It is an understatement to say that non-European immigration in our country arouses passions. No doubt it is because it is among the subjects on which our leaders, French or European, have used reason the least. We can guess why: Europe, with a Christian culture and deeply marked by the Second World War, swore, rightly, that it would always welcome the Other when they found themselves in need.
But in wanting to place the past on the future, it did not see that the migratory phenomenon was now of an unprecedented nature, in terms of its scale and its reasons. In particular, immigration from Africa, the most significant, is the result of a multiplicity of factors: the economic attraction of Europe, its aging demographic, the quality of its social protection and its educational system. , the relative improvement in the standard of living of certain African populations for whom crossing land and sea becomes possible, political conflicts, climate change. A complex configuration which prevents us from disentangling the causes which make immigrants leave (known as “push”) from those which attract them (“pull”).
Before judging the migratory phenomenon, we must understand it. Because not understanding it is condemning oneself to judge it badly, and therefore to act badly. To think that immigration is only the product of the laxity and even Machiavellianism of the European elite, while ignoring its structural reasons, is to prevent oneself from distinguishing the possible from the unattainable, and therefore to condemn oneself to helplessness or brutality. To believe, on the contrary, that the only reasons for departure are poverty, conflicts or climate change, while minimizing our responsibility for migration, is to choose passivity. Europe, and France with it, will not be able to face it if they remain divided between these two sterile positions. On the other hand, if they agree to recognize that humanism does not prevent realism, and vice versa, a political outcome becomes possible.