On Birthright Citizenship in France
Could Marine Le Pen and the far-right chip away at citizenship rights from Day 1?
It’s 7:59 p.m. on April 25, 2027. The second round of France’s highly-anticipated presidential elections between Edouard Philippe and Marine Le Pen is about to be called. At the end of the 60 second countdown, a face appears on the screen. Blonde bob, beady eyes, shark smile: it’s Le Pen. Elected with 52 percent of the vote, Marine’s rebrand from far-right pariah to harmless, homely cat lady is finally successful. Her National Rally party will rule France for the next five years.
What happens on day one?
This is a question many of us in France are already asking ourselves. The re-election of Donald Trump in the United States provides a neat roadmap for the French far-right. Facing an unpopular incumbent and bolstered by a cost of living crisis, Donald Trump combined nativist, anti-immigrant rhetoric and faux economic populism to sweep the presidency. His first day in office set the tune for what’s to come. Seated in his gilded office, Trump signed a flurry of executive orders aimed at, among other things, clamping down on immigration and reducing citizenship rights.
One executive order stood out to me, and to many others who are closely following the incipient Trump presidency, like
: “Protecting The Meaning And Value Of American Citizenship.”The executive order was not scary for its probability of being passed (it’s clearly unconstitutional), but for the particular way in which it signals the future of Trump’s political project. The slimy language — “protecting the value of American citizenship” — reminded me of the rhetoric the French far-right regularly uses to cast aspersions on immigrants and create a false divide between “real” and “adoptive” French citizens. The French far-right and extreme center blames immigrants for the “ensauvagement” — the literal “ensavagement” — of France and French culture. France is being “submerged” by immigration, as its ostensibly centrist Prime Minister recently said. People with joint nationality can’t be trusted, the far-right’s candidate during last summer’s European Elections implied: dual citizens are degrading the value of the goods — that is the French passport.
As
has recently written, Trump's attacks on birthright citizenship are, in essence, an attempt to go after a fundamental tenet of Americanness: the idea of belonging, without question, to a common body and sharing ideals, more than culture. Whereas Frenchness, in a certain sense, can only truly be acquired through a French education, Americanness — at least until recently — was considered to be inherently accessible to all those who were born in the United States, no matter how they grew up or were educated.Trump clearly sees things differently. He sees things more like Marine Le Pen. These two visions of citizenship — French and American — once so different, are converging.
Standing on a windy beach in Mayotte, one of France’s overseas departments that had just been hit by a tropical cyclone that killed hundreds, in late 2024, Marine Le Pen was clear about her vision: “Birthright citizenship should be abolished in all of France. French nationality should be inherited or merited.”
The contexts are different, but the projects are the same: redefining who gets to be part of the collective and who doesn’t.
So to go back to the initial question: what happens if Marine Le Pen, or another far-right politician, is elected president in 2027?
To better understand this question, I called up Serge Slama. I previously spoke with Slama, a professor of public law at the University of Grenoble, for this Substack. Slama has been following this issue closely since the early 2000s. One of his first academic studies looked at France's limitations on foreign students. More recently, he's been vocal about the far-right's attempts to rewrite and narrow access to citizenship.
In France, unlike in the United States, citizenship is not automatic upon the birth of a child to foreign-born parents, Slama explained to me days after Trump took office. France has what’s called “double birthright citizenship.” In other words: “A French citizen is someone who was born on French territory and whose parent was also born on French territory.” Jus soli and jus sanguinis.
In the United States, a child born to foreign parents on US soil automatically becomes American. In France, a child born to foreign parents is granted French citizenship once he or she reaches 13-years-old, under certain conditions.
Marine Le Pen would struggle to end birthright citizenship in absolute terms, Slama explained. Like Trump, she would run into constitutional safeguards. Or to put it simply: To end double birthright citizenship, Le Pen would have to change the French constitution.
What she could do is more subtle, and not without precedent. For children born in France to foreign parents, Le Pen could impose a requirement stipulating that instead of being automatically granted citizenship at the end of adolescence, these children must make a formal request for citizenship at that time. Authorities could then have the right to refuse applications on the principle of a record of juvenile detention, behavioral issues or, even, a lack of “integration.”
This system would not be without precedent, and already existed from 1993-1998.
The end goal of such a policy is clear: it would create and reinforce a class and racial divide. The children of immigrants, inherently less steeped in “traditional” French culture, and often growing up in rough banlieues where crime and violence are endemic, would face an uphill battle to the acquisition of French citizenship.
While such a policy would only concern a “handful of people,” for them, such a regulation would be a sort of Damocles sword, Slama said, “which could lead to statelessness or legally complicated situations.”
It's no wonder that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has insisted, then, on the inherent criminality of immigrants and their children. This narrative is diffuse throughout French culture, from the 24-hour television channels like CNEWS to the halls of the French Senate.
According to Slama, Le Pen would face little legal pushback for inserting a criminality or behavioral clause into the existing birthright citizenship regulations.
As for flat-out ending birthright citizenship, the process would take longer. The first step, for Le Pen and her ilk, is simple: get elected. From there, the hacking away at insitutions like the Constitutional Counsel — the thousand tiny cuts of fascism — could begin.
“The principle of fascism is that it eats away at our institutions,” Slama said. “Fascism takes over the instruments of power in order to weaken them and ultimately eliminate them.”
Le Pen could initially hold a referendum on immigration, Slama said, which would almost certainly pass. This would give her a mandate to implement her policies.
In France, as in the United States, anti-immigrant sentiment is relentless. A recent poll found that more than half of Americans believed that the children of undocumented immigrants should not be granted US citizenship, even if those children were born and grew up in the United States. In France, 65 percent of people, including, apparently, the Prime Minister, believe the country is being “submerged” by immigration. This, despite the fact that the number of visas and naturalizations has been steadily declining over the past decade and that the foreign-born population in France has increased from just 7.5 to 10.5 percent in 50 years.
Like Trump, Marine Le Pen — or, if she’s disqualified from running because of corruption charges, another candidate from the far-right — could ride this wave of discontent to the presidency.
Slama has a solution to this: civil disobedience.
As I think about the rising tide of anti-immigrant backlash — in France, in the US, around the world — I, too, keep coming back to a sign I saw at a protest in Paris last summer. A large hand-knitted quilt, the banner had been wrapped around the Place de la République in Paris. “La France est tissu de migrations,” the sign read. “France’s fabric is made from migration,” a play on the expression “Français issus de migration,” or French people from an immigrant background.
This sign was the centerpiece of the protest, and stayed at the Place de la République until it was taken down in July to create a vapid Olympic fan zone.
While it hung there, it was a reminder of the temporal nature of citizenship rights, and the need — greater today than ever — to fight for them.
The short answer: "Oui".
Really interesting piece! The hypothetical you describe is the reality here in the UK, where British children have to pass good character tests and pay over a grand to get the citizenship they are entitled to. It creates a situation where many don’t apply in time and then at risk of deportation as adults.