“To say that immigration is an opportunity for France is not just a slogan of the ‘moral left’, but a historical reality”

2023-06-16 11:30:05

A historian specializing in the nation-state, immigration and the working class, Gérard Noiriel, director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), is notably the author of Living and fighting in Longwy (Maspero, 1980), from French crucible. History of Immigration XlX^e-XX^e century (Threshold, 2016) and Race and the Social Sciences (Agone, 2021), with sociologist Stéphane Beaud.

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When it comes to immigration, the left seems circumspect, embarrassed to build a discourse that is not just a reaction to those of the right and the extreme right. For what ?

There is nothing new in that. At the end of the XIX^e century, the Republic integrated the working classes within the nation-state. The question arises for the left from this moment. Marxists are embarrassed because alongside their class universalism, (“Proletarians of all countries, unite”), they must also defend the interests of French workers. The line of conduct that tends to prevail then consists in defending the interests of French workers, on the one hand, and fighting against the discrimination of which foreigners are victims, on the other, by pointing out the responsibility of the bosses in the opposition between French and foreigners.

Has talking about immigration become shameful on the left?

This is not about “shame”, but about embarrassment because immigration is a subject that is part of the discourse on the nation. However, since the end of the nineteenth^e century, it is a favorite subject for the right. In his last article published in Humanityin 1914, a few days before his assassination, Jaurès wrote: “There is no bigger problem than immigration. » Since the end of the 19th^e century, in fact, many brawls between French and foreign workers had broken out. The unions accused the bosses of using foreigners to break strikes and lower wages. Jaurès deplores this competition, but he is also aware that France will not be able to remain a great economic power without resorting massively to immigration.

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France had one of the highest immigration rates in the world at the end of the 1920s. To say that immigration is an opportunity for France is therefore not just a slogan of the “moral left” , as we can sometimes read. It is a historical reality. Moreover, the aging of our population and the shortage of labor in certain sectors prove that France will still have recourse to immigration in the years to come.

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