2023-12-22 06:50:38
The cross : What is your reaction to the vote on the immigration law on December 19?
Guillaume Le Blanc: This vote is both surprising, in the sense that we all witnessed in amazement the breaking of a barrier between the government and the extreme right. The National Rally is right to claim an ideological victory. Because, and this is the first political consequence that I see, it will be impossible in the future to defend a Republican Front against him. We sort of burned through our reserves of indignation with this text.
But the vote was also a bit predictable. Since the 1980s, speeches have continued to reactivate the figure of the scapegoat foreigner, the source of all our problems. They created from scratch an internal enemy, playing on the border between inside and outside, between us and them, with the aim of reactivating the Nation.
What also strikes me is the preponderant distinction between foreigners who work and others. It is through the labor standard that national preference is expressed, it is this which allows us to sort out the undesirables from the others, as opposed to a universal conception of social rights. As if the social response ceased to be a priority, even though we are talking about people in great precariousness.
How do you understand this development?
G. L. B. : Again, slippage is not new. For 40 years, we have reversed the logic according to which a job opened the possibility of a residence permit. On the contrary, we made the residence permit a condition for obtaining a job, thus creating the trap of undeclared work. And we have carefully avoided a central question: what is a society where some people work, pay taxes, without having any legal title?
With this text, the national response becomes a priority over the social response. This is where we can, it seems to me, speak of a form of right-wing angelism: believing that it is enough to rearm the nation and sovereignty through restrictive measures to make social problems disappear. But of course they will persist and remain central, especially since the conditions for obtaining benefits will worsen the precariousness of immigrants.
Let’s take the example of unaccompanied minors for whom the law provides, fortunately, not to place them in detention centers. But while certain departments refuse to take care of them, how can we not see that their extreme precariousness contributes to increasing their dangerousness, making them prey for clandestine networks and increasing the risk of violent acts?
You have worked for a long time on the notion of the foreigner. What definition does this legal text seem to you to underlie?
G. L. B. : The foreigner is above all the one to whom full entry is refused. It is this gesture, the refusal of welcome and all the logics which underlie it, which creates the stranger. It is first of all a category affixed to others. No one ever defines themselves as a foreigner but, according to a culture of origin, as Syrian or Afghan, for example.
This text also organizes a split within the foreigner regime, between those who are eligible because they work and the others. It shifts the question of reception to that of the administrative government of foreigners, even if it means calling into question land law. In this sense, this law marks the end of a policy of hospitality.
For what reasons ?
G. L. B. : According to ancient customs, hospitality transforms the stranger into a guest, allowing him to stay for a more or less long period – always determined in time. Such a text, by focusing on the administrative governance of foreigners, relegates hospitality to the side of simple moral indignation. This is a step backwards as associations like Réseau Éducation Sans Frontières have tried for years to politicize the issue of hospitality.
In fact, hospitality is a hybrid concept. On the one hand, it is in fact a moral indignation, a primary, anthropological, religious imperative, which means that I cannot not help others when they are in need. It is also in my interest to do so. Because we must always look at hospitality from the side of the one who is welcomed but also from the side of the one who welcomes.
On the other hand, hospitality only exists through a welcoming policy. As Jacques Derrida had already written, this requires us to think not only of the hospitality of the guest in his house, but that of a Nation which welcomes a population into its midst. The decision of the Lot department to create a new universal autonomy allowance goes in this direction of rethinking a reception policy.
How to rediscover the political sense of hospitality?
G. L. B. : First of all, we must resolutely maintain the idea of a realism of hospitality. Remember that it is in the interest of the one who is welcomed and the one who welcomes. That a society which organizes security abroad is a much safer society. That hospitality allows us to build a common that is much more interesting for everyone.
Then, it is a question of fighting against the hegemony of the far-right discourse on these questions. And how can we achieve this if not through education? Hospitality must be discussed collectively, rationally, beyond fears. In citizen debates and at school.
In this regard, it is high time to question the very title of the Ministry of “National Education”. What place do we give to the history of others with such a project? Instead, let’s think about an education that trains citizens for 21st century hospitality.
He is the author of Inside, outside: the condition of foreigner(Seuil, 2010) and The end of hospitality (with Fabienne Brugère, Flammarion, 2017).
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