President François Hollande on Monday pledged that France would take an extra 24,000 refugees from other European countries over the next two years, as part of a European Union-wide quota system.
A trickle of several hundred asylum seekers began arriving in the country on Wednesday, the first of a total 1,000 refugees - made up exclusively of Syrians, Iraqis and Eritreans - expected over the coming days as part of an emergency measure to relieve Germany, where some 20,000 migrants were received this week in the space of just 48 hours.
The management of accommodating the refugees is to be discussed at a meeting this weekend between interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve and the mayors of the cities, towns and small municipalities across France who have volunteered to provide housing and support for the exiled families. “It’s not a question of organizing a High Mass to tell of one’s generosity, it’s an operational meeting in order that the mayors who wish to welcome refugees tell us what lodgings and land they have at their disposition,” said an interior ministry advisor, who asked not to be named.
Immediate shelter for the new arrivals this week has been provided mostly in the Paris region, in provisional centres while awaiting the registering of asylum requests, before more permanent housing is found elsewhere.
But in the long term, the government faces a major task in meeting the demand for accommodation. Besides those mayors who have come forward to join the scheme to offer spare facilities, such as places in social housing and disused public buildings, others have opposed joining it citing existing housing shortages.
Under the normal procedure, asylum seekers are provided accommodation in dedicated centres spread around the country, the centres d’accueil de demandeurs d’asile, or CADA, but these already suffer a chronic shortage of space in face of the average yearly 65,000 people seeking asylum France, on top of those extra refugees the country is now committed to receive.
Florient Guéguen is head of the Fédération nationale des associations d'accueil et de réinsertion sociale, which groups together hundreds of associations dedicated to helping to house people in dire social conditions, including migrants. He estimates the CADA have accommodation available for 25,000 people. “Just 36% of asylum seekers are therefore received under this programme,” he said. “The others benefit at best from emergency shelter, often a hotel, without any accompaniment and in unsuitable conditions, notably for families, or are forced to live on the streets.”
In face of the problem, a reform of the law governing the rights of asylum seekers, voted through parliament this summer, foresees the creation of additional CADA accommodation for 8, 200 people by the end of 2016. But until now, many mayors have refused to allow the building of these accommodation centres in their municipalities, despite the fact that the centres are totally funded by the state.
The reform also allows for asylum seekers to be given accommodation at any of the centres across France in an attempt to ease the situation in regions where there is a particularly high concentration of asylum demands, notably the Greater Paris Region (l’Île-de-France), the city of Lyon and neighbouring municipalities (in the Rhône-Alpes département) and areas of eastern France. Importantly, the new law aims to reduce the length of the processing of asylum demands from the current two years to nine months.
Of the 150,000 vacant lodgings nationwide managed by France’s subsidized social housing (HLM) agencies, about 3,000 have been identified as possible homes for refugees, and the government is expected to demand over the coming days that the agencies free up more for the purpose.
Meanwhile, the contribution of city and town halls to meet the sudden influx is a voluntary scheme to be led by the interior ministry. Cazeneuve has appointed Kléber Arhoul, previously in charge of a government-sponsored equal opportunity social programme in north-east France, as ‘national coordinator’ of the logistical operation, who the minister described as “the interlocutor of reference” for mayors who have volunteered to provide facilities for the refugees.
While several French cities and towns have clearly announced their intention to provide lodgings for refugees, including Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Pau, Villeurbanne, Avignon, Poitiers, Besançon, Rouen, Strasbourg, Metz, Lille, Blois and Évry, the final number is yet to be confirmed.
Small municipalities have also offered help. Thierry Suaud, the socialist mayor of Portet-sur-Garonne, a commune of 8,000 inhabitants close to the city of Toulouse in south-west France, will be attending the meeting at the interior ministry on Saturday. “The first thing that I said to myself was ‘why take action so late?’,” he said. “Our conscience was engaged some while ago. At the [Socialist Party congress] in La Rochelle we were convinced that something had to be done, but it’s the photo which had the role of prompting things,” said Suaud, referring to the picture of the body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach.
Suaud says that Portet-sur-Garonne can accommodate up to five families of refugees, in a building owned by his municipality situated on the site of a future business park, and later in refurbished accommodation once used to house teachers. The mayor says the local meals-on-wheels service it runs for the elderly can also be used for the refugees, and that the town hall has members of staff who speak Arabic and English. But he wants state funding to help with issues like the special teaching needs that children will have, and the legal procedures that adults will be required to make. “We’re not just working on the reception [of refugees], it’s a question of accompanying these families and to allow for the integration,” he added.
Portet-sur-Garonne was the site of an infamous internment camp, called Récébédou. Originally housing French refugees fleeing south from the German invasion of France in 1940, it became, between 1941 and 1942, a camp for Spanish Republican exiles and Jews who had fled the German administered north of France. Hundreds of Jews were subsequently deported from there to concentration camps in Germany.
Attitudes among the population of Portet-sur-Garonne towards the reception of refugees is mixed says Suaud, who has received emails from a handful of people offering accommodation while others have openly voiced their opposition to the scheme. At a local fête earlier this month Suaud attempted to convince opponents. “There’s confusion over clandestine immigration, terrorism,” he said. “Once things are properly explained, minds are calmed but they don’t necessarily agree.”
Examples of the rising tensions over the refugee programme were highlighted by comments made earlier this month by the right-wing mayors of the town of Roanne, in central France, and Belfort, in the north-east of the country, both members of the conservative opposition party, Les Républicains, headed by Nicolas Sarkozy. Yves Nicolin and Damient Meslot publicly stated that they would be prepared to help only Christian refugees. Their comments were condemned by Prime Minister Manuel Valls and the French Catholic church.
The division of opinions is widespread. In Rosans, a village of 500 inhabitants in the foothills of the Alps, an offer by the village’s mayor, Josiane Olivier, to house two families of refugees in a local social housing scheme, prompted by a local collective in favour of helping refugees, led to the creation of a group of opponents calling itself ‘Respect the Rosanais’ which has called for a referendum on the issue “with regard to the fact that the population has not been consulted or informed”.
In Clermont-Ferrand, in west-central France, the socialist mayor Olivier Bianchi has offered to accommodate 200 refugee families, well beyond the numbers suggested by the government. “On July 15th, the [local government] prefect asked us if we could welcome seven families,” he said. During the 1980s and 1990s, the town and its neighbouring municipalities provided accommodation to more than 600 Kurd and Kosovar Albanians. Bianchi said that he had met with agreement from the mayors of the towns neighbouring municipalities to share the influx. “We need now to discuss capacities,” he said. A meeting to discuss the issue is planned for September 14th at the local prefecture, when representatives of social housing agencies will also be present.
In Lille, in northern France, which has also joined in offering to house refugees, the city hall announced it has begun preparing a programme of “schooling, professional insertion, psychological assistance, healthcare” for those it receives. It has launched an internet site via which the local population can register offers of accommodation, practical and financial help for refugees “and to be put in contact with associations and city hall services”.
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This is an abridged compilation of two reports originally published in French, which can be found here and here.