Afghan immigration in France

Afghanistan has experienced violence, war and political turmoil for forty years. This situation explains why Afghans are among the largest refugee populations in the world. Between the communist coup in 1978¹ and the Russian withdrawal in 1992, Afghans, engaged in a strategy of survival, represented the largest wave of migration since the Second World War. The Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in August 2021 has once again forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans onto the roads. This includes those who benefited from years of Western presence: the middle class, people who collaborated with Western forces and NGOs, and women, unfortunately in too small numbers. The US withdrawal confirmed the failure of a policy that succeeded neither in defeating the Taliban militarily nor in bringing about economic, political and human development in Afghanistan. The main explanation for this failure was the choice of a strategy based more on the use of force than on support for development. Even though the Americans alone spent more than $2 trillion over their 20 years of presence, half of which went to military budgets,² this strategy did not pay off. In comparison, the Marshall Plan, designed to help European countries rebuild their economies between 1947 and 1951, cost the United States $150 billion (in today’s prices), less than 7% of the cost paid by the Americans for the war in Afghanistan.

‘10.9 million Afghans remain displaced, almost all within Afghanistan or in neighbouring countries. In 2023, the number of Afghan refugees increased by 741,400 to reach 6.4 million, reflecting new estimates from the Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan.’³ First they went to neighbouring countries such as Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, and then, to North America and Europe. For a long time, Iran and Pakistan took in 85% of Afghan refugees.

Iran still had 3,752,000 Afghan refugees on its territory in 2023, and Pakistan had 1,987,700.⁴ However, in Pakistan, Afghan refugees are assigned to certain parts of the country and specific jobs, and are denied access to education. In Iran, more than 2 million Afghans are in an irregular situation because their visa, residence permit or even their refugee card has expired.⁵ Everything is being done to restrict the Afghan presence on those territories.

Afghan refugees face similar conditions in Turkey, where there are about 300,000. Since the fall of Kabul, the Turkish government has been deporting thousands of refugees to Afghanistan on repatriation flights. All these repatriation policies have accelerated since 2021⁶ and have precipitated a growing number of Afghans towards Europe. In this context, Europe appears to be the place to go to enjoy better living conditions. This is all the more true given that 20 years of active Western presence in the aftermath of 9/11 have created ties that have, in turn, encouraged Afghans to come to Europe in particular.

Afghan migration has also been driven by economic hardship that the influx of dollars has failed to alleviate due to high levels of corruption among the Afghan elite, protected by NATO, and local civil servants. Today, Afghanistan’s GDP per capita remains one of the lowest in the world. It is a hundred times lower than the European average.⁷

2015 was a pivotal moment in the history of Afghan migration to Europe. That year, the European Union issued 2.6 million new residence permits, including many for Afghans. For a population of 320 million Europeans, the number of new residence permits issued was proportionally much higher than that of the United States, considered a major immigration country, with 1 million new permits issued in 2015 for 340 million inhabitants.

Since 2015, Afghan immigration to the European Union has both intensified and taken new routes. This reconfiguration led to the emergence of an access corridor to the European Union through Serbia. It was used by several hundred thousand asylum seekers, mainly from the Middle East and South Asia. Afghans flocked there, particularly those who saw Germany and the Scandinavian countries as a kind of ‘Holy Grail’.⁸

In absolute terms, the number of asylum applications from Afghans within the European Union has increased fivefold. From around 42,000 applications in 2014 to 2015, it rose to approximately 195,000 in 2015. It fell slightly in 2016, before dropping sharply in 2017. Those data suggest a strong correlation between the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s initiative to suspend the Schengen Agreement in 2015, thus opening her country’s borders to all those who wished to settle there, and the sharp increase in immigration from the Middle East, and Afghanistan in particular. At that time, the acceleration of Afghan arrivals in Europe was not linked to developments or changes in the situation in Afghanistan, although the continuing civil war, the start of the withdrawal of US forces and the intensification of Islamic State in Khorasan’s attacks may partly explain it.

Something else was at play. Overall, the situation had remained constant. It was indeed the ‘Syrian opportunity’, i.e. the flight of Syrians to Europe, that was the driving force behind Afghan asylum. The route to Europe was ‘opened up’ by the Syrian exodus, which created a geopolitical window of opportunity for migration that other populations, such as Afghans, were able to use.

This period thus saw the beginning of a migration to Europe via Iran, Pakistan and Turkey, which became transit countries to some extent, even though many Afghans continued to remain there. People left these countries as soon as they could to reach Western or Northern Europe. When they reach the European Union, immigrants have to apply for asylum in their first country of entry, then responsible for reviewing their applications and granting them asylum or deporting them to their country of origin. These rules were clarified by the EU Member States at a meeting in Dublin, hence the name ‘Dublin Agreements’.

Within the European Union, Afghan settlements reconfigure themselves in what is known in administrative jargon as ‘secondary movements’. A secondary movement is the movement of a person from the Member State responsible for an asylum application to another Member State. This phenomenon severely damaged the Dublin system during the migratory crisis of 2015 and 2016, as it disrupted the process of determining the Member State responsible and undermined the principle of a single asylum application within the EU.

These secondary movements also stem from another major weakness: differences in protection rates across the European Union. The protection rate corresponds to the number of people protected in relation to the number of those seeking protection under the Geneva Convention on the right to asylum. This rate is not harmonised across all Member States. In 2024 (two to three years after the fall of Kabul), the variation in the protection rate for Afghans at first instance ranges from 11% to 92% in EU countries.⁹

Since 2015, Afghan asylum seekers have been prompted to move to the countries offering the most favourable conditions. They have been able to do so in the absence of unified and homogeneous assessment criteria, a European list of countries of origin classifying their level of security and shared risk assessments of countries.

The rules laid down in the Dublin agreements do not prevent asylum seekers who have been rejected in one EU country from moving to another. As a result, many Afghans already present in the EU, in Greece but also in Hungary, for example, are turning to northern European countries. For example, while Hungary registered 46,000 Afghan applications in 2015, this figure fell to just 11,000 in 2016. This decrease can also be explained by the Hungarian authorities’ decision to close the Hungarian-Serbian and Hungarian-Croatian borders, while at the same time opening the Austrian-Hungarian and German-Austrian borders. Afghans in Hungary were then able to leave the country via the North. The closure of Hungary’s Southern borders led to an increase in crossings via Croatia. While asylum applications in this country were almost non-existent in 2015, they rose to 700 in 2016. However, these applications did not mean that migrants were giving up on continuing their journey further West and North, via Slovenia. From 2016 onwards, this country also recorded several hundred applications. But it was in the West and North that the phenomenon was particularly noticeable.

In Sweden, asylum applications rose from 3,000 in 2014 to 41,000 in 2015. Faced with this massive influx, the country reacted quickly by adopting restrictive policies: it curtailed the rights of asylum seekers, limited recognition of the need for protection, and stepped up deportations of rejected applicants.¹⁰ Border controls, reduced refugee rights, lower protection rates for Afghan asylum seekers and deportations to Kabul were among the measures aimed at deterring Afghans from seeking asylum.¹¹ The deterrent effect has been noticeable since 2016, with Sweden recording only 3,000 Afghan applications, confirming that there is a clear link between internal reception or closure policies and the number of arrivals.

The same is true for Denmark. In 2015, this country registered around 21,000 asylum applications. While the majority were Syrian, 3,500 Afghans were also among the arrivals. In 2019, the Danish authorities introduced a ‘zero refugee’ policy (the country is not a signatory to the Dublin Conventions). In 2020, Denmark registered only 1,500 asylum applications, and 860 in 2024, of which Afghans have virtually disappeared. Norway and Finland are experiencing similar developments.

The closure policy of the Northern European countries is causing a shift towards Western Europe. Not only are new entrants to the Schengen area no longer rushing to the Scandinavian countries, but Germany is also becoming less attractive. After Merkel’s ‘wir schaffen das’¹² that made Germany the first destination for Afghans, Afghan asylum applications declined from 127,000 in 2016 to 18,000 in 2017.

In this context, after Germany, France has been receiving secondary movements of Afghans since 2015. Until then, France had mainly been considered a country of transit, particularly to the United Kingdom, hence the strong presence of Afghans in Calais from 2016 onwards, before the dismantling of the Calais refugee camp.¹³ The United Kingdom’s attractiveness results from its historical ties with Afghanistan.¹⁴ The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that there were 79,000 people born in Afghanistan living in the United Kingdom in 2019. This figure rose to 85,693 in the 2021 census for England and Wales and to 116,167 in 2024. In 2024, nearly 8,500 Afghans applied for asylum there, representing almost 8% of the total. Since 2015, Afghans have been the most represented nationality among arrivals by ‘small boats’. In 2024, 5,900 arrived in England by this means. But unlike France, Afghan migration to the UK has been spread over a longer period. Between 1994 and 2006, around 36,000 Afghans sought asylum in the United Kingdom. Afghan asylum applications in France did not exceed 472 in 2014. This low number can also be seen as the result of virtually non-existent ties between Afghanistan and France. Although cooperation in the field of archaeology has existed since the 1920s,¹⁵ the most recent tangible link with France was our country’s participation in the military coalition between 2001 and 2012. However, against all odds, the number of asylum applications from Afghanistan rose exponentially from 2015 onwards. In 2015, 2,200 applications were registered. In 2016, there were just under 6,000 applications (5,989). In 2023, there were 17,550 initial applications, including 812 unaccompanied minors (UAMs), compared to 9,455 in 2018. In 2023, these accounted for 61% of all UAMs who applied for asylum. Afghans are the largest group of asylum seekers in France. More than 13,000 filed applications in 2024, surpassed only by the exceptional number of applications from Ukrainians, who now rank first among first-time applicants.¹⁶

While other European Union countries are restricting access to asylum, Afghan demands in France remain high, driven by significantly higher approval rates from the OFPRA (Office Français de Protection des Réfugiés et des Apatrides) than elsewhere in Europe, with the exception of Italy, where, however, reception conditions remain less favourable than on the other side of the Alps.

France’s more favourable provisions remain in place. In 2024, the average protection rate for Afghans in Europe stood at 63%, remaining very low in Sweden at 40%,¹⁷ but above 70% in France.¹⁸ It was this type of disparity that had already motivated Afghans to leave Sweden to try their luck in France as a ‘rebound’ country in the context of the secondary movements already described.¹⁹ Between 2018 and 2023, about 41% to 55% of Afghans who filed an initial asylum application in France had already filed one elsewhere in the EU, mainly in Sweden or Germany. This proportion fell to 24% in 2024.²⁰

In ten years, the community of Afghans living in France has risen to around 100,000 people, three-quarters of whom arrived after 2016. The number of adults alone with residence permits in France was 89,000 in 2024.²¹ By way of comparison, in 2015 the total number of protected people did not exceed 4,500 (4,397). In 2007, INSEE numbered only 1,600 Afghans on French territory.²² In addition to the current beneficiaries of residence permits, there are 10,376 people who were in the OFPRA procedure in 2024 and who will be issued with a residence permit in 2025 or 2026, depending on the length of the investigation. However, they are already present on French territory as they are in the process of applying for asylum in France. During the first five months of 2025, more than 3,000 Afghan adults registered as asylum seekers. Those data confirms that, in just a few years, a group of well over 100,000 people has formed on our territory.

Afghans are now among the top ten nationalities holding residence permits in France. Their number even exceeds that of Syrians holding residence permits, with twice as many Afghans, and that in spite of the deeper and older historical ties France and Syria have forged, following the French Mandate for Syria (1920-1946).²³

Afghans remain socially, culturally and religiously marginalised, as believers find little solidarity within a Muslim world dominated in France by North Africans.²⁴ Small and medium-sized towns as unexpected as Aurillac, Vannes and Colmar have a significant Afghan presence. This confirms the effectiveness of the asylum seeker distribution policy implemented by the public authorities through the national reception system managed by the Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration (OFII).²⁵ After obtaining protection, Afghan refugees remain in the city or department where the OFII had initially directed them for accommodation.

Those protected by the OFPRA automatically receive a four-year residence permit (for beneficiaries of subsidiary protection) or a ten-year residence card (for refugees). In theory, they are not required to sign the Republican Integration Contract (CIR), unlike other new residence permit holders, with the exception of Algerian nationals. However, in practice, the OFII systematically directs them to sign this contract, which gives them access to free French language courses and employment support.

This support enables to draw up a social profile of the Afghan refugees. Known as the ‘end-of-CIR review’, the review of their situation is especially useful to get a holistic view of this group, for it is carried out 12 to 18 months after their first contact with the OFII for the implementation of their integration contract.

The main characteristic that emerges is the low level of education and training within the Afghan group. More than 40% of those surveyed said they had never been to school.²⁶ Twenty years of ‘Islamic republic’ under Western influence have not significantly improved the education of Afghans, whether they come from rural or urban areas. In 2021, before the fall of Kabul, only slightly more than a quarter of the Afghan population lived in urban areas. Thirty per cent of children aged 5 to 17 were recorded as not attending school. The average age of Afghan asylum seekers (adults) in France was 27.4 in 2023²⁷ which implies that the moment they eventually started school was during the 20 years of Western presence. This therefore shows the extent of the Western failure to support development through education.

Nearly 19% of Afghans report having no more than a primary school education, and even a level lower than our primary school certificate, due to difficulties in reading and writing. And 10% cannot read or write in their mother tongue. Finally, 17% report having a level of education higher than the baccalaureate.

This has an impact on their social integration and access to employment. As a result, 18 months after they signed the CIR and the end of French language courses, 57% of them reported being unemployed.²⁸ This is largely due to the fact that only slightly more than half of learners of French as a foreign language reach level A1, which corresponds to a basic level of French. These figures justify the efforts made by the administration to help them. In 2024, 30% of the beneficiaries of the AGIR programme,²⁹ which aims to support refugees in accessing training, employment and accommodation, were Afghans.

Low levels of education and difficulties in learning the language suggest that, if data were available, it would probably highlight the significant difficulties of integration. However, such social data is not available in our country, as Afghans have been included in the general category of people from Asia in France Travail data.

Other countries, however, have implemented more detailed monitoring. In Germany, another country with a large Afghan presence with an estimated population of 425,000 people,³⁰ the unemployment rate among Afghans of both sexes was 30% in October 2024, six times higher than that of Germans (5.3%). It is as high as 53% among Afghan women. The employment rate for Afghans of both sexes – i.e. the proportion of those of working age who are actually in employment – is 42%, which is almost 30 points lower than the employment rate for Germans (71%). The under-integration of Afghan women into the German labour market is particularly noticeable: only 21% of Afghan women of working age are in employment, almost 50 points lower than German women (70%), which confirms the finding of a very strong cultural gap in this area and puts into doubt the idea that asylum flows could provide host countries with employable labour.³¹

A 2013 Pew Research Center study highlighted the difficulty of integrating Afghans, 99% of whom said they supported Sharia law and 85% supported stoning for adultery.³²

As with other nationalities, integration difficulties are made obvious and measured by involvement in public order offences. France does not have statistics available in this area, except that foreigners account for 25% of convicted prisoners, while they make up 8.2% of the total population.³³ German data show that, while Afghans accounted for only 0.5% of the population of Germany at the end of 2024, they were five times more likely to be charged with all offences recorded in that country in 2024 (2.3%). While some of this crime may be linked to survival needs or precarious living conditions, this overrepresentation is particularly marked for crimes and offences of a sexual nature. This may be partly linked to the difficulties in gender relations and the devaluation of women, a major cultural issue in Afghanistan.

In Germany, Afghans are 21 times more likely to be charged with sexual abuse of minors. They accounted for 10.5% of all such charges, compared with 0.5% of the general population; 16 times more likely to be charged with soliciting sexual acts from minors; 16 times more likely to be accused of pimping; 14 times more likely to be involved in the distribution, acquisition, possession and production of child pornography; 10 times more likely to be involved in violent offences against persons (‘crimes of brutality and crimes against individual freedom’).

Afghans are also over-represented in mafia-type crimes. They are nine times more likely to be involved in armed robberies against financial institutions (banks/savings banks); eight times more likely to be involved in ‘robberies in post offices and postal agencies’; and seven times more likely to be involved in ‘robberies and extortion of funds from/against cash transporters’.³⁴ This criminal reality leading countries to seek ways of deporting to Afghanistan those who have broken the hospitality pact through their actions, particularly those who are a threat to public order. Faced with this necessity, France had come up against a ban on returning Afghans listed as ‘S files’ to Kabul because they were Taliban. Only Germany has announced that it will circumvent this ban.³⁵

Between 2015 and 2024, 85% of asylum seekers were men. By comparison, over the same period, of the 1,064,946 people who signed a CIR, 47.81% were women. This finding further highlights the male dominance among Afghan immigrants.

Women account for less than 18% of all Afghans living in France with a residence permit. Gender diversity among Afghan asylum seekers was only seen during operations carried out between 2021 and 2022, after the fall of Kabul, as part of the APAGAN Operations.³⁶

However, there has been a certain increase in the number of women through family reunification. Family reunification concerns a person designated as a partner by the asylum seeker, which entitles them to join them after obtaining refugee status or subsidiary protection. Family reunification concerns a person who has been declared as a spouse after obtaining asylum; after gaining nationality, the reunification procedure involves granting the title of ‘French family’. Between 2015 and 2024, 1,398 people arrived through family reunification and signed a CIR, of which 601 through family reunification. Women account for 80% of this scheme. There has been an acceleration in family reunifications. In 2015, only 25 were recorded. Until 2020, the number remained below 200 per year. There were 479 in 2022, after the Covid period, 701 in 2023 and 1,094 in 2024. Finally, 410 Afghan women arrived in France as wives of French nationals.

This low number of women deserves to be analysed, especially since, according to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the National Court of Asylum (Cour Nationale du Droit d’Asile – CNDA), they constitute a ‘social group’ that is collectively eligible for asylum.³⁷ Of the 600,000 people of all nationalities currently under protection, women account for 41%. This is despite the fact that their migration routes generally pass through the appalling areas of Libya, Niger and, to a lesser extent, Tunisia. African migration across the Mediterranean is more mixed. For example, 46% of residents from the African continent, out of around 220,000 people receiving protection, are female residents. Some nationalities are even predominantly represented by women. For example, 70% of Ivorians are women. Admittedly, the protection rate for Ivorian men is low, which would explain this discrepancy.

There are more Senegalese women receiving protection in France (60%) than Senegalese men, and more Nigerian women (64%) than Nigerian men. It should be noted that ‘human trafficking’, which in this case essentially means being forced into prostitution by members of their own community, largely explains this over-representation of women.

Women account for 33% of protection beneficiaries from Asia, out of more than 235,000 protected persons, which is a lower percentage than for African migrants. However, despite this, the over-representation of Afghan men is surprising when compared to other countries in the same geographical area. Among the tens of thousands of Syrians in France, women account for more than 46% of the total, while among Sri Lankans, the figure is 37%.

The low number of Afghan women in France cannot be explained solely by the difficulties of the migration routes. It also reflects a deeply rooted mentality that continues to permeate Afghan men, even those who have sought refuge abroad. Although there have been attempts to improve the status of women in Afghanistan as part of a drive towards modernisation, these have been short-lived, with any gains quickly reversed until they disappeared completely in 2021. For example, the age of marriage for girls was set at 18 and polygamy was banned in 1928 under the impetus of Queen Soraya, wife of King Amanullah Khan (reg. 1919-1928), who did not wear the veil at all times. The education of girls was encouraged. It was also decided that girls would be sent abroad to continue their studies. These reforms were called into question in 1929 under the reign of Nadir Shah (1929-1933). He closed all girls’ schools, foreshadowing the measure just taken by the Taliban. A new era begun under the reign of Mohammad Zaher Shah (reg. 1933-1973) during which girls returned to school and women gained access to public office and various professions. In 1959, wearing the hijab was declared optional. Women were represented in the Loya Jirga, the traditional Parliament, and entered Government.

This policy of social equality, part of a Marxist-inspired agenda, continued under the Communist Government that came to power in 1978. Equal rights for women and men were enshrined in law. Literacy became compulsory for women. They were encouraged to work. Kindergartens were set up. Women drove buses and, more generally, worked in the public services. The presence of women in public life was contested by religious forces. Weakened by internal struggles between communist factions and no longer able to count on the support of Soviet troops, the Communist Government was toppled by the Mujahideen in 1996. This marked the beginning of the first Taliban regime. It was a period of total subjugation for women, accompanied by all forms of violence.

A strict separation between women and men was established. Women were not allowed to leave their homes without being accompanied by a mahram, a male member of the family. The new restriction imposed by the Taliban prevented women and girls from fleeing to the Pakistani border. Girls’ education was called into question. Women who disobeyed the rules in force were publicly flogged. Today, the measures are becoming even tougher, under the pretext that women’s emancipation is the result of Western influence imposed since 2001.

The Taliban therefore want to roll back the gains that have been made and return to the country’s long history of oppression of women. During the 20 years of republican rule that followed the fall of the Taliban in 2001, women’s rights were enshrined in the Constitution. Seats were reserved for them in Parliament. However, support for governments promoting a conservative vision of Islam, with the aim of appeasing both religious forces and part of the Taliban, prevented any real intellectual and cultural transformation in favour of equal rights for women.

Improvements in women’s conditions have been limited to certain sectors of society. Their continued illiteracy has been enforced with little internal resistance. For many men, the subjugation of young girls through forced marriage and polygamy remains a source of pride, both in rural and urban areas. The view that women are mentally deficient, inferior and must be subjugated to men remains widespread among most Afghans, including some women. Because of these deeply rooted preconceptions, men who leave Afghanistan today, for a variety of reasons but primarily economic ones, rarely consider bringing women with them, even though women are not allowed to travel alone. This explains the particularly low proportion of women among protected Afghan groups.

This low female presence has consequences in terms of integration, as experience shows that integration through family and the presence of children often accelerates socialisation mechanisms through emotional bonds. Young men who have been granted asylum find it difficult to integrate the norms of civility governing relations between men and women, which leads to a proliferation of incidents, some serious, some less so, which are reported in the news. It is not easy to form legitimate emotional relationships when significant cultural differences come into play.