Promises made in Paris Olympics run-up broken, say undocumented workers

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Names marked with an asterisk have been changed to protect identities.

Paris, France – When Moussa*, an undocumented construction worker, joined a wildcat strike at the building site of Paris’s Adidas Arena in the early hours of October 17, 2023, he was hoping the protest might lead to him getting the papers he needed to travel home to Mali.

Since arriving in France in 2019, having first boarded a boat from Algeria to Spain, Moussa, 25, has not taken a single vacation. After his grandparents died during his time away, he felt an urge to return and mourn with his family.

For eight months, he worked at the arena, which has 8,000 seats and was being prepared for the 2024 Summer Olympics. More than 400 construction workers operated at the site.

He was compensated with normal pay slips by using someone else’s papers – a common strategy among undocumented workers. He was paid about 75 euros ($85) a day for gruelling 10-hour shifts at the arena – a rate, he said, that did not include transport expenses, masks or other protective gear.

Moussa’s bid paid off.

The workers occupied the site before dawn, blocked it off, and then negotiated all day. By the evening, they had a deal.

After intense discussions between Moussa’s employer, the city of Paris, the workers and their union, a list of 14 undocumented individuals who worked at the site was handed over to the French police prefecture, which deals with visa requests, in order for their paperwork to be processed.

They signed a framework agreement that would lead to a residency permit and health insurance. It was signed by the city of Paris, the construction company Bouygues, and several subcontractors.

But 18 months later, the dossiers have still not been approved. Only one of the 14 has been given an appointment at the Paris prefecture.

A number of the undocumented workers are beginning to wonder whether the delays are by design.

“We didn’t ask for much, just a residency permit and health insurance card. It’s our right. To this day we don’t have the right to work in this country,” Moussa said.

Three of the 14 workers and Rafika Rahmani, a lawyer for the CNT-SO union who focuses on the rights of expatriates, told Al Jazeera that they submitted all the information requested of them more than a year ago.

“We have payslips, we have everything. We’re playing by the rules. But so far, we haven’t had even a single summons,” said Adama*, one of the builders. “We have no idea why the files are taking so long. We’ve resubmitted them twice.

“It’s like being in prison in France,” added Adama, who has also struggled to find comfortable housing. He sleeps in a room with 11 other people in the eastern suburb of Montreuil. “It’s like if you don’t have papers in this county, you don’t have any value.”

Despite these challenges and his long shifts in construction work, Adama takes evening classes to learn French.

‘It’s revenge’

In January 2025, CNT-SO, which represents construction and cleaning workers, collectively resubmitted 13 dossiers to the Paris prefecture.

“The files are still blocked, despite the fact that I’ve re-applied for these 13 people,” Rahmani told Al Jazeera.

She suspects that the lack of response is a form of backlash, as the strikes unveiled poor working conditions in France in the lead-up to the Olympics.

“It’s revenge,” Rahmani said. “For them, the [striking workers] gave [France] a bad image, even if it’s the reality.”

The project developer and two subcontracting companies – which have not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment – have allegedly prevented some workers from returning to construction sites, meaning they have lost jobs and housing.

According to Adama, at least three colleagues have not worked since October 2023, and rely on charities to subsidise their food and housing.

“We have information that the company employing them did not reinstate them. It was a disciplinary measure against the strike in which they had participated,” Jean-Francois Coulomme, a representative of left-wing La France Insoumise party, told Al Jazeera. “It’s a strategy of ostracising these employees in particular.”

In February, Coulomme wrote to France’s interior minister via a government accountability mechanism on the “fate of the files submitted to the Paris Prefecture”, demanding “the legitimate regularisation of these workers”.

The letter remains unanswered.

“The arena workers’ case is representative of a systemic problem. It’s a good illustration of the fact that these workers are silenced due to the [precariousness] of their administrative situation,” Colomme said.

The CNT-SO union and so-called Gilets Noirs, or Black Vests – a collective of mostly undocumented migrants working to get administrative regularisation and housing rights for migrants in France – tried expediting the process through the city of Paris, as the city was one of the negotiating parties.

“We’ve plugged a few more holes by going through the mayor of Paris, because they’re the intermediary between our contacts and the Paris prefecture. We want to know what the situation is,” Doums, a spokesperson for the Gilets Noirs, told Al Jazeera. “Today, the situation is still, let’s not say totally blocked, but a bit blocked at the level of the prefecture.”

Colomme suggested the Ministry of the Interior is preventing the dossiers from being approved.

“The prefectures take their orders from the ministry. So as far as we’re concerned, the prefects simply apply the directives of the minister in charge,” Coulomme said.

Al Jazeera contacted the minister of the interior and Paris prefecture, but did not receive a comment by the time of publication.

The initially swift response and negotiations are a typical reaction when a city is scrutinised before major international events, but often there is no follow-through when the hype dies down.

“The state of exception that the Olympics bring can be really important for leveraging gains for workers,” Jules Boykoff, researcher and author of the book Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics, told Al Jazeera. “The key is to lock in those gains while the hot glare of the Olympic spotlight still shines in your city. After that, it becomes much more difficult to take advantage of that Olympic moment to make promises to these workers.”

This can be an opportune time for people to push for rights, but the Olympics and other major sporting events also open the door for exploitation, especially for people in precarious situations like undocumented workers.

“This is just one more egregious example of taking advantage of people to create a sporting event that claims to benefit the many but actually just benefits the few,” Boykoff said. “The Olympics tend to spotlight what we might call surplus populations – whether we’re talking about expendable athletes or expendable workers who make the Olympic spectacle possible.”

Rahmani said, “During the strike, all these people came and made big promises … These deputies and senators come to a demonstration or strike and make a commitment to regularise these workers, but in the end, there’s no follow-up, and they tell you that they have no power.”

‘This ideology is currently affecting our country as a whole’

For years, France’s government has hardened its stance against immigration.

In December 2023, the French Parliament passed a controversial immigration law that differentiates between foreigners “in a situation of employment” and those who are not. The measure made it more difficult to receive social benefits for out-of-work expatriates.

The new regulations have played out in workplaces.

Between 2023 and 2024, according to official figures, the number of undocumented workers who were regularised dipped by 10 percent. Deportations, on the other hand, rose by more than a quarter.

“This ideology is currently affecting our country as a whole, with an instrumentalisation of the migration issue, which means we’re taking a totally utilitarian approach,” Coulomme said.

On the ground, Doums said the Gilets Noirs have observed the same phenomenon.

“The political situation in this country concerning immigrants and foreigners is becoming increasingly complicated,” Doums stated. Still, he insisted the collective would keep pushing for their rights. “We’re not going to stop there. Even after regularising the 14 people, we’re not going to stop.”