LOn July 7, voters from the Republican Front blocked the National Rally (RN) from gaining power. While the feared advent of a far-right government has been temporarily averted, the issues that convinced millions of French people to vote for the RN have not disappeared after the vote.
This is particularly the case of immigration, the RN’s historic hobby horse, which will continue to animate the territories, to work on representations, to arouse indignation after each shipwreck on the coasts of the Mediterranean or the Channel, as again on September 3, to fuel the incomprehension, even the anger, of those who no longer find in the political offer or action suitable solutions to manage a phenomenon that is nevertheless thousands of years old.
For several years, the migration issue has been treated solely through the prism of sovereign power: that is to say, it takes the national border as its basis, the Minister of the Interior as its pilot, the issuing of residence permits as its instrument, control and violence as its method and outsourcing as its perspective.
However, this regal approach organized according to a logic of control of spaces and people, even of constraint, presents three limits.
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First, it rarely manages to achieve the announced results.
Then, it contributes to constructing a negative image of the foreigner. The latter is reduced, in particular in the narrative of the extreme right political formations, to a “threat to public order” from which one must protect oneself, and is no longer considered in his humanity.
Finally, it obscures the reality and complexity of migrations which are part of a journey, a past and future history, rather than an administrative and social assignment.
Facing adversity
In practice, asylum seekers, refugees, foreign workers and students, spouses and children of foreigners face political, administrative and social adversity that only appropriate social support, when organized by the State, communities and civil society, can prevent.
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Also, to provide answers to the questions and fears of citizens regarding migration, to change the way foreigners are viewed, to respond to future challenges, to improve the fate of women, men and children who are willingly or forcibly involved in a migratory process, republican parties must initiate a Copernican revolution.
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