Since immigration became increasingly a political theme in the 1980s, both left-wing and right-wing governments have issued several laws restricting the possibilities of access to French nationality.
[6] Historically, French nationals held differing sets of civil and political rights depending on their religion, ethnicity, economic standing, and sex.
The primary factor determining the privileges and obligations a person had was whether they were part of the nobility, clergy, or a higher socioeconomic level of the Third Estate.
This confiscation became gradually less frequent through the early modern period, with an increasing amount of exceptions granted to foreign merchants to encourage their immigration into the country.
France later negotiated treaties with many European states that exempted their subjects from this tax on a reciprocal basis in the latter half of the 18th century.
Universal education (the aim of the Jules Ferry Laws, 1879–1886) brought the whole of the population into contact with state-sanctioned version of French history and identity.
[10] The measure also extracted the nationality law from the French civil code and made it an independent text, as it had grown too large and unwieldy.
[10] Legislation in 1934, motivated by xenophobia, imposed burdens on naturalized citizens and provided the government powers to forfeit citizenship, which the Nazi-collaborator Vichy regime used widely.
[10] A 1945 post-war measure promulgated a comprehensive nationality code that established very lengthy and detailed rules to shield citizens from government whimsy.
[2] According to Giorgio Agamben, France was one of the first European countries to pass denaturalization laws, in 1915, with regard to naturalized citizens of "enemy" origins.
As early as July 1940, Vichy France set up a special Commission charged with reviewing the naturalizations granted since the 1927 reform[citation needed] of the nationality law.
[26] Due to the case which sparked national outrage, the Sarkozy administration announced that it would be taking steps to denounce some portions in the agreements with the Netherlands and other countries in 2009.
Initial cooperation was focused on the economy through the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation as a condition for receiving aid from the United States provided by the Marshall Plan.
The post-war political situation created the circumstances that facilitated the establishment of further organisations to integrate Western Europe along common social and security policies.
[28] French citizens participated in their first European Parliament elections in 1979[29] and have been able to work in other EC/EU countries under the freedom of movement for workers established by the 1957 Treaty of Rome.
[30] With the creation of European Union citizenship by the 1992 Maastrict Treaty, free movement rights were extended to all nationals of EU member states regardless of their employment status.
[31] The scope of these rights was further expanded with the establishment of the European Economic Area in 1994 to include any national of an EFTA member state except for Switzerland,[32] which concluded a separate free movement agreement with the EU that came into force in 2002.
[39] During the 2024 Mayotte crisis, French interior minister Gérald Darmanin announced that the Macron government would seek to rescind the right of jus soli for individuals born in the overseas department of Mayotte, following local concerns over illegal immigration from African countries.
Under French law passed after the Vichy regime, it is forbidden to categorize people according to their ethnic origins.
France's particular self-perception means that French identity may include a naturalized, French-speaking ethnic Portuguese, Italian, Spaniard, Pole, Romanian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Tunisian, Algerian or Moroccan.
Nonetheless, like in other European countries, some level of discrimination occurs, and there are higher unemployment rates among job-seekers with foreign-sounding names.