France breaks bread with its migrants

Immigration is steadily deepening bonds of unity and affection, finds a new study.

The Monitor's View

There are 295 million people worldwide living outside the country of their birth – most of them economic migrants and refugees, according to the World Bank. Some countries, like Canada, see this human flow as an economic boost for their aging populations. For others, immigration raises questions about security and national identity.

A new study of the migrant experience in France, however, shows that the most difficult challenge may be managing perceptions. Immigration has been a persistent political fault line from one French election to the next. Yet new insights from the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies show that immigration is steadily deepening bonds of unity and affection. As demographer François Héran told Le Monde last week, immigration “is not a massive intrusion, but a lasting infusion.”

The evidence is not immediately clear. The French national police reported 12,600 racist, xenophobic, and anti-religious offenses in 2022. A modest dip from the previous year, those incidents likely reflect only a fraction of the real total. Officials estimate that most go unreported. At the same time, however, the French National Consultative Commission on Human Rights found in its latest index of social harmony that “tolerance has never been so high.”

The National Institute reports 1 in 10 people in France is an immigrant – consistent with the average across Western Europe. Those immigrants have an average standard of living that is 22% lower than the national average. But their experience shows that, starting from the earliest school years, inclusive education is resulting in more economic equality, secularization, and shared identity. One-third of the children of immigrants attain management-level or middle-class jobs. Two-thirds form multiracial life partnerships.

“The great replacement of the French population is a myth,” wrote a collection of 400 French intellectuals in an open letter last week calling for a citizen convention on migration to promote accurate public dialogue and unity. Year by year, they noted, “prejudices are losing ground in France [and] tolerance of others is increasing.”

Daily social contact has served as an important buffer against hate. Even after two French-born Muslim brothers attacked the offices of the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015, killing 12 and injuring 11, a Pew public opinion survey found an across-the-spectrum rejection of anti-Muslim hatred.

Nowadays, French traditionalists have a different way of measuring their gratitude for how foreigners are enriching and preserving their cultural heritage. Since 1970, France has been losing 400 artisanal bakeries a year as industrial bakers have overtaken markets, according to UNESCO. But in recent years, the baguette has found a new line of defense – a batch of young bakers with names like Mahmoud M’Seddi and Makram Akrout, who have become the bread makers of French presidents.

“I’m French,” Mr. M’Seddi, the son of a Tunisian immigrant, told The New York Times. “This is my home.” Yet it is a home defined by both France’s past and the country’s welcoming of future citizens.