“They work here, they live here, they stay here!”
French immigrants strike for the right to work—and win.
France has an estimated half-million undocumented immigrants (8% of the population, compared to 4% in the United States), including many from France’s former colonies in Africa. The sans-papiers (literally, “without papers”), as the French call them, lead a shadowy existence, much like their U.S. counterparts. And as U.S. immigrants did in 2006 with rousing mass demonstrations, the French undocumented have recently taken a dramatic step out of the shadows. But the sans-papiers did it in a particularly French way: hundreds of them occupied their workplaces. Read More »
