“The “immigration” law marks the accentuation of already existing logics but also a form of rupture”

2023-12-21 21:43:13

Emmanuel Blanchard is a historian and lecturer in political science at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He notably published History of Algerian immigration to France (The Discovery, 2018). It places the law adopted Tuesday, December 19 in a line of texts of “deterrence” of immigration voted for forty years and shows how the questioning of land rights or national preference are markers of the extreme right.

The “immigration” law just adopted is the twentieth in forty years. Does it break with the previous ones?

The first break in this text is due to the legislative conditions and the political configuration of its adoption. Beyond the programmatic and ideological inspirations, which Marine Le Pen welcomed, this law was passed with the votes of the National Rally (RN). In addition, potentially unconstitutional provisions were consciously included. This marks a new stage in a more general movement to challenge fundamental rights.

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In 1984, a law which established the “card [de résident] of ten years” was voted. This is the last major law which improves the conditions of stay of foreigners. Since then, the main objective of immigration laws has been to deterrence, suspicion and repression. We certainly observed pendulum swings when the left was in power, but without a total return to previous, more favorable situations ever taking place. The fact remains that the law adopted Tuesday is one of the most repressive in the last forty years. It can be compared to the “Pasqua laws” of 1993, which Eric Ciotti’s party, Les Républicains (LR), welcomes.

Why is the analogy made with the “Pasqua laws”?

This rapprochement is primarily due to a common spirit: it is a law to deter immigration and, when he was Minister of the Interior, Charles Pasqua claimed the objective of “zero immigration” . In addition, a number of provisions refer to these Pasqua years [1986-1988, 1993-1995]. This is particularly the case of the article which calls into question the law of soil and reintroduces, to obtain French nationality, a condition of “manifestation of will” on the part of children born in France to foreign parents. The Pasqua-Méhaignerie law of July 1993 also reformed the nationality code and introduced a “manifestation of will” clause, abolished by the “Guigou law” of March 1998.

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