Overview

• Mayors from rural and small-town France are increasingly frustrated with the transfer of migrants from Paris, linking it to pre-Olympic clean-up efforts.
• Serge Grouard, mayor of Orleans, highlights the lack of prior knowledge and support for migrants, who are left to fend for themselves after three weeks.
• French President Emmanuel Macron supports dispersing asylum seekers nationwide to counteract urban concentration and aid demographic transition in declining rural areas.
• Critics, including right-wing politicians and 80 French charities, denounce the transfers as 'social cleansing' and warn of introducing poverty and crime into traditional communities.
• France recorded over a million asylum requests in 2023, the second-highest in the EU, amid ongoing debates over its migration and asylum policies.