African Immigration To France: The Role Of Immigrants In France

For decades, scores of African individuals and their families have made the conscious decision –motivated either by cultural ties, economics, war, the environment, or political unrest – to undertake the transnational journey of relocation to France. Such a monumental, intercontinental journey carries with it significant socio-political implications for immigrants, especially with regards to families. For many Africans, France, a nation with strong historical and colonial ties to the continent of Africa, represents a land of economic and social opportunity; one they can relate to both culturally and linguistically. As such, African immigration to France has long been socially engrained within French society. Beginning with the post-WWII economic …show more content…
Present day, Africans now represent over 43 percent of the foreign population in France; a reality that greatly influences the ethnic, demographic, and socio-cultural environment of the nation (Ticktin 2011).While African immigration to France is evidently no new phenomenon, only recently have researchers begun to direct critical anthropological attention towards the deep-seated effects the process has on immigrants …show more content…
These “others” find themselves innately excluded from native French society and the benefits that accompany such an association. Within the workings of these social boundaries, state policies, ones that harbour detrimental and discriminatory impacts on immigrant claims for citizenship and social identity, rise to the fore. Such policies are not exclusive to France, and are present in nations across the globe such as Japan (Suzuki 2010), Hong Kong (Constabel 2013), and even the United States (Horton 2015). Over the decades of African immigration to France, the overarching view of immigrants has radically shifted from a socio-economic approach (ie. immigrants as labourers), to one centred around an ethnoracial context (Ticktin 2011). This alteration in perspective has resulted in a significant shift in how societal structures affect immigrants, and in how immigrants work to shape their own lives. The contemporary French nation state – heavily influenced by globalization, capitalism, and neo-liberal ideals - “seek[s] to limit unauthorized migrant entry, to constrain their mobility within the nation, to restrict possibilities for asylum, residency, and naturalization, and to reinforce surveillance, detention, and deportation” (Terrio 2010,