UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE ALIEN WORKFORCE : Socioeconomic debates over immigration in France

The stunning success of xenophobic populist Joerg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria early this year, the anti-Asian immigration maiden speech of Australian Parliament member Pauline Hanson as well as the designation of "mongrels" and "blackies" for colored ethnic groups in public by some high-profile international officials, all are only various symbols of expanding inter-ethnic tensions on question of immigration in advanced countries. The research on this problem with a view from France, the fourth economic power in the world with a population of 3.6 million of immigrants (10% of the working population) and more than 3 million of jobless, seems interesting in the context of economic slowdown due to not only conjunctural but structural difficulties. Migration is indeed a major social phenomenon today, as it has been for thous ands of years. Presently, there are 100 million immigrants in the world, 19 million of them refugees (22). In the old time, the migrants might be sometimes conquerors or colonialists but vast numbers of them migrated to escape the carnage or the tyranny that has so often accompanied conquests. Deportations and evacuations, exile and forcible repatriations, massacres and panic-stricken flights, highly risky mass exodus outnumbered peaceful, voluntary and well-organized movements of populations. By road, sea and air, the immigrants often left behind them less productive land and waters and more hostile political regimes to go for new destinations where they believe-not always true-the promised biblical Canaan. 移民についての討論の際には感情的,主観的な見解がよく出て,ホストの国の人びとを分裂させ,対立を引き起すと言っても過言ではない。国際労働者たちは普通,自分の故郷から離れ,世界各地へ技術と知恵をもたらすと同時に,自分のためもっと豊かで,自由な生活の実現を夢みて来る。しかし,戦争または経済不振の時になると,彼等は招かれざる客と見られ,差別され,冷遇される。周知の様にヨーロッパ諸国は現在いろいろな経済問題に直面し,その中でも失業問題は一番深刻である。結果として社会不安と人種間の緊張か高まり,潜在的な人種の偏見か暴露されうる状態である。国民の中にも自分の苦況の原因とみられる外国労働者に憎しみを持つ人達はすくなくない。フランスでは,極右民族中心主義者の祖国戦線(フロントナシオナル)が外国労働者排除の宣伝をくりひろげた。最近,南仏の知事選挙では,与党と野党の連合で抵抗したにもかかわらず,祖国戦線は四度目の勝利を飾った。その町こそ失業率は19%に達し,移住民の人口が多い所なのである。拙著は先ずフランスの移民の歴史をふりかえった後,この国で生活する国際労働者に対する従来の政策や今日の危機的な経済状の中にいるその人達をめぐる諸論争を取り上げる。それからフランスの例を通じて,日本または他の国の外国労働者の問題と比較し,幾つかの積極的な解決案を提出したい