Immigration, Islam, and the Politics of Belonging in France. Elaine R. Thomas
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code to permit dual nationality in 1982 (Long 1988a: 664).6
Available survey data suggest that immigrant associations’ change in position on this issue paralleled an underlying shift in opinion among Maghrebin residents in France. Public opinion polling of the foreign population in France in those years was, unfortunately, infrequent and relied on much smaller and less representative samples than those standard for surveys of the French general population. Still, what imperfect evidence we have from those years suggests that immigrants’ support for local voting rights was rising. A 1978 survey of 214 Algerian nationals aged sixteen to twenty-four living in France asked, “In France there are political parties and associations that say that foreigners should vote in municipal elections. Yourself, do you think it is normal or not normal that you might vote when there are municipal elections in France?” Already in 1978, a clear majority of respondents (57 percent) said they found it “normal,” with only 18 percent selecting “not normal.” Responses were similar, but a bit less favorable (53 percent “normal” versus 26 percent “not normal”), among a second subsample of 208 young Portuguese living in France questioned in 1978 (“Le sondage” 1978: 26). However, in 1989, when asked, “Do you think it is desirable or not desirable that foreigners living in France for a certain time might have the right to vote in local elections?” an overwhelming 80 percent of French-speaking Muslims over 15 interviewed in the Paris, Marseilles, and Lyon areas deemed it “desirable” (Le Nouvel Observateur, 23–29 March 1989: 99). Unfortunately, the sampling criteria for this survey evidently differed from those used in 1978. Not all Algerians in France are Muslim, and not all Muslims in France are Algerian; many are from Morocco, Tunisia, or sub-Saharan Africa.7 Nonetheless, the difference in the results of the two surveys is striking, and there is no obvious reason to think that the differences in sampling criteria would account for it. While less dramatic, a 1990 survey of “immigrants” also found a somewhat higher level of support for local voting rights for foreign residents than the 1978 survey of young Portuguese and Algerians: 66 percent expressed an interest in having the right, without having French nationality, to vote in municipal elections (versus 26 percent “non”). One reason for the lower level of interest expressed in this survey may have been that, in contrast to the other two surveys, this one asked respondents about their own desire to have the right to vote, not about their desire that foreign residents in general might have it or about their assessment of whether it was “normal” for them to have it (L’Express, 23 March 1990: 70–71).
The reversal in position on the part of immigrant associations and shift in opinion among foreigners residing in France from the 1970s to 1990 paralleled a rise in perceptions among foreigners in France that they were unlikely to return soon to their countries of origin. In 1978, when asked how long they wanted to remain in France, only 24 percent of Algerians and 25 percent of Portuguese respondents said they planned to stay “permanently”; 30 percent of Algerian and 40 percent of Portuguese respondents indicated that they planned to stay “several years,” while many (30 percent of the Algerians and 22 percent of the Portuguese) did not know how long they planned to stay (“Le sondage” 1978: 23). By contrast, a 1983 Gallup poll of male foreigners from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Italy, and Portugal that asked whether they would return to their country if they had work there, found that 43 percent—48 percent of Portuguese and Italians and 36 percent of Maghrebins—indicated that they would choose to “stay in France.” By 1990, the percentage answering that they would stay had risen to 61, an increase of 18 percentage points in only seven years (“Les immigrés” 1990: 72). As their expectations of return declined, the interest of foreigners in voting locally in France increased.
The demand for voting rights for “immigrants” also attracted some limited support from associations of second-generation Maghrebin youth, beurs, notably from the Collective for Civic Rights. However, the idea of voting rights for “immigrants” in France was itself inherently ambiguous. The term immigrés was commonly applied not only to those who had actually immigrated to France (generally nationals of other countries, and not of France), but also to their French-born descendants (many of whom were French nationals). Beur organizations’ support for the extension of political rights to immigrés paralleled simultaneous, and more important, efforts by such organizations to encourage the exercise of political rights by immigrés who were legally French (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 28).8 Thus, the championing of voting rights by the new wave of beur and anti-racist youth associations did not necessarily indicate rejection of the more traditional road to voting rights through the acquisition of French nationality.
Harlem Désir, a French national from the Caribbean presiding over the recently organized, high profile, anti-racist youth movement SOS-Racisme, took a carefully measured midway stance on the issue. Désir supported local voting rights for non-nationals, but opposed actual legal reforms to grant them until (and unless) French public opinion became broadly favorable (interview, L’heure de verité, Antenne 2, 19 August 1987). As Désir could not but have realized by reading the newspapers, French public opinion was then clearly and overwhelmingly opposed to the idea.
As we shall see, Désir’s position in this respect thus closely conformed to that of François Mitterand, France’s Socialist President. At the same time, however, Désir was resisting pressure to admit to identifying with the Socialist Party. When television interviewer Alain Duhamel sought to make him do so during a guest appearance on Duhamel’s show, Désir responded, “my own movement, it would be humanism, it is the philosophy of human rights and then it is above all to try concretely on specific points in daily life to change things.” Of course, one could argue that Désir was simply anxious to avoid appearing overly partisan. But the human rights movement in France is certainly not seen as politically neutral; it is led by left social movements, strongly supported by many activist left-identified lawyers and jurists, and vehemently opposed by the far right. Désir’s position could therefore be better interpreted as one of support for part of the French left, but not always the part best represented by the Socialist Party (PS). Like other supporters of local voting rights for immigrants, Désir was sharply critical of central state control. He favored decentralization and defended greater autonomy from the administration in Paris for Martinique and Guadeloupe (“L’heure de verité,” 19 August 1987). Like those of other groups favoring local voting rights and unlike much of the PS, Désir’s position had a clearly anti-statist cast.
One might have expected Désir to take a stronger stand in favor of non-national voting rights. However, this demand was not as natural a cause for beur groups or the growing anti-racist youth movement of the 1980s as it was for the more traditional immigrant workers’ associations and human rights organizations. Though they may have wanted to see voting rights extended to their older, non-French relatives, many beurs—like Désir himself—were already legally French, and therefore already had the right to vote. And, while the often nationality-based organization of the immigrant workers’ associations testified to a certain attachment to their countries of origin, the new generation was increasingly identifying itself in terms of membership in a particular age cohort (“youth”) or commitment to particular principles, such as equality and fraternity across racial lines. As foreign nationality became a less salient basis of identification and social organization among these youth, the problem of reconciling political participation with attachment to a foreign nationality also became a less pressing source of identity conflict.
Nonetheless, supporters of the “new citizenship” campaign hoped that cause would draw new second-generation organizations back into active cooperation with older immigrant workers’ associations and French left immigrant worker solidarity associations like FASTI. Thus, the campaign was also partly driven by efforts to respond to the growing diversity, and apparent scattering, of the immigrant association movement. More specifically, it marked an effort by older French progressive organizations to reclaim a position of leadership vis-à-vis the disruptively autonomous, upstart, second-generation associations that became increasingly important during the mid–1980s (Serres 1985: 5).
By 1985, demands for local voting rights for non-nationals had also received cautious public support from François Mitterand and later from the French Communist Party, moving the issue into the national political limelight. The right of immigrants residing in France for at least five years