France: A Crisis of Integration
Nair, Sami
Since the mid-1970s, signs of Balkanization have arisen in France. Xenophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism are becoming more common, and the country's tradition of lafcite (secularism)—the radical...
...With this in mind, we can divide the immigration debate into three major periods: The "Immigration Question" Emerges (1974-1981) During this period, the French socioeconomic system, confronted with globalization and constraints imposed by the growing power of the European Community, underwent decisive changes...
...Best for them to "go back home...
...At the same time, the struggle against illegal immigration intensified, and new obstacles were placed in the way of family reunification...
...But political elites, far from adopting a firm pedagogical orientation based on respect for the rights of persons, have only accentuated the malaise by promulgating repressive laws...
...The left won the presidential and legislative elections of 1981 with promises to combat unemployment, but also to integrate legal immigrants and to protect their rights...
...Social Integration and Cultural Assimilation Integration via assimilation has been France's response to foreign minorities since the nineteenth century...
...it is more often a simple function of party politics and opportunism...
...The banlieues, besieged by high unemployment, became social powder-kegs...
...Mohamed to relinquish his cultural attachments...
...The most basic reason is that the question of immigration has starkly revealed the overall crisis of social integration that affects ever broader sectors of the French working population...
...this applies as well to the spouses of foreigners and their children if they entered France before the age of ten...
...All this is jeopardized, however, if the system's capacity for socioeconomic integration is stymied...
...Rather, it defines public behavior, without precluding expressions of cultural singularity within the private sphere...
...While immigration increasingly became part of the general problem of social integration, it also unquestionably raised real issues of identity, for the immigrants and for French society as a whole...
...78 • DISSENT...
...It is true, of course, that even in the private sphere, individuals face social pressures to conform to the dominant cultural model...
...The influx of newcomers, it is claimed, threatens the traditional French model...
...The main point is that social integration makes possible cultural assimilation and the latter, in turn, aims to reinforce citizenship...
...Prejudice and conflict have often reared their heads, but in the end, assimilation has almost always been successful, and newcomers have been transformed into French citizens...
...Since the idea of returning to their native country was neither a real nor a desirable option for most—and even though the government paid a few thousand to do so—their real issue was how to stabilize their circumstances in France...
...The mainstream ("classic") right, egged on by the demagogy of the National Front, proposed a major reform of the Nationality Code: the abandonment of the droit du sol (the principle of granting citizenship to all those born on French soil...
...they thereby initiated a debate on French national identity...
...The droit du sol was maintained...
...The term assimilation may have a negative connotation for those who think all ethnic groups must necessarily form their own distinct communities within the broader society, with special rights of collective self-expression...
...q My thanks to James Cohen for his help in writing this article...
...Its strategy might be called "integration with closure...
...But the fact is that since the 1980s politicians have presented SUMMER • 1996 • 75 French Integration Crisis immigration as a "threat," a key social problem in itself...
...The struggle against inflation and the defense of a strong franc left it impotent in the struggle against unemployment...
...Integration with "Closure" (1981-1993) Between 1981 and 1993, the situation changed completely...
...The borders were closed, for immigrants were accused of taking jobs away from native-born citizens...
...A system of permanent and renewable residency permits was created for legal immigrants...
...Moreover, France has an additional bone of contention with Islam, rooted in the colonization and decolonization of North Africa...
...The French republican model, with its twin universalist and assimilationist goals, appears more and more on the defensive...
...From 1974, when legal immigration was officially halted, to the present, mainstream political rhetoric has referred to immigration as a "problem...
...With the second victory of the left in 1988, there was a return to the status quo ante...
...Broad sectors of the French working classes and even middle strata found their jobs increasingly insecure, and soon more radical forms of exclusion appeared, aimed especially at immigrants...
...To repel it, France would have had to break altogether from the process of European integration...
...Economic support to depressed urban areas was reaffirmed, although it involved more media hype than substantive measures...
...Mixed" marriages (between a French citizen and a foreigner) are regarded by officials with suspicion, and those who "look" like "foreigners" are increasingly liable to be checked for identity papers in the street...
...It calls on the government to keep files on anyone who houses foreigners and empowers the government to confiscate the passports of asylumseekers and foreigners whose situation is judged "irregular...
...the use of anti-immigrant racism as a political resource by parties of the right and far right...
...Still, the government kept the door shut to further immigration...
...SUMMER • 1996 • 77 French Integration Crisis Exclusion as Policy (1993 to the Present) A third period opened in 1993 when neoGaullist Interior Minister Charles Pasqua proposed a set of new laws...
...This idea received some backing in intellectual circles, too...
...Xenophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism are becoming more common, and the country's tradition of lafcite (secularism)—the radical separation of the state from all forms of religion—has been confronted with a revival of religious identities...
...The targets of this proposed legislation are legal immigrants, not those who have entered the country in a clandestine manner...
...The question today is different because it is internal: it concerns a Muslim minority that is destined, like the Protestants and the Jews before them, to assimilate into the French cultural mold...
...The right came to power again between 1986 and 1988 but did not have time to implement this idea...
...From 1983 on, the French left chose Europe and adaptation to 76 • DISSENT French Integration Crisis neoliberalism, abandoning its original leftKeynesianism...
...But Giscard's response—and his very language— only created more obstacles to its resolution...
...Obviously, these severe conditions make family reunification more difficult...
...For the third time in France's history, its Catholic majority faced a population of a different religion...
...became the question of the day...
...Finally, longterm (ten-year) residency permits can be denied to anyone who has committed petty offenses, including "disturbing the peace," no matter how long ago...
...Any weaknesses are, of course, my own...
...This is the context in which France has been debating immigration...
...In 1992, of the 110,000 immigrants who were authorized to enter France, over half were family members of persons already legally established in the country...
...Later, in 1981, Giscard denounced their "invasion" of France...
...It was put forward initially within the broader framework of candidate Francois Mitterrand's proposals for workers...
...Fully integrating Algeria into France would have brought about a long-term demographic change: the Arab and Berber populations would have become a significant portion of the French nation...
...For others, mostly on the right, assimilation is impossible because immigrants, especially Muslims, are bearers of mores and beliefs that are deemed to be incompatible with the French tradition...
...Life is certainly easier for a citizen named Jean Dupont than for one named Mohamed Sidi Mohamed...
...Instead of confronting these changes head on, French elites focused first on the margins of the system—that is, on those who were not perceived as a "natural" part of it...
...The second law eliminates French constitutional obligations to grant asylum...
...The first of the three Pasqua laws partly undoes the droit du sol: children born to immigrants in France now must officially declare their desire to be French citizens...
...There was, indeed, a real problem, as I have indicated—that of immigration in the context of a shrinking labor market...
...The postwar compromise between capital and state went into crisis, with growing structural unemployment, de-industrialization, the destabilization of established social institutions, together with an increasing presence of women in the workplace and the spread of insecure forms of employment...
...Shortly after coming to power in 1981, the left was confronted by a wave of neoliberalism sweeping across Europe...
...Then-president Valery Giscard d'Estaing asserted that immigrants— those from North Africa in particular— were "unassimilable" because they were too different culturally...
...Their children, born on French soil, were already legally French...
...This happened just when a cycle of massive layoffs began to affect French workers...
...now it was Muslims entering— or trying to enter—the French melting pot...
...As a result, France was one of the very few countries in Europe whose foreign population actually declined during the 1980s, from 3.7 million in 1982 (6.8 percent of the total French population) to just under 3.4 million in 1990 (6.4 percent...
...But no law requires Mr...
...There has been nothing quite like it since the Vichy government's laws against Jews in 1940...
...Assimilation implies rights—especially equality before the law—and obligations, such as loyalty to the French state...
...The mainstream right that governs France today has adopted some of the extreme right's values and does not appear to have measured the consequences of this choice...
...The Socialist-led government, though it helped to legitimate the presence of immigrants in French society by insisting on the recognition of both their rights and their obligations, failed in its mission to solve the broader socioeconomic problem...
...While both sides agree on the need to block new immigration, the left, when it was in power, developed strategies that favored integration of those already legally established, whereas the right has been determined to "get tough" with immigrants in general, even at the risk of disrupting the lives of legal residents...
...But political rhetoric, sometimes quite vicious, about the "immigrant problem" is rarely accompanied by any coolheaded consideration of, say, the labor market...
...Who is French...
...For some people on the left, the very idea of "assimilating" immigrants is repugnant because it is reminiscent of an outmoded "Jacobin" worldview tainted with colonialism...
...There were three reasons why: the government's conversion to a neoliberalism that was incapable of dealing with the crisis of social integration...
...In the two earlier cases, integration entailed many difficulties—one need only recall the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre and the Dreyfus affair...
...The bill enables prefects (regional representatives of the central authorities) to expel foreigners, something only the minister of the interior could do up to now...
...It is perfectly legitimate for France to reduce immigration, while aiming to assimilate migrants who are already legally established...
...Once it had been Protestants and then the Jews...
...Only Algeria's independence resolved this matter...
...In the larger picture, however, the left failed to fulfill its program...
...Sailing in 1983, the right began to transform the social integration of immigrants into a "cultural" question...
...Exclusion, not integration, is now the heart of the agenda...
...and finally, the fact that many immigrants, having begun to define their life horizons within French society, also started posing the problem of their religious identity, thereby raising the question of Islam's place within the secular French republic...
...These were part of a broader policy aimed at undermining the status that foreign and immigrant workers have had since World War II...
...Catholic France, whether under the monarchy or under the republic, has displayed a stubborn resistance toward non-Catholics...
...The current minister of the interior, JeanLouis Debré, has further radicalized the situation with a bill that even Pasqua finds alarming...
...new rules for "family reunification" made it much easier to bring a spouse or children into the country...
...During the same period, immigrants started becoming more self-conscious about their situation...
...And a broader chill has accompanied these measures...
...Hence the aggravated worries about French identity...
...In the French context, however, assimilation does not mean forgoing one's religion, ethnic identity, or language...
...The third does away with the right of immigrants to obtain a residency permit after fifteen years in the country...
...The Socialist-led government also sought to improve the situation in the banlieues (outlying urban areas) where many immigrants live...
...Why is this the case...
...But a dynamic had been set in motion by which immigrants were defined repeatedly as being outside the system...
...No wonder that the eminent legal scholar Christian Bruschi has denounced this legislation as "xenophobic...
Vol. 43 • July 1996 • No. 3
