Amidst the heated debate over the French government’s plan to further reform the French pension system, a cross-party parliamentary committee will next month deliver its recommendations on remedying what one of its members describes as the “scandalous” plight of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers who enter retirement in conditions of dire poverty.
Over some three decades, beginning in the early 1950s, a vast wave of immigrant workers, mostly North African, served to fill a gap in the supply of manual labour for France’s then booming economy, notably in the car and construction industries. Many lived in desperate conditions, in shanty towns and workers hostels. A significant number worked on rolling temporary or part-time contracts, while others, especially in the building trade, were undeclared to the social security system.
In the 1980s came the decline of French industrial employment, when they were often the first to be laid off, and rising long-term unemployment. At the same time, the subsequent introduction of restrictions on immigration meant that a return to their native country while awaiting an improvement of prospects in France was likely to become a permanent move back to even grimmer conditions.
The result has been the creation of an ageing immigrant population of hundreds of thousands who have reached or are about to reach retirement age with little or no pension rights. After a working life in some of the most arduous and health-sapping jobs jobs, they face ending their days in financial misery.
“The situation was undignified 25 years ago, today it is completely scandalous,” socialist Member of Parliament Alexis Bachelay, rapporteur for the parliamentary committee’s fact-finding mission on the issue, told Mediapart. “It cannot continue any longer. Some gentlemen still live in 7-square-metre rooms they’ve lived in since they were young, with a shower in the corridor and a shared kitchen.”
The cross-party committee, established last November 20th for ‘A fact-finding mission on ageing immigrants’ and presided by conservative opposition UMP party MP Denis Jacquat, has focussed on a population of 850,000 immigrant workers (some of whom have gained French nationality since their arrival) aged 55 or more. Among this category, 350,000 are aged over 65. Those of North African origin make up the largest category, at 70%, followed by others from West Africa (notably Mali and Senegal), and south-east Asia.
It has questioned several dozens of professionals directly concerned by the problem of the ageing immigrant population, including former ministers, social services officials, medical specialists, ministerial mission managers, NGO representatives and sociologists.
'The administration must stop hounding them'
An estimated 40,000 immigrants across France still live in state-managed hostels for immigrant workers which were built during the years of economic expansion when mass immigration was encouraged. Bachelay cited the example of six such hostels in his own constituency in the Hauts-de-Seine département (equivalent to a county) on the western flank of Paris, some of which he said were in such an insalubrious state that “one can talk of maltreatment”.
The question of providing a dignified retirement for the ageing immigrant population is a distinct and growing social problem which, well before the recent pension reform debate, has remained unaddressed by successive governments despite a series of official studies and recommendations submitted over the past ten years. It was largely ignored in the discussions and public debate that preceded the major pension reforms introduced by the previous conservative government in 2010, when the minimum retirement age was increased from 60 to 62.
A bill of modifications to the 2010 reforms is to be presented before parliament this autumn by the current socialist government, acting on an election campaign pledge by President François Hollande, notably a return of the legal minimum retirement age to 60 for those who have paid pension contributions for at least 41 years. But there are already signs that the government may water-down its proposed changes to the 2010 reforms and there is no guarantee that the new recommendations to be made by the parliamentary committee on improving immigrant pension rights will be adopted into law.
“The chibanis [Editor’s note: an Algerian term for the elderly] live on average ten years less than others [in the general population],” commented Bachelay. “It’s like [the situation] for workers, but worse.” He said many have little command of written French, making them unable to claim what little rights they do have. “Some wait until the last moment to seek medical attention, which complicates treatment or renders it ineffective. To attack them, as politicians do, for coming to France to profit from the [welfare] system is quite simply indecent when you know what is the reality.”
Another significant problem is that retired immigrants are unable to receive French welfare payments to which they are entitled if they move back to their home country. This is the case for the minimum payment made to the elderly who have no pension, and which many immigrants depend upon. Called the Allocation de solidarité aux personnes âgées, (Aspa), the benefit amounts to 787.26 euros per month, but can only be paid to those who can prove that they reside in France for more than six months per year.
Alexis Bachelay denounced the aggressive attitude of the administration responsible for managing the payments, the Caisse des dépôts et consignations. “We showed the person in charge of this service letters sent out by their administration to check on people’s situations,” he said. “Simple letters are sent out, without recorded delivery, demanding a reply within a month, under threat of [otherwise] being suspended.” He cited the example of an 80 year-old who received the minimum benefit for the elderly and who was found by the French administration to have spent too little time resident in France; they received a demand for a refund of tens of thousands of euros which, bizarrely, was to be spread over a period of 120 years. “It’s Kafka,” commented Bachelay. “The administration has to stop hounding them, they are not fraudsters,” he added.
No commitment for change
Bachelay said the parliamentary committee will recommend that the minimum payment for the elderly with no pension should be made available to immigrants who return to their country of origin, a move that was mooted but later blocked under the previous conservative government. Meanwhile, a collective of associations for the defence of the rights of elderly immigrants in France, the collectif Justice et dignité pour les chibani-a-s, is pushing for the granting to them of equal access to medical and social services, and political rights, in both their native countries and France so as to allow greater mobility between the two.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
Another issue the committee has examined is the dilapidated state of many of the hostels for immigrant workers set up around France’s major cities. The problem was the target of a national refurbishment programme by the state-run service that manages them, the Adoma, which was originally due for completion in 2012. “We’re only half-way there,” complained Bachelay.
The committee wants to improve the rights of hostel residents to obtain publicly-subsidised housing, for which their applications are often categorised by town halls as low-priority. It is also studying recommendations for allowing co-rental of public housing flats in order to allow elderly individuals to spend time in their native countries without losing out on their housing rights in France. “Most of the social rights are tied to their presence on [French] territory,” explained Bachelay, who wants to see bilateral agreements established between welfare services in France and immigrants’ home countries. “The question to which we must reply is how to reconcile their freedom of movement with their access to rights,” he said.
Earlier this week, members of the committee travelled to Algeria and Morocco, the North African countries from where the majority of immigrant workers in France originate, to meet with representatives of local social security and social affairs government departments.
Other likely recommendations by the committee include easing for elderly immigrants the bureaucratic process of obtaining French nationality. “It is absurd to ask people for the birth certificates of their parents when the latter were Senegalese agricultural workers in the 1930s,” said Bachelay. Other proposals are the creation of Muslim burial areas in local cemeteries and lowering the costs of returning the bodies of deceased immigrants for burial in their home country.
When the committee launched its work in November last year, the president of the National Assembly, Claude Bartolone, also pledged it would examine how to improve the conditions of elderly immigrant women, notably those who have become widowed and live in extremely poor conditions.
On a broader level, Mediapart understands that the committee is to demand increased funding of research and statistical studies concerning France’s immigrant population by the Higher Integration Council, the Haut conseil à l’intégration (HCI), while also encouraging the inclusion in school history books of an account of the positive contribution of immigration in France. Bartolone has described the committees’s mission as “symbolic for the coming generations who will be able to see how [France] treats their parents and grandparents”.
Before officially delivering its report and recommendations in June, the committee’s hearings will wrap up with the questioning over the coming weeks of health minister Marisol Touraine, elderly affairs minister Michèle Delaunay, and interior minister Manuel Valls.
But while Bartolone and Bachelay have said they are convinced that the committee’s recommendations will result in changes to the law, their optimism can only be tempered by the history of how recommendations to improve the lot of elderly immigrants have been regularly shelved; these include proposals made in the 2002 government-commissioned IGAS report and those in another it commissioned from the HCI in 2005, and also the articles of a 2007 bill of law, the loi Diallo, entitling immigrants to receive French pension benefits in their home country. President Hollande has made no commitment on reforming immigrant pension rights, and his pledge to expand the right to vote in local elections to non-EU nationals has so far never been enacted.
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English version by Graham Tearse