ABSTRACT
The literature on French immigration policy is almost unrelievedly critical of the state, but the sins for which it is chastized differ substantially from one account to the next. For some the problem is that the state has failed to regulate and control immigration sufficiently to tie it to the short-term needs of the French economy (OECD 1973). For others this is precisely what the state has done at the cost of sacrificing the interests of the immigrants themselves, or the long-term interests of the country as a whole. Some critics indict the state for pursuing a conscious, elaborate and cynical policy exploiting foreign workers, a kind of economic and ideological warfare on behalf of French capital (Granotier 1973, Briot & Verbunt 1981, Cordeiro 1984, Gorz 1970). Others document at length the bumbling, confused, ineffective and half-hearted attempts of the state to control its borders, or point out that state regulation of immigration has been achieved in spite of the intense opposition of at least some representatives of business (Freeman 1979, Cross 1983, Hollifield 1986). Marxists claim that the state has played the rôle of collective capitalist by disciplining the less advanced portions of the bourgeoisie (Castles 1984).
