Immigration will have been a strong marker of the electoral campaign, pushed by the hypothesis of the presence of the extreme right in the second round and the emergence of the candidacy of Eric Zemmour. In the fall of 2021, in particular, thanks to the right-wing primary and the soaring rise of the editorialist in the polls, it is establishing itself as a central theme on the right and the far right. The candidates make it the main focus of their projects, convinced of finding high political profitability and a weakness of outgoing President Emmanuel Macron.
Marine Le Pen thus designates immigration as the source of social ills. Eric Zemmour assumes, him, to speak above all about the racist theory of “great replacement”which he describes as “the fundamental problem” from the country. He adopted the radical slogan of “zero immigration”. On the right, the candidate of the Les Républicains party, Valérie Pécresse, promises to resume “the control of immigration to defend our identity and our culture”.
Moreover, these three candidates are proposing a referendum on the subject, to abolish jus soli, to exclude any regularization of foreigners who have entered illegally, to limit or repeal family reunification, to cut off certain social rights for foreigners living in France or to require that asylum applications be submitted outside the territory, in embassies or at the border.
“A huge place”
“What is common to the right and the far right are things that make little sense, such as quotas or the outsourcing of the asylum application, which are technically unfeasible, or even the abolition of the right to ground which, in reality, is not automatic, lists Matthieu Tardis, researcher at the Center for Migration and Citizenship at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI). What changes, compared to other campaigns, is the fact that the candidates have made immigration a constitutional and conventional issue. Because there has been legislative inflation on this subject since the 1980s, we are a bit on the bone and the candidates are now proposing to touch the Constitution, the Geneva Convention or the European Convention on Human Rights the man. »
“It is the normal operation of the campaign that actors have an interest in placing this theme at the center of the game”, according to sociologist Vincent Tiberj
For Mr. Tardis, immigration has occupied a place “more important” in the debate than it should have, given the reality of the phenomenon or the priorities of the French people. A point of view shared by Vincent Tiberj, sociologist, professor at Sciences Po Bordeaux, who has developed in his work a measure over the long term of the tolerance of the population vis-à-vis immigration, xenophobia and minorities. “Like insecurity in 2002, immigration has taken a disproportionate place and goes against the tolerance of the French vis-à-vis the phenomenon which is increasingly great”, he believes.
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