From the 1970s onwards immigration became a key political issue and a source of much anxiety in France. In fact. one might claim that by the 1980s it had become the political issue ahead of all others including unemployment, Europe etc., a `hot potato' at the heart of political and cultural debates in France.

In the next three lectures we will be exploring this issue in more detail. In this introductory lecture however, we will concentrate on some of the terminology used to describe the phenomena of immigration and try to define some of the main social, economic and cultural issues at stake.

Those who study immigration, geographers, social scientists and the like, tend to make a distinction between the term mobility, which they use to refer to habitual or temporary territorial movements (e.g. between home and work, or home and a holiday destination) and migration which they use to refer to territorial movements of a permanent or semi-permanent nature.

Migration or migratory or population movements can be either:

international (from one country to another)

rural-urban (from countryside to town)

urban-rural (from town to countryside )

inter-urban (from one city to another)

intra-urban (from one part of a city to another)

frontierward (towards a new settlement)

 

Push and Pull Factors

A number of explanations have been put forward to explain population movements since the nineteenth century. Most arguments tend to put forward different versions of the view that migration is the result of a more or less complex interplay of `push' factors at origin and `pull' factors at destination. At different points in history, in different parts of the world, there are forces that push people away from their origins and other forces that pull them towards a new destination. These forces may be political, religious, economic, climatic and so on.

Consider these examples and identify the `push and pull' factors at work:

the mass migration of an estimated 7.7 million slaves from West Africa to the Americas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries;

the expulsion of Huguenots (French Protestants) from France and their settlement in England in the eighteenth century;

Jewish migrants settling in the western Europe or the USA;

Irish migration to the USA and Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries;

Italian migration to France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries;

1 million pieds noirs (white European settlers in Algeria) settling in France after 1962.

 

A large number too took place in response to economic trends like industrialisation. Indeed, many geographers and historians have claimed that the principal motivation behind migration is economic - migrants settle in new countries in search of a better tomorrow. The countries migrants move to are perceived to offer greater opportunities for material improvement. The majority of European migrants settling in France at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century were from Italy, Spain and Portugal, countries on the southern fringe of Europe with comparatively low levels of economic development and higher levels of rural over-population.

Much research has been carried out into migration from Britain to the USA in the nineteenth century for example. Due to disparities in the respective trade cycles of these two countries, when one economy was in recession, the other was booming and this helped encourage much transatlantic migration with recession as the `push' and economic boom as `pull' factors. Indeed, the phenomena of migration can be seen as a way of adjusting to disparities in economic cycles or stages in economic development

Migration can clearly be seen as an integral part of the capitalist economies of Western Europe and North America. Industry and a vast service sector grew in France, as in other major European countries, by importing labour - as well as raw materials - from the countryside into the city, and from colony to metropolitan area. This last point is an important one as the expansion of colonialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - the British Empire and the French colonies are good examples of this - created new channels for the movement of migrant labour. The origins and destinations of many migration streams were frequently defined by colonial connections.

Another important phenomena is that of chain migration. Chain migration involving an initial migration stream settling in a new country and paving the way for subsequent further migrants.

Economics is clearly central to the issue of migration with the desire for an improvement in living standards and material conditions a primary motivation for migrants and the desire for economic modernization one of the primary motivations for receiving countries (e.g. France of the Fourth and Fifth Republics).

The benefits of migration to the country of origin is not always clear cut. Remittances sent home to families often make a significant contribution not just to the families themselves but to the overseas earnings of the country of origin as well. Similarly, the migrant who returns home often does so with valuable skills and training. However, some have interpreted these benefits more negatively claiming that remittances are not always put to best effect - they are often used to fund further emigration - and that the skills migrants return with are not always appropriate or useful.

Much more certain however, are the benefits that migration brings to countries of destination. Migrants have assisted greatly in the cultural and economic development of countries such as the USA and Australia. One might add France to this list too although in France, the contribution made by immigration to France's modernisation and increasing prosperity is frequently undervalued.

One might even claim here that many countries have cynically exploited migrants, welcoming them with open arms in times of labour shortages to fill poorly paid jobs and closing the door and encouraging repatriation when recession sets in.

Academics and policy-makers in France share a certain way of conceptualizing immigration that is differs fundamentally from what we might loosely call the Anglo- American model. For many French politicians, demographers, social scientists and commentators, the concept of ethnic minorities is an unacceptable Americanism. It opposes the French republican or, as it is sometimes called, the Jacobin tradition, of assimilation and is considered by many, as a euphemism for ghettoization or a kind of `soft apartheid'.

A key strand within the republican/Jacobin tradition in France has been the assimilation of regional and ethnic differences to a unitary idea of Frenchness and French citizenship. French national identity should ideally take precedence over other forms of ethnic, linguistic or religious identification. The key concept here is assimilation: the immigrant takes on a French identity and becomes a full French citizen in the process. Earlier waves of immigrants - from European countries like Italy and Poland were quickly assimilated within the school system, mines, factories and trade unions and often, particularly in the early years of the twentieth century, with the Communist Party playing a central role in the process.

The French Republican tradition is based upon the goal that socio-cultural difference should be minimized and that the socially distinct immigrant should assimilate the culture of the host country. This tradition acknowledges difference or differentiation but seeks its reduction or effacement. The individual immigrant is expected to to adhere to the values, rules and institutions of French society (i.e. the dominant society) with the long-term aim of that immigrant taking on and identifying with fully French identity.

This tradition is a key part of the concept of the French nation-state as it emerged at the end of the eighteenth century and which constructed the key concept of French national identity. Here is Max Silverman on this issue:

In France the Revolution is commonly seen as the triumph of a new concept of the nation. Armed with the enlightenment concepts of reason, will and individualism, the Revolution established the nation as a voluntary association or contract between free individuals. This concept of the nation triumphed over the other major model for the formation of modern nations, that of the concept of a predetermined community bound by blood and heredity. (Silverman: 1992 p.19)

The use of terms like ethnic minorities is, compared to its use in the USA or Great Britain, relatively uncommon. The terms `immigration' and `immigrés' are still commonly used in contemporary political debates in France to designate what, in the Anglo- American context, would be called ethnic minorities. The term immigré as it is used in France refers not just to recent immigrants but also to men and women of ethnic origins who have spent all their life in France and, in many cases, have been born there. Interestingly, the term is rarely used to describe immigrants, or their children, of European descent (Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgians, Poles etc.) and is mainly applied to those from North and Sub-Saharan Africa and from South-East Asia.

Another important detail to bear in mind is that in most major official classifications of people resident in France there are only two categories: national or foreigner/étranger (i.e. someone born abroad without French nationality). There is no institutional recognition for ethnic origin (e.g. Afro-Carribean) as there is in, for example, Britain or the United States. The French state does not officially recognise ethnic minority status and the nature of its data protection laws preclude any other organisations from doing so. The national body responsible for collecting census data, the Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques (INSEE), records the place of birth of all those resident in France but does not collect information on the birthplace of people's parents. It does not collect any information whatsoever on structurally identifiable ethnic communities in France.

Because of this it is very difficult to state with any degree of certainty figures for ethnic minorities in France or to assess the real impact of immigration on the French population. However, according to the French definition of an étranger as someone born abroad without French nationality, there are currently 4 million foreigners in France, of whom about a third have acquired French nationality. To this, one must add another 5 million who are the children of foreigners and a further 5 million who are the grandchildren of foreigners. So, out of a total population of 59 million, about 14 million (around a quarter) are either foreigners or the children or grandchildren of foreigners (Hargreave: 1995 p.5). INED, the Institut National d'Études Démographiques has, however, recently published some statistics which confirm this.

T. Chafer (ed.) Multicultural France (Portsmouth: Working Papers on Contemporary France, 1996)

P. Ogden, Migration and Geographical Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)

M. Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Race and Citizenship in Modern France (London: Routledge, 1992)

H.P.M. Winchester, Contemporary France (London: Longman, 1993)