How to take back control of the narrative on immigration and influence debates, when the French government is looking for a way forward together with Les Républicains (LR, right-wing), rather than with the Left? This is the question that, just a few months before the immigration bill reaches the Assemblée Nationale, has given the New Popular, Environmental, and Social Union (NUPES), the left-wing alliance uniting four parties, a hard time. "We have a cultural battle to wage. The public debate is being swallowed up by the far right and the right," said Benjamin Lucas, a Greens MP, who has been tasked with defending his group's position on the bill. "The Left cannot set off scattered on this issue," said Communist MP Elsa Faucillon, inviting her partners to "seek an offensive narrative, rather than respectability."
To act as an effective counterweight, the NUPES has to first get on the same page on a subject that traditionally makes its component parties uncomfortable. Hitherto silent, the Parti Socialiste's (PS) national bureau adopted on Tuesday, October 3, a political line that will serve to guide its positions in the Assemblée Nationale. This direction was not a simple one to define: It was a question of putting an end to accusations of naive optimism, all while avoiding giving the impression of ceding ground to the Right, and also at the same time finding an original way forward through Emmanuel Macron's "at the same time" strategy. The government's bill includes both a repressive component aimed at facilitating the deportation of foreigners who commit crimes in France, and a so-called "social" component aimed at regularizing undocumented workers in economic sectors facing recruitment difficulties.
The PS's stance was therefore eagerly awaited by representatives from radical left La France Insoumise (LFI), Jean-Luc Mélenchon's party. For example, one LFI MP, Andy Kerbrat, wanted to know whether the PS was going to break with the line of former PS interior minister Manuel Valls, based on the "firmness and humanity" diptych that had prevailed under former President François Hollande's mandate. Valls had, on the one hand, sought to put an end to previous President Nicolas Sarkozy's "policy of numbers" of arrests of illegal immigrants, by implementing a ministerial circular listing the criteria for regularization. On the other hand, he continued to advocate for a policy of "maximum removals".
A little over a decade later, the Socialists seem ready to put this legacy to rest – at least partly. At the heart of their narrative, they emphasize the regularization of all undocumented workers, a measure that was not implemented under the former socialist president. "Work is perhaps the most comprehensible entry point for the French," said the leader of the socialist MPs, Boris Vallaud, who intends by this angle to resonate with public opinion, which has been seduced by repressive rhetoric from the right and far right.
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