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Author : E. Osipov
Senior research associate, Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Candidate of Science
(History)
THROUGHOUT SEVERAL DECADES, starting with the
1970s, political life in France was unfolding as the right-left oppo-
sition. Strong political alliances on both sides and the majority elec-
toral system made second rounds of presidential and
parliamentary elections inevitable. Dichotomy was spread to the
country's entire population: all and every Frenchman referred him-
self/herself to one of the political flanks, the political bias being
normally inherited from the older generations. We can even say
that the right or left political preferences have become one of the
most important self-identification features of the citizens of the Fifth Republic.
Today, the right/left opposition is no longer obvious to the nation and, therefore, no longer
structures the political life in the Fifth Republic. The first signs of the future serious changes
appeared at the turn of the 1990s with the introduction of a novelty that made possible the so-
called coexistence of the president and the prime minister who belong to opposing parties.
The biggest parties and their policies are responsible, to a great extent, for the structural changes
in the country's political life. Today, French voters more and more frequently point out that there
are no longer "right" and "left" policies in the Fifth Republic. Indeed, the left at the helm for the
last four years have not abolished the law that raised the state pension age, have not raised the
minimal wage (SMIC) and have so far showed no intention to liberalize the labor laws.
The migration issue has a long history in France while its migration policy was developing by
stages connected, to a great extent, with the periods of the secular politics described above. For
several centuries, France attracted and still attracts foreigners in big numbers.
Recently, a new stage of the French migration policies was moved to the center of discussions.
Integration has been replaced with inclusion; this means that the newcomers change society by
introducing new elements into the old norms of public life.
The attempts to adapt the non-French ethnic population to the French norms of life are best
seen in the way the French educational system is being transformed, a sensitive subject directly
connected with the mounting national and religious tension.
Protection of national identity is firmly associated in the minds of the French with the problem
of immigration, which means that Paris should revise its migration policies. All political parties
are convinced that illegal migration should be fought with; that the borders should be open only
for the potentially useful for the Fifth Republic. There is no agreement on the fate of the mi-
grants of the second and later generations who live in France.
The National Identity Factor in Today's France