For Patrick Simon, senior researcher at INED and one of the authors of the study, the results clearly demonstrate the complications of France’s model of integration and the country’s definition of national identity which on the surface appears to be open and accessible to all, regardless of ethnicity, race or religion.
“(The conflict today) is not based on legal distinctions, it’s based on the interpretation of what is Frenchness,” Simon said, adding that this interpretation assumes a ‘neutral’ way to be French which in reality implies that the citizen should not be ‘ethnic’ and should meet certain standards in terms of cultural and political norms.
“So neutrality means you should not be different, which is really a way to endorse the hegemony of one group over the others,” Simon said.
This explains the relative success of the integration of European immigrants in France and the decreased social othering that their descendants face. Indeed, some of the country’s most prominent politicians today have non-French origins themselves, including Nicolas Sarkozy who was born in France to a Hungarian father, as well as Paris’s current mayor, Anne Hidalgo, and Prime Minister Manuel Valls, both of whom were born in Spain and grew up speaking Spanish and Catalan respectively. Hidalgo obtained French citizenship at the age of 14 and maintains dual citizenship today while Valls became legally French only at the age of 20.
For Simon, these examples are a clear indication that it is acceptable to have a hyphenated identity in France only in certain cases.
“It becomes a problem when you are from a Maghrebian, Arab, or Black background,” he said.
Indeed, the 2008 study revealed that only 10 percent of white European immigrants reported that they were not perceived as being French compared to 41 percent of Black respondents and 43 percent of Arab respondents, clearly indicating that the complications of having a hyphenated identity are much worse for individuals from France’s former colonies.
The complications of the colonial legacy
The sense of dislocation and the struggles of belonging are particularly notable in the case of citizens from France’s former colonies in the Caribbean which are today legally recognised as overseas territories or departments with right to representation in France’s parliament. By law, individuals from Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana are born and raised with French citizenship and a sense of French national identity. Unfortunately, this is often implicitly questioned when they move to Metropolitan France.
Kévi Donat, 32, was born in Martinique and now runs Le Paris Noir, a specialized tour company that takes visitors deep into the heart of neighbourhoods that are home to Paris’s immigrant population. On his walks, Donat is a lively guide, eager to share stories about the African diaspora in Paris, a community he feels is heavily underrepresented in conversations about France’s culture.
Growing up in Martinique, Donat spent his childhood attending French schools and watching French television shows, feeling very firmly French in nationality. But when he moved to Metropolitan France at the age of 20 for university, he was immediately confronted with the fact that his sense of Frenchness appeared to be at odds with the commonly accepted form of national identity. Over the years, Donat contended with slights and sometimes outright discrimination, questions about his accent and his origins, that together forced an evolution in the understanding of his hyphenated national identity.
“I would define myself as Caribbean French in opposition to Metropolitan French,” Donat said, “It means that I identify as French but not as European.”
For Donat, the Europeanized definition of Frenchness is counter-intuitive because of the country’s territorial presence around the world. To him, the definition is inherently limited to individuals with white, Christian and European backgrounds and therefore excludes a vast population of French citizens who don’t fit the bill, particularly those from France’s former colonies.
This commonly accepted understanding of Frenchness has deep roots in France’s colonial history. In the time of the empire, the concept of citizenship granted formal equality to the colonized communities in Africa and the Caribbean but that did not prevent them from facing significant economic, social, and political inequality. According to Emile Chabal, a historian and the author of A Divided Republic: Nation, State and Citizenship in Contemporary France, this historical context paved the way for the complications of citizenship and belonging among immigrant communities today.
“The result of this history is that today French citizenship has a very strong meaning, but the promises of égalité that lie at the heart of French citizenship are difficult to achieve,” Chabal said.
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