7 - To See or Not to See

Summary

Regularisation has been part of the French state's policy response to immigration since World War II. Since the end of labour migration in the mid-1970s, one of the key routes to legal immigration in France has been through regularisation by local administrations. These generally discreet practices reveal an intimate knowledge on the part of street-level bureaucrats of this supposedly invisible population. Alongside this generally low-key process, the French state has also organised more visible ‘mass regularisations’, notably in 1981, 1991 and 1998. This chapter explores the political dynamics shaping the French government’s approach to both ‘exceptional’ and ongoing regularisation. Through archival and interview data, it shows how the French authorities at the local and national level developed an array of strategies to manage the visibility of its regularisation policies.