The right to asylum is a legacy of the French Revolution. As it recognized the first secular form of asylum for “freedom fighters”, the Revolution gave birth to the myth of France as a “land of asylum”. However, during the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015, France was not a major destination country for refugees. As in many other Western countries, asylum policies have been shifting to a migration management approach and became a tool to polarize public debates. In that context, while the national narrative still refers to the myth of “France, land of asylum”, this same narrative is increasingly used to exclude migrants rather than to include refugees.
Among European national narratives, France’s might be one the most vigorous. If the United States of America is the “land of the free”, France claims to be the “country of human rights”. This narrative remains heavily taught to pupils in “the schools of the Republic” and is regularly brought to life in spectacular memorial ceremonies (see the “entrée au Panthéon” of Missak and Mélinée Manoukian and fellow members of the Resistance in 2024). Indeed, human rights were enshrined for the first time in history in the 1789 Human Rights Declaration. A few years later, the 1793 Constitution recognized the first secular form of the right to asylum for what is commonly referred to as “freedom fighters” (combattants de la liberté). Indeed, its Article 120 states the French people grant asylum to aliens banished by their homeland for fighting for the cause of freedom. Although the 1793 Constitution was never enforced due to the turmoil of the Revolution, the myth of “France, land of asylum” (France, terre d’asile) was born. The right to asylum was later reintroduced in the preamble of the 1946 Constitution, still part of France’s constitutional block today. This right was occasionally invoked including for refugees from Armenia, Eastern Europe, Germany and Spain before World War II.
A “refugee crisis” – not in France?
Like other Western European countries, France’s asylum policies gradually shifted towards a migration management mode after the fall of the communist regimes and the Balkan wars of the 1990s. A series of laws restricted asylum procedures and reception conditions, aiming to fight against so-called “fake asylum seekers” who were allegedly abusing the right to seek asylum and France’s so-called “generosity”. During Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency (2007-2012), it was taken for granted in public debates that France was the most generous country in Europe and that it received the largest share of immigrants, including refugees, an assertion in contradiction with the reality of migration flows.
When hundreds of thousands of people started arriving on European shores in 2015, heading mainly to Germany and Sweden, France was therefore slow to grasp the scale and the nature of the challenges the European Union was facing at that time. Initially, France did not recognize that the situation was primarily a matter of international protection, not merely an issue of irregular migration. When the European Commission proposed a first relocation scheme in May 2015, the French government stood against “compulsory quotas of migrants”, arguing that France was already receiving more than its fair share of refugees and migrants.
By the end of summer 2015, French authorities could no longer ignore the reality unfolding in the Eastern part of the continent: a humanitarian crisis in Greece, already weakened by economic hardship, political tensions among EU member states, particularly with the Visegrád group, and an extraordinary surge of solidarity, especially in Germany and Sweden. France finally acknowledged that the EU’s core foundations were facing an existential challenge and aligned with Germany, which had taken the lead in the EU’s response to the “refugee crisis”. However, France’s support for Germany seemed more like a demonstration of loyalty to the “Franco-German engine” than a genuine alignment as reflected in the criticism expressed by Prime Minister Valls in Munich in February 2016, which reinforced the narrative that Chancellor Merkel had acted unilaterally without consulting European partners.
As a matter of fact, France did not experience the same “refugee crisis” as Germany and other European countries. While the “refugee crisis” was very high on the political and media agenda, it was far less tangible for the French population than it was for Greeks, Germans or Swedes. Asylum applications in France increased by 20 per cent in 2015. However, with 80,000 new applications, France was far behind Germany, Sweden, and even Austria. Nevertheless, the growing number of slums and makeshift camps in Paris and Calais created an unmanageable situation for authorities. In Paris alone, between June 2015 and November 2016, 23,000 people were evacuated and hosted in emergency facilities. In Calais, camps were repeatedly dismantled and reassembled by migrants until October 2016, when 7,400 people were dispersed across the country.
The disproportionate humanitarian consequences of the rise in arrivals – or “migrant crisis” (crise des migrants) – as the French government termed it – were largely home-made. Due to the Dublin Regulation, many migrants were unable to seek protection in France. Further, poor reception conditions were largely the result of years of underinvestment in the asylum system, leading to multiple court rulings against French authorities at both domestic and European levels. A major reform of the asylum system had been under discussion for two years, aiming to bring France in line with EU standards and to increase the number of accommodation places for asylum seekers from 40,000 to 100,000 over five years.
At the same time, parts of French society were mobilizing to welcome refugees. Volunteers, cities and towns, regardless of political affiliation, offered services to host and support refugees. However, the anticipated influx of Syrians did not materialize until the French government launched a resettlement programme in 2017. In September 2015, the director of the French asylum office travelled to a reception centre in Munich but was only able to convince a handful of Syrian refugees to board a bus to France.
In conclusion, the so-called 2015 “refugee crisis” exposed cracks in the myth of France as a land of asylum. As demographer François Héran pointed out, contrary to claims made by many policymakers, France did not receive a “fair share” of refugees and immigrants in 2015 and has not since.
From an apparent “balanced approach” to an institutional crisis over migration legislation
As a candidate in 2017, Emmanuel Macron’s platform on immigration and asylum did not significantly diverge from policies implemented in France over the previous 15 years. On the one hand, it embraced a “humanist” approach to immigration (protecting “real” refugees, supporting integration). On the other, it maintained a “firm” stance against irregular migrants through more border controls, restricted rights and enhanced deportations. However, Macron distinguished himself in standing unequivocally for Europe, openly praising Chancellor Merkel’s policy and Germany’s solidarity with refugees.
Once in power, there was a constructive impetus to invest in refugee integration, with increased resources and a whole-of-society approach involving the administration, local authorities, civil society organisations and the private sector. This lasted until 2024, when the first budget cuts severely impacted integration measures. However, contradictions soon emerged between protecting refugees, on one hand, and cracking down on irregular migrants, on the other, particularly those stranded in Calais. Data from the UK indicate that most of these so-called irregular migrants would qualify for refugee status if they were willing and able to seek protection in France. This disconnect between political rhetoric and reality was neither new nor unique to France. However, it has continued to widen over time.
The first signs of division within Emmanuel Macron’s heterogeneous parliament majority appeared with the 2018 immigration and asylum bill. Despite the rhetoric of “humanism and toughness”, the legislation was widely perceived as a step toward securitization of immigration policies. A new immigration bill was announced immediately after Macron’s re-election in 2022 aiming at improving the return rate of undocumented migrants and rejected asylum seekers. Even though the Council of State (Conseil d’État) questioned the necessity of introducing this new bill without first evaluating the impact of the previous one, the government insisted that adopting the law was a matter of emergency to take back control over immigration. It took over a year for Parliament to pass the bill, culminating in a political drama and a major institutional crisis in December 2023. The government used the bill as a bargaining chip with conservatives to gain support on the pension system reform. Eventually, the government lost control of the parliamentary process and deliberately turned to the Constitutional Council as the ultimate referee in what was essentially a political dispute – despite this not being the role of the constitutional court in a liberal democracy. As a result, an unprecedented number of provisions were declared unconstitutional in January 2024.
A political debate out of touch with reality
Despite the historical significance of immigration, France now has one of the lowest levels of regular immigration relative to its population among OECD countries. In 2023, France remained among the top five immigration destinations in the EU but ranked below Poland, Germany, Italy and Spain. The share of the foreign population in France’s total population is increasing, but not at the same pace as in many other European countries. In recent years, international students have constituted the largest immigration inflow: nearly one third of all valid residence permits. Since 2015, refugees have represented a growing, but still small share of the foreign population, now representing a bit more than 10 % of the foreign population in France (600,000 refugees registered by OFPRA, 5,6 million foreigners in 2023).
Nevertheless, due to the growing influence of the far-right, asylum and immigration have increasingly and disproportionately dominated political debates. For instance, the long-standing controversy over free healthcare for undocumented migrants (aide médicale d’État) resurfaced both during the discussions about the 2023 immigration bill and again more recently as a reason for France’s difficult financial situation, despite accounting for less than 0.5 per cent of health expenditures in France. Immigration has also become a pretext for questioning fundamental principles of the rule of law. In recent months, MPs from the conservative party (Les Républicains) have proposed amending the Constitution to allow a referendum on immigration. They have also suggested reversing the hierarchy of norms between French law and international and European law – but only for immigration and asylum matters.
Surprisingly, during the last two presidential elections in 2017 and 2022, almost all candidates, including Marine Le Pen, claimed to support the right to asylum. However, interpretations of this right vary significantly across the political spectrum. For Les Républicains and the National Rally (Rassemblement National), the right to asylum is under threat due to alleged abuse by opportunistic and dangerous migrants. As a solution, they propose making asylum applications mandatory at French embassies abroad and banning the right to seek protection on French soil. Beyond the feasibility and legal implications of such proposal under European law and the French Constitution, proponents of this idea refer to a supposed “golden age” when refugees were “real refugees”. Much like in the cases of secularism (laïcité) and gender equality, the myth of France as a land of asylum is increasingly used as a rhetorical tool to exclude migrants rather than to provide them with protection.
Suggested citation:
Tardis, Matthieu. France, land of asylum: the myth and the reality. Forced Migration Studies Blog, 16 July 2025, https://fluchtforschung.net/france-land-of-asylum-the-myth-and-the-reality/, DOI: 10.59350/fluchtforschung.15056.