The theme of our debate today is quite large, so you can understand I won’t be able to touch all the topics concerned by the title of this speech . Each word of the title of this debate could be the theme of a very long discussion.
What is the working class ?
What are the meaning and scale of migrations today ?
What is racism ?
To start with, I’ll give you some basic data which may be useful for our discussion.
France is a country of 64 million inhabitants today. Among these 64 million roughly 28 million, so a bit less than half of the population, are considered as potentially “active “.
At least 14 million people can be included in the working class as opposed to the 150,000 capitalists who hire more than 10 people.
So today, France is an industrially advanced country, where the majority of the labor force works in the services sector or in the industry.
But this phenomenon is quite recent, historically speaking, because French farmers, countrymen, and craftsmen have resisted very strongly to the industrialization process.
This is why migrations have played an important economic, social and political role in France, for 150 years.
Why have migrations been so important in French history ?