Immigration, race & ethnicity in France : how and why did political reactions to immigrants change during the 1970s?

Résumé du document

Immigration is an old phenomenon in France, which was the subject of the will for most French governments, due to France's demographic lifelessness. During the post-war period, France wilfully resorted to immigration in order to make up for the lack of workforce, which was mandatory for France's economic and physical reconstruction. Thus, since the resort to labor migration seemed to have for a pattern an economic logic after the World War 2, immigration was not raised as a political question. Issues of immigration control or even of "integration? of immigrant workers in French society were not current affairs. It is for these reasons that suspension of labor migration by non-EC nationals can be justifiably considered as a turning point in French immigration policy. How and why did political reactions towards the immigrants change during the 1970 in France? It has to be said that France was hit during the 1970s by the world economic crisis, which has had numerous and important social and political repercussions in France. And with the emergence of mass unemployment, presence of immigrant workers in France was not easily accepted anymore.

Extraits

[...] As a conclusion, it is undeniably true that political reactions to immigrants changed during the 1970s, especially because the world economic crisis has had numerous social and political consequences on French society. Among them, the ‘ethnicization of politics' led political elites to undertake an immigration policy, which was characterized by two principles: control of migratory flows, and efforts in favour of the integration of immigrants who had been already settled down. Attempts to integration did not, however, succeed for all immigrants, and for a long time. [...]

[...] The issue of integration was treated by successive governments in two ways: on the one hand, attempting to activate assimilation process, and on the other hand, making immigrants retain close contact with the cultural systems of their countries of origin, in order to facilitate their repatriation. Efforts were made for the improvement of immigrants' living conditions, with the creation of CNLI (Comité National pour le Logement des Immigrés) in 1975, which was set up to supervise the use of funds raised by part of a payroll tax paid by companies with more than ten employees for the purpose of assisting immigrants. [...]

[...] Immigration, race & ethnicity in France : how and why did political reactions to immigrants change during the 1970s? Immigration is an old phenomenon in France, which was the subject of the will of most French governments, because of France's demographic lifelessness. Especially during the post-war period, France wilfully resorted to immigration in order to make up for the lack of workforce, which was needed for France's economic and physical reconstruction. Thus, since the resort to labour migration seemed to have for a pattern an economic logic after the World War immigration was not raised as a political question. [...]

[...] That also is in this political background that the perception of immigrants by themselves started to change: after the mid-1970s social conflicts appeared between immigrants and authorities, like with the Sonacotra from 1976 to 1980, which took the shape of strikes, or even hunger strikes. The global crisis, which has just been described, led political elites to be awaken to the fact that ‘immigration' could not be simply considered as an economic issue anymore, and that French nationals and also immigrants were expecting signs and reactions from them. [...]

[...] Trade unions lost an important part of their members after the May 1968 revolt, because they did not succeed in having a main role in the leadership of the movement, and they have been overwhelmed by several issues of the crisis. And political parties, especially those of the left, deceived their traditional electorate in being too consensual towards Gaullist policy. It is in this political climate, characterized by social despair of French nationals, that the trend to see immigration as a problem, and even ‘the' problem, found its roots. French political elites also suffered from the crisis of Gaullism, which had been an ideological mark concerning the way that the issue of ‘national identity' had to be politically treated. [...]