Anti-racism, racism and asylum-seekers in France

Anti-racist movements in France have been characterized by their strong political orientation and their tendency to be highly centralized. However, in the past decade the increasing salience of the position of 'new immigrants', a term that in France is used to include asylum-seekers, has been accompanied by a shift in the form and content of anti-racist mobilization. Support for asylum-seekers has been provided by a multiplicity of specialist national and local organizations developing modes of solidarity that are more akin to welfare, social work or humanitarian aid than the more directly and overtly political interventions common among French anti-racists. At the same time local committees have developed in places of high tension, but at some distance from the political limelight of Paris. Lloyd examines some of these developments in the context of the crisis of provision for asylum-seekers in France. After setting out some basic information about asylum, undocumented migrants and the law in France she examines the political debate about 'the new immigrants' and racism. Comparing the relatively successful sans papiers movement of the 1990s with the difficulties of organizing among and with more isolated, transient and socially deprived asylum-seekers, she discusses the way in which this new set of issues has challenged the main anti-racist organizations and given rise to new actors and alliances.