© Alex Majoli / Magnum Photos [PAR220591]

People from Senegal, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Congo, and other French-speaking countries have a long history of migration to France that started, on a small scale, during World War I. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, they were offered easy access to France, where a booming economy needed more workers than were available. But legal immigration was all but stopped in 1974, and replaced with family reunification. As the job market contracted, and immigration policies became more severe, many French-speaking Africans turned their attention to other European countries and the United States.