- Structural Explanations
Structural explanations are attempts to account for human behavior. John Elster has offered a stylized account that views structures as one of two successive filtering devices which produce human behavior. Structural constraints, from this perspective, are initial filters which reduce “the set of abstractly possible courses of actions” to a “vastly smallest subset of feasible actions”. (Elster, p 113, 1984)
Given these structural limits to human actions, the second filtering device, according to Elster, is the mechanism that determines which of the various courses of action, within structural constraints, will be followed. This is where human agency fits into an explanation. (Elster, p 113, 1984)
- Economic Explanations
Economic explanations have long been at the center of traditional migration theories. Even schools of thought that are as theoretically and ideologically at odds as modernization theory and dependency theory converge on the point that economics drives migration. As Aljendro Portes (1983) has pointed out, both these theories assign “responsibility for the origin of these movements to backwardness and poverty of sending areas and the gap between them and the receiving regions. ( p 71). Such reasoning is often referred to in the migration literature as a “push-pull” approach because economic deprivation in sending regions “pushes” migrants, while the relative wealth of the receiving regions “pulls” them. One variant of economic explanations for immigration policies is the Marxist and neo-Marxist frameworks advanced by some scholars. According to them immigration helps provide capitalists nations with “relative surplus population”, or an “industrial Reserve Army”. (Freeman, p 174-191, 1979)
When the history of French Immigration policy is reconstructed in subsequent discussion, closed attention will be paid to economic conditions.
- Socio-Cultural Explanations
In addition to migratory flows and the regulation, scholars have long been interested in questions of immigrant incorporation into “host” societies. More specifically, several scholars of migration policy have offered socio-cultural explanations for the Western European border closings of the early 1970s. According to these accounts, the difficulties of assimilating large numbers of immigrants, many of whom had come from culturally “distant” regions of the world, led state elites to stop further immigration.
“By the mid-1970s France was startled to realize that since the war it had unwittingly imported not temporary, expendable laborers but durable immigrant communities… French policy makers finally had to accept that immigration had become a full-fledged political and social issue. The government soon provided its own more thoroughgoing response: in 1974 it instituted a ban on new immigration”. (Ireland, p 46-47, 1994)
However, Socio-cultural constraints are not sufficient to explain why the French state banned immigration in one instance and not in the other.
- Actor-Oriented Explanations
Wihtol de Wenden offers a more comprehensive study of all major actors involved in French Immigration Policy, including the state, trade unions, employers, sending countries, and immigrant groups. For Wihtol de Wenden, 1974 marks a turning point not so much because immigration was suspended, but more because immigrants themselves became important political actors. Their emergence on the scene changed the dynamics of immigration politics. Wendon’s focus on relevant political actors might lead one to expect her to offer an explanation for the French immigration ban that centers on these groups. However, no such explanation is offered. Rather she writes that on the question of whether the decision was based on economic or political considerations, “the debate is still open”. (Wenden, p 165, 1988)
It is argued that coalition formation between the state, employers and trade unions was the central determinant of French Immigration Policy.
Actors, Interests, and Coalitions
An actor-oriented approach to political phenomena needs to identify the major actors, delineate their interests and model their interactions.
-
Immigration Policy Coalitions: One of the most striking and least noted aspects of French immigration policy since 1945 has been the fact that neither state elites, nor employers, nor trade unions have been able to impose their will unilaterally. Put another way, whenever one of these groups has stood alone, it has lost the immigration policy game. Because none of these actors has been able to dictate the course of French immigration policy, the formation of coalition between at least two of these groups has been a necessary condition for the implementation and maintenance of any particular policy direction in such matters.
Abstractly, in any situation in which there are three players, and in which a winning coalition must consist of at least two of these players, there are four possible winning coalitions and, conversely, four possible losing coalitions, including the empty set that is a coalition with no members. (Togman, p 49-56, 1997)
This coalitional approach provides a model for explaining the French immigration ban, not an explanation itself. To move from an actor-oriented model to an explanation using that model, one needs to specify the strategies available to each player, the outcomes which would result fro the possible combinations of strategies, and how each actor viewed these outcomes. (Togman, p 49-56, 1997)
-
The State: The French state has been involved with issues of large-scale immigration since the second half of the 19th century when significant amounts of foreign workers first started coming to France. In the century and a half that has passed since that time, immigration has affected a wide array of state interests in the realms of politics, demographics, and economics. Some of the most important state interests in matters of immigration have concerned the very legitimacy of the state. These legitimacy concerns can be divided into the two related categories of sovereignty and public order. Generally speaking, modern states have often expressed their sovereignty through their authority over membership in their national communities and through control over migration into and out of their national territories. Indeed, sovereignty has become so wedded to international migration that, as Hanna Ardent has asserted, Sovereignty is no where so absolute than in matters of emigration, naturalization, nationality, and expulsion. (Ardent quoted in Zolberg, p 244, 1978)
-
Employers: Employers have expressed their interests in immigration policy at the level of individual companies or industrialists. This is the level at which the swiftest action is possible. In France, individual employers have often taken the initiative in making their preferences concerning immigration policy known to state elites. Immigration has benefitted French employers by supplying necessary labor, by reducing wages, and by weakening the bargaining position of trade unions. In the postwar era, employers have pushed these interests through the CNPF, through sectoral organizations, and at the level of individual industrialists. (Togman, p 64-69, 1997)
-
Trade Unions: Because the preponderance of immigration to France in the 20th century has involved the entrance of foreign workers into the French labor market, and because trade unions have been the organized representatives of much of the French labor force, trade unions interest in immigration policy has been extensive. Furthermore, of all three major actors, trade unions have had perhaps the most complicated array of interests apropos immigration. In the interwar period, this view was often articulated by trade union opposition to restrictions on international migration. For example, The 14th Confederal Congress of the CGT adopted a program I 1919 that declared that all workers whatever their nationality, have the right to work wherever they can fulfill their occupation. (Gani, p 9,1972)
The Recruiting Regime
Between 1945 and 1974 France brought in large amounts of foreign workers to fulfill labor needs. During this period the French bureaucracy was able to recruit or grant legal status to about 2.4 million permanent (as opposed to seasonal) immigrant workers. Roughly one million of these workers’’ family members also migrated to France. (ONI, p 8, 1974)
This phenomenon of state-sponsored efforts at large-scale immigration, what is referred to here as the “recruiting regime”, came to an end with the 1974 ban.
-
The Grand Coalition: In the wake of the Second World War, France faced numerous obstacles in its efforts to rebuild social, political and economic life. General Charles de Gaulle, addressing Franc’s Consultative Assembly, asserted that one of the principle challenges that needed to be addressed was the nation’s lack of manpower and its low birth rate. (Weil, p 54, 1991).
Immediately after the war this view found institutional support in the Ministry of Labor and in the Commissariat General au Plan, a government body which developed five-year economic plans for France. From the Commissariat General au Plan emanated the most conservative estimates of France’s immigration needs. The Monnet, Plan, named after the Commissariat’s director, called for the importation of 1.5 million foreign workers within five years. The grand coalition was also evident in the recruitment process. All three major actors co-operated in the importation of foreign workers following the war. (Weil, p 55, 1991)
-
The State-Employer Coalition: The grand coalition was short lived. By1948 trade union leaders had become disenchanted with the direction of French immigration policy. Trade Unions were especially angered by the government’s tolerance of clandestine immigration. The CGT accused the state of allowing illegal immigration in order to give employers more bargaining power vis-à-vis unions. (Gani, p 47,1972)
Another reason for France’s inability to recruit foreign workers was the ineffectiveness of ONI. In 1949 the director of the ONI, Bideberry, claimed that the low rate of immigration was attributable to the fact that employers had enough workers. (Henneresse, p 71, 1979)
-
Regularizations: France’s policy of regularizing clandestine immigrants bestowed critical benefits upon both partners in the state-employer coalition. From the state’s perspective, regularizations allowed France to overcome the fact that the bureaucracy was unable to process enough workers to meet the nation’s labor needs. (Freeman, p 73, 1979). As a member of Pompidou’s cabinet put it, regularizations were “necessary because without the clandestine workers, we might lack the manpower we need”. (Jeanneney, quoted in Minces, p 136, 1973)
Many scholars of French immigration policy have characterized regularizations as loss of control over the influx of foreign workers (Wihtol de Wenden, p 117, 1988 & Ireland, p 40, 1994). While this is certainly true in some respects, the loss of control was an intentional and successful strategy of immigrant recruitment in postwar France. However, when state elites decided that they wanted to restrict rather than encourage immigration, the legacy of regularizations presented an obstacle that complicated their task.
-
Trade Unions in Isolation: The trade union movement supported the recruiting state for the first few years after the war. At that time trade unions elites participated in the formulation and implementation of France’s recruitment policies. Yet this support and participation were short-lived. In 1948 the CGT objected that the ONI had ceased to operate according to its legislative mandate because the new Minister of Labor was intervening directly in immigration policy, thus dispossessing the ONI of its administrative prerogatives. Finally the trade unions which found themselves isolated from the State-employer coalition changed their position from one that called for an immigration ban to one that primarily attacked clandestine immigration.(Gani, p 45, 1972)
The Recruit Regime in Crisis:
France’s postwar attempt to recruit foreign workers, supported by states and employer elites, and had proven highly successful by the late 1960s. However, several developments, primarily of a socio-cultural nature, pushed the recruiting state into a crisis and prompted state elites to reconsider their position on immigration. As these elites came to doubt the prudence of continuing their postwar policy of importing vast number of immigrants, the French sate began a halting movement away from its coalition with employers. (Togman, p 104, 1997)
The following factors led to the crisis of the recruiting state:
-
Demographics: By the late 1960s, the incoming waves of immigrants, as well as the foreign population already residing in France, was significantly different than it had been immediately following the Second World War. First of all more and ore people were migrating to France, Between 1946 and 1950, an average of 75,924 immigrants, including seasonal workers and family members, came to France each year; between 1966 and 1970, this number rose to 322,703 per year. Cumulatively, the foreign population in France increased three-fold, from roughly one million in 1946 to over three million in 1970. (ONI, p 8, 1974)
-
Housing: The social problem which immediately affected immigrants in Franc concerned their housing. Immigrants who came to France after the Second World War were met by a general shortage of lodging throughout the country. In spite of government’s attempts in the postwar era to provide subsidized housing, a general shortage persisted. A study in 1968 discovered that over a quarter of the French population lived in over crowded conditions. That same year, the Minister of the interior reported that roughly half a million individuals were residing in makeshift housing. (Mince, p 371-372, 1973).State elites acknowledged this when, in 1972, they made the improvement of immigrant housing an explicit goal of their move to implement a more restrictive immigration policy.
-
Immigrant Labor Strikes: Until 1960s, immigrant workers were a relatively passive element in the French workforce. France’s non- citizen laborers had been put to work in the most dangerous and least desirable jobs since the latter half of the 19th century. One observer, Paul Gemahling, noted as early as 1910 that “when it comes to introducing modifications in the organization of work, employers are relying on the docility of foreign workers”. (Gemahling quoted in Singer-Kerel, p 283, 1991).
The spread of strikes by foreign workers was not only an important development in itself, but also had a profound effect on the attitudes of both state and trade union elites towards Franc’s immigrant population. The foreigners had several concrete demands, including increased wages, a return to a forty-hour week, and improvements in their health, housing and working conditions. In addition to these they were also fighting for droit de vivre-the right to decent life. (Theolleyre, p 30, 1972)
-
Racist Attacks: Racial attacks in France and in other European nations were gradually becoming an international issue. Countries of emigration, especially Algeria, condemned the racist attacks against their nationals residing in France. The President of the French Republic, Georges Pompidou, tried to gain control of this volatile situation. He declared that France was profoundly anti-racist, and that the solutions to the racial conflicts were for the state to attain real control of immigration and to de-ghettoize those immigrants already residing in France. (Wihtol de Wenden, p 162, 1988).
The Immigration Ban:
By the early 1970s, the recruiting regime which had successfully maintained large-scale immigration for over two decades, was faced with a crisis provoked by demographic changes, the immigrant housing shortage, the rise of immigrant labor pretests, and the spread of racist attacks against foreigners. The state’s most preferred policy became one that would restrict immigration by suppressing illegal entrances and regularizations, while allowing enough legal entrances to satisfy the labor needs that sill existed in several sectors of the economy. However, when the state implemented this policy by instrument of the Marcellin-Fontanet circulars, it unexpectedly met with the opposition of both employers and trade unions. Unable to form a coalition with either of its social partners, the state backed off from the Marcellin-Fontanet approach and suspended immigration. (Togman, p 122, 1997)
Conclusion
Most accounts to date of the French immigration ban of 1974 have suggested that, given the structural conditions of the time, such a drastic change was inevitable. To be sure, structural developments were important to the dramatic changes in French immigration policy that took place in the early 1970s. First of all structural development such as changing demographics, the dearth of emigrant housing , the rise in emigrant protests , and increasing racial tensions pushed French emigration policy into a period of crises. Second, these new structural conditions had an important impact on the policy preferences of state elites who in turn began the process of altering the countries approach to immigration.
However it is difficult at best to explain specific policy outcomes by direct reference to structural variable alone. In the case at hand, the French emigration ban cannot be accounted for a purely structural perspective. Besides an outright stoppage state elites also had the option of limiting immigration, while still allowing enough foreign labor to enter to satisfy existing labor needs. The structural conditions of the time did not eliminate this alter native. In fact, French state elites developed and pursued such a restrictive policy rather than a ban.
Much of the planning in the measures is devoted to preparations for the resumption
Of emigration .The first of the measures emphasizes the suspension’s exception nature by asserting that “It is obvious that the principle of the suspension does not entail I any way a closing of our borders to entrance of foreign workers each time the need is felt”. (Ministere du Travail, File 2:1, 1976)
The government’s plans for renewing immigration were quite extensive. The fact that state elites were making extensive plans for the resumption of immigration, rather than for the enforcement of the ban, indicates that a ban was not their most-preferred outcome. But the state was unable to implement its will unilaterally. The necessity of garnering sufficient coalitional support from its social partners, and its inability to get this support for its most preferred policy.
The state, unable to maintain the restrictive approach it had implemented in 1972 by instrument of Marcellin-Fontanet circulars, resorted to a ban in 1974. To explain the ban is , in part , to explain the failure if the restrictive alternative that state elites preferred. It was not the case that France’s restrictive policy was abandoned because it was unable to remedy the structural immigration problems of the time. Indeed it was never given a chance. Nor was it the case that a ban was necessitated by dramatic changes in relevant structural conditions between 1972 and 1974, because no such changes occurred.
A thorough account of the French immigration ban must look at the roles of both structure and agency. In certain respects, the impact of structural developments can be direct, as can be seen by the immigration crisis engendered by conditions at the structural level in France. In other respects the impact of structures is often indirect. Such was the case in France when structural changes influenced the preferences of major actors. In turn, the actions of the major players, based on there new preferences, produced an immigration stoppage. However, for each of the actors, structural development effected there preferences in different ways. Because structural changes do not have a uniform influence on preferences, the impact of structures is best analyzed at the level of actors.
In closing, it should be said that an actor-oriented approach is not only the most useful way to understand immigration policy in postwar France; it is also the most effective approach to social scientific research in general. Jon Elster had asserted that “To explain social institutions and social change is to show how they arise as the result of t6he action and inter action of individuals”.
To some, this assertion might seem self evident. But it is only by trying to explain specific social phenomena from an actor oriented perspective, and by comparing the resulting explanation to those offered form alternative perspectives that the validity of such assertions can be ascertained.
References
Elster, Jon. (1984). Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality. Cambridge, Ma: Cambridge University Press.
Freeman, Gary (1979). Immigrant Labor and Racial Conflict in Industrial Societies: The French and British Experience 1945-1975. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gani, Leon (1972). Syndicates et travailleurs immigres. Paris: Les Editions socials.
Henneresse, Marie-Claude (1979). Le Patronate et la Politique Francaise d’ immigration 1945-1975. These de troiseme cycle, Paris, Institute de’etudes politiques.
Ireland, Patrick (1994). The Policy Challenge of Ethnic Diversity: Immigrant Politics in the EC. Journal of Common Market Studies 24, no. 5 (September).
Minces, Julliete (1973). Les travailleurs estrangers en France. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Ministere du Travail (19760). Le Dossier de l’immigration. Paris.
Portes, Aljendro (1983). International Labour Migration and National Development. In Mary M. Kritz (ed.), Global Trends in Migration. New York: The Center for Migration Studies of New York.
Scott, F. D. (2008). Immigration. Encyclopedia Americana. Retrieved April 23, 2008, from
Grolier Online
Singer-Kerel, Jeanne (1991). Foreign Workers in France, 1891-1936. Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Theolleyre, Jean-Marc (1972). Les travailleurs etrangers de Penaroya reclament le ‘driot de vivre”. Le Monde, Feb. 19.
Togman, M. Jeffery. (1997). The Walls of France: An Actor-Oriented Analysis of Postwar Immigration Policy. New York University.
Weil, Patrick (1991). La France et ses etrangers: l’aventure d’une politique de l’immigration 1938-1991. Paris. Calmann.
Wihtol de Wenden, Catherine (1988). Les émigrés et la politique: Cent cinquante ans d’evolution. Paris. Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politique.
Zoleberg, Aristide R. (1978). International Migration Policies in a Changing World System. In William H. McNeill and Ruth s. Adams (eds.) Human Migration: Patterns and Policies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.