Children born to immigrants to Mayotte, a former colony turned overseas department of France, could soon be cut off the path to French nationality. This is not the first time the government has made different rules for the Indian Ocean islands.
Situated between Mozambique and Madagascar, off the coast of south-east Africa, Mayotte is some 7,500 kilometres from mainland France.
The gulf between them is about to get even bigger.
Interior Minister Gérald Darminin announced this month that the government plans to change France’s constitution to revoke the right to citizenship for children born to foreign parents in Mayotte.
That would make the island territory the only part of France where jus soli – the right to citizenship through birthplace, a principle that has existed in French law since the 1500s – does not apply.
“Such a law would pose a major problem for the indivisibility of the Republic,” Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche, professor of public law at Jean Moulin University in Lyon, told RFI.
Enshrined in France’s constitution, this concept is supposed to ensure that the same laws apply throughout the country, mainland or overseas.
But in practical terms, the rules in Mayotte are already different from those in the rest of France.
A history of difference
Mayotte's two main islands form part of a chain known as the Comoro Islands, which France colonised in the 19th century.
In the 1970s, most of the islands voted to split off into an independent country named the Comoros; Mayotte alone voted to remain part of France.
Despite objections from the United Nations, which urged France not to break up the archipelago, in line with international law, the government claimed the right to keep Mayotte.
The islands occupied a sort of provisional status for decades before becoming a full overseas department in 2011. In theory that meant its legal and social systems would be made identical to the rest of France.
But the country’s 101st department remained very different to the hundred that came before.
The islands are poorer than any other part of mainland or overseas France, with smaller incomes, higher unemployment, lower literacy and worse health outcomes.
According to national statistics office Insee, 77 percent of Mayotte’s 310,000 inhabitants live in poverty - five times the national average.
At the same time its population is growing faster than anywhere else, at nearly 4 percent a year, compared to 0.3 percent in the rest of France.
That is the result of a high birth rate and immigration, mostly from the Comoros.
Bound to Mayotte by historical, cultural, economic and family ties, the neighbouring country still lays claim to the islands, even as thousands of its citizens set sail for them every year precisely because of the different life they represent.
‘A department apart’
The minimum wage set by the French government in Mayotte is 1,335 euros monthly (over 400 euros less than in the rest of France). In the Comoros, one of the poorest nations in the world, the equivalent is 112 euros a month.
As Comorans – joined in recent years by people from mainland Africa – flee to the European outpost next door, Mayotte’s inhabitants have grown frustrated with the strain on already scarce resources.
That has translated into frequent and sometimes violent unrest, much of it directed against immigrants.
Tensions are especially high amid a severe drought that for months has left the islands with only intermittent access to clean water. For several weeks now, activists denouncing poverty, migration and gang crime have been blockading roads, bringing the islands almost to a standstill.
The government in Paris has responded by repeatedly tightening immigration controls, with rules that go above and beyond those in place in the rest of France.
As law expert Basilien-Gainche puts it: “Mayotte is already a department apart, with regulatory derogations and exceptional policies that limit migrants’ rights.”
Residence permits granted in Mayotte, unlike elsewhere in France, do not give the bearer the right to travel to other parts of the country.
Asylum seekers have less time to file their claims. People issued with a deportation order do not have the right of appeal.
And thousands of children have been detained after arriving in Mayotte without permission, a procedure condemned by the European Court of Human Rights that is rarely practiced in the rest of France.
Not all birthplaces are equal
In recent years the government has zeroed in on citizenship, insisting the prospect of a French passport is a magnet drawing immigrants to Mayotte.
Jus soli already comes with several strings attached in France. Children born to two foreign parents only qualify for citizenship as teenagers, and then only provided they have also lived in France for at least five years.
Rules for Mayotte were revised in 2018, and now at least one parent has to have resided on the islands legally for more than three months before their child’s birth for the child to qualify for French nationality.
This was the first time France had introduced a geographical distinction in its citizenship laws.
The Constitutional Council did not object to the law on the grounds that the constitution allows statutes to vary according to the “specific characteristics and constraints” of overseas departments.
The government wants to make its latest change to Mayotte’s citizenship rights via an amendment to the constitution, which bypasses the Council, but nonetheless involves getting approval from parliament, which is not guaranteed.
'Nothing to do with papers'
If it does go ahead, legal experts warn that the move could set a dangerous precedent, as politicians on the right and far right are already demanding that jus soli be abolished everywhere in France.
And people who work with migrants say birthplace citizenship is not the pull factor politicians imagine it is.
“It’s a misunderstanding of the situation and the law,” says Lisa Carayon, a lecturer in law at Paris 13 University who also works with migrant charity Cimade.
Even if someone moved to Mayotte illegally with the idea of having a French child, she points out, “their children would not be able to claim nationality until a very long time later, and in the meantime both they and their children are subject to arrest and deportation with no special rights by virtue of having given birth in Mayotte”.
While a significant percentage of children born on Mayotte have two foreign parents – 46.5 percent of 10,600 born in 2021 – most non-French mothers have already been living on the islands for two years or more before they give birth, according to the region's health agency. Only 11 percent of mothers arrive pregnant, it said in a 2023 report.
“What makes Mayotte attractive is nothing to do with papers, but the difference in development,” says Marjane Ghaem, a lawyer who works with migrant support network Gisti.
“These laws won’t do anything to change that appeal. It’s in the middle of an ocean of poverty, so even if Mayotte is extremely poor itself, it’s still attractive.”
Second-tier France
In Mayotte, the announcement did little to calm the situation.
Protesters were vowing to continue their blockades last week, insisting their priority was to see the end of the special residence permit that keeps immigrants from moving elsewhere in France, effectively binding them to the islands.
The Interior Minister has promised to abolish such permits at the same time as reforming the citizenship rules.
But demonstrators say they have learned from experience they cannot rely on promises from Paris.
“In Mayotte, we shout, we scream, we cry and we go on strike, but at the end of the day we always get swindled,” one 28-year-old protester told French news agency AFP.
Time and again the French state has relegated Mayotte to second-tier status, says legal expert Carayon, whether by setting the minimum wage and social benefits lower than in the rest of France or declining to guarantee the same rights.
She believes immigrants have become a scapegoat for institutional failings: “Can we now... finally recognise that Mayotte’s biggest problem might not be immigration, but the way that its people have for decades been marginalised by the government?”
