ABSTRACT
Despite the temptation of each generation, not least that of the 1980s, to see international migration as a controversial question of the moment, there is in fact a long historical continuity in migration movements in France. The rôle of foreigners in France and of French men and women abroad has given rise to a variety of emotions ranging from curiosity and enthusiasm to apprehension, anxiety, fear and hostility. Although France shares some of the experiences of her European neighbours, she also has a number of distinctive characteristics of migration which reflect and to some extent determine wider questions of economic, demographic and cultural change. Thus, the correspondent of L’Illustration, who in September 1919 remarked that the Americans newly arriving in Paris were not a people of austere puritan character but rather a ‘band of flattering cowboys who amused themselves by lassoing parisiennnes of little virtue’ (quoted in Schor 1985, p. 161) was neither the first nor the last commentator to draw attention to the challenges created by foreign immigration. This chapter aims to illustrate the distinctive characteristics of both emigration and immigration, treating the latter at much greater length. While it is necessarily selective in the themes treated and in the sample taken from a vast array of scholarly and more popular published comment, three themes underlie the issues raised: first, international movements of population must be seen in a long historical context, in this case from the mid-nineteenth century to the present; secondly, that the movements concerned are more complex in their causes and effects than is perhaps generally allowed, with for example a great variety of social status and nationality amongst immigrants; and, thirdly, that immigration has been characterized by a very distinctive geography of origins and settlement.
