Audrey Bergassoli

Dear Foreigner…

Let’s take a look at the hypocrisy of the French state regarding immigration. Indeed, with mass immigration, particularly from North Africa during colonial times and after decolonization, France experienced a lot of challenges. Initially, it proposed a model of political citizenship where each newcomer by being or becoming a French citizen should almost naturally assimilate and abandon their ties to their countries of origin. This didn’t work. Faced with the reality of an increasingly diverse, conflicted France, and the political, economic and social failures of the assimilation paradigm, legislators and politicians reacted. They created a new model of integration that, apparently, would respect the specificities of each person and at the same time protect the state and unify the society. 

Wow, it looks good on paper. But does it really? The language produced in the laws, the protocols, the presidential speeches, is full of ambiguities and hidden meanings. There are the reports of the Nationality Commission and of the High Council for Integration, which propose "solutions" for integration. There are legal texts about access to French nationality and the conditions of integration to acquire it. There is a speech by Jacques Chirac, the French president in 2002, offering an "integration contract".

Your French needs to be perfect to get the subtleties of such language! Therefore we added a translation into English, and some comments, that will hopefully be helpful.

Collage, 2021