"Two Euros an Hour" (with Nejma Brahim)

Mediapart investigative reporter Nejma Brahim joins Becoming French to speak about how France exploits and scapegoats undocumented workers.

Mediapart journalist Nejma Brahim. Photo courtesy of Nejma Brahim/Seuil.

“I think it comes down to a universal tendency of rejecting the Other. Today, migration policies — whether in France, Europe or the United States — share a common feature, which is that they are only focused on expulsions.” - Nejma Brahim.

For the past five years, Mediapart journalist Nejma Brahim has had a single-track mind: migrations. Yes — migrations, plural.

Brahim, who recently published “2 euros de l'heure : La face cachée de l'‘intégration’ à la française” (“Two Euros an Hour: The Hidden Face of French ‘Integration’”), covers this extensive beat — in reality, multiple beats — for the independent site Mediapart, founded by investigative journalist Edwy Plenel.

Brahim spoke extensively with Becoming French about how France exploits undocumented immigrant workers, all the while blaming them “for all the ills” in French society. Her own background as a French-Algerian dual national informs her journalism, which seeks to humanize people seeking refuge and asylum in France.

This conversation is the third episode of my monthly interview series, which started with photojournalist Louis Witter in October and continued with Professor Serge Slama in November.

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.

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Phineas Rueckert: Thanks again for being here. Could you please start by introducing yourself and telling me a little bit about how you started dealing with the subjects you're dealing with today, i.e. undocumented people, migrants, immigration? Why is this a subject that spoke to you and that you wanted to explore further?

Nejma Brahim: So, my name is Nejma Brahim. I'm a journalist at Mediapart, in the international section in charge of migrations. We chose this title for the section — “migrations” — because it gives us a more global view of the phenomenon from A to Z, without focusing solely on the subject of “immigration.” For us, the idea was really to try and understand why people leave their country; where they leave from; where they go, e.g., their migratory path; and how they arrive in Europe and more specifically here in France. Finally, what is France going to do to welcome or not welcome these foreigners and exiled people?

I started working on these issues about five years ago: four years full-time on a permanent contract at Mediapart, and before that, as a freelance journalist. It was a subject that has interested me enormously ever since I was a little girl. In fact, I have dual nationality — I'm French and Algerian — and because of my Algerian origins, we often visited Algeria when I was young. It was there that I observed the “harraga” phenomenon. In Arabic, you could translate that as “burning the borders” or “burning the visa.” This was the phenomenon of people — at first young people, but then the profile evolved — who left Algeria on board a “fouka,” or small boat, from the coasts, and in this case from Oran (where I’m originally from), trying to get to Spain. From a very early age, I witnessed these departures, which became increasingly common. The stolen boats that enabled these young people to leave included those in my close circle: my brother's best friend, for example, who undertook this dangerous journey, but fortunately survived and managed to build a life for himself in Spain. But that's not the case for everyone, unfortunately.

So from early on, I was sensitized to these issues. It was quite natural, when I became a journalist, that I would work on social issues more broadly. But little by little, I began to specialize in the issue of migration and to broaden my horizons outside the Maghreb and Algeria, to see how things were going elsewhere.

Phineas Rueckert: Very good. I like the focus on “migrations” rather than just “immigration.”

I wanted to first talk a bit about your book. It's called “Two Euros an Hour,” and it looks into the about the question of employment conditions for people with an immigration background in France. What, if you had to sum it up, is the thesis of the book?

Nejma Brahim: If I had to sum it up quickly, I'd say it's the story of the people who share our lives in France and, above all, contribute to our daily comfort. The idea behind the book was to give visibility to people of an immigration background who are undocumented (and therefore in an irregular situation on French territory), who work in all sectors of activity, not just ones you might expect, such as catering or construction. I really wanted to broaden the spectrum and show that they are to be found just about everywhere, and that they are people without whom our lives would undoubtedly not be the same. They are the people who care for us, for our elders or our children; they work in the agricultural sector, contributing to our food supply by preparing our meals or washing our plates when we go out to eat; and they’re also in the construction industry, building the apartments and houses we live in, the buildings we work in. It's a cycle which could be virtuous if we took care of and considered all these people, but which, in reality, is vicious. Not only do we not consider all these people, but what's more, most of the time, we exploit them, even look down on them. Many French people today, when we tell them that many undocumented migrants contribute to our daily comfort, don't want to hear it, or will accuse them of stealing French people's work.

Phineas Rueckert: That's exactly what I wanted to ask you about next. For context, I've just read and I'm going to do a post on the book, “Des électeurs ordinaires” (Ordinary Voters) by Felicien Faury. And one of the things that struck me in this book is the paradox that, at the same time, some French people consider that immigrants are taking — “stealing” — work from “true Frenchmen,” but on the other hand, there's this image of the lazy immigrant who doesn't work, who takes advantage of the French social services system, but doesn't contribute to it. Is this a paradox you've noticed? Do you think it's a bit of a Catch-22, “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation?

Nejma Brahim: Yes, completely. It's something we notice on a daily basis when we deal with these subjects, especially vis-a-vis the far right in France. I think it's quite paradoxical, as you point out. What it really says about the French mentality is that foreigners are seen as being responsible for all the ills of society. So whatever they actually do — whether they're working under the table without papers or unemployed with papers and taking advantage of social services, which is their absolute right — they'll be accused of being responsible for all the ills of society. And I think this also says something about “French denialism.”

There’s a story that I tell in the book about Moussa, who's a maintenance worker on SNCF trains. His job is to go around the train carriages picking up passengers' garbage. Well, this is a reality that passengers can't deny: that an immigrant of color, a black person, is collecting their garbage. The passengers don't know it, but he is also someone who's in an irregular situation at the time he’s working in these conditions. It's a reality they can't deny, and what they're going to do is adopt an attitude of contempt. They're going to scorn him; they're going to make fun of him; they're going to behave badly around him. There's an absolutely terrible scene where a passenger asks Moussa to take his girlfriend's chewing gum, even though his girlfriend's chewing gum is still in his girlfriend's mouth.

It’s a level of total humiliation. Once you put reality in front of them, the only reaction they're likely to have is contempt. It's the same thing for the people who take care of our elders. For example, I'm thinking of home carers or hospital doctors. In my book there's also the story of Hajar, a Tunisian doctor who finds herself without papers even though she works in a public hospital. Well, here too, there is going to be contempt. When people who are, so-to-speak, “hostile” to immigration in France, come face to face with immigrants and realize that they’re actually working, they're either not going to consider them competent, or they're going to look down on them. That's what I'd call “French denialism.”

Phineas Rueckert: There are, I think, around 500,000 undocumented people living and many of them working in France. But we only manage to regularize between 7,000 and 10,000 undocumented people a year. So there's a problem. We're not regularizing people fast enough. And I think it comes down to the fact that the prefecture isn't ready. Not only is French society perhaps not ready to accept these people, but the prefecture is also not in a position to do so. In your reports, do you often come back to this problem of the prefecture not being able to keep up?

Nejma Brahim: Perhaps the first thing I'd like to clarify is that the figure is actually between 700,000 and 800,000 undocumented immigrants in France. That's the figure given by the former Minister of the Interior himself, Gérald Darmanin, when he was questioned, if I remember correctly, at the National Assembly. It should be pointed out that, indeed the majority of these people work in various ways. And many of them even pay into the tax system, even if often they are accused of not contributing and of taking advantage of social benefits and welfare in France.

As for the question of the prefecture, it's something that comes up systematically, whether in my work as a journalist or in the book. The question of the prefecture is a crucial one, because today the prefecture is the entity that represents the authorities and the French state. Since the prefecture depends on the Ministry of the Interior, it's the prefecture that is blocking the regularization of undocumented migrants and undocumented workers in particular. And what's terrible is that, seeing as the regularization process depends only on a circular (the Valls circular dating from 2012), in reality, it's up to the prefects to decide. The regularization process is entirely at the discretion of each prefect in each prefecture, and so it creates incredible inequalities between regions. Some prefectures are a little more flexible than others. On the other hand, there are prefectures that are much stricter than others, where the deadlines for regularization applications can be as long as two, three or even four years. This means that sometimes, even when people submit an application for regularization and manage to get an appointment to submit the file, between the time they manage to submit the file and the time they manage to get an appointment, it can take one or even two years.

This scenario has only one objective: to delay the regularization of undocumented migrants in France for as long as possible. It is also intented to leave undocumented workers in precarious situations — not only administratively, but financially — so they can continue to be exploited by unscrupulous employers. And that's absolutely terrible for undocumented migrants. Regularization is ultimately the only prospect they have after a migratory journey fraught with pitfalls, difficulties and sometimes horrors. When they arrive in France and say to themselves, “I'm finally going to be able to build a new life and settle down,” the prefecture — regularization — is the only prospect they have left to improve their daily lives. And they can't do it.

Now, why did this policy come about? It's quite simple. I think that successive governments, and the current one even more so, are really giving in to one part of the political sphere and public opinion on the question of migration in France, and in particular to unfounded theories coming from the racist far right. I'm thinking, in particularly of the “suction” theory, which implies that regularizing people, or a certain number of people in any case, will attract other people still in their country of origin, who would hear about these regularizations and say to themselves, “Ah, well, they're regularizing in France, I'm going to go to France.”

This is totally unfounded, and has been addressed by a number of researchers specializing in the issue, who have carried out very serious studies confirming this. It's not based on anything other than playing on people's fears. In fact, in France, there hasn't been any mass regularization for years and years, and we're not about to have any soon. So, for the time being, we're still talking about 7,000 to 10,000 regularizations per year, through work, which is still very few given the number of undocumented people in France. And unfortunately, I think it will continue in this direction, which is not the right one.

I would like to highlight that under the current government in France, the issue of regularization is not going to get any better since the new Minister of the Interior himself, Bruno Retailleau (see below), has said so. In his own words, from now on, he's asking prefects to regularize undocumented migrants on a “drop-by-drop” basis, which means even less than what has already been in place for some time. This means that in reality, the number of regularizations is likely to drop considerably, which I think is dramatic.

Phineas Rueckert: The “suction” theory makes me think of the United States — the context I'm most familiar with — where every time there's a caravan of migrants heading north towards the United States, we’re told, “If we accept them or if we let them through, that means that all the caravans from all over Central and South America will arrive at the border.” It's this very visual idea of an “invasion,” but then again, it's not true at all. That's not how it works.

So, maybe that's the last question I wanted to ask you: do you see any rhetorical or policy comparisons between what's happening here in France with immigrants and what's happening in the United States, which is obviously a much more extreme version?

Nejma Brahim: To answer your last question — yes, I think there's a definite parallel between what's happening in France and what's happening in the United States. I'd say that there's a tendency common to Europe — and I'm including France in that — and to the United States, to warn of “migratory invasion” and to bemoan the fact that our systems can’t or can no longer accommodate so many people. I think we need to put things into perspective. If I take France as an example, we're actually one of the European countries that takes in the fewest people. As for the United States, I haven't seen how welcoming migrants has led to the collapse of the system in place on American soil.

It comes down to a universal tendency of rejecting the Other. Today, migration policies, whether in France, Europe or the United States (with the possible exception of Spain, which is going to pass a reform to regularize a certain number of people), share a common feature, which is that they are only focused on expulsions. In the United States, the lexicon used to talk about migration is all about “deportation.” It's all about deporting people who are trying to reach American territory, or who are already there but are in an irregular situation, with a particular focus on foreigners considered to be “dangerous,” “delinquent,” or “having committed crimes or misdemeanors.” Today, this really is the number one objective.

The priority of European governments, but also of the future American government, is to deport these people as a matter of priority. But this also means drawing a parallel between immigration and insecurity, delinquency, crime, sexual violence and so on. This is the case in France with Bruno Retailleau, who has focused his political speeches on the migration issue since he took office several months ago. And that's absolutely terrible, because it's going to contribute even more, I think, to the lowering of public opinion and othering of migrants, when in reality migrants and foreigners contribute much more to our societies than we think.

Phineas Rueckert: That's exactly it, and perhaps more trivially, it's much cheaper to regularize people who are already contributing, who are already on French soil, than to deport them. Deportation is an expensive, complicated procedure, and there are agreements between countries that make it difficult to do, especially not en masse. So even economically, it doesn't make sense.

Nejma Brahim: Even economically, it doesn't make sense, absolutely. Not only because deportations are expensive, but also because the regularization of illegal immigrants will actually contribute to the state coffers later on. Maybe not in the short term, but in the medium and long term, it will enable workers to contribute in a completely legal way and therefore to access higher qualifications in terms of work, to to consume more, to have a normal life, so to speak. And that's something our politicians don't want to see right now. But it's also because it suits a certain number of companies to continue exploiting this workforce, even if there are voices from within the corporate world that are starting to say — fortunately, by the way — that people need to be regularized, that it's no longer possible to leave them in such precarious situations. But it's still too little. And I think that the number of employers who exploit undocumented workers is still far too high.

Phineas Rueckert: I know I already said I was on the last question, but I think it's just one more thing I want to ask you, and it's a question I try to ask all of my interviewees, which is about the role of the media in all this. Obviously, Mediapart is perhaps a special case, because you're doing investigative reporting, you’re rather left-wing. But how does the media in general in France contribute to this hatred of foreigners? Is it something that you, as a journalist, find frustrating to see this rise in anti-immigration sentiment, knowing that the media are part of it?

Nejma Brahim: Yes, completely. It's hopeless, really. I think that the mainstream media, and TV channels in particular, have a huge responsibility for the rise of the extreme right and by virtue of that, the rise of anti-immigration, rejectionist ideas and so on. Of course, I'm thinking of TV channels like CNews and, to a lesser extent, BFMTV. In print, I'm thinking of newspapers like Le Figaro, Valeurs Actuelles, and sometimes Marianne, which has a rather bizarre, incomprehensible line.

I really think that by swallowing all the State's and, in this case, the Ministry of the Interior's rhetoric, and by going down this road of linking immigration and delinquency, we're really going down the wrong path.

I'm very angry at the media for never, ever, ever — and here I'm thinking even of media that could be described as more neutral, such as France 5 with its program C Ce Soir — inviting journalists specializing in migration issues to take part in the public debate and to put the migration issue in perspective in a factual manner. Specialized journalists go out into the field all year round, they meet the players, they meet the people concerned, i.e. foreigners and migrants, all year round. And these media don't allow voices like these to express themselves and relate the question of migration in more serene terms. From time to time, fortunately, there's someone like [migration specialist] François Héran who's going to be invited.

Why don't we give more of a voice to the specialists in the field? I’m not just talking about journalists, but also institutes and researchers (other than François Heran) who we never hear from. And I think that, really, the responsibility here is immense. We're heading straight for the wall.