At the beginning of the 1970s, the end of the Trente Glorieuses and the first oil crisis put an end to full employment and the myth of infinite growth. In a postcolonial France, which had become a middle power, the toughening of migration policies became a response to political, economic and social malaise.
It was in the wake of May 1968 that the place of immigrants in France became a major political issue. The origins have diversified, with the arrival of the Portuguese but also nationals from former French colonies, particularly from the Maghreb and West Africa. First of all, it is a demand for equality that is expressed in terms of housing and working conditions. The State is working to eliminate the numerous slums, notably those of Nanterre, mainly populated by Algerians, the last of which closed in 1972. The same year, foreigners had access to the positions of staff delegate and elected committee members. business.
Since 1945, the‘immigration of work is favored in a context linked to the reconstruction of the country. From 1968, however, regularization was limited to certain professions – this was the beginning of what would reappear in the 2000s under the name “selected immigration” -. In 1972, with the Marcellin-Fontanet circulars, a reduction in the entry of foreign workers into France was seen as a response to the sudden rise in unemployment. Six years later, Jean-Marie Le Pen will campaign on this false equation: “ A million unemployed is a million too many immigrants! »
The residence permit is now linked to an employment contract. The following year, a period of three months is granted to search for a registered job. The summer of 1973 was that of ratonnades in Marseille, yet another upheaval of the Algerian war. In 1974, immigration was temporarily suspended for workers and families. The following year it resumes for sectors without unemployment. In 1977, “return assistance” was created to encourage immigrant workers to leave France. Foreigners arriving through family reunification do not have access to employment.
From the 1970s to the 1990s: the question of families and the “second generation”
In 1978, the Council of State established the right to family reunification through a ruling. At that time France begins to welcome more families than workers, providing a new argument to opponents of immigration, in complete contradiction with the argument of protection of the labor market put forward until then. From 1980, it became legally possible not to renew work authorization based on unemployment figures. Prefects can now order deportations to the border.
The year 1983 saw a new wave of violence against populations of North African origin. In this climate, a march for equality and against racism is launched between Marseille and Paris. The momentum was taken up by circles close to the Socialist Party who created SOS Racisme in 1984. Arabs – the word entered the dictionary the following year, to designate people born in France to North African parents – are under-represented there. . In 1984, the single card dissociated the right to stay from the obligation to work. The right returning to power tightened the conditions of entry and stay of foreigners in France in 1986. This is the first Pasqua law, which notably plans to facilitate expulsions by restricting procedural guarantees, largely paving the way for decisions arbitrary.
The second law of 1993 returns to the birthright – a first since 1889 –: for minors born in France to foreign parents with a residence permit, obtaining nationality, until now automatic upon reaching majority, is subject to a “manifestation of will”, in response to the widely publicized debate around those we call the “French in spite of themselves” or “French on paper”. This measure was repealed five years later by the Guigou law. It also targets workers in an irregular situation, who are deprived of social benefits and are potentially prohibited from being present on French territory for a maximum period of five years. Working families, whose fathers cannot be deported because their children were born in France, suddenly find themselves plunged into poverty.
2000s: the legal and political construction of foreigners in France
In 2002, the Sangatte center, a temporary reception center for refugees hoping to reach England near the port of Calais and Eurotunnel, was closed, while France was still in shock from the arrival of the extreme right in the second round of the presidential election. It was the start of a very long crisis which would lead thirteen years later to the dismantling of a slum of 9,000 inhabitants. The Sarkozy law – then Minister of the Interior – introduced new discrimination in November 2003, particularly around “marriages of convenience”, since the measure only applies to foreigners seeking to regularize their stay and not, for example , to a French civil servant seeking through this means to obtain a transfer.
Detention periods are extended and the presumption of good faith is called into question – a first since 1803 – with regard to civil status documents issued abroad. This provision has since been widely used for the non-recognition of unaccompanied foreign minors, today called unaccompanied minors. The law also provides for legalizing ethnic statistics, a provision annulled by the Constitutional Council. On the other hand, the principle of “ double punishment » – which adds to the judicial conviction an expulsion and a ban on French territory, possibly implemented upon release from prison – established in 1945, is greatly limited. It has never been completely removed, despite numerous oppositions from the European Court of Human Rights.
In 2010, Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the Republic for three years, pronounced his Grenoble speech where he links delinquency and immigration, invoking in particular “ fifty years of insufficiently regulated immigration which resulted in the failure of integration ». The Roma community is particularly targeted and the European Parliament intervenes to condemn the expulsions. This speech also opens the way to the debate on forfeiture of nationality, taken up in 2015 by his successor François Hollande. At the start of the 2010 school year, Nicolas Sarkozy confided to his advisors and those close to him, as a debate began on raising the retirement age: “We have won the battle of ideology. I gave the Grenoble speech more than six months ago and I still live by it. (…) You realize that I am in the process of eliminating retirement at 60. As for me, they let me govern the country, and if things get complicated, we will organize a new security meeting. »
From 2013 to today: the question of borders
In October 2013, a shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa leaves 366 dead, leading to Pope Francis’ first official trip. In September 2014, off the coast of Malta, a new shipwreck claimed 500 lives. In April 2015, two others made 400 and 800 respectively one week apart. In September, the photo of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian child found dead on a beach in Turkey, went around the world. In France, with the proliferation of makeshift camps in large cities, we are witnessing the creation of numerous collectives and associations. President François Hollande condemns traffickers, seen as solely responsible for illegal immigration: “Those who put people on boats are terrorists, because they know perfectly well that these boats are rotten. »
The Cazeneuve law passed in 2016 provides for the possibility of placing children in detention and therefore families with children in a legal situation, while France has already been condemned on this subject by the European Court of Human Rights. Deaths are constantly increasing on the Franco-British border. The Franco-Italian border is in turn closed. There were around fifteen deaths in each of these crossing zones between September 2016 and August 2017. Since 1945, France has passed on average a law every two years relating to immigration, with a clear acceleration over the last three decadeswithout any having had any proven influence on the intensity of migratory flows, in one direction or the other.
The latest law, a campaign promise for Emmanuel Macron’s second term, follows the so-called Collomb law “asylum and immigration” which, in 2018, notably planned to extend the detention of illegal aliens up to 90 days. It was voted on in December 2023 in a version largely rewritten by Republican senators, with the support of elected officials from the right and the National Rally. The latter evokes a “ideological victory” when Emmanuel Macron sees it “the shield that we lacked” and a defeat of the far right since the project plans to facilitate certain regularizations. He is counting on the examination by the Constitutional Council on January 25 to rebut the toughest points with which he does not agree.
The university community is, however, alarmed by the tightening of conditions of access to residence for students. Thirty-two left-wing departments refuse to differentiate between French and foreigners in the payment of the personalized autonomy allowance, a measure which they consider to be part of the “national preference” dear to the far right. The Minister of Health resigns, other members of the government make their disagreement known – they are all replaced during the January ministerial reshuffle -. 5,000 health professionals are concerned in a forum of the World of the consequences of the law, particularly on the health of children. The questioning of land law finally brings a hundred public figures into a column in the newspaper Humanity to ask the President not to promulgate the law. From Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung describes it as “one of the strictest immigration laws in the European Union”.
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