Amid the rapid rise of the nationalist right, which sees immigration as a direct threat to France’s essence, many French people increasingly seem to feel that they no longer feel at home in their own country.
This feeling, a vague but intense sense of discomfort, has many factors. These include a sense of dispossession, changes in the community’s dress and habits due to the arrival of mainly Muslim immigrants from North Africa, and a loss of identity in a rapidly changing world. The national rally has benefited from all this, and its anti-immigration stance is at the heart of its rapidly growing popularity.
“No French citizen would tolerate living in a house without doors or windows,” Jordan Bardella, 28, told France 3 television last week. Symbol of edge. “Well, the same goes for a country.”
In other words, countries need effective borders that can be sealed tightly.
That message proved echoed by rising nationalist parties across Europe and was a central theme of Donald J. Trump’s U.S. presidential campaign. In France, it propelled Marine Le Pen’s national rally to defeat President Emmanuel Macron’s party in this month’s European Parliament vote.
Macron was so upset by the defeat that he made a risky bet that opened the door to the country’s political future. He called for legislative elections, the first round of which will be held on June 30.
The unthinkable becomes conceivable. About a decade ago, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel immortalized the phrase “Wir schaffen das.” or “We can do “This,” she admitted more than a million Syrian refugees into Germany. Today, her embrace of immigration seems otherworldly, and attitudes in Europe and the United States have completely changed.
Today, a similar gesture of “Wilkommenskultur” (Welcoming Culture) would sound the death knell for most Western politicians.
Controlling or blocking immigration, once a core theme of the xenophobic right, has now moved to the center of the political spectrum. Views that immigrants dilute national identity, freeload on social safety nets and import violence have spread, often fueled by thinly veiled bigotry. The once absolute taboo in France against the National Front (now the National Rally) has collapsed.
Centrist leaders, including President Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron, have been forced to shift from an openness to immigration to a harder line in an attempt to steal the thunder from the nationalist movement. They must recognize that many conservatives are not “far right” and agree with what Trump said during a visit to Poland in 2017: “Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders?”
Earlier this year, Macron’s government passed an immigration bill that removed deportation protections for certain foreigners living in France who “seriously violate the principles of the republic.” It imposes summary deportations on rejected asylum seekers. It sought to remove the automatic right to citizenship for children born in France to foreign parents before the Constitutional Council vetoed it.
If these and other measures are intended to blunt the rise of rallies across the country, this legislation will be counterproductive. For the left, this is a betrayal of French humanist values; For the right, this is too little, too late.
In a similar vein, Biden temporarily closed the southern border to most asylum seekers, citing the “global migration crisis.” It’s a dramatic reversal from many Democrats who accused him of embracing Trump’s politics of fear. But Biden’s decision reflects the fact that many Americans, like many French, want tougher policies in the face of record numbers of immigrants entering the United States.
Why is there such a change? Anger is fueled by growing inequality in Western societies that leave many people behind. In France, long-established social models fail to address the lack of hope in suburban projects and poor schools in the suburbs where many immigrants live. This further adds to the frustration. Tensions between Muslims and police often erupt.
“The government has always protected the police, the state within a state,” Ahmed Djamai, 58, said at a protest last year. For him, being Arab or black, even with a French passport, was often considered a second-class citizen.
Against this backdrop, immigration could easily become a dog-whistle subject. “The idea that the French have lost their country to immigrants is in many ways a delusion,” said Anne Muxer, deputy director of the Center for Political Studies at Sciences Po in Paris. “It’s about disorientation, loss of control, and changes in life. It’s in the DNA of national rallies, but it’s not in Macron’s DNA.
The cultures of the United States and France are very different. One is a country with a core of self-renewal formed through immigration; the other is France, a more restrictive country where the integration of “visible minorities” (mainly Muslims) has challenged the country’s self-image.
Still, many people in every country fear losing their identity to some degree, an anxiety that leaders like Ms Le Pen or Mr Trump can exploit. In the United States, non-Hispanic whites will become a minority by mid-century. The illegal entry of millions of immigrants offends Americans’ sense of the sanctity of the law. The French are concerned about threats to their way of life, a feeling compounded by recurring Islamic terrorism over the past decade.
Hakim El Karoui, a prominent immigration consultant, said the consensus that “the situation of Muslim immigrants has become unsolvable” is now so entrenched in politics that “even though immigration is a campaign issue core, but there was no serious debate about it.” question.
Ms Le Pen has worked for more than a decade to normalize her father’s fringe racist party. She has stamped out anti-Semitism, reversed calls to leave the 27-nation European Union and struck an overall moderate tone.
Still, the party’s core view that immigration dilutes national institutions – seen as something glorious and mystical – remains. She said the party would seek to ban the use of Muslim headscarves in public if elected.
She and Mr. Bardera embraced the idea of ”national preference” – essentially systemic discrimination between foreigners and French citizens in access to jobs, subsidized housing, certain health benefits and other social assistance.
“Legal immigrants who work in France, pay taxes and abide by the law have nothing to worry about when I arrive at Matignon, the prime minister’s residence,” Bardella said last week. This is intended to provide reassuring publicity for the top job.
But France’s unemployment rate is 7.5%, with 2.3 million people unemployed. The share among immigrants is even higher, about 12% in 2021, according to a study last year by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Research. Many of them may be vulnerable.
According to France’s Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons, some 140,000 migrants applied for asylum last year. This number is double what it was a decade ago. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin estimated last year that there were 600,000 to 900,000 illegal immigrants in France.
“Le Pen and Bardera may infringe on individual freedoms,” said Celia Bellin, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Paris.
At a rally in Bardera in Montbéliard, eastern France, funeral home operator Laurent Nansé, 53, said he had recently inherited a family home and had been looking through the memories of his youth. photo album. “There are no veiled women, no people from the Maghreb, no Africans,” he said. “Now during Ramadan, supermarkets are full of ads about this. I didn’t see any ads about Lent.
He said he was confident in Mr. Bardera’s ability to lead the country. “I’m tired of Macron’s bits and pieces,” he said.
At a press conference last week, Macron appeared to be grappling with his failure. He linked the rise of the “far right” to “doubts, existential angst about what we are becoming”.
In response, he said, one must stand firm. He cited his immigration bill calling for “a reduction in illegal immigration” but acknowledged that “our efforts in this area have not yet been fully seen, felt or understood.”
On Tuesday, Macron accused the new left-wing New Popular Front coalition, made up of the Socialists, Greens and far-left parties, of being entirely “immigrationist” – a term often used by Le Pen’s party to describe politicians who encourage uncontrolled immigration. . National rallies have called Macron an “immigrationist” in the past.
All of this is an apparent attempt by Mr Macron to stall the national rally’s rise to power by taking a tough stance on immigration and security. The problem is that just as Trump has occupied the anti-immigration political ground in the United States, it has been occupied in France by Le Pen and Bardera.
Macron has spent his seven years in office trying to navigate a heated debate. Mr. Biden announced soon after that he would protect 500,000 undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens from deportation and provide them with a path to citizenship, offsetting the impact of closing the border to asylum seekers.
It’s unclear whether this cautious navigation around explosive issues is effective. The atmosphere in France today is uneasy. “We tried everything,” Ms. Muxer said. “We need to try something new – this is what’s in the air.” It aired in the United States in 2016.
Of course, it is the very measures taken to create and preserve a homogeneous society that lie at the heart of some of the most heinous crimes of the past century. A central postwar insight in Europe was that borders should be dismantled to save Europe from repeated wars. A closer alliance means an ever-expanding peace.
However, these thoughts seem to have faded away. This is a time of national renewal, whatever the dangers involved.
Last week, satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchainé published a front-page cartoon showing a Frenchman wearing a beret, holding a baguette and a bottle of wine with a handful emblazoned with ” A large-caliber shotgun with the words “National Rally” pointed at his opponent. head.
“We’ve never tried this!” the caption said.
