“The immigration law marks the end of a hospitality policy”

The cross : How do you react to the vote on immigration legislation on December 19th?

Guillaume Le Blanc: This vote is surprising because we all witnessed in amazement how a barrier between the government and the far right was broken. The National Rally can rightly claim an ideological victory. Because, and this is the first political consequence that I see, it will be impossible to defend a Republican front against him in the future. With this text we have, so to speak, burned our reserves of indignation.

But the vote was also somewhat predictable. Since the 1980s, the figure of the scapegoat foreigner, who is the cause of all our problems, has been repeatedly reactivated in speeches. They created an internal enemy from the ground up and played on the border between inside and outside, between us and them, with the aim of reactivating the nation.

What also strikes me is the prevailing distinction between foreigners who work and others. National preferences are expressed through the labor standard. It allows us to distinguish the undesirable from the rest, as opposed to a universal conception of social rights. As if the social response was no longer a priority, even though these are people in great uncertainty.

How do you understand this development?

GLB: Again, slippage is nothing new. For 40 years we have reversed the logic that a job opens up the possibility of a residence permit. On the contrary: We have made a residence permit a prerequisite for taking up a job and thus created the trap of undeclared work. And we have carefully avoided a central question: What is a society in which some people work, pay taxes, without having legal title?

With this text, the national response takes precedence over the societal response. In my opinion, one can speak here of a form of right-wing angelism: the belief that it is enough to upgrade the nation and sovereignty through restrictive measures in order to make social problems disappear. But of course they will remain and remain central, especially since the conditions for receiving benefits will exacerbate the precarity of immigrants.

Let us take the example of unaccompanied minors, for whom the law fortunately does not provide for detention in detention centers. But while certain authorities refuse to care for them, how can we not recognize that their extreme precarity contributes to increasing their dangerousness, making them prey to secret networks and increasing the risk of violence?

You have been dealing with the concept of foreigners for a long time. What definition does this legal text seem to you to be based on?

GLB: The foreigner is, above all, the one who is denied full entry. It is this gesture, the refusal of welcome and all the underlying logic that creates the stranger. It is primarily a category that is assigned to others. Nobody ever defines themselves as a foreigner, but rather, depending on their culture of origin, as a Syrian or Afghan, for example.

This text also organizes a division within the immigration regime between those who are entitled because of their work and those who are not. It shifts the question of admission to the question of managing foreigners, even if this means questioning land law. In this sense, this law marks the end of hospitality.

For whatever reasons?

GLB: According to ancient customs, hospitality transforms the stranger into a guest and allows him to stay for a more or less long time – always depending on the time. Such a text, focused on the administrative management of foreigners, relegates hospitality to the side of simple moral outrage. This is a step backwards, as associations such as Réseau Éducation Sans Frontières have been trying to politicize the issue of hospitality for years.

In fact, hospitality is a hybrid concept. On the one hand, it is actually a moral outrage, a primary, anthropological, religious imperative that means I cannot help others when they are in need. It is also in my interest to do so. Because we must always look at hospitality from the side of the one who is welcomed, but also from the side of the one who receives it.

Hospitality, on the other hand, only exists through a welcoming policy. As Jacques Derrida had already written, we must think not only of the hospitality of the guest in his home, but also of a nation that welcomes a population into its midst. The Lot Department’s decision to create a new universal autonomy allowance goes in the direction of rethinking the reception policy.

How to rediscover the political sense of hospitality?

GLB: First of all, we must firmly maintain the idea of ​​a realism of hospitality. Remember that it is in the interest of the one who is welcomed and the one who welcomes. That a society that organizes security abroad is a much safer society. This hospitality allows us to build a community that is much more interesting for everyone.

Then it’s about fighting against the hegemony of the right-wing extremist discourse on these questions. And how can we achieve this if not through education? Hospitality must be discussed together, rationally and beyond fears. In civic debates and at school.

In this context, it is high time to question the title of the Ministry of “National Education” itself. With a project like this, what space do we give to other people’s stories? Instead, let’s think about education that trains citizens for 21st century hospitality.