France's fractured left seeks unity against Bayrou's rightward lean on immigration

MARSEILLE, France (CN) — On Wednesday, French Prime Minister François Bayrou survived yet another motion of censure — the sixth in his roughly two months in the role — launched by the Socialists.

But experts argue that this motion — really more of a symbolic than tangible effort, since it had almost no chance of passing — is just the latest example of how both right- and left-wing politicians have been leveraging immigration as a tool for political gain.

Left-wing lawmakers accused Bayrou of awarding “cultural victories” to the extreme right, which was prompted when he said that France is experiencing a “feeling of submersion” on migration. More broadly, they argued thatBayrou’s government is making unprecedented concessions to the extreme-right National Rally, headed by Marine Le Pen.

“Immigration has been used for political or electoral purposes for a long time. … We knew that this motion of censure had very little risk of leading to the overthrow of the government,” Pierre Allorant, historian and political scientist at the University of Orléans, told Courthouse News. “It’s the Socialist Party and its allies — but especially the Socialist Party — which wants to be forgiven by its electorate for not having voted five times on the most important budgetary laws: the state budget and the social security budget.”

The past few months have exposed deep fractures in the ranks of France’s left-wing coalition, theNew Popular Front — the Communists, Greens, Socialists and hard-left France Unbowed — that seem to be worsening. While Jean-Luc Mélenchon has completely denounced the Socialists, the Greens have also been critical that the party has veered too far to the right.

“The Socialist party … is trying to be forgiven,” Allorant said. “To give itself back an image of the left in opposition to the government, on ideas and values, while ultimately not wishing to overthrow the government.”

The subject of immigration in France has been politicized for decades, which both Allorant and Michel Wieviorka, a French sociologist and former president of the International Sociological Association, attribute to Jean-Marie Le Pen — the late father of Marine Le Pen, who died in January.

The elder Le Pen founded the National Front — which has now been rebranded as the National Rally — and built the platform on xenophobic discourse and anti-immigration sentiment, making him a notorious figure in the French imagination.

“This has been a subject in France for a very long time, I would say since the end of what we call the ‘Trende Glorieuses,’ meaning the postwar years from 1945 to 1975, when we needed immigrants for the workforce,” Wieviorka told Courthouse News. “It was then that this theme because important, and the political idea of Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 1983, was to use the theme of immigration in his electoral campaign.”

In Wieviorka’s view, the theme of immigration serves multiple purposes for today’s extreme right. Firstly, it allows politicians to position themselves much more clearly than on economic, social or ecological subjects. The right then uses this positioning to put the left on the defensive, and confront it with a clear stance that the left has struggled to match.

“For the left, it is unfortunately — I say unfortunately, because my orientations are rather favorable to it — but on this theme, it’s ill at ease, incapable of proposing a speech that is clear and balanced,” Wieviorka said. “The left is also between a radicalism without nuance, which is a complete error, and the absence of proposals of another nature — so the left … is on the defensive.”

Issuance of French residency permits rose by roughly 2% in 2024 compared to the previous year, mainly economic and student visas, according to the country’s Interior Ministry. The figures suggest that the numbers aren’t rising as high as the far-right discourse often claims.

“It’s a very ideological theme, it’s a theme that the right uses by systemically inflating the figures, the real data on immigration, which are nevertheless available,” Wieviorka said. “It’s a theme that is used by playing on fear, on hatred, and very often on the ignorance of reality.”

Bayrou’s recent comment, which cites a “feeling of submersion” in France’s migratory landscape, supports this notion.

“It’s an interesting way of putting it; he didn’t say it’s a reality, he said it’s a feeling,” Wieviorka said, explaining that he could have added that it might be excessive. “So I think that this is really a right-wing and far-right discourse.”

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