The French far right’s ‘outdated’ definition of identity

2023/10/23 Leave a comment

Of note:

The question of French identity sat at the heart of a play rehearsed at a theater in Sartrouville, a northwestern suburb of Paris, on a recent Tuesday afternoon.

Half a dozen actors sat or stood on the planks of a cross-section of a wooden ship.

“On crée la sous-France — des Fatimas, des Mohameds,” (they are creating the under-France, of the Fatimas and the Mohameds) one female actor shouted out loud. “Sous-France” is a pun on the word “souffrance”, which means suffering.

The play “Kaldûn” tells the story of how insurgents were taken to the French territory of New Caledonia, located in the South Pacific, after the government cracked down on uprisings in Paris and French-ruled Algeria in the 19th century. Algeria gained independence in 1962 after it won an eight-year armed conflict against France, which had ruled the country for over a century by the end of the war.

Director Abdelwaheb Sefsaf’s parents moved from French Algeria to the southern city of Saint-Etienne just after World War II.

‘Repairing our collective memory’

The 53-year-old director, who has both French and Algerian nationality, says remembering largely forgotten parts of the country’s history is crucial to getting to the bottom of French identity — and his own.

“Telling these stories helps repair our collective memory as we suffer from the traumas of the parts of our history which we have forgotten,” Sefsaf told DW. “I am 100% French. But I also need to own my personal history. As the son of immigrants, I am proud of this legacy and the culture I have inherited.”

France’s far-right National Rally party (RN), however, seems to prefer to ignore such aspects of the country’s identity. Its 2022 presidential election manifesto featured a proposal to ban bi-nationals — like theater director Sefsaf — from jobs in the civil service.

Marine Le Pen, the RN candidate in the past two presidential elections, reached the decisive run-off vote for the presidency for the second time in a row last year.

She lost against now re-elected centrist President Emmanuel Macron, but the portion of the French population who voted for her rose more than five percentage points from her previous run at the presidency — from just under 34% in 2017 to over 41%.

Back on the campaign trail for next June’s European Parliament elections, the party is once again championing its idea of French identity.

“I’ll defend the original France, its identity and borders,” RN president and lead candidate Jordan Bardella said at the party’s first EU campaign meeting in the southern town of Beaucaire in September.

The party did not reply to requests for an interview.

One-third of French people have foreign origins

But is the party’s version of French identity too simplistic? A recent study by France’s National Institute for Statistics found that at least a third of French people have foreign origins. That figure will likely increase in the coming years.

At a recent conference at the anthropology museum Musée de l’Homme in western Paris, researchers discussed how French history has been marked by immigration and colonization, emphasizing that many in France, especially the far right, adhere to a bygone definition of the country’s identity.

Historian Naima Huber-Yahi, who specializes in colonial history, told DW that a number of far-right French politicians promote this outdated vision.

“They pretend being French only includes white people … This narrative stems from the 19th century and has not been updated since. It does not take into account other aspects such as our history of slavery, colonization or migration, nor does it include people of color such as many French living in overseas territories,” she said. “It just doesn’t correspond to today’s reality.”

Ahmed Boubeker, a sociology professor at the University of Saint-Etienne, spoke at the conference of a “hegemony of far-right ideas” in France.

“There’s a whole group of reactionary intellectuals who believe that the France of the past was better than today’s France and reject multiculturalism,” he told DW.

“But these people seem to forget that the country was founded based on a political project. Everybody who concurs with it has the right to become French — we need to stop retreating into nationalist ideas,” Boubeker added.

Some French experience racism in daily life

Ghislaine Gadjard, an 87-year-old conference attendee, told DW she immigrated to mainland France from French overseas territory Guadeloupe in 1949.

“When I arrived at the age of 12, we were seen as French despite our black skin, but that’s no longer the case — I’m now subjected to racist treatment almost every day,” she said.

“France no longer sticks to its founding principles of liberty, equality and fraternity — I am scared that our civil rights will be taken away from us if the far right came to power,” she added.

Lobna Mestaoui, another attendee of the conference, was more optimistic. The 45-year-old immigrated to France from Tunisia 22 years ago to study French. She is now a French citizen and teaches at a school in an ethnically diverse area just outside of Paris.

“I know it’s not easy to integrate into French society as an immigrant — especially with far-right ideas gaining momentum,” she told DW. “But I’m living proof that a black immigrant can find her place in France and trying to set a good example for my pupils.”

What ‘being French’ means in New Caledonia

Back at the rehearsal, one actor represented yet another angle of French identity.

Simanë Wenethem belongs to New Caledonia’s Kanak indigenous people. New Caledonia is still a French overseas territory. In the play, he portrays rebel chief Ataï, who leads a revolt against French colonial rule.

Nowadays, he said, being New Caledonian — and thus being French — means many things.

“I am French – that’s just the way it is. But in our part of the country, we wonder about our identity as New Caledonians. What does it actually mean?” he told DW. “Many communities form a part of our people — Indonesians, Vietnamese etc. They are well integrated into our society and we see them as brothers.”

Trying to bridge rifts

Theater director Sefsaf said France needs a new, more inclusive narrative of identity. He said he believes that cultural initiatives like his play represent one way to further that narrative.

“France is our country. We need to construct it together — and participate in defining its identity without denying our own. A shared identity is so much richer, as it includes parts of each one of us,” he said.

Sefsaf’s play will soon be shown in Sartrouville, Paris and other parts of France. The director told DW he’s already working on his next, in hopes of bridging some of the rifts the far right is trying to deepen.

Source: The French far right’s ‘outdated’ definition of identity – DW (English)

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Rioux: L’abaya, un vêtement comme les autres?

2023/09/09 Leave a comment

Le Devoir Paris correspondant on the French abaya ban (consistent in his support for dress restrictions):

Lundi, c’était jour de rentrée scolaire en France. Mais ce n’était pas une rentrée ordinaire. Dans une grande partie des collèges de France, on était littéralement sur les nerfs. Comment cela allait-il se passer ? Comment réagiraient les élèves ? Les parents viendraient-ils protester devant les grilles ? Bref, on craignait le pire.

C’est qu’une semaine plus tôt, le tout nouveau ministre de l’Éducation nationale, Gabriel Attal, avait décrété l’interdiction du port de l’abaya en classe. L’abaya est cette tunique traditionnelle musulmane que portent un nombre croissant de jeunes d’origine maghrébine afin de dissimuler leur corps. Tout juste nommé, à une semaine de la rentrée scolaire, le jeune ministre de 34 ans a décrété que ce vêtement distinctif identifié à la culture arabo-musulmane n’avait « pas sa place à l’école ». Le message était clair. On ne se présente pas devant un professeur en revendiquant sa religion.

Cela faisait des mois que, partout en France, enseignants et directeurs d’établissements réclamaient une intervention du ministre. Laissées à elles-mêmes, les directions étaient aux prises depuis plus d’un an avec des campagnes islamistes sur les réseaux sociaux incitant ouvertement les jeunes musulmanes à contourner la loi qui, depuis 2004, interdit aux élèves le port de tout signe religieux ostensible. Pas surprenant qu’en deux ans, le nombre d’incidents scolaires portant atteinte à la laïcité ait plus que doublé.

Or, quoi de plus ostensible que cet accoutrement patriarcal destiné à dissimuler tout le corps ? Dans sa déclaration, il aura suffi d’une seule phrase à Gabriel Attal pour clarifier le débat. « Lorsque vous entrez dans une classe, vous ne devez pas être capables d’identifier la religion des élèves », a-t-il tranché.

Les associations musulmanes eurent beau prétendre qu’il s’agissait d’une simple tenue traditionnelle sans la moindre connotation religieuse, il est clairement apparu dans le débat que l’abaya était aussi musulmane que la ceinture fléchée est québécoise. D’abord, rien de plus difficile dans la civilisation musulmane que de distinguer clairement ce qui relève de la culture de ce qui est proprement religieux. Comme l’a brillamment expliqué le philosophe Rémi Brague dans son essai magistral Sur l’islam (Gallimard) publié l’an dernier, contrairement à la chrétienté, l’islam est ce qu’il appelle « une religion intégrale » où « tout est culte » puisqu’il intègre un code juridique et définit les moeurs des bons musulmans.

Comme l’expliquait la spécialiste de l’islamisme Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, il n’existe pas de vêtements qui seraient par essence religieux, seulement « un habit qui permet de se conformer à une norme religieuse, celle qui d’après les rigoristes considère que la femme ne doit pas montrer les formes de son corps ». Comme le voile en 2004, ce rôle revient aujourd’hui à l’abaya. Il suffit de consulter les publicités sur Internet pour voir combien les marchands de guenilles le considèrent comme un prolongement du voile permettant de rompre avec la tradition laïque de l’école française.

Une tradition plus que centenaire que les Français ne semblent pas prêts à renier. Soutenue par 81 % des Français, l’interdiction de l’abaya fait l’objet d’un consensus encore plus fort que celui observé en 2004 sur la loi interdisant les signes religieux à l’école. Même les jeunes ayant entre 18 et 24 ans, que l’on dit pourtant multiculturalistes, se rangent à 63 % derrière la décision de Gabriel Attal. Ce consensus s’étend à toutes les familles politiques sans exception, mettant d’ailleurs en porte-à-faux la majorité de la gauche française avec ses électeurs. Ainsi, 58 % des partisans de La France insoumise (LFI) approuvent la décision du ministre alors même que son leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a fait un virage électoraliste à 180 degrés sur le sujet, dénonçant « une mesure dangereuse et cruelle ».

Certaines féministes ont aussi de graves questions à se poser. Alors que l’écologiste radicale Sandrine Rousseau dénonce une « machine de broyage » des adolescentes, le caractère religieux de l’abaya ne fait aucun doute pour 74 % des Françaises qui se disent féministes. Rarement un événement aura illustré de manière aussi évidente le cul-de-sac dans lequel s’est engagée depuis plusieurs années une grande partie de la gauche en se ralliant aux thèses du multiculturalisme et en ne craignant pas de s’allier aux musulmans les plus obscurantistes.

Lundi, comme en 2004, après moult explications de la part des proviseurs, à peine quelques dizaines de jeunes filles ont dû être renvoyées chez elles. Les autres se sont facilement conformées à la règle. Le cours normal de l’école a ainsi pu reprendre. Cela démontre que, pour peu que l’on fasse respecter les lois et la tradition laïque de l’école, l’immense majorité des élèves musulmans se conformeront aux traditions et règles de vie de leur pays d’accueil. Ils n’attendent qu’une chose, qu’on le leur dise !

Pour tous les Québécois que l’on stigmatise en permanence pour avoir simplement osé exiger des enseignants qu’ils se gardent d’exprimer par la parole ou le vêtement leurs convictions religieuses à l’école, le message est on ne peut plus clair : pour être respecté, encore faut-il se tenir debout.

Source: L’abaya, un vêtement comme les autres?

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Yakabuski: Back-to-school in France means back to another bitter debate over secularism

2023/09/01 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

La rentrée, as the back-to-school season is known in France, is starting off with yet another divisive civics lesson after the government’s move to prohibit a traditional Middle Eastern robe that had become a fashion statement among some Muslim high-schoolers.

…

Source: Back-to-school in France means back to another bitter debate over secularism

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French Govt Sees Islamic Clothing In Schools As ‘Political Attack’

2023/08/29 Leave a comment

Hear we go again:

The wearing of abaya dresses by some Muslim women in French schools is a “political attack”, the government’s spokesman said Monday as he explained a ban announced on the clothing.

Education Minister Gabriel Attal said Sunday that the long, flowing dresses that originated in the Middle East would no longer be allowed in schools when the new term begins next week because they violate secular laws.

Government spokesman Olivier Veran said it was “obviously” a religious garment and “a political attack, a political sign” which he saw as an act of “proselytising” or trying to convert to Islam.

“School is secular. We say it in a very calm but firm way: it is not the place for that (wearing religious clothing),” he told the BFM TV channel.

Attal said Monday that the government was clear that abayas “did not belong in schools.”

“Our schools are being tested. These last few months, violations of our secular rules have considerably increased, particularly with regard to the wearing of religious clothing such as abayas or qamis which have appeared — and remained — in some establishments,” he told reporters.

Attal’s decision to ban abayas has sparked a new debate about France’s secular rules and whether they are used to discriminate against the country’s large Muslim minority.

A law of March 2004 banned “the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation” in schools.

This includes large Christian crosses, Jewish kippas and Islamic headscarves.

Unlike headscarves, schools had struggled to regulate the wearing of abayas which were seen as being in a grey area.

The government has sided with politicians on the right and far-right who had pushed for an outright ban, arguing that they are part of a wider agenda from Islamists to spread religious practice throughout society.

But politicians on the left and many Muslims see France’s secular rules — known as “laicite” — as a front used by conservatives for Islamophobic policies.

They say some women choose to wear abayas, or headscarves, to signal their cultural identity, rather than out of religious belief.

Many conservative politicians have pushed in recent years for the ban on the wearing of religious symbols to be widened to universities and even parents accompanying children on their school outings.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen campaigned in last year’s presidential election to ban veils from all public streets.

The country’s constitution guarantees citizens the right to practice religion freely, but it imposes an obligation on the state and state employees to respect neutrality.

The abaya ban is likely to face a legal appeal and could lead to difficulties for school authorities who will have to decide when a large flowing dress moves from being a personal fashion choice to a religious statement, observers say.

Source: French Govt Sees Islamic Clothing In Schools As ‘Political Attack’

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Malik: France has been laissez-faire on race, the US proactive. Clearly, neither of them has it right

2023/07/10 Leave a comment

Another call for greater analysis by class, but one that does not ignore identity and race:

Should public policy be “race conscious” or “colour blind”? Should it target the specific inequalities faced by minority groups or treat all citizens equally without any reference to individuals’ racial and cultural backgrounds?

The contrast between these two approaches has often been seen as that between Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism and French assimilationism, the one “based on the right of ethnic minorities, of communities”, the other “based on individual rights”, as Marceau Long, then the president of France’s Haut Conseil à L’Intégration, put it in 1991, adding that the Anglo-Saxon approach, unlike that of the French, was that of “another way of imprisoning people within ghettos”.

Thirty years on, we can see the issues as more complex and less given to simple binary oppositions. Two recent high-profile events illustrate this complexity: the debates around the US supreme court’s decision to strike down affirmative action and those around the riots that ripped through France after the police killing of teenager Nahel Merzouk.

While affirmative action improved prospects for middle-class black people, it left untouched those of the working-class

The supreme court’s verdict that Harvard’s race-based admission policy was illegal has led many to fear that the progress of African Americans in higher education will now stall. Yet, as the African American writer Bertrand Cooper observed even before the decision: “The reality is that for the Black poor, a world without affirmative action is just the world as it is – no different than before.”

Why? Because while affirmative action has improved prospects for middle-class black people, it has left untouched the lives of working-class African Americans. By 2020, the percentage of African Americans admitted to Harvard stood at almost 16% – higher than the proportion of black people within the US population. Black students in Harvard are, though, anything but representative of the African American community.

In most discussions about race, black Americans are regarded as constituting a singular community. However, black America has been, for most of the past half-century, the most unequal racial or ethnic group in the nation. White Americans in the top income quintile possess 21.3 times the wealth of white people in the lowest income quintile. For black people, that figure stands at a staggering 1,382. The poorest black people earn just 1.5% of the median black income.

This disparity shapes everything from education to incarceration. More than 70% of Harvard students come from the wealthiest 20% of families; 3% come from the poorest 20%. There were almost as many students from the wealthiest 1% as from the poorest 60%.

The greatest lack of diversity in America’s elite universities, in other words, is not racial but class-based. It is, though, one that deeply affects black Americans, because that same pattern of elite recruitment applies to African Americans as it does to the population as a whole. Affirmative action is action largely for the black elite.

This is not a new argument. In his seminal 1978 work, The Declining Significance of Race, the sociologist William Julius Wilson noted the changing contours of race and class and the development of a “deepening economic schism” within African American communities, “with the black poor falling further and further behind higher-income blacks”.

The title of Wilson’s book may seem ironic, given the centrality of race in public debate today. In material terms, Wilson’s thesis has proved largely accurate. Politically, though, there has been an increasing fixation with racial identities. This mismatch between material developments and political perceptions has ill-served the majority of African Americans.

It is not that racism does not continue to play an immense role in the lives of black people. It is rather that, as Cooper has observed: “Ignoring class divisions in Black America over the last 40 years has allowed the benefits of racial progress to be concentrated upon the Black middle and upper classes while the Black poor have largely been excluded.”

Many critics of race-conscious policies argue instead for the pursuit of “colour blind” policies that take no account of an individual’s race or culture. Perhaps the nation that most embodies such an approach is France. It is also the one that most reveals the problems with it.

‘Universalism’ has become a weapon with which to point out the ‘difference’ of particular peoples

French policy is rooted in its republican tradition and universalist principles, and a refusal to recognise racial distinctions in policymaking. The universalist belief that one should treat everyone as citizens, rather than as bearers of specific racial or cultural histories, is a valuable principle.

In practice, however, French policy has entailed being blind to racism in the name of being “colour blind”, and of using the demand for “assimilation” as a means of marking out certain groups – Jews in the past, Muslims and those of North African origin today – as not truly belonging to the nation. “Universalism” has become a weapon with which to point out the “difference” of particular peoples and to justify their marginalisation. France, as much as America, too often treats its citizens not as individuals but as members of racial or ethnic communities.

The French state not only refuses to recognise racial distinctions but also bans the collection of race-based data, making it far more difficult to evaluate the extent of racial discrimination, while providing a free pass to deny that such discrimination exists. A host of academic studies, attitudinal surveys and the use of categories, such as parent’s country of origin, that can act as surrogates for race and ethnicity, have exposed the degree to which France’s race-blind ideals are freighted with race-based assumptions, from racial profiling in policing to racial discrimination in employment.

And then there is the brutality of police violence, Nahel’s killing is but the latest example. Police perceptions of minority communities can be gauged by an extraordinary statement put out by two of France’s police unions during the riots, claiming that the police were “at war” with the “savage hordes” and warning that “tomorrow we will be in resistance” to the government.

In France, the refusal to recognise the social reality of racism in the name of “universalism” has helped create the very “ghettos” for which French politicians used to deride the Anglo-Saxon approach. In America, the preoccupation with policymaking by racial categories has neglected the very communities those policies are supposed to have benefited, by ignoring the many other features, such as class, that shape black lives, while also creating new social frictions – witness the tensions between African Americans and Asian Americans. What needs to be forged, beyond these two approaches, is a universalist perspective that embraces equal treatment but does not deny the reality of racial inequality

Source: France has been laissez-faire on race, the US proactive. Clearly, neither of them has it right

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Eight key takeaways from landmark French immigration study [2021 data]

2023/04/03 Leave a comment

Most notable finding for me was the social mobility of the second generation:

A major new demographic study has explored immigration into France for the first time in a decade.

The dossier, by the French statistics bureau Insee, was published on Thursday (March 30).

It mainly used data from 2021, the most recent available.

Here we look at its main findings.

1. One-in-ten people in France is an immigrant

The study found that there were an estimated seven million immigrants living in France in 2021, equivalent to 10.3% of the population.

The study defined ‘immigrant’ as someone who was “born with a foreign nationality in a foreign country”.

2. More than a third of immigrants acquired French nationality

The study found that many immigrants become significantly integrated into France, especially those who have children (second-generation) and grandchildren (third-generation), in the country.
It also found more than a third (36%) of people who arrived in France as immigrants acquired French nationality.

3. Nearly half of immigrants in France come from Africa

The study found that 50 years ago, most immigrants in France had come from southern Europe. This has now changed.

In 2021, they were more likely to come from north Africa (the Maghreb region), Africa, or Asia.

  • In 2011, there were 882,000 immigrants to France from Spain and Italy
  • In 2021, this had dropped to 543,000
  • In 2011, there were 1.63 million immigrants from the Maghreb
  • In 2021, there were more than 2 million immigrants from the Maghreb

Overall, almost half of the immigrants in France come from Africa (3.31 million of a total of 6.96 million).

4. More than half of the immigrants living in France are women

Challenging the stereotype that most immigrants are single men, the study revealed that 52% of immigrants living in France are women.

This has risen from 44% in 1968.

As with the immigrant population in general (see below), women are particularly likely to be “estranged” from the world of work, even though they are likely to have similar, if not higher, levels of education than immigrant men.

Insee said: “{Women are] nine times’ more likely to be inactive and three times less likely to be in full-time employment than men.”

The bureau said that while this could be partly because many immigrants make their journeys for family reasons, “including, often, the goal of raising a family,” this alone did not explain the gap.

“The probability of being inactive rises with the number of children, and whether they live with a partner,” Insee said.

5. Immigrants are more likely to be affected by unemployment

In 2021, 13% of immigrants were unemployed, compared to 7% of the general population in France.

Immigrants are over-represented in certain jobs, such as at-home carers and maternelle assistants for women, and the construction sector for men.

They are more likely to be in interim and temporary contracts compared to the rest of the population, and “often are in less-skilled jobs, associated with lower pay and more difficult working conditions”.

Insee said that 39% of immigrant men in employment are unskilled workers, compared to 29% of men who are neither immigrants themselves nor descendants of immigrants.

Insee suggested that lower employment levels among immigrants could partly be due to “hiring discrimination”. It said that it had tested the difference between immigrant job applications and non-immigrant applications.

“Similar candidates with a suspected Maghreb origin receive 32% fewer callbacks than those without the suspected origin, even though both say that they have done all of their education, diploma, and work, exclusively in France,” it wrote.

The lower employment levels could also be due to employers not recognising foreign qualifications, and also due to immigrants tending to have lower levels of French language skills.

This is especially the case for refugees, who are less likely to be from French-speaking countries (30%) compared to other immigrants to France (67%).

6. Immigrants are more likely to be poor

Immigrants are twice as likely as the rest of the population to suffer from financial poverty, especially those from Africa and Asia.

In 2019, at least half of immigrants earned less than €1,417 per month; 15% less on average than immigrant descendants, and 26% less on average than people without any recent immigrant background.

Insee said: “19% of immigrants born in Africa cannot have a personal car for financial reasons, versus only 3% of immigrants born in Europe. 47% of those from Africa cannot have a week of holiday away from home, compared to 22% of immigrants from Europe.”

Immigrants are also more likely to be in poor health. Insee found that 10% of immigrant men are likely to be in “bad or very bad health”, compared to 7% of the non-immigrant population, and 5% of descendants of immigrants.

7. Descendants of immigrants have high social mobility

Despite these challenges, the study shows that descendants of immigrants tend to have upward social mobility in terms of education and work.

Insee said: “The level of diplomas among immigrant descendants is very close to the non-immigrant and non-descendant-of-immigrants population.” This shows a strong rise in education levels and social mobility from one generation to another.

“A third (33%) of descendants of immigrants, whose father was an unskilled worker, go on to become managers or have a semi-skilled profession,” the study states.

This is higher than the figure (27%) for those who are not descendants of immigrants.

Around 32% of immigrants have higher-education qualifications, which rises to 38% among the descendants of immigrants, compared to 41% of the non-immigrant population.

8. Immigrants are more likely to be religious

Immigrants in France are more likely to be religious than the wider non-immigrant population.

In 2019-2020, 51% of the general population aged 18-59 in metropolitan France said they did not have a religion.

This rises to 59% among people with no recent (within three generations) immigration background.

In contrast, only 19% of immigrants who arrived in France after age 16 say the same, rising to 26% among descendants of immigrants.

  • 29% of the immigrant population said they were Catholic
  • 10% said they were Muslim
  • 9% said they were another form of Christianity

Among descendants of religious families:

  • 91% of people raised in a Muslim home follow their parents’ religion
  • 84% of people raised in a Jewish home do the same
  • As do 67% of people raised in a Catholic home
  • And 60% among other forms of Christianity

Insee said: “The fact of having grown up in a family of mixed religious or Catholic background is decisive when it comes to the secularisation of immigrant descendants.”

Source: Eight key takeaways from landmark French immigration study

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

UK: Braverman seeks to backdate Channel crossings law amid fears of rush

2023/03/08 Leave a comment

The latest effort by the UK government. Numbers are comparable to Roxham Road. And like Roxham Road, France may be less interested than the UK in adopting measures that restrict asylum seekers from leaving France:

Refugees who cross the Channel in small boats from Tuesday could face detention and deportation under a new migration law that Labour and charities have called “unworkable” and “cruel”.

In an acknowledgment that the law will prompt a fresh rush of refugees across the Channel, the Home Office is seeking to make the illegal migration bill apply retrospectively from the day it is introduced to parliament, the Guardian has been told.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, will ask for the proposed law to be applied from the moment she stands up in the Commons on Tuesday. The move follows criticism from unions that the legislation could result in an increase in trafficking across the Channel as refugees attempt to reach the UK before it is passed.

A Home Office source said: “If parliament passes the bill, the measures will be retrospective and apply from the date of introduction. That’s to stop people smugglers seizing on the opportunity to rush migrants across the Channel to avoid being subject to the new measures.”

Lucy Moreton, of the Immigration Services Union, said the plans would “fuel the service” for people smugglers, at least in the short term, “who could tell would-be arrivals that they needed to travel soon”.

Braverman is expected to say that under the new law, asylum claims from those who travel to the UK in small boats will be inadmissible, and the arrivals will be removed to a third country and banned from returning or claiming citizenship.

Details about how the policy will be implemented are scarce, with previous efforts to tighten procedures – such as the policy to send people to Rwanda – mired in legal challenges.

On Monday evening, a Downing Street spokesperson said Rishi Sunak had spoken to Rwanda’s president ahead of Braverman’s statement.

The prime minister and Paul Kagame “discussed the UK-Rwanda migration partnership and our joint efforts to break the business model of criminal people smugglers and address humanitarian issues”, the spokesperson said.

Source: Braverman seeks to backdate Channel crossings law amid fears of rush

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French prime minister unveils plans to tackle racism – The Associated Press

2023/02/01 Leave a comment

Of note. Will see if anything concrete:

Name it, act on it, sanction it.

That is the focus of a new drive against racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination of all kinds that was announced Monday by French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.

The four-year plan starts with educating youth with a required yearly trip to a Holocaust or other memorial site exemplifying the horrors that racism can produce. It includes training teachers and civil servants about discrimination and toughening the ability to punish those denounced for discrimination.

Arrest warrants will be issued to those who use freedom of expression for racist or anti-Semitic ends.

Unusually, the plan includes fighting discrimination against Roma.

“There will be no impunity for hate,” Borne said, presenting her plan with 80 measures at the Institute of the Arab World.

Tolerance is on the rise, “but hate has reinvented itself,” she said.

“Our first challenge is to look squarely at the reality of racism and anti-Semitism and cede nothing to those who falsify history, who rewrite our past, forgetting or deforming some pages,” Borne added.

Some people working for years in French associations against racism and discrimination are skeptical about the plan, reject it outright or are reserving their judgement.

Even Kaltoum Gachi, a co-president of the anti-racist MRAP organization — which contributed a proposal — told The Associated Press that her group “will be vigilant to see if, concretely, (the plan) bears fruit.”

France’s government has rolled out a succession of plans over five decades, the latest in 2018, to grapple with racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination. Still, the estimated number of victims who suffered as least one racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic attack was 1.2 million per year, according to the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights.

Social media and a rising far-right fearful of the disappearance of the nation’s Christian roots in an increasingly multi-cultural France have added new dimensions to the fight against racism. Generations of citizens from former colonies in mostly Muslim north and west Africa have over decades given the nation a new face.

Gachi, the MRAP co-president and a lawyer, told those attending the presentation that 25 years ago, her younger brother Kamel failed in numerous requests for a job interview with an automaker — until he changed his name to Kevin.

Just on Monday, Gachi, a lawyer, said in an interview with The AP that she spoke with a youth with the same problem, a humiliating experience that leaves a lasting mark. She added that dignity, not just equality, is part of the equation.

Names, addresses and looks have long been a roadblock for people with origins outside France. Regular testing in private and public places of employment will be part of the new anti-discrimination effort, though the exact method is still being devised.

Borne said her plan will also offer victims of racism and discrimination the possibility to file complaints outside a police station, and in a “partially anonymous” way. She did not elaborate.

The plan will also make it “an aggravating circumstance” if someone in authority, such as a police officer, uses racist or discriminatory words to someone.

However, Borne’s plan dodges some sensitive areas, notably failing to directly tackle discrimination and racial profiling within the nation’s powerful police force.

Omer Mas Capitolin, a founder of the grassroots Community House for Supportive Development, said the measures are not sufficient.

“There is a denial of systemic discrimination,” not mentioned once in the plan, he told the AP.

His organization is one of a group of NGOs that launched a class action suit in 2021 against France’s powerful police in 2021, contending that it lawfully propagates a culture leading to systemic discrimination in identity checks. But for Mas Capitolin, who spoke on a personal level, alleged systemic discrimination goes beyond law enforcement to sectors like housing and jobs.

Mas Capitolin also criticized the timing for unveiling the plan on a day parliament opens debate on a hotly contested pension plan and on the eve of a planned protest march.

Source: French prime minister unveils plans to tackle racism – The Associated Press

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,

Macron looks to crack down on illegal immigration with new law

2022/12/08 Leave a comment

The ongoing debates and responding to pressures from the right:

Macron’s centrist government unveiled the outlines of a new draft immigration law on Tuesday that will be debated formally in parliament in early 2023.

It comes just four years after a 2018 law with similar objectives, passed during Macron’s first term in office, which also aimed to take the heat out of an explosive political issue.

“It’s about integrating better and expelling better,” Macron’s hardline interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, told France Info radio on Tuesday of the new proposals.

“We want those people who work, not those who rob.”

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne opened the debate in France’s National Assembly by saying the law would allow France to “say who we want”’ and “who we don’t want” to allow permanent entry into France. “Zero immigration is neither desirable nor possible, and it’s no more realistic than unregulated immigration,” she said.

Darmanin and Macron have linked immigration to delinquency in recent weeks, with both saying that around half of petty crimes committed in Paris are by foreigners.

Speaking to the Parisien newspaper at the weekend, Macron pitched the new legislation as a means of addressing the historic rise of the far-right National Rally, which in June became the biggest opposition party in parliament.

“We need a policy that is firm and humane in line with our values,” the 44-year-old said. “It’s the best antidote to the extremes which feed off anxieties.”

Figures from the interior ministry show that France currently expels around 10 percent of migrants who have been ordered to leave the country and the rate has never been higher than 20 percent.

‘Nothing will change’

The country’s lengthy legal appeals process, procedural delays and a lack of state resources are seen as reasons for the low expulsion rate, which Darmanin has pledged to increase.

Like many European countries, France struggles to persuade countries in North and West Africa to re-admit their citizens once they are subject to an expulsion order.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who scored 41 percent in the second round of April’s presidential election, regularly accuses the government of laxity and “submerging” France with foreigners.

In her third bid for the presidency this year, she proposed changing the constitution via a referendum to set strict immigration targets and ensure French people get priority over foreigners for all state services.

“I don’t expect anything (from the new law),” she said on Tuesday. “They will talk to us again about balancing firmness and humanity. We’ve heard that for decades.

“Nothing will change… immigration in our country is completely out of control.”

A gruesome murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl in Paris in October caused a major political scandal after it emerged that her killer was an Algerian woman who had been ordered to leave the country.

The chaotic management of 234 migrants and asylum seekers who landed in France in November aboard the charity rescue ship Ocean Viking has also embarrassed the government.

Although the interior ministry initially said most of the adults had been refused entry to France, only a handful were detained after they lodged asylum claims and court appeals.

Legal migration route

The new draft legislation, which Darmanin has co-written, would reduce the number of appeals possible for failed asylum seekers from 12 to three and in theory speed up expulsion procedures.

It would also remove safeguards for foreigners who arrived in France as children, making it easier to expel them if they are convicted of crimes — a measure designed to tackle teenage delinquents.

And there will be measures to offer work permits to foreign workers with skills required in particular sectors of the economy, which could include the many employed illegally in the restaurant sector.

Macron’s MPs are a minority in parliament, meaning the bill will need support from the rightwing opposition Republicans party, which has criticised the proposals as too weak.

“There’s a red line in what we know about this bill which is the massive regularisation of illegal workers in short-staffed sectors,” senior MP Pierre-Henri Dumont told reporters.

France has passed 29 different laws on immigration since 1980.

People from 15 different charities and some left-wing MPs demonstrated in front of the national assembly on Tuesday to denounce what they termed the “hostile” attitude of the government to migration.

Nearly eight in 10 French people think Macron’s governments have failed to control immigration, according to a poll by the CSA survey group published by the CNews channel last month.

Around seven in 10 think there are too many foreigners in France, multiple polls this year have shown.

Source: Macron looks to crack down on illegal immigration with new law

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Khan: Soccer is truly the beautiful game, unless you are a French Muslim woman who wears a hijab

2022/12/07 Leave a comment

Good reminder:

Thus far, the FIFA World Cup has not disappointed. Electrifying plays on the field, compelling storylines from Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Robert Lewandowski, and the festive, colourful fandom in the stands. It’s called the beautiful game for a reason. Soccer has a simple, universal appeal – all you need is a ball, a couple of teammates, and voilà, the dreams are yours to make.

Except if you are a Muslim woman in France who wears a hijab. According to a decree by the French Football Federation (FFF), anyone playing, coaching or officiating on a French football pitch is banned from wearing religious symbols. For all the focus in World Cup media coverage on Qatar’s policies towards migrant workers, women and the LGBTQ community, hardly anyone has made a peep about how a soccer powerhouse – France – bars Muslim women from participating in the sport simply for wearing a hijab.

France has a tortuous history of harmonizing its growing Muslim population and its official policy of secularity, or laicité. Suffice it to say that the hijab has never been welcomed in the land of liberté, égalité et fraternité. After a 2004 ban on wearing “conspicuous religious symbols,” including the hijab, in French public schools came into effect, the niqab was also banned in public spaces in 2010. Curiously, while mask mandates were implemented in France throughout the pandemic, niqabs were still subject to fines.

The FFF’s rule runs contrary to official FIFA policy, which lifted its own hijab ban in 2014. The policy has had a painful impact on many aspiring French Muslim female soccer players, who have faced a choice between the sport they love and their faith. Some have grown up in the same Paris banlieues that produced Kylian Mbappé, Paul Pogba and N’Golo Kanté. During childhood, some of these young female players faced opposition from their own conservative families, who deemed soccer too masculine. As they thrived at sport-intensive programs and club tryouts, the families gave in – only to have the FFF turn their daughters away from the pitch because of their hijabs.

Yet the FFF could not kill the spirits of these remarkable young women, or their love of the game. In response to being excluded by the FFF, Les Hijabeuses, a collective of French female Muslim soccer players, was formed in 2020 with the aim of ensuring that all women can play the sport they love. Co-president Founé Diawararecalled feeling angry and excluded when being told to leave the pitch for wearing her hijab at the age of 15: “I was trapped between my passion [for football] and something that is a huge part of my identity. It’s like they tried to tell me that I had to choose between the two,” she told The Guardian in 2021.

Les Hijabeuses have used their strong social media following to rally against the FFF’s ban. They’ve launched petitions, gathered support from the broader sports community (including Nike), and organized soccer matches outside the French Senate building as a form of protest. The members and their allies play soccer together, connect with other French teams and provide training sessions to encourage other young Muslim women to get into the sport. It is a refuge, providing a safe space for Muslims to be who they are, while playing the sport they love. They have even lobbied the FFF to overturn the ban, and are now taking them to court. Earlier this year, the French Senate tried, unsuccessfully, to codify the FFF ban into law, arguing that the hijab was a means to spread radical Islam to sports clubs. Senator Stéphane Piednoir, a ban supporter, told The New York Times that he has yet to speak with a hijab-clad athlete, comparing such an encounter to a “firefighter” listening “to pyromaniacs.”

The ban is even more galling given that France is the only European country that excludes hijabis from playing in most competitive domestic sports, while foreign players with hijabs will be allowed to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Why is France denying Olympic opportunities for its own hijab-clad athletes?

More importantly, why has the rest of the world been silent on this issue in recent weeks, especially during coverage of the World Cup? International media should be shining a spotlight on the FFF’s exclusionary policies. National soccer federations (including Canada Soccer) should be mounting a united stand against the FFF’s overt discrimination through boycotts and other measures. FIFA should sanction the FFF for violating official FIFA policy.

I have played soccer almost my entire life. I am an accredited soccer coach. But because I wear a hijab, I can’t play, coach or officiate on a soccer pitch in France. In Qatar, no problem. Let that sink in.

Sheema Khan is the author of Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman.

Source: Soccer is truly the beautiful game, unless you are a French Muslim woman who wears a hijab

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

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