As French as Everyone Else?: A Survey of French Citizens of Maghrebin, African, and Turkish Origin

Introduction: Why This Question?

INTRODUCTION Why This Question? F OR A CENTURY AND A HALF, France, like the United States, has been a major country for immigration. And as in the United States, France’s citizenship policies have been largely shaped by the principle of jus soli, or birthright citizenship (Noiriel 1988). France has received wave after wave of immigrants from eastern Europe, Italy, and the Iberian peninsula. Since World War II, France has also received immigrants from Algeria, soon followed by immigrants from other countries of the Maghreb and the rest of Africa, not to mention immigrants from Southeast Asia. In 1999, the number of people in France with an immigrant background was estimated at 13.5 million: 4.3 million immigrants, 5.5 million children of immigrants, and 3.6 million grandchildren of immigrants. These people make up 23 percent of the total population of metropolitan France.* Immigration in France comes mostly from southern Europe. This includes 5.2 million individuals (2.6 million from Italy, 1.5 million from Spain, and 1.1 million from Portugal), or 40 percent of the total population of France that has some kind of immigrant background. Of people in France with an immigrant background, 13.4 percent, or 1.8 million, trace their origins to other countries of the European Union (typically Belgium). The most diverse category includes the * [This term is used to describe the French territories that are in Europe, including the nation of France and the island of Corsica.] 2 ■ Introduction 2.5 million individuals (18.6 percent) related to older periods of Polish and Russian immigration and a more recent trend of immigration from Asia and the former Yugoslavia. Immigrants of Turkish origin in France number 322,000 people (2.4 percent), and 679,000 have origins in sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, “those with a Maghrebin immigrant background belonging to the three generations studied here make up only about 3 million people, or 22 percent of the total population with an immigrant background” (Tribalat 2004a, p. 67). Today the integration of these populations with an immigrant background is under debate. In an environment of international terrorism , or even (as some would say) a clash of civilizations, in which the republican model of France is under strain and tensions are building between ethnic, racial, and religious groups, France* is questioning its ability to restructure the social contract and create the “daily plebiscite” that Ernest Renan described as French citizenship. The days seem long ago when France, in the enthusiasm of the 1998 World Cup, boasted of its pluralism. These questions are not new: some were saying as early as the 1930s that the Italians were too different to be capable of integration and that they were coming to take the jobs of the “ethnic French.”† Today this stigma now targets a different population : those who immigrated or are the descendants of immigrants from the Maghreb, other countries of Africa, and Turkey. The following assumptions are commonly made about this population: They are Muslim. “This population (some think) wants ‘to Islamicize French society.’” Yet its relationship to religion in general and to Islam in particular has never been explored. * [Throughout this translation, the term “France” is occasionally used where the more precise term “Hexagone” (hexagon, the six-sided landmass between Spain and Germany, as opposed to the entire Republic of France, which includes overseas territories) may be used in the original text. Where “Hexagone” is important for understanding what specific territories the authors refer to, it is replaced with the English “Hexagon.”] † [The term “Français de souche,” while common in French parlance, is not neutral. Its exact definition may depend on the context, but it generally suggests that there is such a thing as an indigenous French person, as distinct from, say, a great-grandchild of Algerian immigrants. There is sometimes a racial connotation (white), a religious connotation (Catholic or indifferent to religion), and/or an “ethnic” connotation (which may be someone of European ancestry in some contexts or someone with no retained family history of immigration in others).] Why This Question? ■ 3 They are conservative. “This population’s values are opposed to the liberalization of morals. They maintain that women ought to be in a subordinate role in a society (France) where equality of the sexes is recognized by everyone and where discrimination between men and women no longer exists.” Not a single systematic study, however, examines whether the majority of individuals who make up this population with African and Turkish...