European Task Force on Irregular Migrations – Country report: France

Summary:

Looking back since the end of the 1970’s, French immigration policy has been characterised by an increased toughening, both on the outside, through greater border control and an increasingly strict asylum policy, and on the inside, with a progressive criminalisation of irregularity.

Interestingly, and as shown through this compilation of articles, this trend has been followed relatively consistently throughout the European Union space, even in a country outside of the Schengen agreements as the UK. Migration policy has become one of the most politicised topics within the European Union, to the effect that most politicians seek to ‘make their mark’ on the issue. Another common thread in the case studies presented here is the constructed dimension of an irregular administrative status. In France, as in other European countries, migrants have navigated in an out of an irregularity on the basis of new laws and circulars.

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