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Abstract
This article analyses the emergence of the Réseau Education Sans Frontières (RESF) in France, a movement that emerged in response to fear about the deportation of immigrant children who were pupils in French schools. Mobilising ethical concerns about children's welfare, the movement has been able to create public debate about the French State's moral responsibility to protect these children of ‘sans-papiers’. Based on qualitative research, this article analyses the membership of RESF and its modes of action to show how this mobilisation has taken place, stressing the importance of ‘everyday interactions’ in this mobilisation, and the use of new frames of moral injustice concerning children's welfare.
Notes
1. Literally ‘without papers’ meaning undocumented migrants. Although the children are not directly subject to arrest or deportation as ‘illegal’ migrants, the fact that their parents are not legally resident in France and are therefore subject to deportation means that the children are also at risk of deportation with their parents. Some of these children have been born in France, others have migrated with their parents at an early age, but none of them have French citizenship. Children who have been born in France to foreign parents can obtain French citizenship but not before the age of 18.
2. Research was carried out in Paris and other French cities and involved observation of RESF meetings and demonstrations, semi-structured interviews with activists involved in RESF activities, as well as analysis of leaflets and manifestos produced by RESF, and of press reports on RESF in major French newspapers.
3. In English the name could be translated as Network for Education Without Borders.
4. A similar network the Réseau Université Sans Frontières (RUSF) was formed to defend university students who were ‘illegally’ in France and thus threatened with expulsion, but this network has had a less high profile and has mobilised less widely, for reasons which will be discussed below.
5. The designation of ‘leader’ is one that is refused by members of the RESF who maintain that is a non-hierarchical network of collective action which has no official leaders.
6. Interview January 2007.
7. Interview June 2007.
8. The relatively even gender balance among RESF militants is interesting given that school gate actions in general are often largely dominated by women.
9. Interviews June 2007, September 2007.
10. Interview January 2008.
11. The new Code de l'entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d'asiles (Code on the entry and residence of foreigners and the right of asylum – CESEDA) was adopted in 2006. This CESEDA law has been highly criticized by NGOs and associations working for the defense of immigrants and asylum seekers because of the way in which it entrenches a utilitarian vision of ‘chosen’ immigration (immigration choisie) through policies which make it harder for all but the highly qualified to enter or reside legally in France.
12. In an interview with Le Monde in July 2006 he announced that ‘several thousand’ sans-papiers would be regularised under the terms of the Sarkozy circular, a declaration that was quickly countered by Sarkozy himself.
13. The creation of this new Ministry has in itself been the object of protest from a number of different organisations and individuals who are opposed to the amalgam made between immigration and national identity.
14. AFP, 21 August 2007.
15. See, for example, an article published in Libération 6 November 2007, entitled ‘Enfants, attention, retention’, which described the growing number of children in detention centres, and the new ‘record’ for the youngest child ever detained, a baby of 6 months.
16. Interview December 2006.
17. Interview January 2007.
18. Interview January 2007.
19. Interview December 2007.
20. Meeting of RESF Paris, 19 December 2007.
21. The UMP is the major Right-wing party headed by Nicolas Sarkozy.
22. ‘Patimat, 6 ans, cache pour échapper à l'expulsion’, Libération, 29 April 2006.
23. Interview September 2007.
24. Interview March 2007.
25. Interview September 2007.
26. Interview June 2007.
27. Lettre au père Noel, press release by the RESF committee of the Olivier Metra school, 75020 Paris, 16 December 2006.
28. Interview February 2007.