Migrant women in France. New law, new discrimination?

The new draft law announced by the French government should be presented to deputies in the fall of 2023 and would give ample room to the demands of the right and far right. Emmanuel Macron’s government, discredited by the highly unpopular law on pension reform, is attempting to rebuild a parliamentary majority by granting conservative parties generous concessions on a project that has already been judged to be repressive in its current form. Human rights associations and activists have been mobilizing for several months now to denounce the discriminatory restrictions and measures that are looming on the horizon for foreigners in France.

Militant associations: unanimous in their rejection

“Yet another dangerous text,” in the words of Amnesty International, and “worrying” for La Cimade, which stated in its decoding document, published on its website on 15 March 2023, that “beyond the text itself, what is particularly worrying is the climate in which it will be examined. An unfavorable climate fueled by the words of a Minister of the Interior whose discourse on foreigners is exceedingly stigmatizing, emphasizing delinquency and integration difficulties. Not to mention that the government has chosen to stir up people’s fears and tensions instead of adopting a positive and reassuring discourse on migration to promote social cohesion.”

In a collective forum published last January, multiple organizations denounce the text that will lead to a “radical denial of the fundamental rights of migrants. Its goal is to cement and radicalize arbitrary and repressive prefectural practices, like the systematization of obligations to leave French territory (OQTF) and bans on returning to French territory (IRTF). This follows the already-issued instructions to increase both house arrests and the number of administrative detention centers and facilities. The project deliberately employs a utilitarian and repressive approach, as evidenced by the obsession with deportations and the adding of undocumented migratns to the wanted persons file. Migrants are dehumanized and only seen as potential workers who are only entitled to precarious status regularization proposals, and are limited to so-called “hard-to-fill” jobs.

“France is perpetuating the precariousness, isolation, violence, and discrimination that women suffer from daily.”

And though all residence permit applicants in France have reason to fear the future law, migrant women have again been ignored by French legislators’ heteronormative approach. Foreign women (from outside the European Union) who fall at the intersection of all forms of discrimination are not only made invisible by this text but are also threatened by new inequalities—noting that their current situation is already very difficult, especially in the cases of undocumented migrants.

(Read the interview with Fériel Lalami )

Migrant women, doubly victimized

Bearing this in mind, the Gender in Geopolitics Institute, a feminist organization, is launching a petition entitled “Migrant women: the main victims of the ‘Asylum and immigration’ bill.” In this forum, signatories deplore the absence of any specific mention of a gendered approach from the draft law and call for a break with the current system through which “France is perpetuating the precariousness, isolation, violence, and discrimination that women suffer from daily.”

Bearing this in mind, the Gender in Geopolitics Institute, a feminist organization, is launching a petition entitled “Migrant women: the main victims of the ‘Asylum and immigration’ bill.” In this forum, signatories deplore the absence of any specific mention of a gendered approach from the draft law and call for a break with the current system through which “France is perpetuating the precariousness, isolation, violence, and discrimination that women suffer from daily.”

The Solidaires network sent a delegation to the Minister of Labor on 5 December 2022 to reiterate its demands for a gender-neutral policy for welcoming and integrating foreigners. Collectives working to defend undocumented migrants have also organized several demonstrations to protest the bill. But the French government seems more interested in seducing right-wing political parties at the moment than listening to the protests of activists standing up for foreigners. And feminist voices are even less audible to the Minister of the Interior and the President of the Republic.

Militant associations note that the gender-based violence against women and girls is visible in the very structures of reception, accommodation, and detention. And reception centers don’t have training programs nor any other program that could help identify cases of human trafficking. Yet one in five immigrant women say they have been victims of sexual violence. In 2020, women accounted for a third of asylum applications registered with the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA).

Women of immigrant origin who do have regularized status are hardly better off. According to INSEE data, women immigrants from the African continent (Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa) have less access to employment and are twice as affected by unemployment than women born in France (natives): 18% against 9%, respectively. They overwhelmingly occupy employee or worker positions in the sector of personal services, healthcare, and social work. They have fixed-term contracts and earn 15% less than native women, even though 38% of migrant women have a higher diploma than their native counterparts. Additionally, the unemployment rate among young immigrant women is higher than that among young immigrant men: 21.9% against 17.3%, respectively (Observatory of Inequalities, April 2023).

This small sample of data illuminating immigrant women’s precarious situation makes it possible to measure the scope of discriminatory content of the provisions of a bill that only focuses on the repressive aspects of immigration.

Women immigrants from the African continent (Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa) have less access to employment and are twice as affected by unemployment than women born in France

New restrictions for women

In its Decoding the Asylum and Immigration bill document published on its website on 23 March 2023, La Cimade highlights the main articles that pose a threat to the rights of migrant women. The temporary residence permit for “work in hard-to-fill jobs” would be accessible to people who can prove that they have been in France for at least 3 years and have had at least 8 months (consecutive or not) of activity in the last 24 months in one of these hard-to-fill positions. At the end of its validity period, the holder of a permanent contract in a hard-to-fill position could, at the discretion of the administration, obtain a multi-year “employee” card.

Foreign women assigned to care and cleaning professions who have to take on one fixed-term contract after another, and who are sometimes undeclared and poorly paid, are automatically excluded from this system. The text does not just block their path to a residence permit for “professions under strain”—it even specifies that eligibility for the multi-year card depends on the person submitting a high-school level (A2) French language diploma. And registration fees to sign up for these exams to obtain the diploma vary between 90 and 140 euros. Family reunification is also subject to regulatory restrictions. People wanting to bring their families to France must have been living in France for 24 months (instead of the current 18). Even without this amendment, this procedure already takes years.

Reunification requests are grueling because the process requires proof of “stable” resources, mandatory health insurance—which is therefore private and expensive—and mastery of the French language by the beneficiaries, or, in other words, the wives (more rarely the husbands). Finally, the mayor of the applicant’s municipality of residence would have to make a decision about the conditions of the applicant’s housing and resources. In the absence of an opinion from the town hall, the request is considered unfavorable.

Right-wing politicians have not stopped here: even migrant women’s health is on the line. These politicians are calling for the abolition of the state medical assistance system (AME), to be replaced only by the option of emergency care. Migrant women would thus no longer have access to abortion, to the monitoring and surveillance of diseases such as endometriosis, or to consultations related to sexual assault suffered during the immigration process.

This investigation was carried out with the support of the Tunis Office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.