I’ll admit it, two years ago when I first started this Substack, I didn’t see it as a journalistic opportunity. It was 2024, and Elon Musk had just done something foul — I don’t even remember what. In France, where I live, politics had gone topsy-turvy (remember those snap elections?) In the US, where I’m from, Trump was about to be reelected.

Like many, I was looking for a way out, a new platform for my thoughts.

I didn’t even really understand at the time that Substack was a newsletter service. To me, it was more Blogspot than Mailchimp. More Tumblr than The Times. I started using it accordingly: as a space for personal exploration.

In those early days, Substack allowed me, as a foreign resident of France who had just been naturalized, to process the idea of citizenship at a moment of rising nationalism, and to use my own privilege to speak for others less fortunate than myself.

I titled it Becoming French because that was the niche I wanted to cover: the intersection of Frenchness and belonging. With so many Americans thinking of moving abroad and France being identified as a place that is fundamentally getting it right, I wanted to challenge some oversimplified notions about this country I now call home.

Eight hundred subscribers, 60 newsletters and three paid pledges later (thanks, fam)— I feel like I’ve done good on this mission. I’ve spoken with exiled journalists, experts, and politicians. I’ve brought you to museum exhibits and protests. For a while I put together a weekly round-up of immigration-related news. I published a series on French cities and towns run by the far-right. I’ve also gone in-depth with an interview series on the topic of migration, citizenship and belonging.

Throughout it all, I’ve recognized the tantalizing potential of a newsletter like this, but have also been humbled by the realization of how much work goes into doing it well.

After two years, it was time to take stock.

Of course, there was something else that forced me to reckon with where I’m at in my Substack journey. I quit my job.

When I launched this newsletter, I was working full-time at Forbidden Stories, a French non-profit dedicated to taking forward the work of threatened journalists. I had a monthly salary and some of the wonderful benefits people love to cite in Substack posts about why Americans are moving to France in record numbers. But I wanted to do more ground reporting, and at Forbidden Stories, that simply wasn’t going to happen.

I took a few months off to reflect. I traveled to the US on the trail of James Baldwin. Then, I cycled across Europe on the trail of my father. In the fall, I went to Chile on the trail of the Communist Party. I wrote my longest story ever — about how I learned I had been born through IVF, for Longreads. Throughout, I continued freelancing from Paris, writing for Jacobin, The Nation, Al Jazeera English, L’Humanité and various other news outlets. I started editing with , which is about to drop its second issue at the end of the month.

It wasn’t really until this April that I settled back into my Paris life. My eyes reopened to France, and I started to see stories everywhere. The problem was that a lot of those stories went nowhere — instead of being published, they gathered dust in the deep craters of busy editors’ inboxes. This wasn’t what I left my job for.

Which finally brings me to the Big Changes part of this email.

Over the next few weeks, I’m planning on revamping this Substack. I have a new name (which will be revealed in a future post), a content distribution plan and — the holy grail — the ability to monetize. I fought the URSSAF and the URSSAF won: I am now a micro-entrepreneur (small business owner) in France — which means I can finally bill foreign clients, and as an extension get paid for my Substack (h/t ).

First things first: I am most definitely going to keep most of the content free. No — or few — hard pay walls. I will continue the monthly interview series and, starting this Friday, bring back the weekly news round-up. These will remain free to all subscribers. I will also occasionally weigh in on important news stories in France, as they come up.

That said, I am planning to introduce paid subscriptions for the content that takes the most time and effort to produce: deeply researched and reported stories from the ground.

I’ve got pieces in the works on how a student residence has been converted into a clubhouse for the populist far-right; what a cycling trip through the so-called “diagonale du vide” can reveal about the “forgotten” France that’s increasingly drawn to the National Rally; and a profile of a group of journalists in exile who have made Paris their home. I’ll also be doing more collaborative work with other Substackers: , for example, will report on one family’s fight for recognition from the French state after a tragic Olympics-related construction accident left their husband and father dead.

Finally: I’m planning to introduce a mixed-media element to this project that I hope might inspire some of you to take the plunge and get in on the ground floor with a subscription. But more on that soon.

One year before France’s critical 2027 presidential elections, I’m taking a bet on the need for in-depth, local reporting from this complicated, beautiful country — and I’m taking a bet on myself. I hope you’ll join me.

Over the past month, French politicians have breathlessly debated a law proposal aimed at heavily criminalizing anti-semitism. Referring to what it defines as “new forms of anti-semitism,” the law, if it were to have passed, would have made “provoking terrorist acts,” even “implicitly,” punishable by a prison sentence of five years and a €75,000 fine.

Called the Loi Yadan, after the Macroniste overseas deputy who proposed it, the law was met by inevitable and not unreasonable backlash — viewed by many as a thinly-veiled way of repressing pro-Palestinian demonstrators. More than 700,000 signed a petition pushing for the law proposal to be revoked. “This bill is a brazen attempt to silence France’s Palestine solidarity movement,” my friend Harrison Stetler wrote in Jacobin.

Eventually, a couple of weeks ago, the government was forced to backpedal, retracting the law in extremis and promising a new version in June. One of the sad byproducts of the circus surrounding this proposal has been a deflection away from other important issues affecting France.

A couple of days before the Loi Yadan was withdrawn, another French representative, Corinne Narassiguin — who, like Caroline Yadan, once served as an overseas French representative — deposed a very different law proposal.

Hers would not criminalize, but regularize.

“Removing barriers to the integration of foreigners in France,” the text deposed by Narassiguin, who now represents the Seine Saint Denis region as a Senator, reads. Containing 19 articles, the bill’s goal is simple: to cut out red tape that makes it difficult for foreign residents of France from obtaining and renewing residence permits.

An estimated 600,000 to 700,000 people in France are currently undocumented (though some estimates put this number much higher). For the lack of a piece of paper, these French residents are condemned to a shadow life, in some cases unable to work, travel and receive benefits.

When I first moved to France, I regularly stood in agonizingly long and slow lines at the entrance French police prefecture, waiting to renew my documents. I’d have spent entire days calling to try to snag the rendez-vous. Then, a year later, I’d run it all back.

I knew, however, that my personal situation was nothing compared to many of the people in line next to me. Narassiguin’s proposed bill, if passed, would significantly ease their burden.

To better understand the law, I spoke with Diane Fogelman, Migration Advocacy Officer at Amnesty International France, and one of the directors of the November 2025 report “A la merci d’un papier” (“At the mercy of a document”).

The interview, conducted in French, has been translated and lightly edited for clarity. All errors should be attributed to the author and not the interviewee.

This is the latest installment in my monthly interview series, in which I speak with exiles, refugees, experts, journalists, policymakers and others about the hurtles of becoming French and finding acceptance in the country of human rights. (Full list at end.)

Phineas Rueckert: Could you give a brief introduction—tell me a little about yourself, your research, and your work at Amnesty?

Diane Fogelman: I’m the advocacy officer on migration issues, which means I work on migratory topics in the broadest sense—from the rights to residency and asylum to what’s happening at borders and developments elsewhere in the world, particularly in the United States and the EU. This year we’ve had one central focus area: the situation of foreign nationals working in France. Last November, we released a report on the situation of foreign workers who hold short-term residence permits, titled “A la merci d’un papier” (“At the mercy of a document”). The report highlights the state’s responsibility in the creation and perpetuation of undocumented workers and the precariousness that these individuals—both men and women—experience.

PR: Before we get into the report, what are the different types of residence permits you researched? How does the application process work?

DF: In the report, we focused on three different types of residence permits. There are two specific employment categories—temporary workers (holders of a Contrat à Durée Déterminée, or CDD by its French acronym) and salaried employees (Contrat à Durée Indéterminée, or CDI) — as well as family-based residence permits. For those who have a work contract, we’re talking mostly about people employed in essential sectors like food service, cleaning, hospitality, construction. We looked at cases of people applying for their first temporary residence permit at the prefecture; since, after that, the duration can change. The first visa, for someone on a CDD, is typically only for a few months. But even if they’re on a permanent contract, the permit is only valid for one year. For family visas, it depends, but generally we’ve seen durations of one year.

Once you get your work papers, there is the question of renewing them. When you renew your paperwork on a temporary contract, it’s always quite precarious—and usually the duration is extended for just a few months. For other contracts, you might be able to obtain a year-long visa. What’s striking, however, is that in the testimonies we received, many people have been in France for 20 or even 30 years, yet they still have short-term permits, sometimes just for one year.

Finally, there is the “de-materialization” of the process. In the past renewals took place in-person, but increasingly this process is moving online. Today it’s nearly impossible to get an in-person appointment at the prefecture. The process was already very complicated—some have even called it Kafkaesque. Now the physical line you once used to see outside of the police precinct has gone fully digital; it still exists, but it’s invisible.

PR: French bureaucracy is infamous — to the extent that there are plenty of references in popular culture, in movies, etc. Is there something particularly French about this inefficiency in the doling out of work permits?

DF: We’re not the only country that has a residence permit system based on short-term permits, whether for work or not. There are other European countries—and worldwide—that have a somewhat similar system. One of the specific features is that we have a particularly complex legislative framework. Over the last 10 years, almost every two years there has been a so-called “deep” reform of immigration law, and that makes the logistical follow-up behind the scenes very complicated, as well. Additionally, staffing levels have decreased in the prefectures.

Finally, I’d say in a personal capacity: Foreign nationals are required to meet very specific deadlines, or else face consequences for their cases. The prefectures, however, aren’t really bound by deadlines.

PR: Before leaving the Ministry of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau issued a circular that made this system even stricter — reducing the possible employment categories for obtaining work visas, increasing the number of years of employment needed to regularize undocumented workers, etc. What’s been the effect of this change?

DF: We haven’t documented that specifically, so I don’t necessarily have a clear answer to give you on that. However, there are several things I can say.

First, this circular is part of a broader trend of moving toward more and more restrictions on the rights of foreign nationals. Right now, the system is so complex, so hard to understand, that it’s harmful to everyone—obviously, first and foremost to foreign nationals, but also to employers and prefectural officials.

The fact that a situation of illegality can be caused by a glitch in what is at its heart an administrative system is a direct violation of the fundamental rights of the people involved. It means losing one’s job, losing one’s housing, and losing any social benefits one might have had. There really is, in our view, a dual reality between what is said at the political level and what we see on the ground.

However, I’d also note that in the past few months, there seems to be more room—or at least a window opening up—on this issue. At least, this seems to be the approach advocated by the current Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez.

PR: I wanted to move on to the new bill introduced the other week by Socialist Party MP Corinne Narassiguin that aims to remove some of these obstacles. What’s in this bill, and can we imagine it actually passing in a country like France?

DF: The bill has four key recommendations, which are also policy proposals we made in our report.

First, it proposes extending the minimum validity period of temporary documents to three months. During this period, individuals will be able to work legally, thereby reducing the risk of a gap in coverage while awaiting their permanent permit.

Second, the bill allows foreign employees to apply for a work permit on their own, without depending on their employer. This is a measure that would be particularly effective in breaking the cycle of exploitation I mentioned earlier. It would truly be a way to empower people to take back control of their lives at work and their working conditions, and to make it easier for them to say no to their employer or leave a job with complicated, difficult, or even violent conditions.

The bill also provides that temporary residence permits be valid for at least two years, compared to one year currently, and facilitates automatic renewals. This change addresses cases where documents expire shortly after issuance due to administrative delays.

Finally, the bill proposes repealing the provision of a 2004 law, which stipulates that the issuance of a multi-year residence permit depends on a certain level of proficiency in the French language. For us, this is also important in combating the discriminatory nature of this type of measure. While it may seem neutral on the surface, in reality many people who speak a different language or whose native language is very different from French—often these people, at least those we’ve met—speak French very well. It’s really the written language that’s difficult to access.

Regarding the last part of your question: let’s not kid ourselves—it’s politically complicated to pass this kind of law, since it goes against the trends we mentioned earlier. That said, we have a much better chance of getting it passed—or at least sparking a constructive debate—if there’s a lot of buzz around it.

PR: Spain, for example, is currently embarking on a mass regularization of undocumented workers. What would it take for France to do something similar?

DF: Regarding mass regularization, Amnesty can’t really take a stance—it’s not a demand we’re advocating for—so I can’t really say one way or the other. However, I’d rather address the question that ultimately lies at the heart of this: how can we go against the current trend of what’s being done right now?

There’s nothing inevitable about the current system. We can choose to make different choices; that’s what Spain is doing. However—without trying to be too pessimistic—we see that at the European level, the trends are really not moving in that direction. There are other exceptions that are not openly acknowledged, such as such in Italy, for example, or in Hungary—countries that have a very utilitarian approach to immigration, particularly for labor purposes, and which ultimately support this type of immigration, but without owning up to it.

Again, it’s not Amnesty saying this, but it’s been proven that the more societies are in periods of crisis, the bigger the rise in xenophobia and repression, particularly toward foreigners; the better the economy is doing and the less we’re in a crisis situation, the more open people are on these issues. It seems a bit obvious to point this out, but things can change depending on the context.

PR: And regarding the French bill, what happens next?

DF: It will next be reviewed by the Senate, in principle, but if I understand correctly, not before the end of the year, or even early 2027. That would be good, already, because this kind of process can take a long time. As far as I know, it’s not happening right away.

Past monthly interviews:

March 2026: How Europe Exports its Borders (with Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche)

February 2025: France’s Citizenship Laboratory (with Rémi Carayol)

January 2025: An Afghan Refugee Journalist in Paris (with Elyaas Ehsas)

December 2024: Two Euros an Hour (with Nejma Brahim)

November 2024: Liberté, Égalité, Expulsé (with Serge Slama)

October 2024: The Criminalization of Solidarity (With Louis Witter)

Today was a big day for François-Xavier Bellamy, a senior figure in France’s Les Républicains (LR) party. On Thursday, March 26, the European Parliament advanced a new migration law he helped drive through negotiations, paving the way for European countries to work with third-countries outside of the EU to accelerate deportations.

The law was endorsed by far-right and right-wing lawmakers, including members of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and Europe of Sovereign Nations (ENS), a far-right party, who stood to applaud after the vote. It will now enter trilogue negotiations between the European Parliament, the Council, and the European Commission. Experts say the text is very likely to pass in more or less its current form and could be implemented as early as June.

Though not initially proposed by Bellamy, the hands of the French right are all over the bill. Bellamy negotiated the text on behalf of the center-right European People’s Party Group (PPE) and was able to steer it in a more repressive direction: pushing for harsher penalties for those who don’t agree — to borrow the US term — to ‘self-deport’; extending detention periods to up to two years; and allowing for the deportation of families with children.

Perhaps most controversially, the law would allow European countries to deport immigrants whose asylum claims are rejected to third-countries located outside of the EU, such as Albania, Morocco, Turkey or Tunisia.

The vote was celebrated by France’s traditional right-wing parties, which — as I’ve written previously in this Substack — have sought to implement similar policies domestically.

“The European Parliament has just approved the ‘return regulation,’ which will be an essential tool for regaining control of immigration,” former interior minister and president of LR Bruno Retailleau wrote on X, congratulating François-Xavier Bellamy.

Human rights groups like Amnesty International have warned that the passage of the bill could lead to “unprecedented detention, sanctions, and stripping of rights based on migration status.” “Today, the European Parliament has voted to ramp up disproportionate requirements, sanctions and restrictions on people issued with a return decision, and to vastly expand its use of detention and for far longer periods, falling short of international legal standards,” Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, said. “People will also risk being sent to ‘return hubs’ – offshore detention centers – in countries where they have never set foot.”

If this sounds like something the United States might do — it is: the processing of Haitians at Guantanamo Bay being the foremost example. But there’s also something very European about the way in which Europe has sought to expand its borders and shift the dirty work of deportation to places with less oversight in exchange for a fee.

A few months ago, I spoke Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche, a professor of law at the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and member of the Institut Convergences Migrations, a research institute focused on migration. The topic of our conversation was how Europe exports its borders.

In light of today’s vote, I’m sharing our conversation in full as part of my monthly interview series, which I’m hoping to bring back now that the municipal elections are over. The interview, conducted in French, has been translated and lightly edited for clarity. All errors should be attributed to the author and not the interviewee.

Becoming French: Thanks again for being here with me. To start, could you briefly introduce yourself and tell me a bit about your research?

Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche: I’m Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche, professor of law at Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University. I’m a senior member of the Institut universitaire de France, and in that capacity I hold a research chair for a project called Moebius, whose activities can be followed on my Google site. I’m also a member of the Institut Convergences Migrations. My work focuses on the rule of law and the protection of fundamental rights, with a specialization in European migration law.

Becoming French: So do you have a particular focus on France, or is it broader?

MLBG: No, not at all. If you want to talk about French immigration law, you should speak to someone else. I know the basics and the developments, but it’s not my research field.

Becoming French: Right, and that’s already been covered on this Substack (here, here, here). The main topic I wanted to discuss with you is what I’ll call the “exportation of Europe’s borders.”

MLBG: In political science, that’s called ‘externalization,’ and in public law, ‘extraterritorialization.’

Becoming French: Let’s start with ‘externalization,’ then. What does that mean exactly?

MLBG: The ‘externalization’ of European migration and asylum policies is a term borrowed from the private sector. It means outsourcing the management of migration and border control. It’s also referred to as the external dimension of EU migration and asylum policy. In practice, it includes everything projected beyond EU borders in terms of managing migration flows or controlling external borders. This takes the form of agreements or administrative arrangements with third countries so that they manage migration. And what does that mean, in practice? For the European Union, it means preventing migrants from leaving their own countries and preventing them from entering the EU.

Becoming French: How about ‘extraterritorialization’ then?

MLBG: Broadly speaking, this is the model the UK wanted to implement [with Rwanda], with the limited success we know. The idea was that migrants arriving irregularly in the UK – who are actually refugees – would have their asylum claims processed in Rwanda under Rwandan law by Rwandan officials. This didn’t work because Rwanda cannot be considered a safe third country that offers a level of protection equivalent to the UK.

Another example is the Italy-Albania scheme. Migrants rescued at sea who wanted to apply for asylum and were not considered vulnerable are not disembarked in Italy but in Albania. They were placed in centers there, and Italian officials were supposed to apply Italian law to examine their claims. If the claim was accepted, they were supposed to be transferred to Italy. If it was rejected, they would remain in Albania, which might then deport them to their country of origin. This system failed because courts ruled that these individuals were not from “safe countries of origin,” so their claims could not be processed under accelerated procedures in Albania but had to be handled in Italy with full guarantees. In response, Giorgia Meloni became frustrated, changed the list of safe countries, and eventually decided to turn the Albanian centers into return centers. That is, migrants in irregular situation in Italy could be sent to Albania, which would then deport them. But for now, this system is not really working either.

Becoming French: You’ve mentioned two well-known examples that haven’t worked. Are there cases where this has worked?

MLBG: In Europe, no. But there are examples elsewhere. In the United States, Haitian migrants fleeing dictatorship or coups were intercepted by the US Coast Guard and sent to Guantánamo Bay, where their asylum claims were processed outside US territory. Another example is Australia. With its policy of territorial excision, migrants arriving irregularly are considered physically present but not legally on Australian territory. They are sent to Nauru or Papua New Guinea, where their asylum claims are processed. In practice, they are often detained there for years.

Becoming French: Why do European states keep trying this if it doesn’t work?

MLBG: We will likely see the development of return centers rather than offshore asylum processing. This is linked to the ongoing reform of the ‘return regulation,’ (see above) which will allow countries with who the EU and its member states have agreements or arrangements to be considered safe third countries. States will be able to send irregular migrants – including rejected asylum seekers – to these countries.

But there is a problem: third countries must agree to host these centers. They usually do so in exchange for financial compensation. For example, Turkey received billions of euros. Officially, this money is for refugee reception, but in reality only a small portion is used for that purpose. European states are effectively making deals with authoritarian regimes to prevent migrants from reaching Europe. For instance, with Tunisia or Egypt.

Becoming French: Why such a focus on irregular migrants?

MLBG: There are two main reasons. First, European administrative systems actually produce irregularity. Migrants who initially have paperwork – or even those who come in as genuine refugees – become irregular because of bureaucratic failures, such as delays in renewing residence permits. They then become subject to deportation.

Second, migration policy has been framed through a security lens since the 1990s. Far-right discourse has constructed migrants as a threat, and this narrative has spread across the political spectrum. Migrants have become scapegoats. Governments find it easier to blame them for economic and social problems than to address structural issues like inequality or declining public services.

Becoming French: Is France an exception?

MLBG: France often claims to be overly generous, but that’s not true. It is actually below the European average: It takes in fewer migrants relative to its population and GDP than countries like Germany. Across Europe, there is a clear trend toward increasingly restrictive policies and even denial of fundamental rights. France is not more generous than others.

Becoming French: Does France also externalize its borders?

MLBG: Yes, through agreements and administrative arrangements with third countries, often former colonies. These arrangements are shaped by diplomatic and economic considerations, which affect how effective they are.

Becoming French: What about private actors? Are they involved?

MLBG: Yes, extensively. Airlines, for example, carry out checks and may refuse boarding to avoid fines. There are private security companies, surveillance technology firms, arms industries, and operators of detention centers. International organizations and NGOs are also involved, as well as EU agencies like Frontex. This represents billions of euros. Yet only around 200,000 people arrive irregularly each year in a continent of 500 million. The scale of spending is completely disproportionate.

Becoming French: How do you explain the gap between this perception of a migratory ‘invasion’ and the reality?

MLBG: People often think foreigners make up 30% of the population, when in reality it’s under 10%. Many people perceived as foreigners are actually citizens. A large share of the population has immigrant ancestry. So the discourse and policies are deeply disconnected from reality.

Becoming French: Stupid question. Wouldn’t it be simpler just to process people who are already here in Europe?

MLBG: Yes. It would cost less and work better. Migrants would be treated properly and allowed to integrate and work. Instead, policies maintain exclusion and reinforce xenophobia, preventing integration and fueling fear.

Past monthly interviews:

February, 2025: France’s Citizenship Laboratory (with Rémi Carayol)

January, 2025: An Afghan Refugee Journalist in Paris (with Elyaas Ehsas)

December, 2024: Two Euros an Hour (with Nejma Brahim)

November, 2024: Liberté, Égalité, Expulsé (with Serge Slama)

October, 2024: The Criminalization of Solidarity (With Louis Witter)

After winning election Sunday night, Emmanuel Grégoire, who will take office as Paris mayor in a few days time, made a statement: he took the streets. Quite literally.

Riding a Vélib’ bike from the Rotonde de Stalingrad, where his campaign watch party took place, to the Paris mayor’s office in central Paris, Grégoire made his way along the Canal Saint Martin flocked by campaign staff and journalists. The display was, as my friend Harrison Stetler put it in The Nation, “the symbol of center-left good governance.” On his way, he would have passed Parisians reveling in the glow of a warm mid-March evening, groups of young people drinking beers and playing music along the canal and — almost certainly — unhoused folks sleeping rough in the streets of the City of Light.

If the moment was one of celebration — and we should be celebrating that it was Grégoire and not Rachida Dati who won election in Paris — it shouldn’t overshadow the enormous challenges Grégoire inherits from his predecessor Anne Hidalgo. Indeed, as I wrote last week, since 2022, the number of rough sleepers in Paris has increased by about 35 percent — estimated today at around 3,500 people. Under the elevated train tracks at Stalingrad, right by where Grégoire held his election night soirée; along the banks of the Seine and the Arsenal boat harbor near Bastille; and in parks and alleyways and alcoves across the city, people — many, but not all, of them migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees — have made the streets of Paris their temporary homes.

Grégoire himself alluded to this challenge at his victory speech on the night of the election. After thanking Hidalgo, former Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë and those that voted (and didn’t vote) for him, he saved his last words for the most vulnerable members of society. “I am thinking of the most fragile,” he said. “I am thinking about those who even tonight will sleep in the streets of Paris. I’m thinking of the children who are suffering and all of the most vulnerable people who have needed the Left since 2001 [the year Delanoë took office], and who we will continue to accompany and protect as best as we can.”

As wrote earlier this week in Millefeuille, one of Grégoire’s key campaign promises has been to end child homelessness in Paris. But that’s not all. On the campaign trail, Grégoire pledged to create a humanitarian reception center for newly-arrived migrants and house unaccompanied minors who are in the process of getting the French state recognize their status as under-18s; create 4,000 emergency housing beds across Paris; and — perhaps most critically — to dedicate 1 percent of the city budget to solidarity efforts, in line with the demands of the French collective Le Revers, which I wrote about last week.

“With each municipal election, we’re able to move the fence posts a little bit further,” Yann Manzi, the co-founder of the humanitarian organization Utopia 56, which works with migrants and refugees on housing, told me. “What is absolutely sure is that [Grégoire] has promised to go a lot further on these issues than [Hidalgo].”

Manzi cautioned that while Grégoire was nonetheless limited in what he could do, he felt that the newly-elected mayor was “sincere” in his commitments to addressing some of these issues, which have metastasized under Hidalgo.

Paul Alauzy, of the Le Revers collective, agreed. “In my opinion — and from the discussions we’ve had with him — he fully understands that the main challenge in Paris today is this,” Alauzy told me.

In the lead-up to the elections, Le Revers gave Grégoire’s campaign a B ‘solidarity score’ (on a scale of A to E), lower than La France Insoumise’s Sophia Chikirou, but higher than the rest of the candidates. “These measures are part of a logic of strengthening and continuing the municipal action of the previous term, rather than a broader transformation of the support framework advocated by some of the plan’s recommendations,” the organization wrote at the time.

But Alauzy is hopeful that the tone Grégoire struck in his victory speech will amount to more than platitudes. “I want to believe in it. We all want to believe in it, so we’re going to stay proactive and keep a close watch on all of this,” he said.

I will, too, and in the coming weeks, I hope to speak to some of the people most affected by these issues. It’s part of an effort to continue to do with this Substack what to me feels lacking with much foreign coverage of France: deep, reported features that don’t simply whitewash France for a fawning, and increasingly desperate, international audience, but reveal it in all its complexity.

“Our target tonight is the campaign headquarters of Rachida Dati.”

With a sly smile, housing activist Paul Alauzy gathers his troops. Under the stale, fluorescent lights of a medical NGO waiting room, Alauzy and his fellow members of the Collectif Le Revers pass out stickers, flares and a megaphone, which Alauzy himself keeps. After a short legal briefing with their pro-bono lawyers, the group — formed in the lead-up to the 2024 Paris Olympics to shine a light on the harmful displacement policies targeting asylum seekers and unhoused migrants — sets off toward Paris’s 12th arrondissement. Their mission is simple: drum up alarm about the social policies (or lack thereof) of Paris mayoral candidate Rachida Dati through a stickering campaign.

“Our collective is issuing a final alarm call, really, to tell people that this program is dangerous,” Alauzy tells me. “It’s harmful for people without housing, and for anyone living on the streets or in precarious housing in Paris.”

“We’re going to show who [Dati] really is by putting up our stickers and a QR code linking to our evaluation of her program on the window of her headquarters,” he adds.

That evaluation is not good. The collective ranked the Les Républicains candidate’s “nutritional score” for housing policies at an ‘E’ — the lowest possible. On another metric, the solidarity score, Dati received 0.1 out of 3 possible points. Despite multiple requests, Alauzy says, Dati’s team was the only one to not meet with Le Revers.

For Alauzy, it was enough to take their complaints directly to the campaign.

In the metro, Alauzy receives a call. A police van is parked about 20 meters from the headquarters. The action will, therefore, have to be short and sweet, he tells the group before they head to the site.

When the activists turn the corner onto the street where the campaign headquarters are located, police are already standing by. Campaign staffers file out of the building, filming wordlessly. A short standoff ensues. Activists peel the stickers and place them on the glass, as staffers try to block them from doing so. Eventually, one of Dati campaigners, wearing a suit and tie, speaks to Alauzy, who hands him the group’s list of demands.

The whole scene takes only two or three minutes. Eventually, the staffers return inside and the activists disperse. A disappointment for the collective. Still, a couple of members note as we stand by to wait for Alauzy’s police questioning to finish, there are a fair amount of stickers on the façade.

Afterwards, the mayoral campaign continues apace.

Neck-and-neck

Just two days before the highly-anticipated second round of the Paris mayoral elections, opinion polling suggests that Dati is currently neck-and-neck with Socialist candidate Emmanuel Grégoire, the top deputy of current mayor Anne Hidalgo. According to the Paris Match poll, Grégoire hovers around 46 percent and Dati at 44 percent. The only other candidate, the hard-left La France Insoumise’s Sophia Chikirou, who refused to bow out of the race after her overture’s to Grégoire were rejected, is polling at 10 percent.

In recent days, Dati has benefited from a so-called “technical fusion” with the campaign of centrist Pierre-Yves Bournazel and the dropping out of far-right Sarah Knafo, who had received just over 10 percent of votes but decided not to maintain her campaign in order to, in her words, “beat the left.”

Were Dati to be elected, housing activists fear, she would govern more like the far-right than a centrist. “She regularly conflates immigration, insecurity, and the occupation of public space” by unhoused people, Alauzy explains. “She’d like to put a police officer every 100 meters, whereas we think there should be a social worker every kilometer.”

What Dati lacks in specificity on the question of housing, she has made up for with her promises on security. The candidate has proposed a more than doubling of the total number of armed municipal police and video-surveillance cameras in public space, despite crime statistics showing that violence has not risen dramatically under Hidalgo.

Dati has made “cleaning” the streets of Paris — in multiple senses of the term — a campaign priority. And it’s true — homelessness in the French capital, as I’ve written in this Substack on numerous occasions, continues to rise. Between 2022 and 2025 the number of rough sleepers has increased by about 35 percent, according to statistics from the Nuit de Solidarité, a yearly count organized by the City of Paris.

Grégoire, the Socialist, has campaigned on “zero children in the streets” and the creation of an additional 4,000 short-term beds for unhoused people. While his policies generally align with those of Hidalgo, he has criticized the current mayor for her inaction on street homelessness.

‘Only men’

Dati’s unpreparedness vis-a-vis unhoused populations showed through during a televised mayoral debate on BFMTV earlier this week. Speaking over Chikirou as she tried to bring up a point about the increasing numbers of women and children who are sleeping rough in the French capital, Dati proclaimed “there are no women and children; there are only men.”

As Utopia 56, another charity that aims to bring awareness to homelessness in France, explained in a video, this is patently untrue. According to the NGO, roughly 11 percent of unhoused people in Paris are women and children; in 2025 alone, 40 children died in the streets of the capital — a number far higher than those that died at the hands of far-left agitators.

In the streets of Paris, signs put up by another group warn that this already bleak situation could be made worse if Dati were to be elected. 1,000 women, 300 children, 200 unaccompanied minors: that’s the number of people currently housed in gymnasiums in Paris owned by City Hall. Questioned at the debate, Dati claimed that housing these vulnerable populations was a “pull factor” for additional migration — a theory called l’appel d’air that has been disproven by researchers.

Dati’s talking points suggest a rapprochement with the far-right National Rally. In the in the days leading up to the second round of elections, both its president, Jordan Bardella, and Marine Le Pen endorsed Dati.

In an op-ed released the day after their final sensitization action, the Le Revers collective was categorical about the risks of a far-right backed Dati campaign. “Its implementation could lead to a major rollback of solidarity policies in Paris, with a real risk of a humanitarian and social crisis.”

Today, French voters head to the polls in 34,900 municipalities across the country. This morning, on a sunny day, I voted twice in the 13th arrondissement of Paris — once for mayor of my arrondissement and once for mayor of Paris.

The Paris mayoral race is tight, with possibly as many as five candidates advancing to next Sunday’s runoff. I spoke to about how this race is shaping up for her New Paris Podcast. I also wrote a piece for The Nation about the precipitous rise of far-right politician Sarah Knafo, currently polling around 13.5 percent and possibly playing a king or queenmaker role in the second round.

Today, I have a new piece out in Jacobin about the shadow cast by the killing of Quentin Deranque on the various municipal races, which I'm republishing it below as I think it's particularly important to keep in mind as voting wraps across the country.

In the meantime, I'll be eagerly awaiting the first round results and appreciating the glorious, though cold, early spring weather.

Typically, municipal elections tend to remain local affairs. Safety and security, cleanliness, city budgets, and access to services such as healthcare and education top the list of civic concerns in selecting mayors.

In France, on the day 35,000 cities and towns vote in the first municipal elections since 2020, another top-line order has been added this year, subtly shifting electoral dynamics in local races across the country: the shadow of political violence.

On February 14, neo-fascist activist Quentin Deranque died, succumbing to injuries sustained two days earlier during street skirmishes between far-right groups and anti-fascists in Lyon. Video footage shows Deranque, a member of several neo-fascist groups, being beaten by members of the anti-fascist movement La Jeune Garde, some of whom were later revealed to be linked to Jean-Luc Melenchon’s hard-left movement, La France Insoumise (LFI).

Taking place almost exactly one month before elections, Deranque’s death and its political repercussions has had the effect of a fragmentation bomb, sending tiny pieces of shrapnel across the country. In the weeks after his death, France’s national assembly observed a moment of silence for the young identitarian activist; LFI, already demonized by much of the French political class, was legally qualified as a “far left” party and had to evacuate its Paris headquarters in a credible bomb scare; bouts of retaliatory violence against left-wing institutions occurred in cities across the country from Lille in the north to Toulouse in the south; and Nazi salutes were thrown as far-right groups marched in his memory in Lyon and across the country.

This atmosphere has shifted the terms of debate in municipal races that normally focus on bread-and-butter issues onto the complex topic of political violence.

From Marseille, 31-year-old theater production assistant Baptiste Colin tells me that “local debates have taken a back seat, which is a shame.” “It seems to me that we’ve hardly succeeded anywhere in running [the 2026 municipal elections] as truly local elections,” he explains. “We really only have discussions at the national level – for or against Emmanuel Macron, for or against Mélenchon, for or against [former Interior Minister Bruno] Retailleau.”

In the Phoenician port city, a televised debate between leading candidates veered into unplanned sparring over Deranque, leading the incumbent left-wing mayor Benoît Payan to lament in French daily Le Monde that, “The half hour on Quentin wasn’t among the planned topics. (...) We wanted to talk about Marseille.”

“Instead of debating local policy, some candidates may be pressured or decide willingly to position themselves within a broader ideological struggle,” Rim-Sarah Alouane, a legal scholar and researcher in public law at the Université Toulouse Capitole, tells me.

In Lyon, this struggle took place on the walls of city property. Days after the killing, businessman Jean-Michel Aulas, running under the banner of a coalition of right-wing parties and currently leading in the polls, took out a tribune in a local paper calling on his competitor, Green Party mayor Grégory Doucet, to display Deranque’s picture on city hall. While Deranque’s portrait was not, ultimately, put up there, it was shown on a nearby building belonging to the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of which Lyon is a part – and which is run by the right.

To Alix, a 28-year-old public policy student who lives in Lyon, Aulas’s call for an homage to Deranque was a “political error.” “He wasn’t a choirboy,” Alix – who insists that he’s more interested in hearing about urban planning than political violence in the municipal elections – tells me of Deranque.

Nonetheless – as the Marseille debate showed – it seems that taking a stance on the killing, and often assigning fault, has become a prerequisite for this year’s municipal elections. “Today is not the time for controversy. It is a time for solemn reflection, respect, and solidarity,” Thierry Tsagalos, a candidate for the far-right National Rally in Montpellier wrote on X after Deranque’s death. “Let us remain united. Let us remain dignified. And let us not forget Quentin.” The post was nonetheless accompanied with several hashtags, including the names of LFI politicians Raphael Arnault (cofounder of the Jeune Garde anti-fascist group) and Rima Hassan (who had spoken at a conference the day the violence broke out in Lyon) and, in all caps, the word “ASSASSINS.”

The French far-right has sought to capitalize on the killing to make in-roads in cities where they previously struggled to exist, suggesting – despite historical statistics that prove otherwise – that it’s the left and not the right that’s responsible for political violence in France. In Tours, a city in the Loire Valley, a meeting for the far-right National Rally held after Deranque’s death was “packed,” with some attendees forced to sit on the floor, Pascal Montagne, a local photojournalist, tells me. “It was very successful, whereas before that wouldn’t have been the case.” A “Quentin” bump? Not necessarily, Montagne cautions – the far-right was already rising locally before the killing.

As Philippe Marlière has written in The Guardian, the consequences of the Deranque death have also played out in local left-wing alliance-making in advance of the municipal elections – important, too, because city councils help determine the make-up of the French Senate. Despite being part of a broad left-wing coalition in snap elections held in summer 2024, LFI has found itself isolated – and physically threatened, with multiple aggressions of campaign staff signaled across the country.

In Paris, a spokesperson for LFI’s Sophia Chikirou tells me that contrary to media reports and some polling, the attacks against the left-wing party have actually “mobilized widely” in favor of the party. “A lot of new party activists have signed up. On the ground we have the impression many people are going to vote.”

In Paris’s diverse 10th arrondissement, LFI list head Marion Beauvalet says that despite initially worrying about the impact it might have on her campaign, Deranque’s death “is not at all a topic that comes up.” “For many people, the issues that are important are local ones,” including housing, childcare and cost-of-living.

Colin, the theater producer in Marseille, who situates himself on the left, insists that these local issues matter. “A town hall that pivots right will make a difference for associations like mine,” many of which are subsidized by municipal governments. “A town hall that pivots to the far-right, that makes an even bigger difference.”

He brings up a recent football competition between Marseille, where he lives, and Lyon, where he grew up, as an example of France’s division. At the match, Lyon fans carried signs with Deranque’s face. Marseille fans responded with a different sort of message: “Marseille against racism.”

The streets of Lens, an industrial former mining city in the north of France, were quiet on a rainy Wednesday morning. Gray clouds drew gray rain over slick cobblestone streets. I opened my phone to look for a bistro to camp out in before my 11:30 a.m. meeting in a nearby town, but they were all closed. The downtown felt hollowed out as I ducked into the only open establishment with seating, a boulangerie with gray tables and gray chairs.

On Sunday, that city — one of two major hubs in what is still calling France’s “mining basin” despite the fact that the mines have been closed for nearly half a century — will vote in municipal elections. The far-right National Rally (RN) has made down-on-its-luck Lens one of its conquests as it looks to capitalize on de-industrialization, a decline in purchasing power and a feeling of marginalization and loss of identity in order to win over cities that have long been run by the left.

Lens is not alone. Across France, the National Rally and associated far-right electoral lists are running in more than 700 local elections. It’s a significant increase from 2020, when Jean-Marie Le Pen’s party failed to pick up as many town halls as it had hoped. 2026 is looking different. The far-right appears poised to win elections in Toulon, Nice and Calais; it’s competitive in the port city of Marseille and has its eyes on other, smaller cities like Carcassonne and Bourges.

But what happens when the far-right actually wins office? Over the past weeks, I’ve brought you stories from places where the far-right rules. Perpignan, where security cameras have been hung like Christmas lights; Frejus, on the Cote D’Azur, where corruption has become synonymous with city management; and even La Plaine-des-Palmistes on the island of La Reunion, where the mayor REALLY doesn’t want to talk about slavery anymore.

What’s interesting is that the municipal strategy, in most of these places, hasn’t been radical change, but rather death by a thousand cuts. Instead of doing away with patronage systems, the far-right has simply reinvested them. Instead of attacking cultural initiatives directly, the far-right has sought to replace them with a culture of their own. On a local scale, the grand civilizational exhortations of its leaders are replaced with the more mundane task of governance, which the far-right tends to do not very well.

Still — gaining access to and holding onto town halls fits into a broader master plan. As L’Humanité reports, behind the RN’s quest to take over hundreds of cities across France is the shadow of French billionaire exile Pierre-Edouard Sterin. Sterin has invested heavily in Politicae, a training school for future leaders. These trainees are parachuted into smaller French cities and towns, where they try to unseat local mayors. The intention is two-fold: to seed right-wing talking points into municipal debates and to shore up the far-right’s presence in the French Senat, which mayors help to elect in a set-up similar to the American electoral college.

Not all of the National Rally’s candidates, though, have this elite profile. Back in Lens, RN candidate Bruno Clavet has a unique arc. Clavet, elected as a deputy in the 2024 legislative elections in the district that includes Lens, started out as an underwear model in New York and a contestant on the reality TV show X-Factor. In 2012, he joined what was then the Front National and became an activist for Marine Le Pen’s party.

In 2014, Clavet ran for mayor in Paris’s 3rd arrondissement, winning under 5 percent. He then moved north, looking for greener — or grayer — pastures. His progression since then has matched that of his party on a national scale. Just over 20 percent in Lens’ 2020 municipal elections; legislative candidate in 2022, losing by under 100 votes; and finally, elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2024, winning by a margin of 13 percent.

His success Sunday in the first round of elections might be a bellwether for what’s to come — and a warning sign for the rest of the country.

For nearly a millennium, Reims stood as France’s “City of Kings.” Inside the soaring nave of Reims Cathedral, monarchs processed beneath stained glass and incense to claim the French crown. From Clovis I—whose baptism helped anchor the alliance between the French monarchy and the Catholic Church—to Charles X, nearly every French king was consecrated here in ceremonies meant to signal divine authority as much as political power.

That tradition unraveled in 1830. When Charles X attempted to tighten royal control, Parisians rose up during the July Revolution and forced him from the throne. The fall of France’s last crowned king seemed to close the chapter on rule from above—at least in theory.

Nearly two centuries later, echoes of that struggle over authority are surfacing again in the streets of Reims—this time in municipal politics.

In Reims, left-wing unity candidate Éric Quénard is attempting to rally a fractured progressive camp against incumbent mayor Arnaud Robinet, a center-right figure often compared to former prime minister Édouard Philippe and a member of his party. In the lead up to the upcoming mayoral elections, to be held in two rounds on March 15 and 22, Quénard has stitched together a coalition of nine left-wing groups, pitching the race not simply as a local election but as a referendum on how power is exercised in a city once synonymous with royal authority.

Standing in his modest campaign office, Quénard casts the contest in almost monarchical terms.

“Today the mayor operates a bit like a lord ruling over his subjects,” he tells me. “The mayor decides, and the people of Reims simply carry it out.”

For Quénard, the campaign hinges on reversing that dynamic—replacing what he describes as a “vertical” style of governance with participatory politics, from citizen budgets to neighborhood decision-making. In a city once defined by coronations, he argues, the next political transformation should come not from a throne but from the citizenry.

Quénard — much like, in a very different context, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani — has made free public transport the backbone of his underdog campaign. The Reims mayor proposes a gradual adoption of this policy, starting with discounted fares, and then proceeding to age-based rates, free transport on weekends, and eventually universal free transit. But, as he explains to Becoming French, he also wants to invest in public housing — including building a “21st-century garden city” inspired by early 20th-century social housing in Reims — cycle lanes and urban forests.

He faces an uphill battle. In 2020, in elections that were slightly postponed due to the outbreak of Covid-19, Quénard’s main opponent Robinet handily won election for a second term — winning two-thirds of the votes in the first round. Robinet has said that during his mandate, Reims made strides as a sustainable and smart city, while also maintaining a balanced budget. He has been criticized for an overly “securitarian” approach to public safety, such as through the installation of CCTV cameras in the downtown.

Despite a lack of polling (in France, political parties, newspapers and think-tanks can request opinion polls for a fee), Quénard insists that his coalition, which runs from the Communist Party (PCF) to the center-left Place publique (the party of French MEP Raphaël Glucksmann), has a chance — in part to competition to the right of Robinet.

Running to the rightward extreme, National Rally MEP Anne‑Sophie Frigout has campaigned against ecological measures such as low‑emission zones, which she says harm drivers, and, in keeping with her party, for stricter security measures to crack down on delinquency.

“The far right is rising because people feel the policies put in place haven’t answered their expectations,” Quénard explains. “They’ve tried the right, they’ve tried the left, and they tell themselves: the only thing we haven’t tried yet is the far right.”

A strong showing for the far-right in Reims would be a major shake-up. In 2022’s presidential elections, an overwhelming majority voted for Emmanuel Macron in the run-off with Marine Le Pen. But the following years have seen the far-right regroup and increasingly take on smaller French cities where incomes and quality of life feel, to residents, to have stagnated.

Despite its outward appearance of glitz and glamor, France’s Champagne region is one of France’s poorest and most unequal. In Reims, roughly one in four people live below the poverty line. And, as in many parts of the country, the results of the upcoming elections might hinge on which candidate is able to get out the vote in some of the city’s poorer neighborhoods. Will Quénard be able to convince them, or might they fall under the charm of Frigout? A high abstention rate would almost certainly benefit Robinet, the incumbent.

In recent weeks, Quénard’s focus has centered on these populations, the candidate says:

“We’re talking about people who work small jobs and don’t make a living from their wages. We’re talking about people who sleep outdoors—the homeless, refugees. What I want is for us to have a comprehensive approach to the issue of housing, to integration, and to support for individuals.”

Going back to the basics, Quénard has presented himself as a unifier and a man of the people. In his early 50s, with white hair and square glasses, Quénard was born and raised in Reims. For nine years, he served as a parliamentary assistant in the European Parliament to Adeline Hazan, Reims’ Socialist mayor from 2008 to 2014. His electoral list includes Remois and Remoises from all walks of life. Mathieu Picard, the director of the non-profit Club de prévention d’Épernay, which works with vulnerable populations and Léa Robinet, an 18-year-old education activist, stand out as two examples civil society leaders who have joined the campaign.

“The people of Reims are ready to take part in running their city. They don’t want decisions imposed from above,” Quénard concludes.

Whether Reims is ready for a Champagne Socialist, on the other hand, will become a lot clearer this coming Sunday.

In early February, 2025, I traveled to Kyiv with a group of colleagues from Forbidden Stories, the French journalism non-profit where I worked for five years. We were there to meet with Ukrainian and foreign reporters and to launch an investigation that would eventually become known as the Viktoriia Project, about the death in Russian captivity of 27-year-old journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna.

While most of my time was spent in meetings, I was able to spend some time exploring that beautiful, historic city. Kyiv was the closest I’d ever been to an active war zone, and that must have been weighing on me in ways I couldn’t fully grasp. Over three days, I jotted down many thoughts in the notes app of my phone. What follows is a selection of the somewhat personal, and certainly raw, notes I took at that time and lightly edited afterwards. I should say that this is just my experience, and what’s written here shouldn’t be taken as universal.

In recognition of the four-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I wanted to share it as one testimony of many.

Flash 1:

Somewhere during the span of a long highway tunnel, a thick fog slips in and envelopes the outer Paris suburbs. When we entered the tunnel — myself and four colleagues in an eight-person taxi — there was bright, late-winter sunshine. The sun was a red orb low in the sky, reflecting orange light across sleek, modern buildings. Now, as we approach the Charles de Gaulle airport, it’s suddenly cold and dark: the deep, wet sort of cold that furrows into your bones and causes you to shiver endlessly. It’s as if we’ve already made the transition between two situations, two different worlds. The whole passage reminds me of a Murakami novel — one of those moments in life when one tiny thing changes and nothing is ever the same again.

Flash 2:

We are on the plane that will take us to Poland. Warsaw, a city that sounds like the East. I know little about this city — only that it’s the capital of one of those countries where sudden cold spells are normal, quotidian. There will be snow, and even more fog when we arrive in Poland, the captain announces.

We land through a layer of fog. I know this fog. It’s the fog of the fields of France’s Champagne region from the window of the train in winter. It’s the fog in my head. I can’t concentrate for more than five minutes at a time. I can’t read. My thoughts are jumping around, like a derailed train, or they don’t come at all, and I feel a deep heaviness inside me that I can’t shake off.

It’s a cold year. It’s also a wet year. 2024 was the rainiest year in Parisian history, or something close to that. On my balcony, for the past months, I’ve watched the plants die: a little more every day, drowning in their own pots. But there’s nothing I can do about it because the balcony door doesn’t close properly once it’s been opened and we prefer dead plants to a high heating bill. A year of fog. A year of rain. A cold year. A year of illness and hospital visits. Around me, I watch the world fall apart. Change happens slowly at first, then suddenly very quickly.

Flash 3:

I’m in the car, watching the dark Polish road and hearing the noise of wheels grinding on ice. The rhythmic sound makes me think of soldiers marching, the earth squirming under the impressive weight of the vehicle with four men and one woman in it. The driver is a burly man who speaks little. It’s nighttime in Poland and there’s no one on the highway. It’s one of those countries where everything is big — the streets, the people, the silence — and the history is ancient. In that way it’s like and unlike my own country.

Then there’s the Ukrainian border, barbed wire everywhere, a German shepherd sniffing around inside the car. As we drive into western Ukraine, we tail an old Lada; next to us, a train that must be carrying ammunition barrels through the dark, quiet night. I see Ukraine for the first time at 3 a.m. In the no man’s land between the two borders—Polish and Ukrainian—are two huge flags, one Ukraine, the other the European Union. Destinies that could have crossed paths, but that didn’t and probably never will.

Now it’s 4 a.m., but I feel alive. The fear of the unknown—that natural survival instinct—kicking in, dispels the fog and I’m more alert, awake than I’ve been in weeks. We enter the dark, gray world of the middle of the night. I see small houses, lights off, and a fluorescent green hotel, lights on. I will probably never return here, I think, so I try to capture everything. I have only one desire: for the others in the van to go back to sleep so that I can contemplate the road in silence.

What was I expecting? Explosions and debris falling from the sky? I see orange lights in distant windows. It’s five o’clock; Ukraine is waking up.

Flash 4:

In Rivne, the first big town we drive through, people are going to work. They're lining up to get onto one of those little yellow buses packed with people. They look like sardines in coats and fur hats. We pass trees, also packed, but this time with crows. There are crows everywhere. Spring of crows in the year of the snake. Intelligence and transformation. The country, at least in the west, is not so much destroyed as disintegrating. In the midst of war, repairing roads and bus shelters takes a back seat to the war effort.

Flash 5:

Suburbs of Kyiv. Large, uniform buildings. Wet snow falls atop Soviet-style statues. This morning I woke up to a view of snow-covered fields. In my head I repeated the word: snow. Like a protective amulet.

Flash 6:

Alone for an hour. I can’t sleep so I take a walk. At first I move quickly and hug the walls, until I realize that everyone else is acting normally and that maybe I’m the one who looks suspicious. It’s the early afternoon, and it’s not snowing or raining. It’s not quite sunny either. Everything is gray and blue and yellow. Life takes place in the underground passageways that smell faintly of boiled corn.

I pass a Christmas tree made out missile bullet casings. THE RESISTANCE PERSISTS, an accompanying text proclaims. The tree was fashioned in 2023, and will remain until the end of the war. I wonder if it’s still there.

In the Maidan square, a shrine stands to the fallen soldiers. There are yellow flowers in porcelain vases and flags rising above them like the canopy of a tropical rainforest protecting the ecosystem below. People walk by silently. A young woman comes up to me and asks me to donate, but her app won’t accept my credit card so I keep walking.

Flash 6:

The first missile alert. We’re walking out of a restaurant around 10 pm — now there’s a whole group of us, the others having arrived on the night train — and the siren blares. I look around me, but again no one is running. No one even seems to notice. The Ukrainian journalist we’re with looks at an app on her phone. No need to worry, alerts like this are a dime a dozen, she says.

It’s one of those weird in-between weeks, a week where nothing happens before a lot does. The next week, after we leave and are safely back in Paris, the Ukrainian president will visit the White House, where the US president will publicly admonish him for his lack of a suit. The talking heads will comment the incident for days, and then the Russians will start to rain many more bombs and missiles on Kyiv — real ones, not the phantom ones we had experienced and that everyone had brushed off. One of them struck the house of a journalist, who died instantly.

Flash 7:

Overnight, a real snow blankets Kyiv. I look out my window, from which you can see the Olympic stadium. I repeat the mantra. Then, I go downstairs and have a coffee and prepare for the first day of meetings.

Flash 8:

Sometimes, I’m reminded that this is a country at war. On the second night, a man — clearly in a state of rage and desperation — wakes up the entire hotel floor at 1 a.m., shouting and pounding on the walls. Then, there are several voices yelling at once, and the sound of doors slamming. I wonder if we need to go to the bomb shelter downstairs.

I call my colleague, the one who speaks Ukrainian. According to her, the man, a soldier, is having a breakdown and asking for help. Apparently, he is naked and connected to an IV tube, wandering up and down the hallway yelling out warnings about Russian soldiers. I don’t look through the peephole; I can’t. I put my headphones in and blast white noise, but the screaming is louder. It’s a reminder that despite the calm, despite the almost festive atmosphere, we are in a country at war — and the war never stops. You can’t just shut it off.

After the episode, silence. I try to slow the rhythm of my thoughts, of my heart beating too quickly. Bloodcurdling screams in a world in crisis. There is nothing to do but pray, or cry.

Flash 9:

There’s a hotel where all the foreign journalists hang out. We’re drinking red wine. I’m speaking to a Ukrainian colleague. He tells me about the start of the war; about how Kyiv was almost taken. Then, he tells me about a friend of his who went out to cover the Russian offensive, about how he took a wrong turn and ended up at a Russian roadblock, and was shot dead.

He tells me this in a very matter-of-fact way. Next, we talk about movies.

Flash 10:

The next evening, we cross the border during the daytime. My shoulders relax slightly. It’s another subtle shift — less abrupt than I had expected, less noticeable than on the way there. In Kyiv, I never really felt in danger. The city was noisy, lived-in, European. I keep feeling like I’m always skirting around conflicts. I know they’re there, but I never see them.

Back in Europe, I’m able to read again. On the plane from Warsaw, I see the Polish sunrise from my seat — low and pink, the color of cotton candy.

The plane rises and now we are at the level of that pink light. The horizon appears tiny between the ground and the clouds, then it disappears. I see factories and rivers and white clouds and I see us, all of the people in the hull of the plane — everyone is plugged into their little screens, in their own worlds, traveling to remote places in their heads as our journey home begins.

La Plaine-des-Palmistes resembles, in many ways, paradise. Mountains and tropical rainforest surround the 7,000-person town on the island of La Reunion, a French overseas department in the Indian Ocean. Red-roofed houses, many in the colonial style, and palm trees line the winding streets.

It’s an unlikely to place for a national-level politician to visit. Yet, in December 2021, Marine Le Pen could be spotted walking around in a blue, flowery dress. Her guide was a bald man, in his 50s, wearing a white surgical mask (Covid-19 was not yet a thing of the past). That man — Johnny Payet — had run for mayor in 2020 as an independent, winning handily. Two years later, he officially joined the far-right National Rally, or RN, becoming a departmental delegate.

The local politician has proven himself to be a staunch Lepeniste. The winter he received Marine, the island was celebrating the Fèt Kaf, an island-wide commemoration of the 1848 abolition of slavery. Unlike in the overseas territory of Mayotte, where her reception was less than favorable, here she was welcomed with open arms. In national elections the following year, Le Pen won the island of La Reunion handily — garnering just under 60 percent of the votes.

As for Payet, inviting Le Pen to visit during Fèt Kaf appears to have been more bluster than substance. A couple of year later, in 2024, Payet declared that he would no longer be commemorating the event. “I tell my grandchildren that slavery is finished. It was a way of life a long, long time ago. It’s time to put it to the side,” he said.

In the wake of the comments, even the RN had to distance itself from Payet.

Six years more?

Yet in 2026, Payet will run again under the National Rally banner. His record, in a commune where poverty rates exceed 30 percent, throws into question the promises made by the far-right party before assuming office.

Under Payet’s rule, the financial management of the town has increasingly come under question. In a report by a regional court, the financial health of La Plaine-des-Palmistes was qualified as “alarming” — despite claims made by Payet that the city has made progress in the past six years. The report noted irregularities in accounting and “numerous bad habits” in the fiscal management of the town. According to Le Monde, Payet attempted to prevent the report from being published through various stalling tactics.

Like his mainland contemporaries, Payet has tried instead to position himself as someone who gets things done, working hard at the so-called “de-diabolisation” (un-demonizing) of the party. The National Rally, he has said, is “not a far-right party” and Payet “wouldn’t be part of it” if indeed it were racist.

Nonetheless, other National Rally candidates in La Reunion haven’t shied away from some of the party’s favorite bugbears. As Liberation reports, RN candidates hoping to surf the Payet wave in the upcoming mayoral elections have sought to deflect the blame of the the island’s financial woes to uncontrolled immigration from the Comoros Islands and Mayotte, despite such immigrants being located more than 1,700 kilometers away by boat and representing under 2 percent of the population in La Reunion.

From Le Pen to Bardella

Despite its distance from mainland France, the political fault-lines in France’s overseas departments reflects some of the widening cracks back in the Hexagon. These have only deepened in the past four years.

In the first round of the 2022 presidential election, it was not Marine Le Pen who garnered the highest vote share on the island of La Reunion. It was Jean-Luc Melenchon of the La France Insoumise party. Today, LFI is on its back heel and, as is the case in La Reunion, the far-right is seeking to gain territory — and quickly.

In December 2022, National Rally president Jordan Bardella visited La Reunion. Here, he declared that the RN was hoping to increase its local “anchorage” and prove that the same themes it has popularized or co-opted across the rest of France — security, immigration, cost of living — will also speak to residents of the country’s former colonial outposts.

Despite his town’s financial irregularities, Bardella’s foot-soldier in the Indian Ocean, Payet, is anticipated to win re-election in La Plaine-des-Palmistes. The question is weather the RN’s overseas strategy will bear fruits elsewhere on the island, as well.

In Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, author Naomi Klein writes about the alternative realities that both separate her from and connect her to the world of Naomi Wolf, a far-right polemicist for whom she is often confused. If France were to have such dopplegangers they might well be Marine Le Pen and Marine Tondelier.

Marine Le Pen is the daughter of National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. Marine Tondelier is a Green Party politician and New Popular Front headliner, known for her sharp intelligence and bright green pantsuits.

The shared world of the two French Marines is Henin-Beaumont, a commune of 27,000 in France’s northern mining bastion of Pas-de-Calais. Scene of Zola’s grande grêve (Germinal, 1885), the north of France has transformed in recent years from communist stronghold to crown-jewel of the far-right. As Mediacités reports, in 2026 the National Rally is seeking to make further gains in this region where rapid de-industrialization has bottomed up the economy and anti-migrant rhetoric is commonplace. It’s also here, in Henin-Beaumont, that Marine Le Pen was elected to the city council in 2008, and that Marine Tondelier herself joined the opposition in 2014.

While both Marines are implanted here, neither of them can be said to run the city. In 2014, when Henin-Beaumont became the first northern French city to pivot to the far-right, the candidate for mayor was not Marine Le Pen, by then too busy with national politics, but Steeve Briois. In 2014, Briois was elected with just over 50 percent of the votes — capitalizing on the catastrophic legacy of the Socialist incumbent wracked by corruption scandals. In 2020, Briois shored up his influence, winning nearly 75 percent of votes in the first round of the Covid-delayed mayoral election. In 2026, Briois is running again on a slogan of “With you since forever.”

A bold claim for sure, but is it true?

As a journalist for the Belgian newspaper Der Standard wrote in 2022, the RN’s promises and follow throughs haven’t always fully aligned. The façade of the city hall is “splendid,” the journalist writes. Children play in clean parks that close at night, and public space is surveilled 24/7 by cameras. “The spoiled grasses that grew six years ago have disappeared,” the journalist writes. But as he spends more time in the town, he starts to see what’s beneath the surface.

Disappearing NGOs and privatized pools

Lower taxes, lower crime rates, and entire neighborhoods transformed, improved. Ten years on from his election, Briois had nothing but good to say about his management of Henin-Beaumont. That’s normal — he’s a politician.

Ask the local chapter of the Ligue des droits de l’homme (Human rights league) and the response might be different. One of the RN’s strategies to muzzle dissent on a local scale has been through removing municipal subsidies from organizations viewed as antagonistic to them. Once elected, Briois quickly sought to do so for the Human rights league, whose subsidized offices in the town hall were shuttered. The organization was forced to move to a neighboring town, Noyelles-Godault.

Or the Secours populaire, an association that aids migrants and refugees, who were prevented from selling artisanal wares at the Hénin-Beaumont Christmas market, after Briois judged them too favorable to migrants.

Or the Théâtre de L’Escapade, which saw its lease end under Briois, who called it a “stew of leftists.”

Under Briois, the castigation of NGOs and associations has been paired with a drive toward the privatization of other public resources — something the RN would love to do on a national level. This includes public pre-schools, funeral homes and the municipal pool, whose prices rose by about 60 percent.

Jordan Bardella has called cities like Hénin-Beaumont windows into “why the RN works.” David Noel, the president of the Human Rights League, said the opposite: “If at a national level, they apply what they have done in Hénin-Beaumont, I have the greatest fears.”

A press freedom nightmare and a 'city against migrants’

The cultivated image of Hénin-Beaumont has not been uncontested. However, as Le Monde reports, the municipality has been highly litigious against associations, unions and journalists who dare to critique it.

“They call us friends of Libération (the newspaper) and the buddies of the Cocos (a derogatory term for communists),” labor union leader Djelloul Kheris said in an interview about labor organizing under the far-right.

For Kheris, it’s not just about rhetoric. Under Briois, he said, the number of public sector workers dropped from 700 to 500.

Journalists have also found themselves in the RN’s line of fire. Before his election Briois compared the work of La Voix du Nord editor Pascal Wallart to “pornography moonshining as love.” Briois’s partner Bruno Bilde, also an RN politician, regularly sent him threatening text messages, according to Le Monde.

This hate extends, of course, to migrants and refugees.

In 2014, Briois tweeted without proof that “the repartition of migrants (in Europe) has has led to the explosion of sexual assaults in Germany, Sweden, Austria, and so on.” His comment was flagged by the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, which brought a case against the RN politician in Paris.

In Hénin-Beaumont, Marine Tondelier has pushed back against some of the more egregious examples of discrimination, such as attempts to ban panhandling and another attempt to pass a motion entitled “My city against migrants.”

While the panhandling ban failed, the anti-migrants motion passed by a vote of 29-6. Emboldened, Briois took the lead on a national campaign to create an association of mayors against migrants.

“Considering that welcoming migrants generates a financial and social cost (...), that these facilities create tensions with local residents and disturbances to public order, suffocate the local economy and threaten the exercise of individual freedoms, the city of Hénin-Beaumont commits to opposing the migrant reception plan following the dismantling of the Jungle de Calais,” Briois said at the time.

It’s hard not to imagine what such a campaign against migrants might look like on a national scale, with the force of a federal governing force behind it. (Or is it?)

I’m traveling this week, so part two of When the Far-Right Rules is a republication from Jacobin. After Perpignan, we’re staying in the south. Welcome to the city of Fréjus, the fiefdom of Marine Le Pen’s right-hand man.

It’s a well-worn story: the anti-corruption crusader who, once in office, becomes even more corrupt than his predecessor. But that simple narrative quite aptly describes the argument of a recently updated book on David Rachline — the vice president of France’s Rassemblement National party and the man once considered Marine Le Pen’s “best friend.”

Les Rapaces (The Birds of Prey) is French journalist Camille Vigogne Le Coat’s two-year-long investigation into Rachline’s management of Fréjus, the southeastern French city where the party’s vice president has served as mayor since 2014. Here, near the blingy Côte d’Azur, Rachline, who is close to both Le Pen and her protégé Jordan Bardella, reportedly perfected the art of patting the right backs and stuffing his own pockets: a system of clientelism nicknamed the “Varois Mafia,” after the southeastern department (Le Var) where Fréjus is located.

As Le Pen appeals her conviction for embezzlement of European Parliament funds, handed down last Monday by a French court (NB: the appeal is still underway), Le Coat’s book offers a window into how the far-right party allegedly organizes corruption on a local level. While the Rassemblement National — down from its leadership to its local affiliates — presents itself as an anti-system party, spared from the corruption roiling the political establishment, Le Coat argues the opposite: once in power, the Rassemblement National doesn’t just perpetuate tired corruption schemes but builds on them.

“And what if David Rachline weren’t an isolated man, a black sheep, but the symptom of a greater illness within the party?” Le Coat asks in the intro, published before Le Pen’s conviction last Monday.

Far from Brussels, where Le Pen’s party was found guilty of siphoning roughly €4 million of European Parliament funds in order to fund party activism, Le Coat suggests that the Roman town of Fréjus served as a laboratory for the far right’s misappropriation of public funds. In her analysis, Rachline — who reached office in 2014, taking over from the discredited former mayor Élie Brun, himself convicted of an “illegal conflict of interests” — was central to the scheme.

At the time, Rachline was a twenty-six-year-old Rassemblement National activist, quickly rising in the party as a “Mariniste” (supporter of Marine Le Pen). He split the vote between Brun and another candidate of the traditional right to become mayor of Fréjus. Months later, he ran for senator in the Var, becoming France’s youngest senator and one of the first two to ever represent Le Pen’s far-right party.

Fréjus wasn’t always a bastion of the far right. This city of 57,000 people in the former Communist-led region once known as the “Red Var” is nestled just inland of the glitzy coast, roughly halfway between the beaches of Saint-Tropez and Cannes. The Var’s agricultural and industrial hinterland contrasts with the resort-lined coastline. But starting in the 1980s, this traditionally left-leaning rust belt has increasingly gravitated toward the far right.

As Le Coat painstakingly reveals, Rachline was able to ride popular discontent in this hollowed-out region to rapidly ascend to dominance. But his rise came at a cost.

Once in office, according to Le Coat’s telling, Rachline nearly immediately began to grease the elbows of the same power brokers his predecessor once frequented, including the discredited former mayor himself. She says that like Brun, Rachline nuzzled up to construction magnate Alexandre Barbero, owner of a dozen companies in the region, who began to pile up contracts with the city — exploding its debt and paving the city in ugly concrete.

Le Coat began to investigate Rachline after learning of his cash purchase of a €15,000 Hublot watch from a famous Cote d’Azur jeweler in 2015. The watch, paid for by his valet, “speaks to a system,” Le Coat writes. “It was the first element of proof of a vast corruption mechanism operating in Fréjus.”

Rachline’s clientelist networks weren’t only limited to Barbero, Le Coat writes. Nor were his luxury tastes limited to this flashy wristwear. Various interviewees who spoke with Le Coat recall his multiple-day parties, choice outfits, or the suspicious payment of small expenses with €500 bills — all or most of cash flow presumably funded with taxpayer money.

As Rachline consolidated power and influence, he wielded it against minority groups and low-income habitants of the coastal city. The mayor of Fréjus, according to Le Coat, frequented right-wing hooligans such as the infamous Groupe Union Défense (GUD); jokingly employed Nazi salutes with advisors; and used Fréjus municipal cops like personal enforcers while funneling money into a fleet of video surveillance–equipped police vehicles.

The result of his mandate: not the economic temperance guaranteed by the far right, but a billowing debt of more than €150 million.

This dangerous cocktail, Le Coat suggests, could be quickly put in place across France if a Rassemblement National candidate were to win the presidency in 2027. Rachline’s “manner of running Fréjus, by recuperating the old networks and clientelism of the traditional right [and exerting them] in an antisemitism and racism-fueled climate, is that which Marine Le Pen’s party could extend throughout France if it were to take power,” Le Coat warns.

It’s unlikely, though, that Rachline will be the Rassemblement National candidate in 2027. Earlier this year, the mayor was summoned to appear in court at the end of September on suspicion of “illegal conflicts of interest,” linked to his role at the head of two companies responsible for city management. (NB: The decision is expected for next week.)

Perpignan mayor Louis Aliot wants you to know who the criminals are, and they’re not him.

On Tuesday, January 13, a trial opened in the southern French city of Perpignan. In this red-roofed, 120,000-person city with Catalonian influence and a view of the distant Pyrenees, the accusations are not against just anyone, and the trial is not opening at any old time. The case is part of a widespread corruption scandal involving higher-ups of the far-right National Rally, or RN by its French initials, and its president Marine Le Pen. Expected to take the stand next Thursday, Aliot finds himself in the spotlight, accused of employing a fictitious parliamentary assistant from July 2014 to February 2015. (As for others in this case, the fictitious roles were used to funnel money directly into the coffers of the RN’s campaign war machine.)

The timing is important. Aliot’s trial is set to terminate one month before France’s 2026 mayoral elections (March 15 and 22, 2026). If found guilty on appeal, Aliot could be ruled ineligible to run for office for up to three years. On the surface, he’s not too worried. “Mine is the smallest affair in the trial, and on appeal the judges tend to be more legalistic and more precise than the first-instance magistrates,” he told France Bleu.

The case against him, however, illustrates a broader phenomenon: the paradox of RN rule. The far-right party promises to weed out corruption, crack down on crime and clean the streets, while simultaneously doing the opposite in practice. In the first part of When the Far-Right Rules, a 10-part series that looks at the cities and towns across France run by RN mayors, we’ll head south, to Perpignan, Gateway to Catalonia.

Security, security, security

Aliot will tell you that he’s not the threat. The threat is out there. As both the justice system and municipal elections close in on Aliot, the mayoral candidate has played the security card in the hopes of maintaining control over the largest city run by the RN in France. “We are a border city: drug trafficking and illegal immigration are exploding,” Aliot told reporters before the start of the trial against him. “Once the state has dealt with these problems, Perpignan will be a tranquil city.”

If re-elected, Aliot has pledged an extension of the 24-hour security camera system outside of the center of the city, the hiring of an additional 50 municipal police officers (bringing the total to 250) and increased policing of petty crime and drug trafficking. His investments in security have led to a ballooning city budget (from €160 million to €190 million), even as other state institutions struggle to survice.

The rhetoric is nothing new. In June 2025, Aliot organized a community meeting in the aptly-named “Freedom room” of the town hall. On a flier handed out at the meeting, Aliot is photographed walking along a beach, wearing sunglasses and a suit: “70% satisfaction rate,” it proclaims in big lettering. To applause, Aliot explained that the city had invested €16 million in security spending, on police officers, materials and surveillance equipment, the local news outlet Made in Perpignan reported.

His actions have not appeared to stop, or even slow, crime, however. According to the Interior Ministry, almost every form of crime increased between 2023 and 2024 (the latest year with statistics). 31% increase in car theft. 15% increase in sexual assault. 11.5% increase in drug trafficking offenses.

While the center of the city has been, in a sense, cleansed, the periphery has been left to stagnate, Mickael Idrac, one of three left-wing candidates running for office against Aliot in Perpignan (head of a coalition of La France Insoumise and Les Ecologistes parties) told a local TV channel. “Louis Aliot has pandered to his electorate in an attempt to secure re-election, but working-class neighborhoods are completely neglected,” Idrac told local reporters. “I would even say that only the city center is cleaned and secured; as soon as you move a little farther away, there is absolutely nothing.”

A ‘toxic atmosphere’

More than a knock-out blow, for groups who work with vulnerable communities in Perpignan, Aliot’s mandate has looked more like death by a thousand cuts.

“He never attacks us frontally,” Corinne Grillet, the cofounder of the local charity Welcome 66, created to help integrate refugees and immigrants into the fold of Perpignan’s civil society, told the French daily L’Humanité. “But he creates a toxic atmosphere, which makes everyone act cautiously.”

Once in power, promises made in the lead-up to political campaigns — deport them all, drain the swamp, and so on — are softened. But the far-right’s impact on the ground remains in the form of self-censorship.

As L’Humanité reports, in Perpignan, Welcome 66’s program with a local pool to help refugees learn how to swim has been hard to keep afloat. The organization wonders whether the anti-migrant rhetoric might have led the community center to stop hosting them out of fear for backlash. A local theater director who works with Roma communities told Le Monde that collaboration with non-profits viewed as “enemies” might lead to the removal of funding. Though Aliot’s far-right-led city council has so far failed to pass regional legislation aimed at the “systemic expulsion of delinquents and their families from public housing,” the message in one of France’s poorest cities is clear: the target is set.

In some cases, non-profits have been forced to close, such as the association Fil à Métisser, which works with Roma communities. “It was as if we were feared as whistleblowers, making heard the voices of a vulnerable community and showing the systemic discrimination they faced,” one former employee told The Guardian.

A laboratory for France

Aliot has called Perpignan “an advanced observation post” for France. This might turn out to be true in more ways than one.

After the upcoming municipal elections, Perpignan might no longer be the largest run by the RN. Currently, the far-right is polling well in other southern cities with a history of immigration, such as Nice, Toulon, and even Marseille — all of which are well bigger than Perpignan. As has been the case here, vulnerable communities will be the first in the visor should the far-right make gains this coming March.

But the results of Aliot’s corruption trial will also say a lot about the future of the party on a national scale. If Aliot’s appeal is accepted, and he is able to run for office, might the same happen for party leader Marine Le Pen?

What happens in Perpignan may not stay in Perpignan.

In July 2023, the mayor of the southern French city of Béziers refused to conduct a wedding ceremony. This function is one of the less controversial that a local politician has to perform, and quite possibly, I would imagine, one of the more pleasant — after all, who wouldn’t want to celebrate the union of two constituents? If that weren’t reason enough, refusing to perform the rite is also against French law. But the night before the marriage of Eva, French, and Mustapha, Algerian, mayor Robert Ménard canceled the appointment. His given reason? Mustapha had received a deportation notice, known as an obligation de quitter le territoire français, or OQTF.

Under three weeks later, Mustapha was deported to Algeria. “One day I’m in a white dress at city hall, and two weeks later my partner is expelled in the middle of the night to Algeria,” Eva later told La Dépêche, a local newspaper.

This is what it looks like when the far-right rules.

Currently, 17 cities across mainland France are led by far-right leaders. Ten of them are run by the National Rally, or RN, by its French acronym. Located primarily in the post-industrial north and the southeast, mayors in these cities have refused to marry immigrants, cut funding from charities and municipal budgets, invested in repressive policing apparatuses, failed to balance budgets and engaged in corruption.

On March 15 and 22, French cities and towns will vote to elect their mayor for the first time since 2020. According to Le Monde, the National Rally is expected to run a mayoral team in 600 cities across France — a record, and almost twice as many as they ran in 2020. In 2020, Marine Le Pen’s party failed to conquer as many city halls as experts had predicted — but so much has changed in the past six years. The Covid-19 pandemic led to protracted economic instability, the popularity of Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government nosedived, and across the Atlantic, US President Donald Trump was reelected, a sign of the intransigeance and staying power of today’s global far-right moment.

Municipal elections are not presidential ones, and across France (including in Paris) wide coalitions on the left, right and center have already emerged to stave off the far-right. The March elections, thus, shouldn’t necessarily be viewed as a signpost for the upcoming 2027 presidential election. Though presidential polling currently gives Le Pen’s protégé Jordan Bardella a sizeable advantage against any opponent across the political spectrum, on a local scale, the RN has not yet gained as much ground.

But for French citizens, local politics do matter. It’s in France’s 35,000 cities and towns that babies are born, schools and nurseries are run, residents are married, parks are maintained and civic life is organized.

My goal over the next 10 weeks is to bring you some of these stories from cities currently run by the RN. What does life look like when the far-right runs the show?

Next week, we’ll head south, to Perpignan.

It’s the last Sunday in 2025 and I’m writing from my mom ’s house in rural Champagne. The past few days we’ve been treated to crisp but sunny weather and I’ve bundled up to go on a few bike rides through the Aube region. Tomorrow, and I head back to Paris, and then to Normandy for the end of the year.

After a busy 12 months that started with a February visit to Kyiv with Forbidden Stories and ended on a November solo reporting trip to Chile to cover the elections (not to mention a seven-week cycling trip from Austria to Greece in the middle), I’ve finally taken the time to breathe and reflect upon the past year.

I’ve also taken the time to read. I finished Roberto Bolano’s 900-page novel 2666 and caught up on some long-form articles I’ve been meaning to read — from Naomi Klein on surrealism to a Guardian investigation on “wild births” practiced without access to medical care and with deadly consequences for babies and mothers.

This exercise in sitting with myself and with the words of others has given me the energy to start writing again, and I have big plans for 2026 — my first full year as a freelancer. That includes for this Substack, which, admittedly, has been rather on-and-off recently. Still, looking back, I’m happy with the work I’ve done in 2025.

In January, I wrote about the death of far-right National Rally founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. I interviewed Afghan journalist Elyaas Ehsas about his struggles to find housing in the French capital, and spoke to author Remi Carayol about the island of Mayotte, which has become a laboratory for France’s attacks on birthright citizenship. I covered protests and hunger strikes. I also penned some more personal essays, such as this one about reading James Baldwin’s Another Country during a month-long trip back to the United States.

For a while, I wrote a regular series recapping French news and policy regarding foreigners, migrants and refugees. There were stories about deportation flights, Islamophobic hate crimes and undocumented worker strikes. I discontinued this series around the same time as Twitter (now X) became too unbearable to scroll through, awash in ads for sports e-betting, nutritional supplements and AI slop.

Over the summer, I took a break from Becoming French and started a new Substack — Cycling My Father’s Europe — as I biked across Central Europe and the Balkans, following the trail my dad left during his own, similar adventure in 1978. I don’t have any plans for a bike trip in 2026, though I do have some ideas, so I’ll keep that project dormant for now — just in case.

Cycling My Father's Europe

My Father's Europe

I don’t remember the first time I learned about my dad’s cycling trip. I think it was always sort of in the background growing up. Because it tied in to the story about how he met my mom, and this is, for many people, one of the first stories you ever hear…

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10 months ago · 13 likes · 6 comments · Phineas Rueckert

When I got back from my trip, I quickly got swept up in the frenetic life of a Paris writer. One of the highlights of the Fall was starting the literary project alongside journalists, photographers and artists, including , , and others. My first piece for the mag was an 8,000-word feature about the November 13, 2015 terrorist attacks and the ways in which survivors and researchers have sought to understand the impacts of that event in the wake of the carnage.

SOUVENIR Magazine

DIX ANS PLUS TARD

By Phineas Rueckert…

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6 months ago · 30 likes · 8 comments · SOUVENIR Magazine and Phineas Rueckert

Finishing the November 13 piece felt, in a way, like turning a page. Now, as features editor at the mag, I hope I’ll be able to help other writers with ambitious reporting and storytelling projects.

What comes next

All of this year’s traveling and writing came amidst a barrage of major life events, including a marriage proposal, a move and a career change from full-time to freelance. Which leads me, finally, to 2026…

This upcoming year will certainly be a busy one on the freelance front. I’ve got stories upcoming for Longreads, the French magazine Society and, as always, New Lines. If they ever get back to me with edits, I should also be penning a letter for the epistolary French media La Disparition. In 2026, I’m hoping to expand my freelance roster in both French and English, and cover several major events on both sides of the Atlantic. (If you’re an editor reading this, don’t hesitate to reach out!)

In March, French voters will head to the polls in municipal elections. That means that cities like Paris, Marseille and Lyon will vote for a new mayor. The race in Paris pits two left-wing candidates against the current culture Minister Rachida Dati, who may or may not decide to team up with the far-right. But elsewhere across France, there are a number of interesting races to watch.

In the southeastern city of Menton, the right-wing party Les Republicains has tapped Louis Sarkozy, the son of ex-con, best-selling author and former French president Nicolas to run for mayor. In Pau, it remains to be seen whether former prime minister Francois Bayrou will run again, in the wake of health issues and the child abuse scandal at Betharram, which he is accused of covering up. In the north, what happens in the city of Henin Beaumont, the fiefdom of the Le Pen family, will be telling. Currently, the left-wing is running two candidates against far-right mayor Steeve Briois.

For this Substack, I’ll be running a new series about the 17 cities across currently run by the far-right in advance of the municipal elections. In practice, what has this leadership looked like? Who has won and who has lost when the far-right takes power?

After March, I’ll turn to the Americas for a bit. There’s the 50 year anniversary of the Argentinian coup d’etat, elections in Colombia and Brazil and, in my home country, the US, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I’ll be traveling to the US for a wedding in July and might head back a bit early to look into how the preparations for this event are being organized under the Trump administration.

It’s never too early to start looking ahead to future events on this side of the pond as well. France will head to the polls again in March 2027, this time to elect its president, and current polling suggests that far-right Jordan Bardella is running away with the popular vote (I know it’s far too early to draw conclusions, but still). The second half of the year will be a time to take stock of the situation in France, and reckon with the real possibility of a far-right takeover in my adoptive country. What might that mean for citizenship rights, the inclusion of refugees and immigrants, access to social services?

Throughout the year, I will try to keep my sights focused on the same questions that drove me to start this newsletter. Who is considered a citizen? When citizenship rights are hacked away at, what does a country lose?

There’s always, of course, the itching idea of writing a book on the topic. Will 2026 finally be the year Becoming French goes paperback?

Time will tell. In the meantime, I’m enjoying piece, quiet, family and the last golden rays of 2025.

Nader Ayache and I arrived in France at nearly the exact same time: September 2015. Then, quickly, our paths diverged. A few days after landing at Charles de Gaulle airport, I took the train to Toulouse to teach English. Ayache stayed in the area, where he started a master’s program at La Sorbonne; a couple of years later, he moved on to a PhD in cinema studies in Saint-Denis. I had a work contract, fixed. Ayache had a student visa, ostensibly renewable. In Toulouse, I received a salary of 800 Euros per month — not a lot, but enough to pay my 100 Euro rent and drink too many three Euro pints. Ayache needed to make money to finance his studies and live in the Paris region, one of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the world. So he started completing bike deliveries for Deliveroo while making a film about his coworkers.

Ten years later, it’s that one decision continues to haunt him. A decision I never had to make.

In May 2017, Ayache went in to the police prefecture in Nanterre for what was supposed to be a routine visa renewal appointment. Like many, he carried all of his documents on his person: letters of reference, past visas and — critically — pay slips from his bike delivery job. His request for a renewal was rejected. Instead of walking out with a long-term residency card, he ended up undocumented.

Ayache appealed the decision, but after two years of back-and-forth with the French authorities, the second hammer fell. In 2019, he was handed an obligation de quitter le territoire français (obligation to leave the French territory, or OQTF). In other words: a deportation notice. He was told that he had worked too many hours on his student visa, and given 30 days to leave France. Not only did the French authorities stick him with an OQTF, they added the rarer interdiction de retour sur le territoire français (ban on returning to the French territory, or IRTF) — something usually reserved for repeat offenders.

“In my head, I wasn’t going to be undocumented,” Ayache tells me from a tent in front of the Paris National Center for Cinema, where he’s been camping out for the better part of three weeks in protest of his situation, which — six years later — still hasn’t been resolved. “I was shell-shocked.”

Ayache again appealed the decision, but this time the rejection felt like a personal failure. “I felt a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, like I had failed in some way,” he says. “I made an administrative error in submitting these documents that I shouldn’t have submitted.”

A hunger strike for paperwork

More than half a decade later, the mistake of surpassing the allotted number of work hours on his visa hangs over Ayache like a Damocles sword. Over the years, his case worked its way up the French administrative ladder: His requests were successively rejected by the prefecture, the administrative court, and then, finally, the Versailles Court of Appeal.

The most recent rejection, on November 6, 2025, felt like a déjà vu. Only this time, he decided on a new approach. Within 48 hours, friends, fellow filmmakers and activists had banded around Ayache to create the Solidarité avec Nader collective. Then, on November 8, Ayache stopped eating. Six days later, still on his hunger strike, he set up a tent in front of the offices of the Paris National Center for Cinema (CNC). He wanted to bring the protest to the heart of his métier: film.

Ayache had been in the building of the CNC — the French public institution responsible for protecting and supporting cinematic and audiovisual arts in France — before. The filmmaker, still in his 30s, has enjoyed critical success in France for his short documentaries highlighting the challenges of exile. In La guerre des centimes (A war of pennies), he followed bike delivery workers struggling to make ends meet in the French capital. His next documentary, La Renaissance (Renaissance), told the story of a Tunisian oud player who becomes partially paralyzed after a car accident. The second film was selected for the short film category in the French Césars awards. But now Ayache was facing the industry — literally — from the outside looking in.

The first few nights on the floor of the tent were difficult. But gradually, Ayache and members of the solidarity collective have given the space life. A large Palestinian flag hangs from one corner of it. On a wire hanging along the middle, a clipping from a recent Humanité story about Ayache is prominently displayed. There are boxes of tea and cough drops and comfortable lawn chairs draped in blankets. There’s even a heater in the corner of the room pumping out hot air. Ayache introduces me to a stuffed animal — a fish he calls Steve. As we’re talking, a friend of his — a classmate from film school — stops by to check in on him.

On the first night of the installation of his campement de fortune, Ayache feared that he might be awakened by the police or by the center’s private security. Instead, he woke up the next morning to find a group of more than a dozen supporters who had come to show him solidarity. Today, he says, the tent is more than just a structure, it has become a source of dignity.

“Even if it’s bad for my health, it has, in a sense, allowed me to be free,” he says of the hunger strike in front of the CNC. “In this space, I am free to settle in, to make demands, to receive guests, to speak with people.”

The tent also feels “a bit like revenge,” he says. For the first time in ten years, it feels like punching back against the institution that has held him in an open prison.

A 50 percent increase in OQTFs

Tomorrow, December 3, Ayache will return to the préfecture for a follow-up appointment in what he hopes might finally mark the end of his administrative hell.

Since the beginning of his hunger strike, the filmmaker has received an outpouring of support. On November 29, dozens of French directors, actors and other members of the culture industry published a tribune in Libé calling on the French state to allow Ayache to remain in France. Signatories included Jacques Audiard (director of Emilia Perez), writer Annie Ernaux (author of The Years) and journalist David Dufresne (director of Un pays qui se tient sage, about police violence against the French Gilets Jaunes).

But across France, stories like his have become all too common — so as to nearly disappear from mainstream French media coverage.

In 2017, the year Ayache’s first visa renewal was rejected, France doled out 85,268 OQTFs. In 2024, this number is estimated around 140,000 — nearly double the amount. Consecutive interior ministers, including Gérald Darmanin and Bruno Retailleau, have implemented measures aimed at complicating an already difficult-to-navigate immigration system and dissuading immigrants from staying in France.

Ayache’s story is just the tip of the iceberg.

Much will be made today — and reasonably so — of the collapse of now-former French Prime Minister Sebastian Lecornu’s government. Lecornu’s government will have lasted less than 48 hours, a new record low. His nomination for housing minister, Eric Woerth (notable moreso for his connections to condemned criminal and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy than his housing chops) is, thus, already a thing of the past.

What's lost in France's constant political chaos, though, is something more important in the long-run: a focus on the twin economic and social catastrophes the country currently faces.

Last night, just hours before Lecornu named his partial government, French activists were in front of the Paris town hall. They rolled out a long red carpet that led to a voting booth. Instead of votes, members of the collective dropped banners into the urn. “A city that houses mothers living in the streets,” one read. “A city where no one suffers from malnutrition,” another proclaimed.

Called Le revers (The other side), the collective spun out of Olympics-critical group Le revers de la médaille (The other side of the medal), which documented the roughly 20,000 expulsions linked to the 2024 Summer Olympics held in Paris. In advance of the 2026 municipal elections, the group has reoriented its focus on rising housing precarity and homelessness in the French capital.

“The situation for people experiencing homelessness is deteriorating in Paris,” the collective wrote in a statement shared with journalists, “and the alerts being sounded by civil society aren't reaching the ears of politicians to bring about structural change.”

In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron promised that by the end of that year nobody would sleep rough on the streets. The next year he rolled out an ambitious plan to address rising homelessness. Nearly a decade later, the country has never been further from the mark. In fact, France's poverty level is the highest it's been in three decades.

Other numbers paint a bleak picture of France's rising social disparities. According to the Fondation pour le logement des défavorisés (Foundation for housing the vulnerable, formerly Abbé Pierre Foundation), the rate of housing precarity increased by 145 percent between 2012 and 2024. Nationwide, roughly 350,000 people were sans domicile fixe — a catch all term that includes people sleeping on the streets, in shelters and in other precarious situations such as squats and vehicles. In 2024 alone, more than 700 people living in the streets died. Child homelessness levels are also on the rise.

Successive housing ministers have failed to address structural problems, including excessive wait lists for social housing and a shortage of phone operators for France’s short-term housing hotline. But the challenges go beyond the purview of the housing minister.

Across France, inequality has skyrocketed under Emmanuel Macron. The political response: not an exit plan, but rather a revolving door of unqualified ministers, exploding debt, and austerity politics.

The Le revers collective has emerged at a critical juncture. As France plunges into another period of uncertainty, the group is one of the few to continue shining a light on the structural issues buried beneath the political theater. And, by the looks of the photos from last night’s action, they are having fun with it too.

The disruptions kicked off in the early morning. If I had still been commuting to my old office from my old apartment, I would have first seen the protesters at the Porte de Montreuil. Here, dozens of young people mostly clad in black began dislodging the highway barriers along the peripherique ring road and dragging them into the middle of the four-lane highway as police chased after to try to clear the roads.

Then, I would have continued along the Rue de Lagny, which passes the offices of the Minister of the Interior and an RATP bus terminal. I would have bumped into the crowd of protesters in front of the bus terminal, where they attempted to prevent city buses from entering and exiting the garage. Finally, I would have made my way into Paris, almost certainly encountering some of the 80,000 police officers who were mobilized across the country, including 6,000 in Paris.

According to estimates from France’s Interior Minister, yesterday an estimated 200,000 people took to the streets across France (250,000 according to labor unions). Not quite the heights of the Gilets Jaunes in their early days, but let’s not forget that that movement didn’t really hit its apex until early December 2018 — several months after the first roundabouts were blocked.

Faced with a months-long political and budgetary standoff that paradoxically pitted the left and far-right together against the center, French citizens across the country were saying that they had had enough. The ambiance in Paris was generally positive, and after lunch I made my way to the Place de Chatelet where a number of disparate groups had gathered. There were Communists, Queer groups, labor organizers and at least one brass band.

Many people I spoke to were upset about the choice of the latest French PM. As much as the French government wants to make the crisis a budget issue, it is really a political one. Over the past three years, France has had five different PMs. The most recent one, named last night, Sebastian Lecornu, is a Macron party loyalist who — like several of his predecessors — hails from the traditional right. He is pro-hunting, anti-marriage equality and has spent the past two years OKing shipments of weapons parts to Israel as the Army Minister.

Nicholas, an artist (top left), had joined the protest with a hand-made sign depicting Macron and Lecornu wearing suits and ties and standing in front of billowing flames that look quite similar to the logo of the far-right National Rally. “There’s a genocide going on. The election results are not being respected. There’s nothing democratic about what’s going on,” he told me.

Others carried signs rebuking Macron’s neoliberal policies, which included as his first act in office the removal of a tax on France’s highest earners. One read: “The only trickle down is in my toilet.” Another, simply: “Parasites.”

France IS in a budget crisis, but the timing of the debt explosion — which tracks with Macron’s pro-business and anti-union politics — makes you wonder just exactly how we got here.

It's always a peculiar feeling to come back home after a long time away. This is even truer when the life you're coming back to is almost entirely different from the one you left before you went away.

I'm still in the same apartment in Paris’s 13th arrondissement, and and I are still anxiously and excitedly preparing our wedding for next summer. But aside from that, it feels like the over the past few months the tectonic plates undergirding my life shifted ever so slightly and I'm only now feeling the earth start to move.

The Parisian weather has followed suit. This morning, Diane and I woke up shivering under our comforter. We had fallen asleep to what felt like the last night of summer — with music blasting from the nearby Station F co-working complex and a light, almost warm breeze — and woken up to what felt like a premature Autumn. I looked out my window and saw the sun trying to pierce through the grey, billowing clouds. Then, in an attempt to ground myself in something concrete, I walked to my go-to cafe, ordered a coffee and a croissant and made a list of everything I have and want to do this Fall while watching Paris come to life around me.

Gone Boy

It was an eventful summer, to say the least.

In June, I left my full-time journalism job of five years to pursue my freelance career. It's a move I've been on-and-off contemplating for the past several years.

Quitting my day job wasn't some big revelation that came out of nowhere. Instead, it felt like the inevitable response to a more sinuous feeling — of creeping insatisfaction and incompleteness — that had swept over me over time and started to submerge me slowly. In those days commuting in and out of an office, I kept thinking that there must be something more, some deeper level to things. I felt trapped at the surface of my life. Even though on paper I was working my dream job, in practice I was just going through the motions.

During the months of doubt when I couldn't make a decision about whether to stay or go, I kept coming back to ’s "I didn't want a job" essay.

Amie’s Substack

I didn't want a job

There is no greater crime in our culture than to not want to work…

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a year ago · 6675 likes · 618 comments · Amie McNee

I, too, had been thinking a lot about work. My relationship to it, our society's. That's why Amie's piece struck a chord. Her writing dovetails with a broader reflection about what we value as a society, and limits of that system. Is it possible to live a creative life within that system? If so, how to finance it. By leaving our jobs and working for ourselves, is it not just the illusion of freedom? Are we not just disconnecting ourselves from the threadbare safety nets that protect us from the worst ravages of capitalism by offering our labor to contract employers and San Francisco-based middlemen who don't have to pay us overtime or provide us benefits?

Eventually, though, the desire for adventure and fulfillment and creativity outweighed the need for stability and these more existential questions. I finished a big project that I had been tapped to take on at work, packed up the dozens of black notebooks I had filled with my scribblings, and got on a plane to Minnesota.

On the Road

The day after my last day at work, I traveled back to the US for three and a half weeks. I reconnected with college friends I hadn't seen in a decade; read James Baldwin’s Another Country; and road-tripped across the country with my friend Mark, splitting the country down the middle from Minnesota to Texas in his light green Subaru. We ate an unhealthy amount of meat while staying in a succession of Motel 6s and Super 8s and the occasional La Quinta.

After Texas, Mark drove back to Seattle by himself and I stayed in Laredo for a few days, where I met with a number of folks in this border area affected by Trump's tariffs and mass deportation policies for a series of stories I'm currently trying to place in a French magazine.

Then I headed back East — first to Boston, then to Vermont and finally, unexpectedly, to New York, where I spent most of the hottest day of the year waiting out a six hour train delay.

I was only in New York for a day before heading back to Paris — also experiencing an early summer heat wave. Then, after a week in which I very much didn't finish everything I needed to, I packed my bags again. This time, I would be traveling not by plane, but by train. I'd also be time traveling.

As I've been recounting in a second Substack, , I spent the months of July and August cycling from Austria to Greece. It's a trip that my dad did in 1978 and that I had been wanting to recreate for nearly a decade.

I won't go into the details here, but suffice it to say, the trip was life-changing, and I'm still processing what it means for me, and for my dad, and maybe — someday — for my own kid.

Cycling My Father's Europe

My Father's Europe

I don’t remember the first time I learned about my dad’s cycling trip. I think it was always sort of in the background growing up. Because it tied in to the story about how he met my mom, and this is, for many people, one of the first stories you ever hear…

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10 months ago · 11 likes · 6 comments · Phineas Rueckert

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If quitting the job was the first tectonic shift and the bike trip was the second, then the third is coming back to Paris and experiencing it in a different way as a freelancer.

One of the main reasons I left my job was that I felt a growing disconnect between what I was doing (investigating stories of murdered journalists, often in far away countries where I didn't speak the language or run the same risks as the people living in those places) and where I was living. Paris is a global capital where every day there's a new story to cover. Yet, I was always adjacent to it. While I was able to cover some major events (the Olympics, an Islamophobic hate crime investigated as domestic terrorism, etc.) I couldn't just drop everything to cover the latest protest or change in government or social movement.

Now I can.

This morning, as I sat at my neighborhood cafe, and wrote down all of my ideas — a sort of tapestry of my hopes, dreams and, yes, also fears, for the next months started to come into focus. Now, it's just a matter of letting those invisible plates slide back into place.

My ambitions for Becoming French are part of this shift. But they're not the only thing that have me giddy about the rentrée.

I'm working on an exciting new literary project with a few other Paris-based Substackers (more on this soon). I've got a couple of pieces in the pipeline about my cycling trip, including my first long-form article in French. And I'm pitching other France-based stories as I prepare to teach English part-time at La Sorbonne later this month. (If you're an editor and for some reason you're reading this, please do drop me a line!)

Becoming French

This Substack was borne out of the idea of bringing visibility to a hidden side of France: the migrants pushed to the margins, the people living on the streets and sweeping the streets, the activists and artists fighting for a more just society.

Over the coming months, I want to refocus on these stories. And I want to convince you that these stories are not just France-specific, but global.

I've got interviews with a lawyer representing undocumented immigrants and a professor studying how Europe, including France, exports its borders to less developed countries. I'm also hoping to reintroduce some original reporting — which I'm in turn hoping will convince you to support this endeavor financially. For now, nothing goes behind a paywall, but if you're enjoying what you're reading and want to support me, a pledge to subscribe will certainly warm my heart. (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for already being my first two supporters — on Substack and in life.)

In the meantime, stay tuned!

Today is my thirty-second birthday (which passes in a blink of an eye!⌚). I'm celebrating it in Daruvar, Croatia, where I'm passing through as part of my six-week cycling trip. (More on this later!)

My New Lines story on Fanon

But more, or just as, importantly, it's the 100th birthday of legendary post colonial theorist, psychiatrist and freedom fighter Frantz Fanon.

I have a piece out recently in New Lines Magazine about Fanon’s legacy not just as a theorist of the post colonial struggle but also as a medical practitioner.

(Link here, because the Substack mobile editor won't allow me to hyperlink for some reason: https://newlinesmag.com/essays/the-radical-roots-of-frantz-fanons-psychiatry/)

How, I wondered, did Fanon's writings and psychiatric practice hold up over the years since his death at the very early age of 36? And where/how did his psychiatric ideas form?

It turns out that this story took me backwards and forwards in time. Backwards to 1930s Barcelona, and the radical ideas of a mustachioed Catalonian anarchist who fled the dictatorship of Francisco Franco during World War II. And forwards to modern day Algeria, where a young, tech savvy Algerian doctor is trying to take forward Fanon's lessons.

Of course, Fanon’s story is also integrally tied into France (which is why I've permitted to send it out to you on the Becoming French Stack.) Born in Martinique, Fanon had French citizenship, and fought for France's liberation during World War II. This experience was formative for the young Fanon, who felt — justifiably — that despite putting his life on the line for his country, he was not properly thanked or respected on account of the color of his skin. Later, while living in Lyon and traveling around eastern France and Switzerland, an encounter with a young boy on a bus who pointed out his skin color to his mother was the starting point of one of his most-read and commented books, Black Skin, White Masks.

I love that New Lines Magazine has allowed me the leeway to write these sorts of stories, and plan to continue writing for them as I embark on my career as a freelancer.

(If you want to read more about this transformative moment in my career, I get into it a bit in the below essay.)

Cycling my father's Europe

So what am I doing in Croatia?

On July 3, I left Paris by train for Vienna, where I began cycling. The goal? Retrace a journey my dad took in 1978 when he cycled, trained and ferried his way from Austria to Greece.

I've been writing about this in another Substack, Cycling My Father's Europe: cyclingeurope.substack.com

I first made my way along the Danube, ending up in Budapest, where I spent a long weekend with my brother. Then, I cycled west across Hungary along the Lake Balaton and into Croatia.

What's next? I'm taking things day by day, but I've been recommended strongly to check out Bosnia, a country with a rich, if devastating, history.

I've gone about 700 kilometers and am starting to feel like my legs can handle a little bit of incline. Why not cycle up into the mountains?

And as for Becoming French, I'll be back in Paris in September and plan to hit the ground running.