The French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced on Sunday in Mayotte the coming end of “droit du sol” on this French island in the Indian Ocean, facing a serious migration crisis and an explosive social and security situation. .
The 101e French department has been paralyzed since January 22 by blockages and roadblocks installed by “citizen collectives” protesting against insecurity and uncontrolled immigration.
“We are going to take a radical decision, which is the inclusion of the end of land law in Mayotte in a constitutional revision that the President of the Republic will choose,” declared Mr. Darmanin as soon as he got off the plane.
“It will no longer be possible to become French if you are not yourself the child of French parents,” he added, assuring that this will “literally cut off the attractiveness” that the archipelago can have when faced with a strong migratory pressure from neighboring Comoros.
“It is an extremely strong, clear, radical measure, which obviously will be limited to the Mayotte archipelago,” he added.
The right-wing MP for Mayotte Mansour Kamardine welcomed these “strong” announcements, while the French left was outraged.
The Socialist Party has already announced that it would oppose this revision of the Constitution. The head of the environmentalist list in the European elections Marie Toussaint estimated for her part that “ending land rights in Mayotte will not solve the difficulties of the territory”, but “damage[a] our Republic”, with a “demolition of our values”.
Slums
The poorest French department in France, Mayotte is populated by 310,000 inhabitants, according to INSEE (National Institute of Statistics) – probably much more according to the Regional Chamber of Accounts -, 48% of whom are Comorian immigrants or other African countries.
Most arrive clandestinely aboard traditional fishing boats, the “kwassa-kwassa”, from the Comorian island of Anjouan, only 70 km away. Many live in unsanitary “bangas” (huts) organized as shantytowns.
Mr. Darmanin and the new Minister Delegate for Overseas Territories, Marie Guévenoux, are due to visit the Cavani stadium in Mamoudzou on Sunday, where the settlement of migrants from Great Lakes Africa has crystallized tensions since the start of the ‘year.
Mr. Darmanin specified that the abolition of land rights in Mayotte, as well as the tightening of family reunification permitted by a law on immigration passed in December, will make it possible to put an end to territorialized residence permits, a system preventing holders of a Mahorais residence permit to come to France.
Its removal is one of the main demands of the groups of angry residents, the “Forces vives de Mayotte”, who, with roadblocks, have paralyzed traffic and disrupted the economic life of the archipelago for three weeks.
According to Mr. Darmanin, the removal of this system must be recorded in a Mayotte bill – announced for a long time and confirmed on January 30 by the new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal – which will be tabled in the National Assembly “in the weeks which are coming “.
“Angry Mayotte”
Several hundred Mahorais greeted the ministers in Mamoudzou with boos and shouts of “Mayotte angry”. Their procession immediately went to the prefecture, while scuffles broke out between demonstrators who tried to follow them and the police.
“Now we are waiting for something concrete […] We don’t have a deadline […] If it is done immediately, we will remove the roadblocks but we do not want just words,” reacted to AFP Zafira Ahmed, of the Force Ouvrière union and member of the “Forces vives”.
“The announcements are very encouraging but we are waiting to see the actions. All this will take time and for the moment, it will not change our daily lives,” explained protester Eirini Arvanitopoulou.
The Ministry of the Interior announced that it was preparing “a new major operation against delinquency and illegal immigration”, with Gérald Darmanin’s entourage referring to an “Operation Wuambushu 2”.
As part of Wuambushu, launched in spring 2023, hundreds of additional police and gendarmes had been deployed to stem the flow of arrivals of migrants from the Comoros and combat delinquency and unsanitary housing. But many residents found its results disappointing.