The terrorist attacks in which 17 innocents were killed in Paris between
Wednesday 7 and Friday 9 January 2015 will soon reopen controversies
about migration policies in Europe. To what extent are these attacks,
though, really linked to migration?
Were the three perpetrators of the attacks migrants? Well, their parents were migrants, from Algeria and Senegal. But the terrorists themselves were not migrants. They were French citizens born in France. They had what is sometimes, ambiguously, called an “immigrant background”. The same applies
to the French gunmen who committed killings in Montauban and Toulouse in March 2012 and in Brussels in May 2014.
Were the three perpetrators of the attacks migrants? Well, their parents were migrants, from Algeria and Senegal. But the terrorists themselves were not migrants. They were French citizens born in France. They had what is sometimes, ambiguously, called an “immigrant background”. The same applies
to the French gunmen who committed killings in Montauban and Toulouse in March 2012 and in Brussels in May 2014.If they were not migrants, were they connected to
the hotbeds of global jihadism through migrant networks? With
apparently one exception, they had all travelled to countries such as
Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But they were not using migrant
networks, i.e. networks which would have linked them to Algeria and
Senegal, where their parents were born. Instead, they were using the
same terrorist routes as other young French men and women, some without
any immigrant background, who were videoed by the Islamic State carrying
out multiple decapitations in Syria.The only migrant at the scene of the attacks in Paris was the hero: Lassana Bathily, a young Malian Muslim who helped 15 French Jewish hostages to hide from the killer. Terrorist attacks committed in France and Belgium by French-born citizens are not relevant to current and future immigration policies. They touch, instead, on the functioning of key institutions, from schools to mosques, to prisons…
http://blogs.eui.eu/migrationpolicycentre/terrorist-attacks-in-paris-and-migration-are-they-linked/?utm_source=MPC+Newsletter&utm_campaign=610e1c6564-MPC_Blog_1_13_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5739ea1f8b-610e1c6564-40560833
