A French “Windrush”? What France did to its overseas populations
The Windrush scandal continues to make headlines in the United Kingdom. The British public is outraged to discover the appalling way in which Caribbean Commonwealth workers were treated.
Antonia Wimbush, University of Montpellier
Eloa Prod 2018
Encouraged to come to Britain after World War II to alleviate labor shortages, they are now threatened with deportation if they cannot prove they have the right to reside there. What is less well known is that France also experienced these waves of postwar immigration.
From 1963 to 1982, 160,000 men and women from the French West Indies, French Guiana, and Réunion were actively recruited, trained, and sent to mainland France to work in construction, healthcare, and administration. Although legally French, they were treated as second-class citizens.
A report that went unnoticed
On April 10, 2018, under the auspices of the Ministry of Overseas Territories, sociologist Philippe Vitale published a report highlighting the history of children from Réunion sent to mainland France between 1963 and 1982, and the treatment they were subjected to.
Although this report does not exonerate the French government from the role it played in removing these young children from their families and sending them to the mainland, it minimizes the state's involvement and portrays Réunion as a region with no future, economically underdeveloped.
Curiously, this report went virtually unnoticed in the French media, both in mainland France and overseas.
Why? And, at a time when the Windrush scandal is rocking the United Kingdom, what significance does this document have for France? To fully understand what it means for the 2,015 French citizens and their families affected by this scandal, we need to take a look back at the turbulent history of French colonial policy.
Former colonies in turmoil
The post-war years were difficult for the former French colonies. Combined with a rise in the birth rate, unemployment continued to grow, and more and more young people found themselves out of work.
As unemployment rose, the population lost faith in the political system in place. Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, and French Guiana went from being French colonies to overseas departments following the departmentalization law of March 19, 1946, which granted them French citizenship and the same rights as those in mainland France.
However, for many, this change in status made virtually no difference. Rebellion was brewing, and the French government feared that the overseas departments would demand independence.
At the same time, the metropolis, in the midst of the economic boom of the Trente Glorieuses, was in desperate need of labor.
An office for overseas citizens seeking to immigrate
To resolve this delicate situation, Michel Debré, the French Prime Minister at the time, created the Office for the Development of Migration in Overseas Departments (BUMIDOM) in April 1963, following on from an existing political will in France.
The aim was to recruit young people (especially women) to come and work in mainland France. Over a period of nearly 20 years, 160,000 workers emigrated to the continent. Women were encouraged to immerse themselves in more "modern" family values (i.e., those of "white" French people) and to spread them upon their return.
Each immigration candidate had to undergo a physical examination and personality tests to prove their ability to adapt to French life. Although legally French, these migrants were not treated as such because of the color of their skin.
Their command of French was assessed, along with their family and professional backgrounds, and then they received a one-way ticket to mainland France, paid for by the government.
Men on construction sites, women as domestic workers
Some were hired as soon as they arrived, in construction or administration; others were sent to training centers. Women were sent to Crouy-sur-Ourcq, in the Paris region, where they learned to cook French dishes and run a household, before being employed in the healthcare sector or as domestic workers.
The men went to Simandres (Rhône) or Marseille. However, from 1982 onwards, the French economy began to show signs of stagnation. The Bumidom slowed down its activities and priority was given to family reunification rather than the recruitment of new workers.
Eloa Prod, 2018
Although for some, the Bumidom represented an opportunity for social advancement and financial independence, others experienced this migration as a "deportation," in the words of writer and politician Aimé Césaire.
The most extreme case of deportation took place in Réunion, with the tragedy of the "Children of Creuse." From 1962 to 1984, more than 2,000 children (some orphans, others not) were forcibly removed from their homes and taken to mainland France to repopulate declining rural areas. The Creuse region, in particular, had an aging population: every year, some 3,000 young people left to settle in large cities to find work. It was therefore to this region that the majority of children were sent.
Generation Bumidom, Jacob Desvarieux, singer with the band Kassav, speaks out, France Ô.
“It is not enough to create museums.”
The tragic fate of these children, who were often victims of mistreatment, abuse, and violence, went largely unnoticed until the early 2000s, when some of them took legal action against the French state, seeking financial compensation and official recognition of the trauma they had suffered.
For [Michel Calteau](https://www.temoignages.re/social/droits-humains/le-combat-continue-pour-la-reparation-du-crime-des-enfants-de-la-creuse,92849)(https://www.temoignages.re/social/droits-humains/le-combat-continue-pour-la-reparation-du-crime-des-enfants-de-la-creuse,92849),spokesperson for the Collectif Enfants 3D association (which helps victims of this trauma), it is not enough to create museums and memorials or to establish a national day of remembrance, as suggested in Philippe Vitale's report.
The French government has announced that it will provide financial assistance to victims in the form of free plane tickets to Réunion, but it is unclear whether victims will find this measure satisfactory.
The immigration office in question
The role of Bumidom, which took care of children and adults sent to mainland France, is now at the heart of the debate.
In 2018, several cultural productions dealing with this office and its impact on the populations concerned were released in French-speaking countries. Recently, the television film Le Rêve français, directed by Christian Faure, was broadcast on France 2 in March.
Maryse Condé, one of the most prolific writers in the French West Indies, offers the following critique:
“This film, commissioned by France 2 and the public service, contains two significant bold moves. The first is that it does not separate the history of the overseas departments. It does not separate Guadeloupe from Martinique, as if the two quarrelsome twins had finally admitted that their fate was intertwined. The second is that it does not separate these territories from France either. The characters come and go, arrive and linger as if it were a single entity with identical boundaries. This is undoubtedly a way of suggesting the close, albeit often conflictual, ties that unite the "departments" with "their metropolis," because for the filmmakers, the Antilles are clearly not entirely separate lands.
A graphic novel was also published in 2017. Written by Jessica Oublié and illustrated by Marie-Ange Rousseau, [Péyi an nou](https://peyiannou.wordpress.com/) ("Our country" in Creole) tells the story of Jessica Oublié's family.
In April 2018, the work won the Political Book Award presented by France Culture to the best political comic book.
While popular culture and literature are finally exposing the dark role played by the Bumidom, the French government is still far from doing so. It must urgently acknowledge the extent of the state's responsibility (particularly in the case of Réunion) if it wants to avoid a scandal on the scale of the Windrush affair.
Indeed, beyond the borders of the French-speaking world, this government-organized migration remains largely unknown.
Like the Windrush generation, immigrants recruited by the Bumidom helped rebuild France after the war. They also suffered discrimination because of their ethnic and cultural origins. It is time to thank them and pay them a dignified tribute.
Translated from English by Iris Le Guinio for Fast for Word.
Antonia Wimbush, Early-career researcher (Francophone studies) & English tutor, University of Montpellier
The original version of this article was published on The Conversation.