By Line Reguig
By the end of 2025, France’s migration policy has moved well beyond administrative reform. What is unfolding is a political redefinition of the country itself, away from any pretense of being a welcoming nation, and toward the organized production of exclusion.
The 2024 “Darmanin Law,” already restrictive, has since hardened further through a series of so-called “Retailleau Circulars.” The debate is no longer about managing migration fairly or efficiently. It is about designing procedures so burdensome, so exhausting, that only a few can survive them.
The “Civic” Barrier and the Mythology of Integration
In July 2025, the government unveiled the new Contrat d’Intégration Républicaine (CIR). It is no longer enough to reside; one must now perform “Frenchness” under the threat of expulsion.
- The Exam as a Filter: The new civic exam, required for even a multi-year permit, now demands an 80% success rate. It is a multiple-choice questionnaire on history, culture, and “the culture of French society.”
- The Paradox: We demand that a delivery driver working 60 hours a week master the nuances of the 1905 law, while the state-funded language classes (OFII) are notoriously overstretched and underfunded.
- The Intent: This is not about education; it is about attrition. By raising the bar to an arbitrary level, the state creates a “legal” reason to refuse renewals, pushing integrated families back into the shadows of the sans-papiers.
The Fortress of the Préfecture: Administrative Disappearance
The “Circulaire de Fermeté” (Firmness Circular) now dominates 2025. Bruno Retailleau’s approach has ended Prefects’ power to grant regularization, replacing discretion with a fixed policy rooted in automatic rejection for most cases, significantly reducing pathways to legal stability.
- The 7-Year Trap: Where the law used to consider 3 or 5 years of presence, the new unofficial directive pushes for 7 years of residency before any regularization is even considered, all while keeping the person in total legal limbo, unable to work “legally” or access healthcare.
- The OQTF Trap: The state now denounces a “Kafkaesque phenomenon” where people use their OQTF (Obligation to Leave French Territory) to prove their presence. Yet, it is the state that issues these orders without executing them, creating a class of people who are physically present but legally erased.
The Colonial Debt and the “Expat” Alibi
France in 2025 continues to practice selective amnesia. We celebrate the “Week of Integration” while quadrupling the capacity of the Bordeaux-Mérignac detention center. We lament “parallel societies” while our bureaucracy forces people into the very ghettos and shadow economies we then condemn.
The hypocrisy is starkest in the terminology. The British “digital nomad” in Nice or the French retiree in Thailand is an “expat.” They are never asked to pass a civic exam or prove their “utility” to the local culture. They are granted the privilege of uncontaminated mobility. Meanwhile, the student from Dakar or the worker from Algiers is a “migrant”, a pathology to be managed. This is the essence of colonial class anxiety: a project to maintain a global hierarchy that grants unchecked movement to the wealthy West while criminalizing the necessary movement of the Global Majority.
The Resistance of Radical Solidarity
On this International Migrants Day 2025, our task is to honor the world being built in the fissures. The state wants us isolated, facing the Préfecture alone. But our power—the power of the YREMASUD, emerges from the community.
- We see it in the collective appeals of December 18th across Paris and Marseille.
- We see it in the “shadow infrastructure” of social media groups sharing legal loopholes and case worker numbers.
- We see it in the mutual aid that provides housing when the state offers only the street or the CRA (detention center).
Choosing community-based care in an economy that commodifies human life is a revolutionary act. We are not supplicants. We are the living consequence of the histories France has profited from. We are here because they were there.
Our presence is life insisting on its course. As the 2025 budget slashes integration credits while expanding detention beds, we remain unyielding. We carry the memory they have forgotten, and we are building a future of solidarity that no border, digital or physical, can contain.
