France

Noting that remittances by migrants totaled more than the national development aid budget, French immigration minister Eric Besson endorsed an agreement Wednesday between money-transfer company MoneyGram International and local French firms.

The agreement aims to expand fund-transfer services to tobacco shops, the largest network of sales points in France that already sell such products as top-up cards for mobile phones and tickets for the bus and metro.

From January 2008 to July 2009 around 1,500 migrant children arrived without a care-giver or parent at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and were denied entry. Physically present within France’s geographical borders, but yet not “in” France according to French law, these children were detained by police in the so-called airport transit zone.

Download this new report by Human Rights Watch here.

The main aim of this publication - edited and produced by December 18 on behalf of the European Platform for Migrant Workers Rights - is to assess the emerging Common European Migration Policy, with a special emphasis on labour migration and integration, both in terms of policies and legislation as well with respect to their actual implementation. The latter is crucially important since the respect for rights at the formal level does not automatically result in their accessibility at the practical level.