Migration researcher Virginie Guiraudon says French immigration policy has gone from open to strict in a matter of a few years. What has changed, and what impacts will it have on demographic trends in France?
 | Virginie Guiraudon, National Center for Scientific Research, Lille“Very few get asylum in France anymore.” (Photo: Guiraudon) |
What impacts does migration have on demographic trends in France?
In some countries, migration is really the reason for population growth, but not in France. Migration is extremely stable, and even going down due to some of the recent policies. France is quite multicultural, but in terms of migration, it's fairly stable. The number of foreigners was 7.4 percent of the population in the 1970s; now it's 8 percent.
For a short while, we had a lot of asylum seekers because of crises in Africa. But now the situation is that very few get asylum in France anymore. People don't even try or are stopped at the borders. Their claims are not even examined. Actually, we were just condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for that last spring.
How has French immigration policy evolved in recent years?
The big change was after 2002, when Nicholas Sarkozy, then the interior minister, pushed through new laws that were more restrictive. Now, following a trend set in the Netherlands, France has integration contracts which requires language and civics classes.
Another big effort is the quota of expulsions of undocumented migrants. This year, just as in 2007, the target is 25,000 effective deportations - a huge number of people actually being thrown out. So, on a comparative basis, France is pretty strict. We are not Austria or Greece, but we've gone from being a pretty open country to not so open.
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What do you mean by "open"?
By open, I mean a country that allows for humanitarian immigration (family reunification and refugees), and acknowledges and allows other forms of migration for labor or study without making it almost impossible bureaucratically. It means a country that protects migrants from legal and non-legal discrimination and facilitates their access to the labor market.
In short, it gives migrants the possibility to do well in the receiving society; a country that also provides opportunities for naturalization and political participation; a country that respects international and European covenants in this area: the 2000 EU anti-discrimination laws and the 2004 EU guidelines for integration.
Did the 2005 riots in the Parisian suburbs increase public awareness about migration and integration?
Not really. We've been talking about immigration for 25 years. We've had the [far-right] National Front since 1983-84. The riots were strangely described in ethnic terms - sometimes as Muslim riots - by foreign journalists; not in France, where the coverage was quite different. But if the question is, "do the French love their immigrants?" No. There's nothing particularly new about this.
How has politics affected the issue of immigration in France?
We now have polarized politics around the issue of migration. We have the extreme right keeping the issue alive, even for people who do not vote for them. So migration becomes very high on the agendas of political parties. When that lasts for a long time, it transforms the issue into a problem. It becomes complicated to change the framing of the issue, even if you need migrant workers. The short-term views of politicians have had some very long-term consequences.
But France is not the only example. Look what's happening in The Netherlands. The period from 2000 to 2008 has seen a constant politicization of the issue, and the result is actually negative net migration since 2005. More people are leaving the Netherlands than actually coming in. The message is so Islamophobic that people are going somewhere else.
editor: Valdis Wish
publishing date: February 19, 2008
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