A Late Welcome: The Case of French Postcolonial Naturalization Policy for the Aging

• In Event: Law and Settler Colonialism: Indigenous Sovereignty, Resistance, and Jurisdiction

Abstract

This paper examines the tensions between reparative and merit-based logics in decisions to grant citizenship to former colonial subjects, through the cases of French naturalization policies targeting aging postcolonial populations. I use primary sources (e.g., parliamentary debates) and qualitative fieldwork, drawing mainly from the case of an original, age-based law passed in 2015 to facilitate citizenship acquisition for direct ascendants of French citizens who had lived in France for at least 25 years and were over 65. I highlight the role of temporality and symbolic politics in this law’s limited reparative potential and their contribution to broader immigration politics of deservingness. The 2015 law effectively opened a new case of reversed jus sanguinis (i.e., blood right) that excludes some of the most marginalized among its target group. It was arguably voted with a reparative intent—for post-migration exclusion—but only at a point when dwindling numbers of eligible individuals limited the reach of a primarily symbolic policy. I also demonstrate that the policy’s late recognition of postwar labor immigrants’ contributions is rooted in the broader politics of deservingness that defined a model figure of immigrant citizen against other generations and waves of migration. Two other cases of naturalizations—stateless individuals in Madagascar and colonial veterans—further exemplify the role of temporal and symbolic politics in postcolonial citizenship.

Author

• Sonia Blanche Planson, University of Notre Dame