Less than two months went by between cyclone Chido's devastation of the French overseas department of Mayotte, on December 14, 2024, and the February 6 vote by MPs on a Les Républicains (LR, right) bill restricting the droit du sol ("right of soil") – a right granting access to citizenship for children born on French soil – in the Indian Ocean archipelago. It then took only a few minutes for the government to challenge this right throughout the country.

"Being French can't be [something granted by] the chance of birth. Being French is a matter of will," argued Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, who has spoken in favor of a return to the system that was in force from 1993 to 1998, which required the children of foreign nationals born in France to demonstrate their desire to be French in order to acquire French nationality when they come of age. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, speaking on the radio station France Inter, on February 12, pointed out that, during Sénat debates on the most recent immigration law at the end of 2023, he had had a restriction on droit du sol voted in (which, in the end, was struck down by the Constitutional Council), "to avoid [people] becoming French by chance."

Every year, just over 30,000 young people become French through droit du sol, also known as birthright citizenship, whereby a child born in France to two foreign-born parents becomes French when they turn 18 (or through an anticipated process, which is possible from the age of 13), provided they have lived in France for at least five years since the age of 11. This is, therefore, a "conditional and deferred" form of jus soli, explained Emmanuel Blanchard, director of the social sciences university Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye. This is combined with a "double droit du sol" policy, whereby a child born in France to parents who, though foreign nationals, were themselves born in France is automatically granted French citizenship at birth.

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