Governing immigrants and citizenship regimes: the case of France, 1950s–1990s

Does sustained and increasingly transnational immigration weaken the national character of citizenship regimes? This paper addresses this issue by examining French responses to immigration over a 40-year period. In spite of the changing character of immigration and changing state strategies, all governments throughout this period have sought to maintain the national character by making full access to rights contingent on one's conformity to national values and moralities. As the government made accessing rights dependent on conformity to national norms, the legitimacy of immigrant activists seeking to expand their rights has depended on their abilities to conform to the rules of the national political game. Resisting marginalization therefore requires the assimilation of the immigrants into nationally specific political cultures, which contributes to reinforcing the national character of citizenship regimes. By examining the particular case of France, the paper aims to show how top-down and bottom-up processes by states and activists work in different ways to keep the nation at the center of citizenship regimes in spite of the ongoing and very real challenges presented by transnationalism and globalization

Introduction

"Family migration" and "integration" are intimately related concepts in policy discourses in Europe today. Assumptions about the relation between "family migration" and "integration" play a crucial role in shaping policies. This special issue aims to examine the axis between "family migration," "policy," and "integration," both from a policy perspective, and from the perspective of individuals engaged in family migration. In this introduction, we first discuss scholarly work on family migration policies in Europe, which analyzes how policies and discourses on family migration and integration participate in the politics of belonging. Second, we explore the fragmented and incomplete insights offered by existing research about the actual relation between family migration and migrant integration