On Saturday, February 14, the Institut La Boétie and the European foundation For the People organized an exceptional symposium: “Immigration: Facing the Xenophobic Inundation,” at the Espace Conférences in Paris (11th arrondissement).
“Great replacement,” “migratory influx,” “insecurity”: today, immigration has become the number one obsession of our governments and the systematic target of racist and deceitful smear campaigns.
This rhetoric legitimizes increasingly repressive and dangerous policies. In the United States, the immigration enforcement agency (ICE) rounds up, “removes”—and sometimes kills—undocumented immigrants amid widespread terror. In Europe, migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean are pushed back at sea, resulting in thousands of deaths every year. In France, national “identity” and “security” are brandished to justify the indiscriminate criminalization and stigmatization of foreigners, immigrants, and even their descendants.
All over the world, immigrants are on the front lines of the authoritarian slide and the shift toward the extreme right in our regimes. In the face of this peril, this symposium by the Institut La Boétie and For The People Foundation aimed to shed light on the plural realities and lived experiences of immigration today, far from racist fantasies, using social sciences and the expertise of international NGO and political leaders. The goal: to provide the keys to resisting this racist and xenophobic inundation.