to the symbolic and discursive particularities of the local voting rights campaign in France, it may be helpful first to look at who supported it, and why and how they sought to promote it.
The Social and Political Bases of France’s New Citizenship Campaign
The idea of extending more equal civic and political rights to immigrants was an initiative that emerged primarily out of groups on the French left with a localist or collectivist orientation. The campaign for a “new citizenship” was launched largely by French left organizations outside the party system, and won only limited support from Socialist Party leaders (Dinant 1985: 11–12). Calls for greater participation of immigrants in local political life began to be heard in France as early as the late 1970s. The Federation of Associations of Solidarity with Immigrant Workers (Fédération des Associations de Solidarité avec les Travailleurs Immigrés FASTI) supported the right of immigrants to vote and to stand for office beginning in 1975. At first, FASTI was isolated in its position, and made only low-key efforts to attract support for its ideas. Other groups were also starting to consider issues of migrant representation, but none yet went so far as FASTI on this score. From 1977 to 1981, the Christian refugee assistance group CIMADE (Comité Inter-mouvements auprès des Évacués) and parts of the Socialist Party expressed their support for the creation of institutions to represent “migrants” as a group at the local level, but initially not for the direct, individual participation of migrants in the election of regular local council representatives (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 26–27; Serres 1985: 4–5).4
Beginning in 1980, however, the voting rights demands initially made by FASTI started to find other supporters. The Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT)—France’s largest trade union confederation—called for local voting rights for immigrants who met a minimal residency requirement (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 27). Notably, the Human Rights League (Ligue des Droits Humaines, LDH) also adopted a resolution in favor of municipal voting rights for immigrants at its 61st Congress in November 1980. Subsequently, the local voting rights idea in France would, like the turn to “post-nationalism” later proclaimed in the academic literature, be closely linked to support for the cause of human rights. LDH’s resolution received open support from France’s small socialist PSU party, religious organizations, and of course FASTI.
During the mid–1980s, associations grouping first-generation immigrant workers according to their country of origin also campaigned actively in favor of the “immigrant voting rights” idea. The Amicale des Travailleurs Africains en France (ATAF), a humanitarian organization committed to promoting social action and mutual aid among African workers in France, was among those declaring their support for immigrants’ right both to vote and to run for office (Dinant 1985: 13). Accounts of the events organized by associations of and for immigrant workers are suggestive of the flavor of the campaign for local voting rights during those years, particularly as the idea was presented locally to other foreigners. In March 1986, the Union of Tunisian Workers (UTIT) and the Democratic Union of Kurdish Workers in France (UDTKF) were active in organizing a local festival for the promotion of immigrant voting rights in Chalon sur Saône. The symbolism on which the festival drew was leftist, collectivist, and hostile to the French state. The mock-vote that crowned the day’s activities was preceded by performances of Kurdish and Maghrebin musicians who sang about Tunisia and the struggles of the Moroccan and Palestinian peoples. The festivities thus symbolically associated the immigrant voting rights issue with both anti-imperialism and the promotion of cultural diversity in France. This festival also thereby framed local voting rights in terms of a more general celebration of locally rooted collective struggles for autonomy from state authorities.5
This event marked a clear change from the initial hostility of such firstgeneration foreign worker organizations to immigrant voting rights. Originally, many had viewed such initiatives as assimilationist and feared their potential to undermine immigrants’ political engagement in their countries of origin (Serres 1985: 4). There was never unanimity on this point, however. As early as 1982, the Association of Workers from Turkey (ATT) expressed support for the right of immigrants to vote in France as “a step toward the equality of French-immigrant rights that goes further than the simple right to vote in the country of origin” (Dinant 1985: 13). By the mid–1980s, foreign workers in France were increasingly arguing that extending voting rights to immigrants would better enable them to resist assimilation, by allowing them to obtain more equal political rights without becoming French nationals. Those who were attached to their nationality of origin as an anchor of cultural identity, it was argued, would be able to vote without sacrificing it (Lefranc 1985: 7).
One reason for the eventual waning of this argument may have been its inaccuracy, at least in legal terms. France in fact allows double nationality. Acquiring French nationality therefore entails the loss of one’s nationality of origin only where required by the laws of the other country. Neither Portugal nor Algeria, whose emigrants together accounted for more than a third (36.5 percent) of legal foreign residents in France in 1986 have such restrictions. Portugal, meanwhile, amended its nationality 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
