“When I arrive in Tunisia for the holidays, I will smile at the migrants, it’s not much, but that they feel that we are not all the same”, promises Mayssa Ben Abdallah, a student in 22-year-old trader who is apprehensive about his next trip to his father’s country.

Since the death on July 3 of a Tunisian during clashes in Sfax between residents and sub-Saharan migrants, Tunisia has been plagued by racist violence, encouraged by the statements of President Kaïs Saïed. In February, the Head of State denounced the “hordes of migrants” whose presence was the result of a plot “to change the composition of the demographic landscape in Tunisia”. Since then, several hundred people from sub-Saharan Africa, including women and children, have been expelled from Sfax and taken to the Libyan and Algerian borders.

In France, the Tunisian diaspora, which numbered 328,200 people in 2022 according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee), is divided. Some condemn the violence against migrants, others their presence on Tunisian soil and support government policy, or even justify brutality against foreigners.

“Let them be sent back to the desert!” »

On the Belleville market in Paris, the lack of empathy towards migrants is glaring. “I’m sick of it!” “, hammers a man while arranging his goods. The man in his thirties, who did not wish to give his name, believes that the number of migrants has increased in Tunisia, rapes, crimes, and even acts of cruelty to animals have exploded. “Before, we reached out to them, now they rape women and they kill,” added an anonymous passerby. Denunciations without details or evidence but which shed light on the state of relations. “Let them be sent back to the desert!” “, concludes the latter.

For student Mayssa Ben Abdallah, the rejection of migrants would be a question of age: “It is true that part of the older generation holds the same discourse as the far-right French people. Mohamed Bhar, former coordinator of the Federation of Tunisians for citizenship on both shores, in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, unreservedly condemns the racist violence observed on the other side of the Mediterranean. On June 6, like every summer, he left for Ksour Essef, 200 km south of Tunis. A few days after his arrival, in a supermarket, “someone started saying that sub-Saharans are colonizing us”, he testifies.

“I’m very afraid of the holidays I’m going to spend in Tunisia, of the discussions that will undoubtedly divide us,” anticipates Franco-Tunisian psychiatrist and writer Fatma Bouvet de la Maisonneuve. “In France, the far right is expressing itself as we would never have imagined fifteen years ago, adds Wafa Dahman, journalist and teacher in Lyon. In Tunisia, exactly the same thing is happening. »

“Our African Brothers”

After the violence that followed the death of Nahel, killed by a police officer on June 27, part of the French political class made the link between immigration and riots. For some Tunisian immigrants, their country of origin repeats this pattern of stigma. “While Tunisians can suffer this situation in France, we Tunisians exercise the same on our African brothers? says Fatma Bouvet de la Maissonneuve indignantly.

Among those interviewed, Tunisia’s current economic difficulties are put forward as the first explanation for the racist drift. “With poverty, some people cannot find a piece of dry bread for three days,” says Ali Choubani, 80, sitting in front of a strawberry milk on the terrace of a Belleville café.

“There are queues to buy bread and there are shortages of basic products such as semolina or coffee,” continues Mohammed Bhar. Some reject migrants because of this, but it is only a justification, part of the population has simply fallen into the rejection of the other. However, within civil society, some have mobilized. Videos, filmed in particular in Sfax, show residents distributing water and food to migrants.

“Tunisians are also drowning in the Mediterranean”

Beyond politics and the difficulties of daily life, the business student recalls that the Mediterranean does not make a preference: “Tunisians experience the same thing towards Europe, they struggle and drown. While from January to May 2023, 3,432 Tunisians, including 864 minors, reached Italian shores, according to the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, each year dozens of young harraga (literally border burners) die in sea.

This violence occurred in a context of negotiation of “global partnership” between Tunisia and the European Union, which wants Tunis to strengthen its migratory controls.

The episode of racist attacks on migrants seems to have passed, but “no one will come out unscathed”, worries Fatma Bouvet de la Maisonneuve. “Here, I saw French people crying for young people from the suburbs. We cry for what we do to blacks in our country,” says the psychiatrist, “what will become of the woman who gave birth in the desert? Her child? The thirsty kids we left hanging out in the heat? All will have consequences, which we will not see. »