North African engineering students in France: the impact of political decisions on academic ambitions

French interior Minister sent out a government decree on 31 May 2011 to all prefects, thus demonstrating his will to take a tougher stand on foreign students wishing to start their professional life in France. He stated that the objective is to encourage former students to return to their country of origin. In this paper, we explore the indirect impact of the "Guéant decree" on the academic projects of students from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, who study in French graduate and post-graduate engineering schools. These students are concerned about their future situation. Many of them wanted to stay a few years in France before going back to their home country. With so many difficulties in finding a position in France, they have been developing new strategies for their academic projects. Our research is based on interviews carried out with students in French engineering schools. We will analyse how they put their migration careers into words and how they reshaped them in such an unfavourable political context