Immigration & Identity in France

Transcript of AFPI’S third interview in the "Civilizational Allies" series 

For about a decade, the French population has been dealing with the effects of mass migration, particularly the rapid growth of an unassimilated African and Muslim population. The immigration policies of both President Emmanuel Macron and the E.U. have generated profound cultural, social, and political challenges that successive French governments have struggled or hesitated to address directly. Recognizing the effects of France’s immigration policy and potential solutions are key to civilizational allies seeking to preserve their culture and heritage.

For the annual International Network for Immigration Research Conference in Washington, D.C., I sat down with Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti, co-founder and leader of the Observatoire de L’immigration et de la Démographie (OID) (in English: Observatory of Immigration and Demography) – an immigration research institute headquartered in Paris. Monti offered insights into the state of immigration into France, policy analysis and potential paths forward, with a view into immigration’s role in shaping the future of the West.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Nicholas, thank you so much for this conversation. Let's start with setting the scene. Can you please describe the scale and the nature of immigration in France today?

Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti:

What we’re seeing now can only be referred to as an immigration crisis. There has never been as much immigration in France as there is today.

The number of first-time residence permits granted every year has tripled over the last 25 years. If you take a look at the number of people granted asylum in France, it has tripled over the last 10 years. As far as illegal immigration is concerned, of course, the metrics are a bit less assured. With state medical aid, which is a specific health care system for illegal immigrants, the number of its beneficiaries has tripled over the last 20 years. Last year alone, this immigrant population rose as much as over the three previous years combined. There is an accelerating trend that is at stake and that is of high concern to a large part of the French public.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Understood. Can you tell me about how that immigration has altered the culture of France, the economy, the feelings of security in the general population?

Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti:

There is a specific feature of immigration in France, which is that we have one of the culturally distant immigration situations in the entire European continent. We have the most African immigration of all Europe, where half of all immigrants living in France are from the African continent. So, of course, this has important implications as far as culture and religion is concerned.

For a long time, there was a myth of assimilation, which tended to reassure everyone that these immigrants and immigrant descendants were going to slowly converge with French culture. This is something we cannot say anymore. It used to work quite well in the first part of French immigration history, but it's generally not the case anymore. Another specific feature in France is that we have one of the least employed and relatively poorest immigrations across the whole of the E.U. And this has huge economic and fiscal implications, which are especially topical right now because in France, as well as in Europe, there is a public debt crisis. So, the issues related to the cost of immigration are also rising sharply.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

What are some of the specific political and policy factors that led to this immigration crisis?

Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti:

Along with the U.K., France was one of the very first European countries to experience massive non-European immigration, starting in the 1960’s by what was mostly temporary economic immigration at the time.

During the post-war economic boom, there was a yearning for cheap labor in some parts of the French manufacturing industry. Then, by the late 1970’s, family reunification policies were put into place, which changed both the scale and nature of immigration to France. This led to a re-accelerating of immigration ever since the late 1990’s. Immigration was a bit lower between the late 1970s and the late 1990s than it was during the post-war economic boom, but now it's higher than ever.

During the post-war economic boom, the policies at stake were first, I would say, ill-advised economic policies in order to fulfill labor shortages. Over the last 50 years, we moved away from those policies into what could be called a “rights-based” immigration policy. Part of the issues we’re seeing now is due to E.U. treaties, but the immigration crisis in France outdates E.U. treaties by many aspects too.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

How do you feel like the identity of France has endured or changed with immigrants arriving from very culturally dissonant places and refusing to assimilate? Can you just talk about the different sort of effects that’s had on French society?

Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti:

I would say that contemporary France has been built on what is often called civic nationalism – this idea of a strong republican, secular identity, independent of people’s backgrounds or creeds. This is something that the French are still deeply attached to, but it’s true that the extent and nature of today’s immigration is putting this model under intense pressure. There is growing awareness in large parts of the French public and also in the French intellectual life that civic nationalism can only be conceived in the framework of strong shared values, and of a strong common culture.

This is the kind of awareness that is also rising on some parts of the old left. People who are deeply attached to the French concept of laïcité, not only separation of church and state, but also this idea that religion belongs into the private sphere. And for a long time, laïcité was conceived as some sort of conflict or compromise between the Catholic Church and the secular republic. And now the very rapid and high rise of Islam is putting this framework under unprecedented change. And of course, this is felt as a barely bearable tension.

On top of this, France now has the largest Muslim population in Europe and this is entirely due to immigration. There is really no such thing in France as native Islam, apart from Mayotte, perhaps, which is one of its overseas territories, populated with a few tens of thousands of inhabitants.

In France, we have 44% of all immigrants and 32% of second-generation descendants who declare themselves to be Muslims, as opposed to barely 1% of people who are not either immigrants themselves or children of immigrants. The rise of Islam is heavily correlated to immigration because of continuing incoming flows, because also of the differentiated birth rates of immigrants coming from the Muslim world in France. This is also due to the documented stronger transmission of religious affiliation within Muslim households than there is within Christian households.

This has impacts of various kinds. One of the most visible things you can witness in France is the rise of hijab, the Islamic scarf, which is also rising within the Muslim community. Over the last 10 years, the share of Muslim women in France who are actually wearing the Islamic scarf has increased by half. And there is a growing pressure in some neighborhoods to wear it; this pressure is mostly exercised on the Muslim descent women who would like to take part into the modern secularized France. This is another testimony of the kind of tension I just mentioned.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

So, for the French citizens who are concerned with these changes, particularly high levels of immigration and the lack of assimilation, what are their options in politics?

Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti:

Well, for a long time, there was this feeling that only Rassemblement National (National Rally) was addressing the issue. And it’s obvious that today’s Rassemblement National success in polls is heavily tied to immigration. The latest polls for the upcoming French presidential election, which will take place in one year and a half are now polling Rassemblement National at around 35% of the votes, with a 20 point lead over the over the second-polling candidate, which is post-Macronist Edouard Philippe, who used to be Macron’s Prime Minister.

But now there are wider segments of the French political spectrum that are trying to show they take this concern into account. This is the case, for example, with Les Républicains, who used to be a traditional centre-right party, Sarkozy’s party, Chirac’s party, which is adopting a tougher and tougher stance on this issue. There are also challengers to Rassemblement National on the right, with Éric Zemmour, etc. The panel of choices is wider than it used to be.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Thank you. Circling back to the birth rate issue, can you talk about the demographic decline of the native population, and if you think the average French citizen is concerned about this? There are so few young families, everything is expensive, and the culture is so secularized; it really feels we are on a precipice.

Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti:

Absolutely. France used to be a country that was doing relatively okay on birthrates, as compared to other European countries, partly because we had a very generous and ambitious family policy, with fiscal benefits for people with children.

We sacrificed a large part of it over the last 10 years. Right now, the birthrate is around 1.62 children per woman, which is slightly higher than Europe’s average now, but way lower than it used to be. It used to be two children per woman in 2010.

This is especially felt in the context of demographic change triggered by immigration, because last year, we had more than 30% of all newborn babies which were born to at least one parent born outside of the European Union. This is a dramatic demographic shift, and something that is also tied to the geographical background of the immigration we have. The fact that we have the most African immigration in Europe also means that we have the immigration which comes from the countries with the highest fertility rates in the world. I mean, if you take a look at the six countries in the world with the highest fertility rate, five out of six are French-speaking African countries – Niger, Mali, etc.

The kind of sacrifice we made on family policy, mostly by Francois Hollande’s socialist government, largely impacted the middle class, which is more than proportionately native French or European background French. There was a very interesting study from the World Bank which showed that these reforms impacted above all households with at least one middle- or upper-class member, and the choices they made of having one more child or not. And this kind of households is usually less immigrant and more native French than the average population.

They had this ill-advised conception that family policy must be elaborated as any other kind of welfare policy, of economic redistribution policy. Whereas in the traditional French conception, this is not the case. Family policy is not about reducing income inequality, it’s about retributing people who invest in the future of French society by having children.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Can you talk a bit more about how the importing of Islamic migrants especially has altered the religious life in France?

Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti:

Mostly, there’s a noticeable change in cultural and social norms. In many French neighborhoods, feasts of the Islamic calendar are more widely shared and celebrated than traditional Christian holidays. There’s also the rising call for access to halal food in schools or in business restaurants. All of these are sometimes looked down by the mainstream media as anecdotal to some extent, but it is felt strongly by a large part of the French public.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Let’s talk about policy solutions. What are the main things we need to do to get this under control?

Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti:

There are two types of action for turning the tide. The first is what can be done in the current framework of French constitutional law and E.U. law. There are things that can be done, and many of them have to deal with welfare reform, because France tends to be especially attractive for immigrants who are looking for welfare benefits rather than the opportunity to work, as compared to some other European countries. So, this access to welfare must be reformed.

There’s also a range of bilateral treaties between France and extra-European countries which makes it easier for nationals from these countries to access French territory. The most obvious case is with Algeria. There was a vote in the National Assembly last week which asked the government to denounce this bilateral treaty.

There are other things that can be done on the short term, but on the longer term, if you want to address the biggest masses of immigration, family immigration, asylum-based immigration, you will have to reform the E.U. treaties. You will have also to break the judicial deadlock of France’s several supreme courts. In France, as well as in Europe, the judges tend to take a tighter and tighter grip on migration policies that has to be broken at some extent, in order to have some degree of democratic accountability at last.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

How much is the E.U. a roadblock to all of this?

Nicolas Monti:

The E.U. was conceived as a largely pro-immigration project. Inside the E.U., there’s this idea of the “internal market” which means that any citizen of a member state can go and settle into any other member state.

This intra-E.U. migration is not that much debated in France, because it’s not the one that has the most negative implications. But this attachment to what the E.U. calls ‘free movement’ extends to the wider world. For example, if you take a look at the Schengen Agreement, which has suppressed most of internal border controls within the E.U.: it does not only mean that European nationals can move from one member state to the other without being checked at borders; it also applies to non-E.U. citizens that are on European soil. This is a massive incitement to irregular migration, because when you manage to set foot in Italy, for example, then you enter an absolutely large area without any border checks that can get you to France or Germany or Sweden.

There’s an interesting move within the E.U. in regard to the realignment of some national governments in favor of legal reform, especially as far as asylum is concerned; you can see it in Italy, you can see it in Denmark, in Sweden. There’s a growing idea that E.U. might be reformed from within, or at least taken towards a more restrictive stance towards immigration. The political landscape in Europe has changed so rapidly over the last ten years that this kind of prospect, which did not exist 10 years ago, is now likely.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

On immigration, is there a tipping point? A date or time where these changes are basically irreversible?

Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti:

It’s true that immigration has changed French society in a way that is partly irreversible. The most important issue now is how do we manage to have a society that is still livable, that is still at peace with itself to some extent by the end of this century. If we continue on today's trends, as far as incoming flows are concerned, as far as the birth rate is concerned, there is a serious concern that this will not be the case. But if we take a serious grasp on immigration, if we cut the incoming flows: we won't come back to 1960’s France, but there's still a chance that we can have a French society that is livable.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

One last question: why should Americans care about what's happening in France, especially on immigration?

Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti:

There are common features and differences across the West on this issue. Some of the common features have to deal with the international law framework of immigration. We are all submitted to the Geneva Convention of 1951, which is completely outdated in its contents, that would have to be either revised or cancelled to some extent. We also have the same issue of cultural assimilation, because numbers matter and culture matters. It is probably even more serious in Europe, because of the kind of immigration we have.

But more importantly, and perhaps more deeply, I would say that the core issue at stake is the same. It's the issue of cultural persistence and democratic accountability. Are the American people owners of America? Are the French or European people owners of France and Europe? And if so, are they legitimate to decide what kind of aliens they want to admit and what kind of aliens they want to settle permanently, and on the opposite, what kind they want not to have?

If we agree that there's a democratic right, then I guess the future of immigration policies in Europe and America can be brighter than it is.

Kristen Ziccarelli:

Well said, and thank you again for sharing all your analysis on this issue. I think from the U.S. standpoint, we can see the consequences in France as a clear warning for the broader West. It shows what happens when civic nationalism is hollowed out from within, when family and faith lose their central place, and when culture is intentionally dismantled by the Left. These are existential questions that every Western democracy will face if we fail to protect our cultural inheritance. And of course, for the America First movement and our allies abroad, France’s situation affirms why immigration frameworks must serve the nation and its people, first.