Migration, asylum and the political sphere—a short contextualization

3Between the end of WWII and today, commentators of the whole political spectrum have frequently alluded to France’s legacy of hospitality towards immigrants and refugees. Especially France’s status as terre d’asile enjoys great popularity. Within the Vichy years, asylum had ceded to be provided to those fleeing the persecution of the axis powers1 and the imposition of discriminatory measures lead to the confiscation of property belonging to Jews, the restriction of their movement and for many of them the internment in camps. The scars the Vichy years caused in France’s public image contributed to the assertion of asylum as integral part of its cultural identity in the post-war years.2 Until the 1970s, France’s open migration policy and a high acceptance rate of asylum requests were motivated by the need of a workforce for France’s booming economy which made it easy to uphold France’s image as terre d’asile. The amount of asylum requests submitted during the trente glorieuses was marginal compared to the number of work migration during the period. This can be explained by the permeability of the French working market in this timespan.3 France’s migration policy was largely based on a laissez-faire approach consisting in the unregulated entry of immigrants to reduce its manpower shortage.4 The relatively easy access to the working market can be considered as a major explanatory factor of the low amount of asylum requests within this period. The small number of asylum requests submitted were treated through a liberal procedure within which hardly any requests were rejected.5 In retrospect, the period was nevertheless mystified as era of “true refugees” because the high acceptance rate was interpreted as evidence that most asylum seekers of this era had been political dissidents persecuted by authoritarian regimes.6

4While the trente glorieuses were characterized by a low amount of government intervention and public attention regarding migration, the topic gained importance as a subject of political action and public debate in the 1970s and 1980s. Conflicts between the ideals of hospitality towards foreigners and the perceived necessity to protect the working market and France’s cultural norms grew stronger. On a political level, attempts of a stricter control of immigration started to emerge in the late 1960s when public authorities took the first measures to reverse the laissez-faire-approach of the preceding years.7 The suspension of economic and family immigration of non-EC citizens on the 3rd of July 1974 represented a further major step towards a more restrictive migration policy.8 After the victory of Mitterrand in 1981, government action was focused on the introduction of measures to improve the rights and living-conditions of minority groups.9 However, with the centre right winning many municipal elections and the Front National taking 11% of the national vote in the European elections in 1984, appearing too lax on the issue of irregular migration seemed politically risky for Mitterrand’s government.10 Despite important differences between the main political parties, substantive agreement evolved on the necessity to constrain new inward migration and fight against irregular migration in the following years.11

5After France’s ratification of the New York Protocol in 1971, the spatio-temporal restrictions of the 1951 Convention were abolished so that Ofpra’s mandate was extended to non-European asylum seekers and refugees previously under UNHCR mandate. While their number remained low in the first years after the ratification, the global political and economic situation, as well as changes in transportation and communication, altered the global migration flows within this period. After 1975, France received high numbers of South-East Asian asylum seekers from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia who had been placed under UNHCR protection in Thailand and its neighboring countries. Most of them arrived in France through state-organized procedures within which the French government determined the number of persons receivable per month.12 Ofpra admissions of asylum requests within these organized procedures were automatic. With one thousand procedures per month between 1975 and 1982, they represented by far the majority or asylum admissions within this timespan. Media coverage on the arrival of South East Asian asylum seekers was very positive and their entitlement for protection was not a matter of public debate.13

6While the state-organized procedures dominated France’s asylum policy in the late 1970s, spontaneous asylum requests—i. e. requests of persons who entered the territory regularly or irregularly without having been accorded territorial asylum by French consular authorities and outside state-organized procedures—14 grew stronger in the early 1980s.15 In contrast to the high acceptance rate of the previous period, asylum requests were granted less frequently, and the amount of rejections rose between 1980 and 1989. Overall, strong differences can be noted regarding the amount of admissions in relation to the origins of asylum seekers.16 Admissions in the South-East-Asian division were disproportionately high as a result of the organized asylum procedures described above. The lowest amount of admissions was registered in the African division: of 130,774 requests treated between 1973 and 1991 118,161 were rejected.17

7In the first half of the 1980s, a tendency set in which grew stronger in the following years: while in the beginning of the decade, asylum seekers faced a high to average probability of a positive outcome of the procedure at Ofpra, in 1990, 85% of requests were rejected.18 The situation in France should be seen in context of the asylum politics of most Western powers in the 1970s and 1980s which increasingly restricted their asylum systems.19 On an intergovernmental level, the coordination of the asylum policy of Western European states evolved as an objective with the ratification of the Schengen Agreement in 198520 and the Dublin Treaty in 1990.21 However, relevant steps towards the implementation of a European asylum policy only evolved with the ratification of the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997.22 The following analysis will therefore focus on the French national level. The next paragraph will shorty introduce differing explanatory frames regarding the growth of rejections of asylum requests during the 1980s. This will establish a basis for the analysis of reform attempts and the impact of fraud cases.

Competing explanations for the growing rejection rate

8The main explanatory model which Ofpra’s yearly reports provided for the increase in rejections argues that an increasing amount of asylum seekers didn’t match the criteria of the 1951 Convention. In the early 1980s, a supplementary line of argument developed according to which many asylum seekers did not only fall outside the scope of the Convention but also intentionally attempted to “abuse” the French asylum system. Until 1976, the amount of rejections does not represent an important aspect of the reports. First changes of this tendency can be detected in the 1976 report according to which many immigrants “have developed a vocation to the refugee status to regularize their residence or work situation or to obtain this or that social benefit.”23 The 1978 report claims that immigrants “without any condition required to be considered as political refugees forge their dossiers so that the office has to conduct long research which mostly results in rejections.”24 Thus, the argument according to which rejections result from requests with economic motivations is supplemented by an element of fraud which necessitates higher suspicion and investigative work by protection officers.

9All reports of the following years include variants of the argument that rejections rose because of the lacking “quality” of requests and that the rejected requests aimed at circumventing France’s policy against economic migration.25 The sceptical tone and heightened suspicion grew stronger in the 1980s when allegations regarding the “abuse” of the asylum system evolved into a powerful interpretive tool. The first reference to the “abuse” of France’s asylum system can be found in the 1980 report which calls for means to “prevent the extension of the abuse of asylum”.26 Within the more detailed 1981 report, Ofpra’s director concludes that determining whether a founded fear of persecution pertains has become difficult and he complains about fraudulent procedures of “certain applicants of bad faith”.27 This can be explained by the fraud scandals which shook Ofpra’s African division within this year which will be discussed in more detail below. While “abuse” had a relatively unspecified meaning in the previous report, the detection of frauds moved the misleading intentions behind “abusive requests” into the centre of debate from 1981 onwards. In the 1985 report, the director concludes, for example, that the asylum procedure is abused “by a majority of foreigners […] who don’t have any right to benefit from the Geneva Convention and who know really well that they don’t”.28 As consequence of this suspicion, Ofpra increasingly demanded proof for fears of persecution and the authenticity of identity documents. In 1982, the supervisor of the African division asserts a heightened sense of vigilance and explains that “the problem of proof becomes the main issue during the treatment of dossiers”.29

10The changing categorization within the reports provides further evidence for this development. The term asylum seeker is used for the first time in 1979 in the context of the division responsible for the treatment of requests of asylum seekers from North Africa and Asia. However, the same report states that “concerning Sri Lanka and Pakistan only very small numbers of refugees are accepted”.30 This implies that the refugee category was used broadly to refer to a person fleeing her country of origin, rather than to a person with acknowledged refugee status according to the criteria of the 1951 Convention in this report. While a similarly broad usage of the refugee category can still be identified in the 1980 report, the asylum seeker category was now used more frequently in contexts in which the applicability of the 1951 criteria was represented as dubious.31 From 1982 onwards, the refugee category only referred to persons meeting the criteria of the 1951 Convention and became clearly distinguished from the term asylum seeker.32

11Despite the expanding demand for vigilance, the reports never call into question that it is highly important to provide asylum for “real refugees”. Instead, references to France’s asylum tradition figure among the most important legitimizations provided to motivate stricter procedures.33 Overall, the reports reveal the evolution of an explanatory framework which created an increasing amount of distrust towards asylum seekers. Rejected requests were more and more associated with an intentional abuse of the procedure. Media coverage and public political statements regarding the “abuse of asylum” grew so that the subject soon entered public discourse. Ofpra director Jacques Fouchet appeared on national television to talk about the identity frauds detected in 1981 and Gilles Rosset, then Ofpra’s General Secretary, published a novel with an Ofpra employee facing confusing fraud problems as the lead character.34 Research into political debates and media coverage on asylum in France’s 1980s remains sparse and often superficial. Because of this, the causal relation between Ofpra’s work reports and the development of the “abuse” framework on a public level is difficult to determine. The analysis of the reports shows nevertheless how the framework evolved into a powerful explanation for the increasing amount of rejections which also served as basis to demand reforms from political decision-makers.

12While Ofpra’s interpretation on the increasing rejection rates was adopted by most government representatives, differing explanatory models evolved in sociological and historical research. The explanations provided within these accounts can be classified in three major categories: some authors argue that the growth of rejections indicates discriminations against non-European asylum seekers.35 Valluy quotes research on migration policy according to which high functionaries who had started their careers in France’s colonial administration afterwards applied colonial surveillance principles to the governance of France’s immigrant population.36 Arguing for a “post-colonial analysis of the restriction of asylum”,37 he then expands this frame of analysis to the growing number of asylum rejections.38 However, he fails to justify this inference through empirical data.39 Other researchers, like Akoka,40 Julien Laferrière, Noiriel and Wihtol de Wenden focus on the political level and argue that the asylum system was used as an government instrument to reduce unwanted migration flows.41 Although these analyses trace important tendencies, they mostly focus on the modernization period starting in 1989 and therefore fail to explain why rejections started to increase in the early 1980s. Since an analysis of reform attempts preceding the 1989 reforms is missing in these accounts, it remains nebulous which impact the government had during the 1980s. The third category, which mostly consists of sociological research, examines the increase of suspicious attitudes within the administration and jurisdiction of asylum. Fassin and Kobelinsky represent the rejection rates as the result of increasingly suspicious attitudes towards asylum seekers and argue that they were “linked less to objective data concerning applicants than to modifications to the subjective evaluation of circumstances”.42 However, they don’t examine the impact of actual fraud cases on the “moral economy of asylum” in the 1980s because their case study focuses on the Court Nationale du Droit d’Asile (CNDA) in 2009. A detailed analysis of reform attempts on the political level preceding the 1989 reforms and of factors influencing the procedure “on the ground” is missing in most analyses. This article aims to bridge these research gaps by examining reform attempts of the 1980s and discussing the example of fraud cases detected in Ofpra’s African division.

The government’s reform attempts and their outcome

13Despite Ofpra’s status as independent administrative institution, its functionality is highly dependent on budget decisions of the government. Large-scale changes like staff increase and the functioning of the procedure can only be decided on the political level. Until the 1980s, Ofpra was only marginally transformed and changes of France’s asylum system as such were not envisioned. The year 1981 represented an important turning point. Because asylum requests had increased over the year, untreated requests accumulated strongly. More importantly, the idea that a growing number of asylum seekers were “abusing” France’s asylum procedure evolved into a powerful conceptual framework in the early 1980s and seemed to be confirmed by the detection of fraud cases. As a result, the government launched three state inspections in 1982. The inspections were supposed to identify existing problems and suggest necessary reform measures to regain control.43

14In a meeting of representatives of the Interior, Justice and Foreign Ministries and the Secretary of State of Public Security in October 1982, the delegates decided to establish an expert commission which should devise a reform plan for France’s asylum system.44 Daniel Fabre was assigned the leading post of the délégation interministérielle aux Réfugiés (DIR) which was to devise the project and coordinate the expectations of the different ministries. Between the creation of the DIR in April 1983 and its dissolution in 1986, possible reform measures were discussed in meetings between Fabre and ministry representatives. As an analysis of these reform attempts will reveal, accounts which interpret the growing rejection rates as evidence for government measures to reduce migration inflows are oversimplified. On the one hand, many restrictive measures proposed during the debate were prevented so that the relation between the growing rejection rate and implemented measures remains unclear. On the other hand, a unified government incentive appears implausible because of the differing standpoints of the involved ministries.

15Since it was assumed that the long waiting times for Ofpra and CRR decisions encouraged the “abuse” of France’s asylum system, the discussed reform measures mainly aimed at accelerating the procedure for “manifestly unfounded requests”. The minutes of the December 1982 meeting summarize the objectives in accordance with the “abuse” framework:

“The French authorities have serious reasons to believe that since several years a relatively important part of asylum seekers […] request refugee status out of bad faith to be able to evade the work regulations in France for new foreigners. To try to dissuade these abusive immigrants, the délégué interministériel aux réfugiés has proposed to accelerate the instruction in the prefectures, at Ofpra and the CRR, especially the requests that seem least founded.”45

16Fabre proposed a two-speed system for the treatment of asylum requests: 12 regional Ofpra divisions were to be created as a primary instance to order incoming requests in two categories: requests with favourable opinions of the regional divisions would be forwarded to Ofpra’s main office where a normal asylum procedure would be introduced. In this case, the asylum seekers would be accorded a provisional residence permit and social benefits until a definite decision on their cases had been taken. Asylum seekers with requests judged “manifestly unfounded” by the regional divisions should only be tolerated on French territory for two months. Within this timespan, their cases should be treated in an accelerated procedure at Ofpra’s main office and in case of a definite rejection a detention was to be initiated. To enable effective detentions, abandoning the suspensive character of CRR appeals was considered as an option. A further aspect consisted in regulations regarding the competences of the prefectures: Fabre proposed to formulate a circular to determine in which cases the prefectures could refuse provisional residence permits to asylum seekers. The plan also envisioned first aid housing close to the regional divisions where asylum seekers could live during the accelerated procedures.46 In the following, I will first provide a short chronology of the reform project. Afterwards, individual aspects will be discussed in more detail.

17In a meeting in December 1983, the ministry representatives accepted Fabre’s proposal of a two-speed system. The decision to provide the necessary financial means was taken in a meeting in January 1984. However, the implementation of the plan stagnated. In July 1984, Fabre sent a letter to the responsible ministries reminding them to transfer the necessary budget.47 While correspondences between Fabre, the affected ministries and refugee organizations on the reform plans continued, a representative of the Interior Ministry argued in September 1984 within a letter to an advisor of the PM that it wouldn’t be possible to provide sufficient staff to realize the regional divisions plan.48 The decision to abandon the project was taken in a meeting in January 1985.49

18Debates on individual facets of the plan reveal important power dynamics and controversies. During a meeting in September 1983, the representatives discussed whether the suspensive character of CRR appeals should be abandoned to permit effective deportation measures. This option suggested that asylum seekers whose requests had been rejected by Ofpra would still be allowed to introduce appeals but would lose their residence permits after Ofpra’s rejection. The representative of the Interior ministry argued in favour of this proposal.50 Next to the opposition of the Justice Ministry, strong criticism of NGOs prevented this option. Organizations like France terre d’asile, Secours catholique, SSAE and the Cimade had been included into the reform attempt from early on.51 Ofpra’s syndicate52 formed a committee with these organizations which campaigned for the preservation of the suspensive character of CRR appeals.53 The prevention of this potential infringement of the legal rights of asylum seekers can therefore be interpreted as a success of France’s judicial branch and the described NGO campaigns.54

19Further struggles over authority became apparent when Fabre attempted to formulate a circular towards France’s prefectures. The circular was to regulate in which cases the prefectures could refuse to issue provisional residence permits for asylum seekers. In meetings and correspondences between June 1983 and October 1984, different criteria were discussed including threats to public safety, possible readmissions in a third country and “manifestly dilatory” requests. Interior minister Pierre Joxe argued in a letter to Fabre that a governmental directive should instruct Ofpra not to receive requests if a provisional residence permit had been denied.55 This option would have represented a deep indentation in France’s asylum system. In allowing the prefectures to prevent affected persons from submitting asylum requests, competences restricted to Ofpra would have been transferred to the prefectures. Ofpra’s direction opposed this possibility56 and many Ofpra employees organized in the newly formed syndicate went even further and opposed all changes towards differentiated procedures that could lead to discriminatory practices.57 Further opposition was raised by NGOs who sent several letters to Fabre and the Prime Ministry.58 Libération published an article on the issue in November 1984 which stressed the concerns of the NGOs and thereby directed public attention on the issue.59

20After the regional divisions plan had been abandoned in January 1985, Laurent Fabius instructed Fabre to devise a circular which would “avoid possible annulations through the judicial branch, make the text acceptable to humanitarian organizations, shorten the delays at Ofpra and restrict its instructions on the procedure before and after the intervention of Ofpra thus respecting Ofpra’s autonomy”.60 As a result, the circular implemented in May 1985 stated that the prefectures should immediately deliver a provisional residence permit of one month to every foreigner entering the French territory to seek asylum. Persons whose asylum requests had been enregistered through Ofpra were to be provided with residence and work permits valid for three months which were renewable until definite decisions on their cases had been taken. Fabre abandoned the idea to list criteria for the refusal of provisional residence permits and clarified that Ofpra and the CRR had the sole authority over decisions on asylum requests. The evolution of the circular reveals that NGOs developed an important influence in the 1980s which was assisted through media coverage on the issue. A further interesting aspect concerns the fight on who should have the authority to judge the validity of asylum requests. The Interior Ministry and Ofpra’s direction exhibited similar conceptual frameworks regarding the growing “abuse” of asylum. Nevertheless, Ofpra’s direction supported the view that all asylum seekers should be given access to a procedure executed through Ofpra and therefore opposed the plans of the Interior Ministry to expand the authority of the prefectures.

21Overall, the scope of restrictive reform measures that were discussed as options indicates the strong influence of the “abuse” framework. Questions which dominated the European asylum policy in the 1990s and 2000s, like the treatment of “manifestly unfounded requests” and the possibility to expulse asylum seekers to “third countries”, can already be identified within the debates. Most envisioned restrictive measures were prevented, partially through the successful forms of opposition described above, partially because of budget considerations. As the interministerial meeting in January 1984 suggests, the plan to introduce a two-speed system for the treatment of requests failed mostly out of financial rather than judicial or moral concerns. The main outcome of the reform project consisted in the 1985 circular which represented an important affirmation of the rights of asylum seekers. However, the major problems of France’s asylum procedure itself, i.e. the lack of staff, the accumulation of old requests and the chaotic working conditions at Ofpra weren’t addressed after the regional divisions plan was abandoned.

22After the March 1986 legislative elections resulted in a cohabitation period under Jacques Chirac as PM, the DIR was abolished without substitution. The efforts towards higher economic rigour of the new government did not stop at the gates of Ofpra whose budget was reduced in 1986.61 Although the “rapport Décamps” conducted by the Foreign Ministry stated that, if the aim was to speed up the procedure at Ofpra and the CRR, for both institutions the provision of supplementary financial means would be inevitable,62 the government hired the management consultant company Arthur Anderson in 1987 to conduct another investigation.63 In opposition to the Décamps report, it favoured technical solutions over investments into Ofpra’s staff. The adoption of the report’s proposals reveals a newly evolving incentive for efficiency enhancement, managerial attitudes and expert commissions. Ofpra’s director Jean Brouste criticized the report vociferously64 and resigned in November 1988.65

23As the previous paragraphs reveal, government action on asylum remained highly unsteady and indecisive during the 1980s. This ambiguous period ended with the reforms of 1989 under Ofpra’s new director François Dopffer. Ofpra’s budget was increased from 52.9 million francs in 1988 to 142.9 million francs in 1990. Overall, the institution was modernized: the taking of fingerprints of asylum seekers and a new computerized system of documentation were introduced, the amount of employees was increased and a stricter separation between the administration of asylum seekers and recognized refugees was supposed to render Ofpra’s functioning more efficient.66 On a broader political level further measures were implemented between 1990 and 1993 with the abolition of the previously automatic work permits for asylum seekers in 1991,67 the introduction of sanctions towards transporters of undocumented passengers and the establishment of transit zones in airports between 1992 and 1993.68

24The proposals of the Interior Ministry during the DIR debates show that incentives to reduce migration inflows through the asylum system already existed during the 1980s. These proposals reveal an important pre-history to the restrictive measures implemented after 1989. However, financial considerations and arguments of the judicial branch and NGOs prevented the implementation of restrictive measures in 1985. This implies that the assumption of a unified government incentive to reduce migration inflows is oversimplified. Until the late 1980s, the increasing rejections were not caused by open government reforms. This suggests that more research should be aimed at factors impacting the administrative procedure. The next paragraph will therefore use the example of fraud cases to examine how factors “on the ground” caused an increasing sense of vigilance and demand of proof among Ofpra employees.

The detection of asylum frauds “on the ground” and the consequences

25The preceding analysis discredited the hypothesis that it was the implementation of restrictive asylum policies that caused higher rejection rates during the 1980s. Accounts which focus on the growth of suspicious attitudes on the administrative and judicial level are more promising, but they often remain vague or focus on later periods than the 1980s. The following section supplements these accounts by examining the example of fraud cases detected at Ofpra’s African division between 1981 and 1982. I do not argue that these cases represent the only reason why an increasing demand for proof evolved in the 1980s. Instead, the analysis provides one example of how an examination of factors “on the ground” can help clarify tendencies which only appear as vague assumptions in other accounts. By focusing on asylum seekers from Sub-Saharan Africa,69 the analysis risks to rigidify the association between this group and the detection of fraud. It should therefore be stressed that cases of fraud had also been detected in the South East Asian division without comparable effects. The 1977 report states that the South East Asian division had to cope with “fake documents, wrong declarations, dubious certifications, interventions and pressures” and explains that the organized procedures mean that compared to requests from other world regions softer criteria are applied to these problems.70 Despite the previously mentioned risks, the framing is necessary to show that the scope of fraud cases does not justify the association between asylum seekers from Sub-Saharan Africa and the “abuse” of asylum which evolved after their detection. What is more, this focus can reveal the discriminatory consequences Sub-Saharan asylum seekers had to face after the detection of frauds.

26Requests of African asylum seekers represented only a small percentage of all requests until the late 1970s. Until 1975, most of them were accepted. This tendency changed in 1976 when rejection rates increased to 77% which the yearly report explains by attempts of African asylum seekers to circumvent France’s regulation on economic migration. In the following years, requests grew from 869 in 1978 to 3,583 in 1982. Within these years of the strongest increase so far, most requests were accepted (61% in 1979 and 66% in 1980). Although rejection rates sank strongly compared to 1976, the tone of Ofpra’s yearly report stresses the difficulty involved in the treatment of these requests and claims that African asylum seekers “almost never deliver proofs and give free reign to their imagination” within their accounts.71 The yearly report doesn’t provide any indication of why most requests were accepted. A note of Ofpra director Fieschi of May 1982 provides clarification: it argues that the growing number of requests had been interpreted as the result of the social movement in Zaire in February 1979 and the following student protests in spring 1980 so that an “extremely generous position” had been taken towards these requests. When the first cases of fraud were detected in 1981, the rejection rate rose to 64%. It afterwards reached between 70 and 80% until 1985, between 80 and 90% until 1990, and 95% in 1990 when requests that had accumulated in previous years were treated.72

27According to the yearly reports of 1981 and 1982, cases of fraud started to be detected in summer 1981. In these cases, several asylum requests had been submitted by one person under different identities either because their first request had been rejected or with the aim to benefit several times from the Assedic and Caf allocations provided for asylum seekers. Fieschi argued in a meeting of the administrative council in March 1982 that 331 dossiers submitted related to only 125 persons.73 According to Ofpra’s 1982 report, 123 new fraudulent dossiers had been detected between March and December 1982. The report claims that 70 new cases were under investigation and estimates that around 500 fraudulent dossiers were submitted in total.74 The 1983 report does not include any further information on the scope of fraud cases, but states that “abusive cases clearly diminished” in 1983.75 Given that the yearly requests of African asylum seekers between 1981 and 1982 lay between 2,800 and 3,000,76 Ofpra’s estimation of 500 fraudulent dossiers in total in 1981 and 1982 would imply that of ca. 5,800 dossiers 8.62% included cases of fraud.

28The impact of the detection of fraud cases on the division can only be understood when considering the technical equipment used at Ofpra within this period. Until the late 1980s, newly submitted requests were registered in a manual file system. After the detection of fraud cases, this analogue system meant that long research was necessary to countercheck the dossiers in search of multiplied requests. The bad quality of the photographs further complicated the task.77 Between March and April 1982, the division was closed because of the growing chaos and necessary investigations in which two protection officers were solely occupied with assisting investigations into Assedic frauds.78 Mr. Barbero-Diez, a protection officer who started to work in the division in 1983, remembers that state services were present in the division over longer time periods who investigated dossiers of asylum seekers suspected of fraud.79

29The preoccupation of employees with the detection of multiple dossiers and the growing number of new requests caused that untreated requests accumulated strongly in this timespan. According to the 1982 report, 2,000 requests waited to be treated in the African division, in 1983 this number grew to 3,000.80 Marzal and Barbero-Diez describe that the increasingly long waiting periods for Ofpra decisions deteriorated the atmosphere in the division: since asylum seekers were frustrated about the waiting times and the office space at Aubervilliers only offered reduced space for the reception of asylum seekers, the situation often became tense. There were suicide attempts by some asylum seekers and several aggressive situations made division employees anxious.81 The described problems impacted how Ofpra employees perceived their work. A state report conducted in November 1982 argued that a “genuine psychosis of fraud” had evolved among the employees.82

30The detection of fraud cases thus represents one explanation of how restrictions in the treatment of requests could evolve “on the ground” without direct government involvement: while Ofpra’s direction described the high acceptance rate of asylum seekers from Zaire in 1979 and 1980 as “extremely generous”, it was in line with the way most requests were treated between the creation of Ofpra and the late 1970s. The yearly reports of 1981 and 1982 stress the necessity of a higher degree of caution regarding the authenticity of identity documents and the judgement of the credibility of accounts.83 Fieschi’s representation of the “problems caused by the growth of requests of African asylum seekers” during a meeting of the administrative council in March 1982 indicates that he strongly associated requests of African asylum seekers with the “abuse” of France’s asylum system after the fraud cases:

“The examination of 2,000 accumulated requests, of which 90% are probably from‘economic refugees’, has become extremely difficult because of the acrimony and arrogance of asylum seekers who often present themselves under multiple identities and nationalities.”84

31Given that in 1981 and 1982 the total rejection rate of requests of African asylum seekers lay between 55 and 65%,85 it is unclear on which evidence his assumption of 90% of “economic refugees” was founded. The assertion that asylum seekers “often” use multiple identities also seems overstated if the preceding calculation of 8.62% of affected requests is correct. The generalization concerning the “acrimonious” and “arrogant” behaviour of African asylum seekers illustrates the tendency to depict a complete group negatively after the frauds committed by a minority of its members.

32Nevertheless, the impact of the fraud cases should not be overestimated. It rather strengthened an already existing tendency towards vigilance and rigour. What is more, the director’s statements do not allow direct conclusions regarding the treatment of requests in the division. The nuanced analysis Matarollo, then supervisor of the African division, provided in the 1983 report shows that he didn’t share Fieschi’s assumption that 90% of their requests were economically motivated.86 A mono-causal relation between the detection of frauds and increasing suspicions of abuse should therefore be avoided. Instead, the intention to prevent new frauds incited a work ethic towards a just sorting between founded and unfounded requests according to objective criteria. Barbero-Diez remembers that:

“Like my colleagues I adapted my working methods to exercise more discernment to try to distinguish right from false and to treat a request through objective elements to be able to propose the most appropriate and equitable decision possible.”87

33Protection officers who started to work in the division now received a formation which included measures to detect frauds, and interview techniques were developed to guide the protection officers’ personal meetings with the asylum seekers.88 This suggests that a decreasing acceptance rate evolved because the standards for the granting of asylum were restricted and the procedure of the 1980s became more individualized. While the stricter methods occurred as a change to protection officers in the early 1980s, the new generation of officers employed in the following years (12 in 1984 and 75 between 1989 and 1990) started to work within the stricter procedure from early on.89 The social profile of the newly hired protection officers diverged from the previous generation: a majority of them had university degrees, worked with a stronger sense of professional distance than their predecessors and advocated a modernization of working methods.90 As Valluy observes correctly, in the course of the 1980s the French asylum system developed towards a higher degree of professionalization.91 However, it should be stressed that the working methods varied strongly between the different divisions until the 1989 reforms.92 The pace with which the change of working methods was adapted in other divisions was therefore uneven.

34Ofpra’s direction decided to apply the principle fraus omnia corrumpit to asylum requests implicated in fraud: refugee status was rejected to persons who had submitted multiple requests if the case was still open, and withdrawn if refugee status had previously been granted.93 The examined primary sources do not provide any information on how many persons were expulsed because of their involvement in the fraud cases. Only an analysis of decisions taken in the Interior Ministry and prefectures could provide further clarity on this point. However, because of the overall scarcity of expulsions, it can be assumed that many continued to live in France irregularly.

35Many African asylum seekers were indirectly affected by the fraud cases. The increased demand for proof meant that the criteria applied to their requests were stricter than in other divisions. The prolongation of waiting times caused that asylum seekers had often found jobs and started a family before a definite decision on their requests had been taken. If their requests were rejected after several years, most of them nevertheless settled in France permanently.94 Lloyd suggests that the hunger strikes of rejected asylum seekers and the “sans-papier” movement in the early 1990s evolved as the result of rejections of requests of asylum seekers who had been living in France for years.95 Her analysis implies a causal link between these social movements and the treatment of accumulated requests in 1989 and 1990. This development resembles trends in other EU member states with an increasing number of persons who live unregularized within these states after the rejection of their asylum requests.96

36The strongest consequences affected the treatment of asylum seekers on the prefectural level. The Interior Ministry reacted to the detection of fraud cases by sending a telegram to the prefectures in April 1982. It stated that “in case of doubt” asylum seekers from Zaire, Angola and the Congo should not be provided with an asylum seeker certification (récépissé de demandeur d’asile)—a document which acknowledged that the person had submitted an asylum request and entitled the person to a residence and work permit and to social benefits.97 A letter sent to the Interior Ministry by the prefect of the Rhône-Alpes department in July 1983 suggests that further instructions were provided during a formation in November.98 The prefects were advised to deliver asylum seeker certifications without the phrase “has requested asylum in France” if requests seemed dubious after police inquiries. Certifications without the phrase didn’t entitle the asylum seeker to provisional work permits and social allocations. Thus, the affected asylum seekers were neither able to work legally nor to receive state support during their asylum procedure.

37A letter sent to PM advisor Joinet by Ofpra’s director on the second of January 1984 indicates that the application of the Interior Ministry’s instructions were unclear: It complains about the prefectures in Strasbourg, Lyon, Marseille, Bobigny and Melun because they refused asylum seekers certifications if identity documents were absent, if the request was formulated after having lived in France for a long period of time or if the asylum seeker had reached France over a third country.99 Between April 1983 and September 1984, the Moselle prefecture even started autonomous investigations into whether asylum requests of 146 asylum seekers of the region were well-founded. In these investigations, 114 of 146 examined cases were judged as “impostors” because of vague and insufficient declarations during the investigations.100 The prefecture had no authority to reject requests which is why this procedure clearly overstepped the responsibility of the prefect. That the affected asylum seekers were referred to as “impostors” is suggestive of the way they were treated during the interviews.

38Overall, the procedure of the prefectures caused severe difficulties for the affected asylum seekers: if provisional residence permits were denied, they had to fear judicial sanctions for staying on the territory irregularly. In cases in which the phrase “has requested asylum” was omitted, they could not require any state support normally accorded to asylum seekers. Complaint letters of NGOs illustrate the caused problems: Amnesty International argued that questions of fake identity documents, which are often necessary to flee authoritarian states, were conflated with frauds committed by a minority of asylum seekers after entering France.101 Other NGOs complained that the affected asylum seekers were forced into a legal grey area without any possibility to afford housing, medical aid and nutrition and that some prefectures denied the prolongation of residence permits to asylum seekers although they had introduced an appeal at the CRR.102 Until the 1985 circular was implemented, several prefectures continued to apply a differentiated treatment to asylum seekers from Zaire, the Congo, Angola, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. These procedures represented a clear discriminatory practice: Frauds committed by a minority of asylum seekers were not only used to legitimize a more suspicious treatment, but also to deprive the affected persons of rights which were normally accorded to asylum seekers. Cases in which the prolongation of residence permits during CRR appeals were denied imply that some prefectures took autonomous measures devoid of any legal basis. In a letter of March 1984, even a representative of the Interior Ministry conceded that “in certain cases the worry to fight against clandestine immigration obscured the respect for the rules of asylum”.103 These cases reveal the dangers involved in the incitement of mistrust which was provoked through the focus on fraud cases: between April 1982 and May 1985, having “suspicious” national origins sufficed for being refused rights accorded to other asylum seekers.

Conclusion

39The preceding text offered a deep dive into the 1980s as a period of change in France’s asylum system. It first examined different explanatory models for the growth of asylum requests and asylum rejections. As the analysis of Ofpra’s yearly reports indicates, the intentional “abuse” of asylum developed into a powerful legitimization for the growing rejection rate in the early 1980s. Historical and sociological research offers opposing explanations, but often remains vague or focuses on other time periods. This article therefore analysed in detail which reform attempts were discussed by government representatives during the 1980s and how the detection of frauds influenced the procedure on the administrative level.

40I have argued that the main purpose of the reform project of the DIR was based on the “abuse” framework since it aimed at making “manifestly unfounded requests” less attractive. The discussed restrictive measures, like the suppression of the suspensive character of CRR appeals and the expansion of the authority of the prefectures, indicate that the debates can be considered as prehistory of policies that were implemented after 1989. However, financial considerations and the opposition of NGOs, the judicial branch and sections of Ofpra prevented the discussed restrictions and the 1985 circular supported the legal rights of asylum seekers. It can therefore not be assumed that the reforms caused an increase of asylum rejections which shows that more research on the procedure “on the ground” is necessary regarding the period preceding the 1989 reforms.

41The detection of fraud cases in Ofpra’s African division should be understood as one among other reasons for the increasing calls for vigilance in the asylum procedure. The percentage of fraudulent requests does not account for the fact that the rejection rate of requests of African asylum seekers grew from 34% in 1980 to 64% in 1981 and over 70% in the following years. Explanations which argue that the increase of rejections was solely caused through the rejection of “abusive” requests should therefore be dismissed. They neglect that most requests were rejected for other reasons than intentional abuse and fraud. Ofpra’s direction used the “abuse” rhetoric too broadly in several statements which contributed to the emergence of suspicions towards the entire group of Sub-Saharan asylum seekers. The detection of fraud cases contributed to the impression on the political level that France’s asylum institutions were losing control over the procedure. This should be seen in context of a general tendency identified by Zolberg: while the state-organized procedures of the late 1970s with their fixed monthly quotas provoked an image of order and predictability, the evolution of spontaneous requests during the 1980s appeared more threatening because less controllable.104

42I have argued that the detection of fraud cases represents one explanation of how restrictions could evolve without direct government intervention. The intention to prevent new frauds incited the demand for objective criteria to determine the validity of requests. The tendency to give asylum seekers the benefit of doubt, which was still identifiable in the treatment of requests in 1979 and 1980, was replaced by a more individualized procedure: a thorough examination of identity documents and written evidence were introduced next to interview techniques to identify contradictions in the accounts of asylum seekers.

43The statements of Ofpra’s direction and the treatment in the prefectures suggest that Valluy’s hypothesis of discriminations against non-European asylum seekers can partially be confirmed. However, the nuanced assessment of motivations of Sub-Saharan asylum seekers by Matarollo and testimonies of protection officers suggest that it was the growth of vigilance rather than the impact of colonial mentalities which increased the rejection rate during the 1980s. Clear discriminations existed nevertheless on the prefectural level. In these cases, the rights of asylum seekers were infringed because their origins were associated with frauds committed by a minority of their compatriots. These discriminations unveil the dangers of the spread of the rhetoric of “abuse”: if the fight against “abuse” develops into the primary focus in the reception of asylum seekers, the tradition of hospitality claimed by France as terre d’asile and, more importantly, the legal rights of asylum seekers suffer.

44The contrast between highly individualized asylum procedures in the Global North and overcrowded refugee camps in the Global South, as well as the rhetoric of “abuse” still characterise the politics of asylum today. The current relevance of the issue highlights how important it will be to approach it through research in contemporary history. From the perspective of European and Global History, more comparative research on the evolution of asylum systems and public debates on asylum would be a desirable objective. A focus should be set on how asylum institutions reacted to the growth of spontaneous asylum requests and the diversification of the nationalities of asylum seekers. This approach could evolve into an interesting pre-history to the Europeanization of asylum politics in the 1990s as well as to the current failing of European governments and the EU to implement a functioning asylum policy.