Let’s not believe that the melodrama played around the coming of Medina at EELV and the Insoumis would have revealed in the latter who knows what clumsiness or lack of political sense. On the contrary, the very echo encountered by this initiative attests that the political coup was concerted and successful. From a simple point of view of political communication, the entry into play of the components of the Nupes at the approach of an election year is a great success. Of course, this all might sound a little messy. We could well say that the political stunts of the radical left flirt with the unacceptable. That all this does not really meet the concerns of deep France (of which the Socialist Party, jokingly, wonders if it is not, ultimately, a simple bunch of “beaufs”, sic).
In truth, according to these summer tribune effects, we can see what is becoming a red thread within the French political class. Something like a subject that is now a major focus of public debate, and almost the only theme on which all parties position themselves. This theme is immigration. Because behind Medina, it is indeed the whole strategy of conquest of second or third generation immigrants that is at stake, with all the identity assignation that this implies – all of this is well known, but neither the cynicism nor the mediocre clientelism of this strategy do not stop it.
At the same time, during river interviews, the President of the Republic is summoned to draw a clear line on immigration, the contours of which he has decided to redefine. His expression trying on the one hand to dissipate the specter of a migratory submersion, while not underestimating the problem of integration, and reserving a place for chosen immigration, seems to observers not to give enough importance chin thrusts and unilaterally restrictive measures. The Republicans, so absent subscribers that one wonders if they are even still subscribers, are only expected on this front: will they be able to twist the presidential arm towards greater rigor in migration matters? For Fabien Roussel, things are clear: we must strengthen the borders. In this he is faithful to the traditional workerist line of the Communist Party: uncontrolled immigration produces social dumping unfavorable to the working classes. On the extreme right (the real one), we dig the furrow by drawing from the riots of June all the possible conclusions on the misdeeds of immigration and the impossibility of integration. Moreover, the media Livre Noir is preparing a great evening of debates on the theme, oh surprise, of immigration. Even within the presidential majority, divisions are emerging between a left wing heir to social-democratic benignity and a right wing determined to break spears on this theme.
Immigration, the last cartridge usable for electoral purposes
No other subject traces such a continuum within the political world. No other subject fascinates commentators to such an extent. No other subject sees confronting positions that are so clear-cut and ultimately quite consistent with each other’s political identities. Neither on the economy, nor on education, nor on Europe do we detect such a clear political framework. It is only on this theme that the balls are returned from one end of the court to the other. Everything else gets lost in the net, for lack of imagination, ideas and probably media interest.
We are not going to believe, however, that the superb unanimity of politicians to place this subject at the top of the agenda outlines concrete courses of action. And that’s the problem. Immigration is something of the last cartridge that can be used for electoral purposes by political parties that are out of breath on the ideological and intellectual level. It’s the last lifeline in a long conceptual agony. It is the catch-all of exhausted organizations which do not catch, in truth, any more of the real stakes of France in the world such as it goes. Here we are back in the heyday of the 1980s, when the disintegration of political reading grids began, when communism was collapsing and François Mitterrand was playing electoral cap. The debate on immigration was then very similar to the one we are experiencing, forty years later: undecided, cynical, superficial. And, as we can clearly see a few decades later, profoundly inefficient.
* Sylvain Fort is an essayist