Sans Papiers

Abstract

If the issue of work has acquired a high political profile in France over recent decades, the question of the sans papiers, of undocumented migrants and their potential place within the Republic, has become equally highly politicised. However, these two issues are rarely seen as being intrinsically connected, protests in favour of the rights of the sans papiers typically being couched in humanitarian terms, with little reference to questions of political economy. This is equally true of many filmic representations of the sans papiers, which reinforce this notion of sans papiers as victims deserving of humanitarian aid, rather than as active agents. This chapter draws on Emmanuel Terray’s notion of ‘délocalisation sur place’ or ‘on-shore off-shoring’ to argue for a better understanding of the role the sans papiers play within the contemporary French jobs market, epitomising the logics of flexibility, modulation, and precarity that now characterise its functioning. Armed with this interpretative framework, it re-reads a number of films and novels featuring undocumented migrants, uncovering the insights concealed behind their overt humanitarianism, insights into the interrelationships between undocumented migration and the shifts in employment analysed in earlier chapters.