France, Terre d’Accueil? Integration and post-national citizenship in French legislation (2001-2022)

Abstract

Does French legislation encourage integration and post-national citizenship? Although French national identity and integration literature reaffirms the exhaustion of the French model and politics for integration, and although traces of economic and social segregation are still observed, data from the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques and the Migrant Integration Policy Index indicate instead a growing care, from 2015 onwards, to include non-nationals into French society. In light of this mismatch between literature and data, this study tests the hypothesis that the legislative acts published by Paris display a propensity towards welcoming and guaranteeing rights regardless of the immigrants’ nationality. To that end, our research design is multi-method. First, we applied content analysis to 40 regulations referring to immigration, nationality, and citizenship in the period from 2001 to 2022. Then, correspondence analysis was used to gauge the correlation between the proposed categories. Corroborating our hypotheses, the results suggest that (i) French laws, decrees, and ordinances have set norms that are more focused on respecting and welcoming immigrants; and that (ii) there is a correlation between the norms that include non-nationals and those that dissociate the guarantee of rights from nationality. In this way, the present study contributes to the literature on migration flows in the 21st century, especially the guarantee of Human Rights and dignity in French society.

Post-national citizenship; France; Legislation; Integration; Migration