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 to vote in municipal elections was included in Mitterand’s 1981 electoral platform. In 1985, it was also embraced by the French Communist Party following a new round of efforts to increase support for it in the mid-1980s, most notably by FASTI, the leading French anti-racist group Movement Against Racism and for Amity Between Peoples (MRAP), and the Council of Immigrant Associations in France (CAIF) (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 28–29, 29 n1; Serres 1985: 4–5).9
In April 1985, Mitterand, then president, again spoke in favor of immigrants’ participation in local government, calling it “a fundamental claim” that “would inevitably be inscribed in the laws.” He made this statement at the 65th Congress of the Human Rights League (LDH), thus clearly expressing his enthusiasm for that organizations’s efforts (Le Monde, 23 April 1985). He did not go so far as to promise to extend new rights to foreign residents in the immediate future, however, hedging his support with statements that public opinion would have to be won over first, a process sure to be slow at best.
Critics of Mitterand’s position speculated that he was actually trying to fan a xenophobic backlash that would increase votes for the far-right National Front (FN) party of Jean-Marie Le Pen, thus weakening the mainstream right (RPR-UDF) opposition. Others accused Mitterand of taking a spectacular stand in favor of left humanitarian causes to compensate for his 1983 turn toward a more liberal socioeconomic policy (Times, London, 23 April 1985). Mitterand’s stance was thus always controversial, contributing to conflicts over citizenship and integration policy within the French left that would flare up still more dramatically by the end of the decade.
From this brief account of the new citizenship campaign, some of the particular flavor and significance taken on by the campaign for local voting rights as it developed in France should already be apparent. Two aspects of its typical framing in France proved particularly significant. First, its association with the history of French syndicalism inflected the way that new citizenship was understood. Second, and most importantly for understanding its later eclipse, the new citizenship movement in France had a decidedly anti-statist orientation, one that drew on deep resentments against both central state control and imperialism.
Back to the Labor Movement
As many recognized, the “new citizenship” agenda in a sense grew logically out of the same kind of reasoning and strategy that had informed the promotion of immigrants’ interests in France through syndicalism. The strategy and reasoning of the “new citizenship” campaign for immigrant voting rights unmistakably resembled those of the workers’ movement in several respects. Unlike British postwar immigrants from the New Commonwealth, first-generation postwar immigrants from France’s former sub-Saharan African and North African colonies arrived in Europe as foreigners and without the right to vote. Nor did foreigners have the legal right freely to form voluntary or political organizations in France before 1981. French trade unions therefore played a particularly privileged role as a legally available vehicle for organizing
