La Cimade Interview/Thoughts

Yesterday I had my second what I might call a "key-informant" interview with the director of La Cimade here in Montpellier. It was a very difficult interview for me in that he was very quick, concise and unwilling to compromise in both his answers and his perceptions. The information I was able to extract is valuable, and heavily biased. It also was somewhat disheartening in that his core message quite cleanly rips apart the concept of public policy being effective or important, let alone the notion of a public policy that includes development.

My suspicions with respect to this "codevelopment" were, to some degree, confirmed by his response. It seems not only to me to be simply some kind of loose, contrived add-on to a strict, harsh regime of expulsion and control. In fact, he confirmed my thesis that it's an additional form of control. Whether or not its solely for the image of "development," I'm not sure. In one sense, the cooperative development programs are intended, it appears, to increase the economic state of the country of origin to reduce some of the push factors associated with emigration from that country and some of the pull factors of immigrating to France. Yet, with development agreements that involve policing undocumented/illegal immigration as a precondition for receiving money, partnerships for work visas and profiting off of remittance flows (see envoidargent.fr), I see that France has a stake in maintaining, or even increasing the migration from a particular country. The important point is that France control every aspect of that migration. This, of course, fits very well into the notion of selective migration and the like. This in no way, I'd argue, contributes to the real economic independence of the country of origin (the only way that migration might subside, if that's the goal). And yes, perhaps the goal is not to reduce migration, but merely to effectively manage it and make as much profit as possible from migration flows.

There's a lot that could be studied here, many claims that could be made. My next background area of research will be to look at the large-scale trade agreements between France and, say, North Africa, or countries that are a part of this codevelopment scheme, and respective migration patterns. The link between free trade and mobility came up in some of the reading I was doing, and it's unclear what it actually is. Final point: I might want to focus on the impact of legitimizing remittances on both the flow of remittances, and consequently on the degree of immigration, or to the amount of profit gained by the French government, for example. There are tons of variables and not a lot of clarity, nor any data. This remittances issue could be interesting for a questionnaire, but as my friend at La Cimade curtly reminded me, "Come on, what does it matter if [the remittance flow] increases or doesn't increase? What's the interest?"

In other news, tomorrow is Bastille Day. Woo hoo! I wonder what I'll do.