Protests over illegal migration have brought Mayotte to a standstill
Protests over illegal migration have brought Mayotte to a standstill
MANY Europeans feel their homelands have too many immigrants. In countries like Germany, as many as 15% of the population are foreigners. But on Mayotte, a small French island in the Indian Ocean with a population of 256,500, the share is more than half. Immigration has led to violent protests and a general strike, bringing the island to a standstill since February. Locals have begun rounding up suspected illegal immigrants, and the island is descending into chaos.

"Every night ten boats carrying at least 30 people arrive on our shores," says Mansour Kamardine, Mayotte's deputy in France's National Assembly. "It is absolutely intolerable." Many of those arriving are pregnant women. Every year, 70% of the 10,000 births in the island's sole maternity hospital are to illegal migrants. France's policy of droit du sol (birthright citizenship) means they are entitled to French nationality. French officials are considering making the hospital a non-French territory.

The Comoros islands, including Mayotte, were a single French colony until the 1970s, when the people of Mayotte, known as Mahorais, voted to split off and become a French overseas territory. Political turbulence and poverty in the other three islands, which became the independent Union of the Comoros, have since led thousands to flee to Mayotte. Comorians now make up 42% of Mayotte's population. Some have legal status; many do not.

The rate of immigration has risen since Mayotte became France's newest overseas department (DOM) in 2011. With the same political status as residents of mainland France, the Mahorais expected higher living standards and better infrastructure. Seven years on, joblessness, now at more than a quarter, has not fallen, but DOM status means more taxes. Prices are high: in 2015 living a mainland French lifestyle on Mayotte cost 17% more than in France. In 2014, the last year it was measured, the island's GDP per person, at $10,600, was the lowest in the European Union; 84% of its people live below the poverty line.

As elsewhere in Europe, immigrants have become scapegoats. But it is true that Mayotte's growing population is straining services. Hospitals are struggling to cope. Schools are "saturated", says Claire Petit, a high-school teacher. The current unrest began as a gang clash at a high school, which spilled over into a protest movement.

To its neighbours, Mayotte still looks wealthy. The island has 82 doctors per 100,000 people, compared with just 19 in the rest of the Comoros and 14 in neighbouring Madagascar. Yet the fed-up Mahorais are deserting their homeland in droves. Older ones head to the neighbouring French island of Réunion, but the young-including some 40% of 25-to-34-year-olds-are moving to Europe. "It is the only way for them to go to university, or to have a job," says Ms Petit.

Comorians in Mayotte do not have that option. They cannot even return home. In March the Comoros announced a refusal to accept the repatriation of its citizens. France is in a bind. "More naval boats, more police-that's the answer," says Mr Kamardine. But as in Europe, it is hard to stop impoverished people from seeking a better life that looms tantalisingly close.