“The national preference voted in the Assembly will reinforce racist stereotypes”

2023-12-21 08:00:07

We find many things in the National Archives of the World of Work, in Roubaix (North), in particular the personal documents of priest-workers, like those of Francis Philippe. During an “immigrant day” in Maubeuge (North), in February 1972, this anti-racist cleric drew up a list of the clichés he heard every day, and among the most frequent, he cited: “They live on Security social security, and live on family allowances. »

Half a century later, when France adopted a new law on immigration on December 19, this archive shows, even before the creation of the National Front [l’ancien nom du Rassemblement national, RN] and the oil shock, the deep roots of a collective representation which exerted a significant influence in the National Assembly and even more in the Senate.

Immigrants come to France mainly to “take advantage of the system”. This is an argument in apparent contradiction to the more well-known argument that “they are coming to steal our jobs”, but the two are perfectly complementary.

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This stereotype of the idleness of immigrants has a strong postcolonial dimension, as shown by certain racist expressions: “Arab work” (quickly done, poorly done). The Franco-Tunisian writer Albert Memmi, in his classic Portrait of the colonized, published in 1957, had clearly felt this, he who spoke from his first pages of the “trait of laziness”Who “seems to have the unanimity of the colonizers, from Liberia to Laos, via the Maghreb”. This cliché itself legitimized the exploitation of the natives.

Anyway, “it is more economical to use three colonized people than one European”, Memmi tells us. More than half a century later, and in the midst of the debate on the “immigration” law, business interests were not mistaken, the provisions on “jobs in shortage” being written for them.

Finally, we note that, for once, and in this specific area, the French government has decided not to listen to the French Business Movement. [qui a indiqué, le 19 décembre, que la France avait un besoin massif d’immigration]now that the latest version of the law has considerably weakened the provisions on “sectors in tension”.

Intensification of Islamophobic rejection

The law passed in the Assembly separates immigrant groups between European Union nationals and others, non-whites, Africans, Muslims. Through a stigmatizing ripple effect, this text will also fuel suspicion towards ethnic minorities and French people from postcolonial immigration. This law confirms the idea that certain French people have a decidedly deficient “Frenchness”.

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