Interpreting Immigration Laws: "Crimes of Hospitality" or "Crimes against Hospitality"

Diaspora 8:3 1999 Interpreting Immigration Laws: "Crimes of Hospitality" or "Crimes against Hospitality" Mireille Rosello Northwestern University In a recent book entitled L'injustifiable: les politiques françaises de l'immigration, Monique Chemillier-Gendreau writes, Par le renforcement aveugle et continu de leur politique répressive à l'égard des immigrés, les ministres de l'Intérieur successifs ont contribué à éliminer l'hospitalité du champ des vertus françaises. Ils ont rendu possible l'effroyable expression "délit d'hospitalité," osant ainsi faire basculer dans la catégorie des actes condamnables ce qui était une valeur à préserver , à encourager. (8) [Through the continual and short-sighted enforcement of repressive anti-immigrant politics, one Minister of the Interior after another has contributed to eliminating hospitality from the list of French virtues. They have allowed the coinage of the terrifying phrase "crime of hospitality," thus daring to push a value that should be preserved and encouraged into the category of reprehensible acts.]1 But what exactly is Chemillier-Gendreau denouncing? If she accuses the French government of having betrayed a mythical image of a hospitable France capable of welcoming foreigners and asylum seekers, aren't unconvinced readers going to object that the concept of "hospitality" is too vague to describe, simultaneously, a national "virtue" and a specific immigration politics driven largely by economic forces? In this passage, the author does not propose a revised definition of "hospitality": we are expected to know what hospitality means, to agree that the government's politics amounts to turning hospitality into a reprehensible act. And, while I happen to share Chemillier-Gendreau's indignation and agree with the political analysis outlined in her book, I propose to distinguish between "hospitality" and the contemporary manifestations of this "virtue": what I would like to do in this article is to analyze the very specific ways in which the most recent French immigration laws have not only launched a whole debate on national hospitality but, more Diaspora 8:3 1999 importantly, influenced the practices ofanonymous individuals who have found that inviting a foreigner can turn into a very serious moral, but also political and legal, gesture.2 In the summer of 1996, during what was dubbed the "affaire des sans-papiers de Saint Bernard," approximately 300 African men and women occupied several Parisian public spaces, including the Saint-Bernard church, and defied the government for months, determined to impose their own narrative of their situation. The high profile of the "sans-papiers" movement was due to intensive media coverage during the summer of 1996, and also to the involvement of an interdisciplinary team of intellectuals, the "collège des médiateurs" (mediators' committee), whose attempts to find a long-term solution were eventually thwarted by the government, which ordered the brutal evacuation of the church by riot police on 23 August 1996.3 By February 1997, although "l'affaire des sans-papiers de SaintBernard " had disappeared from the headlines months before, the image of the riot police breaking down the door of a church with axes had been broadcast several times by all the major audiovisual channels, and the pictures lingered in French memory. Suddenly, a new, highly visible episode was added to the list ofpolitical events that force citizens to reflect on the relationship between their own private practices and immigration laws. This time, one single individual was on the spot, and she was a French citizen. Here is how Le Nouvel Observateur told the story, a few weeks after Jacqueline Deltombe's arrest: Le crime de Jacqueline Deltombe : elle avait hébergé, dans le F5 qu'elle partage à Villeneuve-d'Ascq avec son concubin zaïrois, sa fille et ses deux nièces, l'une de ses amies, Hélène Herbaut, et le compagnon d'Hélène, Tony M'Bongo Bongolo, lui aussi zaïrois, "en situation irrégulière." Ce qui, selon l'ordonnance du 2 novembre 1945, modifiée par la loi Pasqua relative à l'immigration du 24 août 1993, l'expose à une peine de cinq ans de prison et à une amende de 200 000 francs. Oui, cinq ans de prison pour avoir omis de demander ses papiers à un étranger de...