The Contradictions of Sought Safe Havens: The Difficulty of Immigration and Integration for Muslim Maghrébins in France

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of laïcité and government trends to the right in France affect immigration and integration policy in France as it pertains to Muslim Maghrébin migrants. To do so, I conducted interviews with five experts with experience in some facet of Muslim North African migration, followed by using secondary sources to identify current trends, policies, and practices pertaining to migrants in France. The paper is broken into five sections that build on each other to contextualize and explore how the lives of Muslim Maghrébins are affected, including historical migrant trends, laïcité as a French principle, the current French political trend to the right, immigration policy, and integration policy. The evolution of laïcité and its role in affecting right-wing anti-immigration rhetoric is explored, in addition to the examination of discriminatory immigration policy against Maghrébins. The paper concludes with the determination that both laïcité and French right-wing policy has substantially affected the trajectory of immigration and integration policy in recent years and has contributed to the targeted discrimination of Muslim Maghrébins in both France and French immigration practices