Description of the integration initiative implemented
Coming from a very religious and practising family, I grew up with a model of how to live. This model was to be a respectful woman of the male gender and to be a good wife. I always felt oppressed in my family. I dreamed of leaving, living in Europe to continue my studies and find a job. When my father introduced me to my future husband in October 2010, I rebelled and made it clear that I did not want to marry someone I did not know. Afterwards, this man and I spoke and he explained to me that he lives in France and is a naturalized French citizen. I told him that I wanted to leave Mali to be a free woman and continue my studies. We got married in January 2011 according to tradition and I left Mali in July 2011 thanks to the family reunification procedure. My departure from my country was intended to allow me to break with a society that subjugates women and to become autonomous.

Personal story
As the eldest of six children, I always wanted to be independent. In Mali, I could not express myself freely as my younger brothers did. When I passed my baccalaureate, my father made me understand that I had to stop my studies because he had plans for me to marry. He started forcing me to assist my mother in all household chores and to wear the veil. I felt trapped in all his traditions that consisted of enslaving me. One evening my father summoned me to inform me that he had found me a husband. That evening I opposed my father and made it clear that I would not marry this man I had never seen. Unhappy with my behaviour, he asked my mother to lock me up in my room and informed me that I would only come out of that room to meet my future husband. A few weeks later, my mother came to my room and helped me get ready to receive this man who would become my husband. I force myself to look good and agree to talk to this man for an hour. He tells me that he is a mathematics teacher in France and that he is a naturalized French citizen. As soon as I heard "naturalised French", my face lit up with joy and hope because I understood that this man was my passport to leave Mali to live a modern life of freedom in France.
I left Mali in July 2011 through the family reunification procedure. When I arrived, I was happy to have left behind a society full of obligations. A few days after my arrival on French territory, I had to go to OFII to sign a reception and integration contract. When I read this contract, which mentioned my obligation to follow French language courses and to take part in seminars on integration, I had the feeling that I was still in Mali because the OFII agents were telling me how I should behave in order to integrate successfully. I questioned myself at length about the importance of this integration contract and the training courses on "republican values". "I attended these various training courses for almost six months, which for me had no considerable impact on my understanding of French society. The reason it took me so long to get my integration contract signed was that I refused to attend the training courses. I felt that I spoke the French language well and did not need help in learning manners. My husband did not force me to go. He just made remarks to me by showing me the various reminder letters from OFII. It was the last letter threatening to send me back to Mali that forced me to go to these training sessions. It was through this last reminder letter from the OFII that I became aware of the compulsory nature of this procedure and its importance, on the one hand, in obtaining a residence permit and, on the other, in the possibility of attending university. At the end of this period of integration training, I enrolled at the University of Reims and obtained a degree and a Master 2 in public law.
Today I am 44 years old and I work as a lawyer in various companies and I owe this professional success to my migration and especially to my marriage. Indeed, if I had stayed in Mali, I would not have had the privilege of continuing my studies and being independent. Despite this migratory success, I feel trapped in my marriage. I got married because I saw an opportunity to leave Mali and be independent. For me, this marriage is a 'reasonable' alliance for development. My parents, my parents-in-law knew each other and my in-laws appreciate me a lot because I have always been respectful. My father-in-law, who was my father's best friend, chose me as a wife for his eldest son, whom I had seen, if I remember correctly, five times before he went to France as a brother's son of his biological father. There was no love at our wedding celebration. My husband and I learned to love and support each other. Ten years now that we are married and have a 9 year old boy, we have never spoken about our feelings. I don't even think we've ever said "I love you" to each other. In ten years of marriage, we have never had a fight. Despite the fact that we don't express our feelings for each other, I know that he cares about me and I am grateful to him for allowing me to be independent and self-sufficient. The idea of separating from him never crossed my mind because I feel I owe him what I am today. And many people who don't know us ask what our secret is. Because we never argue. I have no answer to this question because we ask ourselves the same question. Thanks to my husband, I am able to perceive certain subtleties of French society and to understand why he never wanted me to meet the Malian community living in Reims, even though his parents asked him to do so.
As a naturalized French citizen, with hindsight I can now see the importance of the family reunification procedure, which is explained by the French government's desire to limit the development of communitarianism, in order to allow women to break away from dependence once they arrive in France. Indeed, the mistake many women make is to try to find people of the same nationality in the host country. They end up excluding themselves and failing to integrate.

Analysis of the initiative and individual story
For my interviewee, marriage to a naturalised French Malian was seen as a way of breaking away from the social control of her country of origin, in order to live in a country where equal rights between the sexes are at the heart of public policy. Hapsatou, through her marriage of 'reason', projected herself into a future symbolising a break with the normativity of her home society by aspiring to empowerment in French society. This initiative of my interlocutor underlines her perseverance and even resilience in accepting to live for ten years with a man for whom she says she does not know if she has a love feeling or not. Her determination to stay with this man is explained by the idea that she feels that she owes him a debt of gratitude for the fact that she was able to migrate to France and obtain French nationality. For my interviewee, this recognition that she has developed for her husband is a way of consolidating her relationship.
My interviewee's story also highlights all the questions she had when she was forced to attend republican integration training courses in order to legitimise her presence and her integration as a citizen in her host country. Indeed, if we take a critical look at the training courses provided by the OFII, we realise that these various courses are intended to contribute to the empowerment of the latter, by basing the content of the training on the elsewhere and the here. The migratory and professional success of this immigrant woman allows us to point out the inclusion of migrant women who have been reunited with their families, while at the same time pointing out the absence of community withdrawal. In fact, this immigrant, who rejected the traditions of her country of origin, did not wish to establish links with the Malian community present in the city of Rheims, insofar as the community environment generally leads to intra-community resocialisation, which makes her immigrants dependent on social control. The case of my interlocutor makes it possible to explain the importance for women who reunite with their families to be direct actors in the migratory project.

Results and Impact
The success of our interviewee makes it possible to explain the importance of integrating women into the family reunification procedure managed by the OFII. As Christine CATARINO and Mirjana MORAKVASIC (2005) point out, women will appear in public debates on immigration following the development in 1970 of the law on the legal framework for family reunification.

Through this interview, we note that the OFII continues to focus on training courses whose objective is to give immigrant women the tools to adapt to French society. This institution does not realise that the training it provides on family reunification contributes to labelling these women as passive and dependent, while locking them into a community withdrawal. Indeed, the reference to women coming under the status of family reunification continues to be made in the private sphere, without considering that these women would like to aspire to a more autonomous situation.