Names marked with an asterisk have been modified to guard identities.
Paris, France – When Moussa*, an undocumented development employee, joined a wildcat strike on the constructing website of Paris’s Adidas Area within the early hours of October 17, 2023, he hoped the protest would possibly result in him getting the papers he wanted to journey residence to Mali.
Since arriving in France in 2019, having first boarded a ship from Algeria to Spain, Moussa, 25, has not taken a single trip. After his grandparents died throughout his time away, he felt an urge to return and mourn together with his household.
For eight months, he labored on the enviornment, which has 8,000 seats and was being ready for the 2024 Summer season Olympics. Greater than 400 development employees operated on the website.
He was compensated with regular pay slips through the use of another person’s papers – a standard technique amongst undocumented employees. He was paid about 75 euros ($85) a day for gruelling 10-hour shifts on the enviornment – a charge, he stated, that didn’t embody transport bills, masks or different protecting gear.
Moussa’s bid paid off.
The employees occupied the location earlier than daybreak, blocked it off, after which negotiated all day. By the night, they’d a deal.
After intense discussions between Moussa’s employer, the town of Paris, the employees and their union, an inventory of 14 undocumented people who labored on the website was handed over to the French police prefecture, which offers with visa requests, to ensure that their paperwork to be processed.
They signed a framework settlement that might result in a residency allow and medical health insurance. It was signed by the town of Paris, the development firm Bouygues, and a number of other subcontractors.
However 18 months later, the dossiers have nonetheless not been accepted. Solely one of many 14 has been given an appointment on the Paris prefecture.
Various the undocumented employees are starting to wonder if the delays are by design.
“We didn’t ask for a lot, only a residency allow and medical health insurance card. It’s our proper. To this present day we don’t have the precise to work on this nation,” Moussa stated.
Three of the 14 employees and Rafika Rahmani, a lawyer for the CNT-SO union who focuses on the rights of expatriates, informed Al Jazeera that they submitted all the data requested of them greater than a yr in the past.
“We’ve payslips, we’ve got all the pieces. We’re taking part in by the foundations. However up to now, we haven’t had even a single summons,” stated Adama*, one of many builders. “We don’t know why the recordsdata are taking so lengthy. We’ve resubmitted them twice.
“It’s like being in jail in France,” added Adama, who has additionally struggled to seek out comfy housing. He sleeps in a room with 11 different folks within the japanese suburb of Montreuil. “It’s like if you happen to don’t have papers on this county, you don’t have any worth.”
Regardless of these challenges and his lengthy shifts in development work, Adama takes night courses to be taught French.
‘It’s revenge’
In January 2025, CNT-SO, which represents development and cleansing employees, collectively resubmitted 13 dossiers to the Paris prefecture.
“The recordsdata are nonetheless blocked, even though I’ve re-applied for these 13 folks,” Rahmani informed Al Jazeera.
She suspects that the dearth of response is a type of backlash, because the strikes unveiled poor working situations in France within the lead-up to the Olympics.
“It’s revenge,” Rahmani stated. “For them, the [striking workers] gave [France] a foul picture, even when it’s the fact.”
The mission developer and two subcontracting firms – which haven’t responded to Al Jazeera’s request for remark – have allegedly prevented some employees from returning to development websites, that means they’ve misplaced jobs and housing.
In response to Adama, not less than three colleagues haven’t labored since October 2023, and depend on charities to subsidise their meals and housing.
“We’ve info that the corporate using them didn’t reinstate them. It was a disciplinary measure towards the strike through which they’d participated,” Jean-Francois Coulomme, a consultant of left-wing La France Insoumise get together, informed Al Jazeera. “It’s a technique of ostracising these staff specifically.”
In February, Coulomme wrote to France’s inside minister through a authorities accountability mechanism on the “destiny of the recordsdata submitted to the Paris Prefecture”, demanding “the reputable regularisation of those employees”.
The letter stays unanswered.
“The world employees’ case is consultant of a systemic downside. It’s illustration of the truth that these employees are silenced as a result of [precariousness] of their administrative state of affairs,” Colomme stated.
The CNT-SO union and so-called Gilets Noirs, or Black Vests – a collective of principally undocumented migrants working to get administrative regularisation and housing rights for migrants in France – tried expediting the method by the town of Paris, as the town was one of many negotiating events.
“We’ve plugged just a few extra holes by going by the mayor of Paris, as a result of they’re the middleman between our contacts and the Paris prefecture. We wish to know what the state of affairs is,” Doums, a spokesperson for the Gilets Noirs, informed Al Jazeera. “At the moment, the state of affairs continues to be, let’s not say completely blocked, however a bit blocked on the stage of the prefecture.”
Colomme urged the Ministry of the Inside is stopping the dossiers from being accepted.
“The prefectures take their orders from the ministry. So so far as we’re involved, the prefects merely apply the directives of the minister in cost,” Coulomme stated.
Al Jazeera contacted the minister of the inside and Paris prefecture, however didn’t obtain a remark by the point of publication.
The initially swift response and negotiations are a typical response when a metropolis is scrutinised earlier than main worldwide occasions, however usually there isn’t any follow-through when the hype dies down.
“The state of exception that the Olympics deliver might be actually vital for leveraging features for employees,” Jules Boykoff, researcher and creator of the ebook Energy Video games: A Political Historical past of the Olympics, informed Al Jazeera. “The secret is to lock in these features whereas the recent glare of the Olympic highlight nonetheless shines in your metropolis. After that, it turns into rather more tough to benefit from that Olympic second to make guarantees to those employees.”
This may be an opportune time for folks to push for rights, however the Olympics and different main sporting occasions additionally open the door for exploitation, particularly for folks in precarious conditions like undocumented employees.
“This is only one extra egregious instance of benefiting from folks to create a sporting occasion that claims to learn the various however really simply advantages the few,” Boykoff stated. “The Olympics are inclined to highlight what we’d name surplus populations – whether or not we’re speaking about expendable athletes or expendable employees who make the Olympic spectacle attainable.”
Rahmani stated, “Throughout the strike, all these folks got here and made huge guarantees … These deputies and senators come to an indication or strike and make a dedication to regularise these employees, however ultimately, there’s no follow-up, they usually inform you that they haven’t any energy.”
‘This ideology is at the moment affecting our nation as an entire’
For years, France’s authorities has hardened its stance towards immigration.
In December 2023, the French Parliament handed a controversial immigration regulation that differentiates between foreigners “in a state of affairs of employment” and those that should not. The measure made it harder to obtain social advantages for out-of-work expatriates.
The brand new rules have performed out in workplaces.
Between 2023 and 2024, in accordance with official figures, the variety of undocumented employees who had been regularised dipped by 10 %. Deportations, alternatively, rose by greater than 1 / 4.
“This ideology is at the moment affecting our nation as an entire, with an instrumentalisation of the migration subject, which suggests we’re taking a completely utilitarian method,” Coulomme stated.
On the bottom, Doums stated the Gilets Noirs have noticed the identical phenomenon.
“The political state of affairs on this nation regarding immigrants and foreigners is turning into more and more difficult,” Doums said. Nonetheless, he insisted the collective would hold pushing for his or her rights. “We’re not going to cease there. Even after regularising the 14 folks, we’re not going to cease.”
