Chômage, immigration, et réforme: Evaluating unemployment in Emmanuel Macron’s France

Plan Author

  • Jonathan Bork, 2019

Fields of Concentration

Sample Courses

  • Course: Rage Against the Machine: Populist Politics in the Age of Trump and Brexit
  • Course: French Cultural Journal
  • Tutorial: Mathematics for Economists
  • Tutorial: The History of Capitalism

Faculty Sponsors

Outside Evaluator

  • Thomas Breda, Paris School of Economics

Overview

The first section of my Plan is my independent, which consists of the completion of the Diplôme d’études en langue française (DELF) French-language certification exam at the ​tout public B2 level, as well as an assessment of the work I have done in preparation for the exam. The second portion of my Plan, which is written in French, is an analysis of Emmanuel Macron’s recent set of reforms, notably his 2017 reform of the ​Code du travail​, and their implications on the French labor market. The third portion of my Plan is an analysis of immigration’s effect on unemployment in Europe (2000-2017) and in France (1984-2016). For my WSP internship, I spent 7 months

The first section of my Plan is my independent, which consists of the completion of the Diplôme d’études en langue française (DELF) French-language certification exam at the ​tout public B2 level, as well as an assessment of the work I have done in preparation for the exam. The second portion of my Plan, which is written in French, is an analysis of Emmanuel Macron’s recent set of reforms, notably his 2017 reform of the ​Code du travail​, and their implications on the French labor market. The third portion of my Plan is an analysis of immigration’s effect on unemployment in Europe (2000-2017) and in France (1984-2016). For my WSP internship, I spent 7 months

Excerpts

Ces réformes apportent d’importantes changements au marché du travail, dans le but de remédier au taux de chômage tenace du pays. En évaluant ​les réformes mises en place sous la présidence d’Emmanuel Macron​, nous tenterons de répondre aux questions suivantes : ces réformes vont-elles créer à long terme des emplois sécurisés et de qualité pour la population française? Les ordonnances Macron marquent-elles une véritable modernisation du Code du travail qui rompt avec ​les précédentes réformes jusqu’alors insuffisantes ? Soutiendront-elles de manière adéquate ​les travailleurs précaires, par exemple les jeunes et les immigrés?

The findings of this work challenge the notion that immigration has been responsible for increases in the unemployment rates of European countries and of France in particular. For the EU, Norway, and Iceland, the log-log multiple regression model used by Ortiz et al. (2015) has been expanded in order to evaluate the period 2000-2017. This research demonstrates that for each year-pair in this range, the immigration rate (imm) coefficient is negative, meaning that there is no evidence to suggest that increased rates of immigration to EU region countries causes increased unemployment rates. Furthermore, all but three of these year-pairs is significant at a 95% confidence level, meaning that for these years an increase in the immigration rate is correlated with a decrease in the unemployment rate in these countries.

Reflections

I was inspired to a large extent by attending protests, reading political posters and graffiti, and talking to people during my seven-month WSP internship in Paris. I worked with documentarian Viviane Candas in Paris in 2018. This work focused on the Algerian war of independence from France, highlighting the lost stories of Algerian militants killed during the war.

In my tutorial, “Le droit du travail en France,” Frederique and I explored the history of labor law reforms in France as well as the details of the recent reforms of Emmanuel Macron. Taught in French, this tutorial served as a basis of understanding of French labor law which allowed for my critique of such reforms in one of my Plan papers.

I have been admitted to the MSc Political Economy of Europe program at the London School of Economics (LSE) for the 2019-20 year. I plan on accepting this offer, which aligns closely to the work I have been pursuing during my time at Marlboro. It is this work I equally hope to pursue as a career.