“Chez nous, c’est chez nous”: nearly 200 people mobilized in Perpignan for Migrants’ Day

“Immigration is not the problem. To make people believe that is to increase violence and inequalities. It is to hide the real causes and move away from the solutions: justice and equality.” For the thirty left-wing political, trade union and associative organizations which called for demonstrations in Perpignan on the occasion of International Migrants Day, this is obvious.

This Wednesday evening, there were between 150 and 200 marching in the streets of the city center, between the prefecture and the town hall. In the light of the torches distributed for the occasion and behind a banner proclaiming: “Welcome to migrants. Your home is our home.”

Let’s affirm our humanity

Once the procession arrived in front of the town hall, Josie Boucher, from the Association of Solidarity with All Immigrants (Asti), recalled the demands common to all the organizations signing the appeal. Namely: the regularization of undocumented immigrants, the closure of detention centers, assimilated to “prisons for foreigners”access for all to health and schooling, or the repeal of several laws on immigration, including in particular the Darmanin law. “In the face of racism and inequalities, let us affirm our humanity”chanted the spokesperson in particular.

In addition to the activists, some migrants also joined the procession. Like Rodney, 31, a political refugee from Congo Brazzaville, where he worked until 2021 as a cultural administrator in a contemporary art center. “When I started looking for work in my field, I was made to understand that even if I had skills, I did not know the workings of the French administration”he relates. This is why the young thirty-year-old decided to take, in addition to the diplomas he already held, a license in cultural project management in France. While simultaneously working in a fast-food restaurant and as a self-employed person in the social sector.