LThe decor has been set for a few weeks now. The actors know their role and the tirades are delivered with marvelous aplomb. The monologue, with its inevitable emphatic phrases, aims to reduce the adversary to a “heartless being” or to a being trapped in a “denial of reality”. The theme of this endless play, eternally replayed? Immigration and the “regulation” of international migratory flows. The challenge ? The legitimacy of the presence of certain fractions of the foreign population. And always this reminder, in no way illegitimate, since 1945: the inviolability of the sovereign power of the people (through the voice of its representatives), the only one authorized to say who can be welcomed or who does not have, according to the consecrated formula, “vocation to stay” on the national territory, if he does not have a residence document or if he has committed a crime or an offence.
In the National Assembly and the Senate, on December 6 and 13, the debate without a vote on immigration, if it was in good standing, was nonetheless devoid of surprise. This is not a criticism, it is a simple observation. And how could it be otherwise? All political speeches (including activists) and some of the speeches with scientific claims are built around a representation of what an immigrant is. With this ontological condition – the immigrant is a being who lives in the world of others – is associated a series of characteristics, mainly those of “victim” and “vulnerable”. This is, whether we like it or not, the dominant view that we have of these populations.
It is approximate and often condescending, and produces an effect of social and cultural homogenization that is deeply damaging to the intelligibility of the fact of migration in its multiple dimensions. Just one example: there was not a single moment in all the exchanges when immigrant women were discussed, with or without a residence permit, and their social and domestic condition. However, in 2020, foreign women represented 52% of immigration. What fate will the bill reserve for them? We don’t know, even if we guess. Do they share the same living conditions as men in the land of immigration? Never.
Technical Concerns
In practice and in theory, all the biases have “sticked” to this sociological and political representation of being an immigrant. The only concerns, everywhere and always, are inseparably technical (reducing appeal procedures from twelve to four; simplifying foreigners’ rights, etc.) and moral. This last dimension is reflected in the notion of “humanity” which, I remind you, is systematically coupled with a posture of political and legal “firmness”. I in no way contest the legitimacy of the State and the representatives of the nation, and therefore their right to organize the general conditions of a social and national order which would take into account, in the form of a pact, and most judiciously possible, the migratory phenomenon in its double component of emigration and immigration.
You have 50.18% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.