve around,” history would judge him kindly.

In the meantime, the present certainly has not: Hundreds of thousands of protesters, predominantly young, have taken to the streets in the past month. In theory, they are the same demographic the proposed reforms are meant to assist. But many of the protesters view the measures as an affront and a turn to the right.

To that end, even many of Hollande’s fellow leftists have thrown in the towel, threatening a new primary to oust him before the presidential election next year.

On Sunday — which was International Workers’ Day — the protests in France were joined by similar protests around the world.

In Turkey, police attempted to disperse a similar rally in Istanbul’s Taksim Square with tear gas and water cannons. In South Korea, tens of thousands rallied against labor reforms and advocated for a higher minimum wage. In Russia, tens of thousands marched across Moscow’s Red Square, calling for higher wages and more jobs for young people.

While some of these protests are typical and happen at this time every year, 2016’s roundup seemed to be marked by a particular fervor and a palpable sense of unrest.

In France, at least, as the National Assembly discusses the controversial labor laws that triggered these demonstrations in the first place, it remains to be seen whether the center will hold.

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