Highly-qualified French citizens from Muslim backgrounds, often children of immigrants, are quietly leaving France in a brain drain, seeking new opportunities in cities like London, New York, Montreal, and Dubai, according to a recent study.
The study, “France, you love it but you leave it,” published last month, faced challenges in estimating the exact number of departures. However, it revealed that 71 percent of over 1,000 survey respondents had left partly due to racism and discrimination.
Adam, who requested anonymity, shared with AFP that his new job in the United Arab Emirates has given him a fresh perspective. In France, “you need to work twice as hard when you come from certain minorities,” he explained. He expressed gratitude for his French education and missed his friends, family, and the rich cultural life of his homeland. However, he was relieved to escape the “Islamophobia” and “systemic racism” that led to frequent unwarranted police stops.
France has a long history of immigration, including from its former colonies in North and West Africa. Yet, descendants of Muslim immigrants who moved to France for a better future now report facing an increasingly hostile environment. They argue that France’s unique form of secularism, which bans all religious symbols in public schools, disproportionately targets Muslim women’s attire.
A 33-year-old tech worker of Moroccan descent told AFP that he and his pregnant wife are planning to move to a “more peaceful society” in Southeast Asia. He described his desire to escape the “ambient gloom,” where television news channels often scapegoat Muslims. Having grown up in Paris’s lower-income suburbs, he recounted the humiliation of being questioned about his presence in his own apartment building despite living there for two years. He found it particularly frustrating given his substantial tax contributions as a high-income earner.
Since 1978, a French law banning the collection of data on race, ethnicity, or religion has made it difficult to gather broad statistics on discrimination. Nonetheless, a 2017 report from France’s rights ombudsman found that young people “perceived as black or Arab” were 20 times more likely to undergo identity checks than others.
The Observatory for Inequalities claims that racism is declining in France, with 60 percent of French people declaring they are “not at all racist.” However, job applicants with French names still have a 50 percent better chance of being called by employers than those with North African names.
A 30-year-old Franco-Algerian with two master’s degrees from prestigious schools plans to move to Dubai for work, feeling that France has become “complicated.” Despite enjoying his job, the investment banker, son of an Algerian cleaner who grew up in Paris, feels he has hit a “glass ceiling.” He also observed a rightward shift in French politics in recent years, contributing to a deteriorating atmosphere where some pundits equate all people of his background with extremists or troublemakers from housing estates.
“Muslims are clearly second-class citizens,” he concluded. Adam, the consultant, remarked that the emigration of privileged French Muslims is just the “tiny visible part of the iceberg.” Reflecting on the current state of France, he expressed a sense of disillusionment, saying, “When we see France today, we’re broken.”
