"even those with no work are paid a salary"

In the chapter 5 of Fatou Diome’s The Belly of the Atlantic, the man from Barbés spoke to the children of the island about France and how is life like there. On page 25, he says: “Nobody’s poor, because even those with no work are paid a salary by the state: they call it benefit”. This sentence constitutes a recurrent argument for Madické and the other young boys who want to go to France since in their mind, if even people who do not work can make a decent living, then there is no reason why they could not do it. It must have been very hard for those boys who lived on an island where one has to work hard to be able to feed his family to imagine that some people might enjoy better standards of living than them without even working. The generous allocations and pensions in France were created by the French government after the Second World War in a period of strong growth when the country was flourishing economically. These generous allocations from the government are available for French citizens and this is one of the reasons why a lot of people immigrate to France and try to get the French nationality. Some French citizens tend to be xenophobic and try to limit immigration at a minimum level because they have the feeling that some immigrants came to France only to take advantage of the systems and of the numerous perks granted to the French citizens. They have the feeling that some immigrants are consuming more wealth than they produce and that they should not be entitled to do so if they are not “truly” French. This one of the many reasons why there are currently issues in France about immigration and racism which are among the main points of the far right’s political parties’ ideology. This resentment towards immigration from the French people is thus one of the reasons why the Front National, an extreme-right party led by Marine Le Pen is currently increasing its popularity in France.