The idea was to restrict the rights of people who were Ivorians by adoption or force of circumstance compared with those who were of Ivorian descent. This development dealt a severe blow to the shared feeling of belonging to a nation, a feeling that generated a sense of community strong enough to silence the complaint of widespread corruption voiced by the many who were, so to speak, left behind. The experience of being a second-class citizen is a painful fact of daily life. Last year the government imposed a sharp increase in the cost of annual residence permits. This discrimination affects many aspects of daily life.
Employment is a crucial area.
There are no special conditions for employment in unskilled, low-paid jobs, such as domestic work or piecework. However, employers engaging staff for posts involving more skilled work are required to give priority to Ivorians unless they can provide reasons for not doing so. Applicants have no chance of being appointed to an established post in a university or hospital unless they have Ivorian nationality. But obtaining it is often a long and arduous process and new Ivorians are daily reminded that they were foreigners not so long ago. The rhetoric about Ivorian identity also relies heavily on the idea that foreigners control national resources, when in fact their access to such resources varies widely over the country as a whole.