Immigration and Insecurity in France by Jane Freedman

Author:Jane Freedman [Freedman, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138277632
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2017-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

The Debate over Immigrants' Right to Vote

One of the major debates that has taken place over immigrants' political participation and representation has been that over whether or not immigrants should be granted the right to vote in local elections. This debate has been ongoing and may be viewed as a critical factor in the more general discussion of the limits of citizenship for immigrants.

The issue of immigrants' right to vote in local elections was first raised in the mid-1970s by pressure groups and associations such as the FASTI and the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme (Human Rights League). These groups were inspired by the decision taken by Sweden in 1975 to grant the right to vote and to be eligible to foreigners in local elections. These rights were granted on the basis not of nationality but of residence. This call for the right to vote in local elections for those who lived in France but did not possess French nationality was taken up by various groups on the Left, as part of a call for a recognition of diversity - le droit a la difference (Favell, 1998). The idea was included as one of the 110 propositions which formed Mitterrand's electoral manifesto for the 1981 presidential elections, proposition number 80 promising to give the vote in municipal elections to those who had been residing legally in France for at least five year. However, this reform was never implemented when the Left came to power, partly due to constitutional obstacles, but for the stronger reason that the Socialist Party leaders decided that it would be an electorally unpopular move, particularly after 1983 when the Front National began to gain ground rapidly in local elections. As outlined in chapter 2, an announcement made by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Claude Cheysson, in August 1981, stating that the government had resolved to grant voting rights to foreigners met with a storm of opposition despite quick rebuttals by other government ministers. This announcement formed the basis of Right-wing accusation of laxity over immigration which eventually forced the Socialist Party into a retreat on this issue.

Those who cited the Constitution as an obstacle to granting immigrants the right to vote in local elections argued that article 3, which stipulates that national sovereignty belongs to the French people would be breached if non-nationals could be eligible and vote in local elections. This is because local electors would participate indirectly in the election of members of the Senate - Senators being elected by an electoral college composed of mayors and regional and municipal councillors. Several lawyers suggested modifying the Constitution in order to remove this obstacle (Wihtol de Wenden, 1988), but the prevailing political conditions meant that this type of reform was not adopted seriously by any of the major political parties. The difficulty with any such reform was that it would involve a rejection of the link between national citizenship and the right to vote, and for many in France, this link was fundamental to the nature of the Republic and its concept of citizenship.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.