Peng Shuyi: French Social Inequality as Reflected by Immigration
France was originally a Western country that placed relatively high importance on social equity; compared to countries that have long practiced liberalism, such as the United Kingdom, its gap between rich and poor was not large and its Gini coefficient was relatively small. However, since the 21st century, the wealth gap in French society has gradually widened, and people of different classes and ethnicities have faced increasingly serious social inequalities in fields such as employment, education, and healthcare. The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic not only highlighted but also exacerbated these inequalities. Immigrants, who account for nearly 10% of France's total population, serve as a concentrated reflection of this social inequality and once again became its victims during the pandemic.
Under the value orientation of neoliberalism, France's economic and social policies have tilted toward capital, prioritizing efficiency over equity and reducing protection for vulnerable groups such as laborers. This is the root cause of the intensifying social inequality in France. For the sake of winning votes, French left-wing political parties abandoned the lower-middle class to represent the upper-middle class instead. Their rightward shift in economic and social policy objectively indulged and worsened social inequality.
I. Immigrants Reflect the Inequality of French Society
The expansion of social inequality is a major issue currently facing France. Before the 1990s, due to the strength of left-wing parties and left-wing thought, France provided relatively good protection for vulnerable groups like laborers, effectively preventing the polarization of wealth. However, starting from the 1990s—and particularly in recent years—along with the rise of neoliberal thought, the phenomenon of wealth inequality in France has gradually emerged and intensified, reflected through the prism of immigrants.
Roughly one-tenth of the French population is composed of immigrants, primarily those of African origin. This massive group, especially its African members, faces a huge gap compared to native French residents in terms of employment, education, and healthcare, largely sinking to the bottom of society. Data from the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) [1] shows that in 2015, the median per capita income for immigrant households in France was 1,152 euros, and the poverty rate was as high as 38.6%, far above the national average (table omitted). Among these, the poverty rate of African immigrants is particularly high—44.6%, or four times that of native residents. The department of Seine-Saint-Denis in the Greater Paris region (Île-de-France), which has the highest proportion of immigrants in France (30%), is the poorest region in the country.
The primary factors leading immigrants to become the most impoverished group are as follows:
(1) Deindustrialization has caused immigrants to become the main force of structural unemployment and informal employment
Immigrants were originally introduced as laborers after World War II for the purpose of economic recovery, primarily distributed in low-tech, labor-intensive industrial enterprises such as mining, construction, metallurgy, textiles, and machinery manufacturing. From the 1970s and 80s, France began adjusting its industrial structure and launched a process of large-scale deindustrialization. The proportion of the primary and secondary sectors in the national economy dropped significantly—from 21% and 37% to 2.6% and 20.3%, respectively. Conversely, the tertiary sector rose sharply from 21% to 75.9%. This made France one of the EU member states with the highest proportion of service industries (4% higher than the EU average) and the lowest proportion of industry (3.4% lower than the EU average). This structural adjustment brought about massive structural unemployment, with workers—especially unskilled workers—hitting the hardest: from 1970 to 1982, the proportion of industrial workers in total French employment dropped from nearly 40% to 15%, then further to 7% by 2017. Within this, skilled worker employment fell from 7% in 1982 to 4% today, and unskilled workers from 9% to 3%.
Immigrants, who are primarily unskilled workers, became the main victims of structural unemployment. Their unemployment rate has long hovered between 15% and 20%, significantly higher than the national average (which is below 10%). The unemployment rate for African immigrants is especially high, remaining at a high level of around 20% for a long time. In some old industrial bases, due to the closure of factories and mines, the unemployment rate for African immigrants once approached 50%, and for immigrant youth, it was even higher, reaching nearly two-thirds. To make a living, these immigrants—who lack specialized skills and have no access to retraining—have been forced into the service industry, particularly the informal employment sector. These service jobs offer low, unstable income, and the risk of falling into poverty is far higher than the national average.
(2) Immigrants are isolated from high-quality educational resources and have low levels of education
Most immigrant laborers live in clusters in the suburbs, which isolates them from high-quality educational resources.
When immigrant laborers first arrived in France, they were concentrated in low-rent public housing in the suburbs. Over time, this formed highly closed and isolated immigrant enclaves. In a specific context, the French word banlieue (suburb) [2] refers to these "immigrant neighborhoods." A major consequence of immigrants gathering in the suburbs is the inability to enjoy high-quality educational resources. Schools in the banlieues—the schools for "children of immigrants"—generally have weak teaching staff and cannot be compared with those in mainstream neighborhoods. Impoverished immigrants lack the economic means to move to mainstream neighborhoods; furthermore, limited by their own educational levels, their degree of emphasis on education, and their horizons, they are unable to supervise their children's studies or do not prioritize them. Consequently, the academic gap between their descendants and those of non-immigrants continues to widen. Statistical results prove this: compared to non-immigrant youth, immigrant youth are characterized by higher dropout rates and lower rates of advancement to higher education. There is no illiteracy among non-immigrants, while 4% of immigrants are illiterate; 9% of male immigrants and 17% of female immigrants have only a primary school education, both far higher than native residents (2% and 7%, respectively). The number of immigrants without any diploma is also far higher than that of native residents.
Inequality in basic education is ultimately reflected in the field of higher education. Surveys show that the number of immigrant children who eventually enter prestigious universities (and thus obtain higher-quality employment opportunities) is far lower than that of non-immigrant children. As the saying goes, "it is difficult for a prestigious house to emerge from a humble gate" [3]!
Discrimination is another major factor making it difficult for immigrants to find employment. Although the French government explicitly prohibits any employment discrimination, including racial discrimination, implicit discrimination against immigrants—especially African immigrants—is omnipresent in French society. Investigations show that job seekers with clearly Arabic-sounding names have a 20% lower chance of getting an interview than those whose names appear "French." Surveys also indicate that five years after graduation, the unemployment rate for immigrant youth is nearly three times that of native youth; for African youth specifically, it is four times higher. Furthermore, even with the same educational background, it is much more difficult for immigrant youth to be recruited as civil servants; they are more likely to fall into the informal employment sector.
Descendants of immigrants with low education and low skills are forced to repeat the path of their fathers—making a living through low-skilled or even unskilled informal work, facing the risk of unemployment at any time. Thus, they fall into a vicious cycle of intergenerational poverty transmission and class ossification.
II. The COVID-19 Pandemic, Using Immigrants as a Prism, Highlighted and Exacerbated Social Inequality in France
The occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequality in French society. Immigrants, as the most vulnerable group in the economy and the labor market, reflected this like a prism.
(1) The COVID-19 pandemic intensified the disadvantaged position of immigrants in the field of health
The COVID-19 pandemic hit immigrants the hardest. Statistics show that during the pandemic, immigrants—especially African immigrants—ranked at the top for confirmed cases, infection rates, and mortality rates. For example, during the most severe period of the pandemic in France in March and April 2020, the growth rate of deaths among immigrants was twice that of native residents. The Greater Paris region, which concentrates nearly half of the country's immigrants, saw an excess death rate [4] that ranked first in the nation. Seine-Saint-Denis, which has the highest proportion of immigrants and is the poorest department in France, had the highest excess death rate: 134% during the peak period of the pandemic from March 1 to April 19, 2020—far higher than the average for the Greater Paris region. From March 1 to April 6, 2020, the number of deaths in that department was nearly double that of the same period in 2019. As the President of the Departmental Council and Socialist, Stéphane Troussel, pointed out: "If we say COVID-19 kills, so does inequality... this crisis has clearly had a very serious impact on social and regional inequality, which is particularly evident in a department like Seine-Saint-Denis, which is young and has a strong proletarian character."
The primary factors why immigrants were hit the hardest are as follows:
First, poor living conditions. Immigrants, especially African immigrants, generally live in poor conditions. Seine-Saint-Denis is typical; the population density there is 64 times the national average, the living area per capita is small, and the housing overcrowding rate is as high as 20.6%, far higher than in the city of Paris (12.7%).
Second, low rates of lockdown compliance. During the most severe period of the pandemic in 2020, the French government issued a lockdown order, stipulating that citizens should not go out unless necessary. At that time, more than two-thirds of management personnel could work from home, and could even leave big cities at any time to hide in detached villas in deep forests, mountains, or by the sea. In sharp contrast, 96% of workers (referring to wage laborers in the industrial sector in France) and 75% of employees (referring primarily to wage laborers in non-industrial sectors, mainly services) still had to go out to work, making them the group with the lowest lockdown rate. "Employees" and "workers" share a common situation: low income, low education, high work intensity, a lack of flexibility, and little discretionary time. The intermarriage rate between the two is also very high—a significant portion of households are composed of male workers and female employees.
Among immigrants, the proportion of workers, employees, and especially low-end service workers is very high. For example, many immigrants in Seine-Saint-Denis are engaged in occupations such as supermarket cashiers, cleaning and sanitation, express delivery, nursing in hospitals and elderly care homes, domestic services, and security maintenance. Not only can they not work from home, but they also have to frequently commute by public transportation to make a living. Therefore, their risk of infection is much higher than that of non-immigrants. The "Observatory of Inequalities" (Observatoire des inégalités) pointed out: "Some of the lowest-paid occupations, such as nursing assistants, delivery drivers, or cashiers, are exposed to the highest risks [under the pandemic]."
Take elderly care homes as an example. Nursing homes in France had the highest infection and death rates; at one point, it reached the stage where the government stopped counting their case fatality rates. There are a large number of immigrants among nursing home workers. During the pandemic, they could not stop working due to staff shortages, and they had to have close contact with elderly people who might have been infected while having low levels of protection (due to the shortage of epidemic prevention materials). This greatly increased the risk of infection; after returning to their cramped dwellings, they then passed the infection on to their families.
As the French Communist Party pointed out: "The health crisis reveals profound inequalities in our society and exacerbates the inequality for millions of our compatriots, the most vulnerable and the poorest... inequality remains very serious: the lockdown for a large poor family squeezed into a flat and for a wealthy family living in a large detached house cannot be spoken of in the same breath..."
Third, poor health status and low utilization of medical resources. Like all developed countries, France has serious inequalities in the field of health influenced by factors such as occupation, income, and education level. This is particularly reflected in immigrants. Relevant French studies show that highly educated and affluent populations are healthier overall; meanwhile, the grassroots population represented by immigrants faces a greater risk of chronic diseases—10% higher than the national average—and the overall health status of immigrants is far inferior to that of non-immigrants. The French "Observatory of Inequalities" pointed out: "People with chronic diseases are in the most danger [in the pandemic], partly due to social inequality." Furthermore, there are relatively fewer medical resources in immigrant neighborhoods. For example, Seine-Saint-Denis has the lowest density of doctors and the poorest hospital facilities in the Greater Paris region. After the COVID-19 outbreak, the hospitals quickly experienced a "run," and confirmed patients could not receive timely treatment.
For immigrants, occupational factors led to the inability to lock down and frequent use of public transportation, while their distant place of residence (as immigrants mostly live in suburbs)...
The combination of multiple factors—prolonged commuting times, poor housing conditions that made effective social distancing and isolation impossible, general decline in health due to poverty, and low per capita medical resources leading to delayed treatment—ultimately resulted in the risk of infection and death for immigrants being several times higher than that of non-immigrants.
(2) The Pandemic Exacerbated Immigrant Poverty
The pandemic simultaneously intensified the poverty of immigrants. Under the impact of the crisis, French household incomes plummeted, marking the largest decline since 1949; among these, immigrant households saw the sharpest drop, a fact closely linked to their disadvantaged position in the labor market. The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) pointed out that during the most perilous period of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first quarter of 2020, France lost 715,000 jobs, with informal employment suffering the hardest hit. The "Observatory of Inequalities" (Observatoire des inégalités) also noted: "Unemployment hit short-term contract workers first, especially low-skilled ones." To avoid mass layoffs during the pandemic, France introduced "partial unemployment" (chômage partiel) [5] measures—allowing companies to reduce working hours while paying partial wages. For example, if a five-day workweek was reduced to three days, the employer paid for three days, while the remaining two days were partially compensated by the government via unemployment benefits. This measure primarily affected blue-collar workers (54%) and service employees (36%), while the management class was almost unaffected. Because immigrants constitute a large proportion of the informal sector and blue-collar workforce, they bore a greater impact. As the International Labour Organization (ILO) pointed out, laborers in the informal sector under COVID-19 faced a choice: if they did not die from the virus, they would die of hunger.
(3) The Pandemic Widened the Educational Gap Between Children of Immigrants and Non-Immigrants
The shift to online teaching for primary and secondary schools during the lockdown also brought significant negative impacts to immigrant families. These families were either too poor to provide internet devices for their children; lived in conditions unsuitable for online classes; possessed low literacy levels and were too exhausted by the struggle for subsistence to assist with schoolwork; or suffered from all of the above. These factors further widened the academic gap between their children and those of non-immigrants. Although these phenomena also existed among non-immigrant families, they were more prominent in immigrant households, particularly those of African descent.
In summary, while the pandemic acted as a catalyst exacerbating French social inequality, it also acted as a magnifying glass, highlighting the institutional and structural inequalities across different classes, strata, and races in fields such as employment, housing, healthcare, and education. As the French "Observatory of Inequalities" observed during the pandemic: "Social inequality is increasingly intensifying; capitalism seems never to have been so powerful." The French journalist Denis Lafay also noted: "The lockdown has shockingly exposed [French society’s] inequality—for example, the inequality resulting from the location of isolation and material conditions. Imagine [the difference between] a Parisian on the beaches of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and the anonymous groups huddled in social housing (HLM) [6] in Seine-Saint-Denis; or the inequality in material guarantees and digital literacy (digital illiteracy)... In what form will these 'silent' inequalities explode? What other inequalities will the lockdown reveal?" The French Minister of the Interior and former Socialist, Christophe Castaner, also admitted: "The economic and social crisis has deepened difficulties and inequalities." As the bottom layer of society, the experiences of immigrants during the pandemic represent a concentrated manifestation of nearly all social inequalities.
III. The Prevalence of Neoliberalism is the Root of Social Inequality in France
The social inequality reflected through the prism of immigration is a microcosm of French society in recent years. As the "Observatory of Inequalities" pointed out, for a long time, France's social problems were identified as the hardships of the working class and wage laborers. However, the focus of the inequality problem has now shifted from the concentrated suffering of workers toward immigrant poverty, "distressed neighborhoods" (quartiers sensibles), youth unemployment, and the formation of a "new dangerous class" (i.e., the informal employment group). In fact, all these inequalities find prominent expression in the immigrant population—distressed neighborhoods are primarily immigrant enclaves; youth unemployment is highest among immigrant youth; and informal employment is most typical among immigrants. Therefore, immigrants are also the main force of the so-called "new dangerous class." In short, the immigrant acts as a prism reflecting all facets of inequality.
The root of increasingly unequal French society lies primarily in the prevalence of neoliberalism. Over the past twenty to thirty years, the ascendancy of neoliberalism in the Western world has dealt a major blow to France, a nation that originally emphasized equity and labor protection. Under the dominance of neoliberal values, French policy has gradually tilted toward capital, with the scales increasingly tipping toward "efficiency" at the expense of protecting labor and other vulnerable groups. This is particularly evident in the following areas:
(1) Drastic Reductions in Public Expenditure for Healthcare and Vital Sectors
After World War II, driven strongly by left-wing forces such as the French Communist Party (PCF) and the French Socialist Party (PS), France gradually established a world-class healthcare system. However, in the last two or three decades, to cut fiscal deficits and stimulate the economy, France embarked on a path of fiscal austerity, reducing medical investment and drastically cutting hospital beds. This not only led to the closure of small medical institutions and made it difficult for people in remote areas to see doctors but also resulted in a severe lack of hospital capacity when faced with COVID-19—the department of Seine-Saint-Denis being a prime example. Since 2019, French medical staff have protested many times against government cuts to healthcare spending. They claimed to have witnessed the gradual collapse of the medical system over 20 years and warned the government that if spending cuts continued, France's health system would completely disintegrate, leaving patients at risk of death due to lack of treatment. Unfortunately, this became a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is also why President Macron pointed out during the pandemic that "this pandemic reveals that some goods and services must be placed outside the rules of the market," expressing a need to learn this lesson and reclaim state control over the healthcare sector related to people's livelihoods.
In recent years, other social investments in France have also shown a trend of contraction, such as the shrinking of family allowances, the reduction of housing subsidies, and the decrease in the duration and level of unemployment insurance. In short, protection for labor and vulnerable groups has continuously weakened—the French government claims this is to improve efficiency and promote growth. However, research by Thomas Piketty and others shows that economic growth has not benefited the masses; on the contrary, wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small minority, and the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. France was originally among the Western countries that emphasized social equity with a relatively small wealth gap, but this gap has trended upward in recent years. For instance, 2018 statistics show that the living standard ratio between the richest 10% and the poorest 10% was at least 3.5 to 1. The wealthiest 10% own 46% of total social assets. The gap between the median living standard and the top 10% continues to widen. During the same period, thanks to increased capital income, the living standards of the wealthiest households rose sharply, while those of the poorest households trended downward due to reduced housing subsidies, leading to a rise in the poverty rate. Statistics also show that the affluent class consists mainly of finance professionals, self-employed professionals, and the management class; the poor class is dominated by workers and employees. Ethnically, immigrants are poorer; by gender, women are poorer (due to higher unemployment rates and a higher proportion of women employed in the informal sector, such as low-end services).
(2) Replacing Formal Employment with Informal Employment in the Pursuit of Profit Maximization
Since the 21st century, it has become a common practice for Western governments adhering to neoliberalism to encourage firms to cut production costs—including wages and social benefits—to gain comparative advantages in economic globalization. This involves replacing long-term, fixed contracts with short-term, temporary ones, and even outsourcing parts of operations. To "improve" employment (as the shrinking of manufacturing led to rising unemployment), governments have also encouraged the development of so-called "flexible employment," especially in the service sector. France is no exception; for example, the government has encouraged such employment by reducing or exempting social security contributions. The result is an increasingly polarized labor market: the number of formal employees continues to decrease, while informal employment—such as temporary, contract, and hourly work—continues to increase. Informal workers lack protection in all aspects: wage levels are low and unstable; they are excluded from the social security system or find it difficult to be covered by certain social insurance programs, overall facing a higher risk of poverty. Furthermore, compared to formal workers, informal workers are dispersed and fragmented, making it difficult to organize into unions for collective bargaining or to voice legitimate grievances. Immigrants, acting as a seemingly "inexhaustible" reservoir of low-end labor, have become the typical representatives of informal employment.
Addressing these phenomena, the renowned French left-wing scholar André Gorz pointed out: "Stable full-time employment—employment that could last the whole year and the whole of [one's] working life—has become the privilege of a minority. Conversely, nearly half of the active population can no longer integrate into a productive group through labor and thereby determine their place in society through professional activity." "In Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, 35% to 50% of the active population lives on the margins of what we call 'labor civilization' and its hierarchy of values, ethics of virtue, and profit. The social system is split in two, forming what is commonly called a 'dual society' or a 'two-speed society.' The result is the rapid disintegration of social organization and structure. At the top of the pyramid is moderate competition, leading to those very rare, stable jobs with upward mobility... society moves toward a competitive sports model, and social relations move toward a life-or-death struggle... men and women who are not winners are tossed to the margins of society..."
Informal employment includes a large number of domestic services, which is the common situation for French immigrants, especially women. Regarding this, Gorz also provided a penetrating analysis, noting: "In a free economy, the only activities likely to create a large number of jobs in the future are personal services. If activities [such as housework] that have hitherto been undertaken by each individual for themselves could be transformed into the supply of paid services, employment would grow infinitely. According to economists, this is the 'new growth that creates more jobs'—namely, the 'tertiarization' of the economy and the replacement of 'industrial society' with a 'service society'." "However, we see that saving the wage-earning society in this way will trigger a series of problems and contradictions... personal services... have the potential to create a large number of jobs because, in most cases, the men and women who perform an hour of housework for you are paid much less than what you yourself earn for an hour of work. The development of personal services relies on the pauperization of the masses, a group that is constantly increasing, as we have found in both North America and Western Europe. On one side are those providing services to individuals, and on the other are those purchasing them; the inequality between the two in the social and economic fields becomes the new engine of employment development. This engine is built on the duality of society and a certain 'South-Africanization,' as if the colonial model were taking root in the heart of the metropole!"
Gorz identified the essence of the problem with incisive clarity: the proliferation of low-skilled or unskilled service jobs following the decline of manufacturing has caused social polarization. On one hand, more and more people deprived of formal employment opportunities must sell their services to survive; on the other hand, the cheapness of these services allows the affluent class to purchase more service, thereby freeing up more time to earn even more money. The result is that wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, while ordinary people are increasingly trapped in cheap, low-end employment. The income gap between the two continues to widen, and the latter group becomes increasingly impoverished.
The French "Center for the Observation of Society" (Centre d'observation de la société) reached the same conclusion: "In fact, rising through job positions by gradually improving [individual] qualifications is no longer an inevitable process as it was in the 1980s and 90s. The growth of low-end services meets the needs of the unequal 'service society' currently being established. On one hand, the widening income gap means the affluent class has the means to use low-wage labor; on the other hand, the increase in unskilled employment is supported by public subsidies... These public subsidies include reducing social contributions for low-wage [labor]."
...and reductions in tax for employers of domestic services. The result was that some people who once had the prospect of upward social mobility, especially given their educational backgrounds, found themselves trapped in low-skilled, low-paid, menial work. This bred social tension." In other words, under the influence of neoliberal thought, encouraging the development of informal employment—represented by the service industry—through means such as exempting social security contributions and personal income tax to promote employment and growth is a complete reversal of priorities [7]. In reality, economic growth has not benefited the struggling masses; on the contrary, even those who originally hoped to improve their circumstances through education have been permanently trapped at the bottom of the labor market, with the channels for social mobility blocked. The correct approach to improving employment and reducing unemployment, as Gorz pointed out, should be to create high-quality employment and provide comprehensive vocational skills training, enabling people to obtain and retain stable, high-quality jobs, rather than being nailed to low-quality, low-wage positions without any hope of recovery.
IV. The Transformation of Left-Wing Parties—The Socialist Party’s Metamorphosis Objectively Condoned Social Inequality
France’s largest left-wing party, the Socialist Party (PS), identifies itself as a party of the working class and, in theory, takes the defense of the interests of the lower-middle classes and the maintenance of social justice as its mission. However, with the changing times, the Socialist Party has gradually undergone a metamorphosis, no longer acting as a spokesperson for the lower-middle classes. This fact has objectively condoned or even exacerbated social inequality.
Since the 1970s and 1980s, following the adjustment of the industrial structure, France’s employment structure has undergone a massive shift. Between 1982 and 2018, "senior managers and intermediate professionals" (most of whom are general managerial staff belonging to the upper stratum of workers—"white-collar" or petty bourgeoisie—while a minority are top managers like CEOs acting as capitalists) increased from 28% to 44% of the employed population, while the number of those in the lower-middle strata of the working class contracted. This class differentiation led to changes within the Socialist Party: under the electoral system, in order to win over more voters and achieve the goal of taking power, the Socialist Party gradually alienated the lower-middle strata represented by workers and employees, turning instead to court the votes of the upper-middle class. After taking office, it implemented policies that, to a certain extent, represented the interests of big capital. Research shows that as early as 1985, the Socialist Party’s "commoner" character had already faded—in 1985, the proportion of workers and employees among Socialist Party members was 22% (10% workers, 11% employees), which further dropped to 12% by 2011 (3% workers, 9% employees). Conversely, the proportion of senior executives doubled, rising from 19% to 38%. Looking at educational levels, the elite character of the Socialist Party has also become increasingly pronounced: in 1985, the proportion of party members with a university degree or higher was 39%; by 2011, this rose to 64%, several times the national average (14%). While alienating the lower-middle strata, the Socialist Party’s economic and social policies moved continuously to the right, converging with the center-right and, in some respects, even becoming identical to them. Thus, we see that when the Socialist Party returned to power in 2012 after a 17-year absence from the French political stage, it did not correct the social injustices caused by right-wing governance but instead fueled them.
On the other hand, a portion of the grassroots population abandoned by the Socialist Party turned to support the National Rally (RN, renamed from the "National Front"), an anti-elite, anti-globalization right-wing populist party. This has allowed the party to grow continuously, becoming one of the top forces in French politics today. The National Rally is simultaneously known for being anti-immigrant; it constantly incites hostility and antagonism toward immigrants in French society, blaming all of France's current "misfortunes" on them. For example, it vigorously propagates the idea that immigrants are stealing French jobs, when in fact immigrants mostly engage in "dirty, exhausting, and dangerous" work that native French residents are unwilling to do. We even see the following paradox: on the one hand, there is a large unemployed population in French society; on the other hand, a large number of low-end jobs go unfilled, necessitating a reliance on immigrants. This is why the French government still needs to bring in a certain number of immigrants from Africa to this day—to supplement the shortage of "low-end labor."
Furthermore, under the so-called "competitive pressure" of the growing National Rally, center-right parties have also moved continuously to the right to compete for voters, exhibiting a degree of "far-rightization." On the eve of every general election, they use immigration to generate talking points. The collective rightward shift of the French political stage not only makes it difficult for the various social injustices faced by immigrants to be recognized by French society in a comprehensive, objective, and fair manner, but also prevents them from being addressed, further worsening the disadvantaged plight of immigrants.
V. Conclusion
The intensifying inequality in French society reflected through the lens of immigrants under the COVID-19 pandemic is the result of neoliberalism gaining the upper hand in France in recent years. Under the dominance of neoliberal ideology, the protection of capital and the market has increasingly overridden the protection of labor and social equity. Guaranteed, high-quality employment has continuously contracted, while unsecured temporary employment has continuously increased. The social protections for the laboring classes, such as healthcare and pensions—established after the war under the promotion of powerful left-wing political forces like the French Communist Party and the Socialist Party—are being continuously compressed, and the gap between the two poles of wealth and poverty in French society is widening.
As Denis Laffay pointed out: "Following Thomas Piketty, social scientists, think tanks, and economists have all correctly emphasized the continuous increase in inequality over the past 30 years. The inequalities they have discovered and exposed are actually very large inequalities—inequalities that pit 5%, 1%, 0.1%, or even 0.01% of the population against the rest. They are right, because the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority brings about economic as well as social and fiscal problems; this is not just a matter of justice, because a portion of society thereby escapes 'everyday' social life and the control of the state." Laffay's final sentence implies that under neoliberal economic and social policies, the wealthy propertied class can do almost as they please. In fact, while weakening protections for the laboring class, French policy has increasingly tilted in favor of capital. For instance, immediately after taking office, Macron abolished the "Wealth Tax" (ISF) [8], which had been launched when the Socialist Party returned to power following heavy public demand; conversely, he did not forget to levy a "fuel tax." In summary, as long as the neoliberal policy orientation remains unchanged, the injustice between wealth and poverty in French society will not change; instead, it will only further worsen and intensify social contradictions.