French Immigration and Family Law during the 1970s

During the 1970s, French family law underwent what one legal scholar has described as a “quiet revolution.”  The Civil Code’s articles on marriage, adoption, divorce, and filiation – some of which had not been touched since they were first established in 1804 – were radically transformed.  As the legislators who put forward the reform explained, the Civil Code needed to be “updated,” rejuvenated, so that it could reflect and accommodate the real families of that time.  For those opposed to these reforms, family law needed on the contrary to establish timeless universals that could provide a normative anchor for individuals and for society as a whole. 

Just as family law was being rethought, immigration law was also rapidly changing.  In 1974, the French government decided to close the nation’s borders and to suspend all immigration.  Two years later, it decided to make an exception for family-based immigration, also known as regroupement familial, under the pretext that having a family was a fundamental right.  Many of the experts and the administrative bodies that advised the government on these immigration reforms were the same who had advised it on the family law reforms. 

This paper examines these two sets of laws in conjunction to ask how immigration and the family were both integral and complementary to reimagine the French nation during those years.