“No question of me contributing to a system that will soon collapse”: these young French people who no longer believe in their future in the country

“Every time I return to France, it’s the same thing. I find a country fractured socially and politically.” In a calm tone, Emile, a young 26-year-old HEC graduate, gives a bitter assessment of the situation he observes from Hong Kong.

Having left in 2025 to work in a large Anglo-Saxon investment bank, he was due to return to Paris in 2027. But with his partner expecting a child, he plans to extend his stay. He will wait at least until May, with the presidential election, to make a decision. “And if it doesn’t improve, we’ll stay,” he says with a form of resignation. He is looking, in the budgetary debates which are beginning and which he follows on his social networks, for signs of a country capable of pulling itself together. But in vain. “We have the impression of going straight into the wall, and that no one has the courage to kick in the anthill,” he sighs.

Like Emile, many young people see the future of France getting darker. Between a growing debt, a lasting political impasse and an economy that is struggling to regain its momentum after successive crises, there is no shortage of reasons to doubt. Today, only 21% of young people with a Bac+5 degree say they are confident in the political situation in the country, according to a recent Ipsos survey. And in a France regularly described as in full decline, some fear seeing their ambitions reduced and their projects constantly postponed. “Even if the problems can be solved in…