Identities, Discourses and Experiences : Young People of North African Origin in France [1 ed.] 9781526130372, 9780719091193

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Identities, discourses and experiences Young people of North African origin in France

Nadia Kiwan

Identities, discourses and experiences

Identities, discourses and experiences Young people of North African origin in France Nadia Kiwan

Manchester University Press Manchester

Copyright © Nadia Kiwan 2009 The right of Nadia Kiwan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available ISBN 978 0 7190 9119 3 paperback First published by Manchester University Press in hardback 2009

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on text Map of Seine-Saint-Denis

page vii viii ix x

PART I: Public and intellectual discourses of immigration Introduction 1

2

3

3

Nation, immigration, integration: the public debates of the 1980s, 1990s and twenty-first century Introduction Nations and nationalisms The politicisation of immigration

17 17 18 27

‘Cultural difference’, citizenship and young people: intellectual responses Introduction Cultural difference and multiculturalism Citizenship and community Les jeunes and La banlieue From theory to practice: fieldwork in Seine-Saint-Denis

53 53 54 63 69 74

An alternative approach to post-migrant narratives? Subjectivity and identity Introduction Subjectivity Identity

82 82 82 89

PART II: Post-migrant discourses 4

Individualist trajectories: social worlds and cultural positionings Introduction and data collection method

97 97

vi

Contents Individual identity and the social Individual identity and culture

99 104

Collective identities and cultural communities? Introduction Cultural positionings ‘La Descente au Bled’: dominant discourse and the parents’ country of origin The dynamics of group unity The community as a socio-economic and socio-cultural entity

116 116 117

The socio-economics of community Introduction The banlieue as a community: solidarity, mentality and stigma Micro-communities within the banlieue Narratives of racial discrimination

141 141

7

Subjective identities Introduction Three axes of subjectivity Advanced subjectivity Fragmented subjectivity Thwarted subjectivity

156 156 158 159 166 173

8

From individual to collective subjectivities? Introduction Young French-North Africans and the political Young French-North Africans and associations

182 182 183 190

5

6

121 125 137

141 147 150

Conclusions

209

Bibliography Glossary Appendix I: summarised interviewee biographies Appendix II: photographs Index

223 238 243 257 260

List of illustrations

1 2 3 4 5

Quartier Vallès/La Frette – 1 Quartier Vallès/La Frette – 2 La Maladrerie/Émile Dubois – 1 La Maladrerie/Émile Dubois – 2 Offices of the Office municipal de la jeunesse d’Aubervilliers (OMJA)

All photographs © Nadia Kiwan 2007.

page 257 258 258 259 259

Acknowledgements

This book grew out of a doctoral project at the University of Bristol and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), funded by a University of Bristol scholarship and a French Ministry of Education and Research grant. I would like to thank Gino Raymond and Michel Wieviorka for their advice throughout the research process. I would also like to thank the CADIS (Centre d’analyse et d’intervention sociologiques) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales for the warm welcome I received there. This book would have not been possible had it not been for the many respondents who participated in the fieldwork and I am extremely grateful to them for their willingness to accord me so much time. I also would like to extend my gratitude to colleagues at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Southampton for their encouragement during the writing of this book. The team at Manchester University Press have been very supportive and helpful throughout and I am grateful to them for this. Finally I would like to express my gratitude to Angela and Mageed Kiwan and to Marc Combredet for their unconditional support and encouragement throughout this project.

Notes on text

All citations from French published sources and from my fieldwork interviews have been translated from French to English. These translations are my own unless otherwise stated. For reasons of limited space, the original French text of these translated citations has not been provided. However, where French published sources are concerned, readers are directed to the original French text via the references. Elsewhere, some French words appear in the body of the text and if a translation is not given, please see the Glossary at the end of the book.

Map of Seine-Saint-Denis Source: Based on a map provided by the Observatoire de la Société locale Aubervilliers.

PART I

Public and intellectual discourses of immigration

Introduction

France has an established reputation as a country of immigration and has received numerous waves of immigrants from the nineteenth century onwards. This book aims to focus on one of these immigrant groups or, rather, on the French-born descendants of North African immigrants of Muslim origin.1 The mass arrival of migrant workers from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia in the post-Second World War reconstruction period has led to the emergence of a French-born population of North African origin. This population is, of course, heterogeneous, not least because it is made up of more than one generation, hence the commonly employed, although misleading expression ‘second-’ and ‘third-generation’ immigrants. These individuals are not immigrants; the vast majority of them are French. They have been educated in the French school system and may never have been to Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia. Very few master Arabic or Amazigh (Berber). Yet, despite being similar to their ‘French-origin’ counterparts in many respects, these young people of North African origin are often portrayed as dangerously ‘Other’, and thus their exclusion through racial or cultural discrimination in many areas of French life, such as in employment and education, can be exacerbated. Indeed, it has been argued by Nacira Guénif Souilamas and Didier Lapeyronnie that the more similar to the ‘host society’ or the dominant mainstream the ‘Maghrébin’ or the ‘immigré ’ becomes, the stronger is the desire to exclude them (Lapeyronnie 1997; Guénif Souilamas 2000). It is this ‘mise à distance’ or weariness of young people of North African origin, reflected in the public debates of the last thirty years, which can be seen as the starting point of this book. As we shall see in Chapter 1, a number of factors in the 1980s and 1990s such as the realisation that North African immigration would no longer be characterised by the temporary male guest worker but by a permanent settlement of families, and the bitter, yet buried, memories of the Algerian War, the colonial past more broadly, the worsening economic climate and urban unrest led to a growing sense that key contours of the French ‘nation’ and the Republic were being

4

Immigration: public and intellectual discourses

seriously challenged. This growing malaise meant that immigration, and North African immigrants and their descendants, became the object of polemical public debates. The resurgence of discussions in France surrounding the place of Islam in the post-‘9/11’ context and fears that more assertive religious identities as well as religious extremism may be growing within European societies, as well as the eruption of riots across France’s banlieues in October–November 2005, would make the case for focusing on the more ‘ordinary’ majority of young French-North Africans more compelling. Their rather more unspectacular preoccupations and identifications often go unnoticed, or at least undocumented, in a context where issues such as the Islamic headscarf and terrorism are pushed to the fore instead. By shifting the focus to the less visible young people, debates concerning the post-migrant generations of French-North Africans might be re-balanced or complexified further. This book aims to look at three levels of discourse relating to North African immigrants and their descendants. First, the increasingly politicised issue of immigration in France since the 1980s can be seen as just one level of discourse concerning North African immigrants and their descendants. A second level of discourse can be found in the intellectual debates of the last twenty-five years, which have often taken on a rather ideological character. One of the central ideas underpinning this book is the notion of a disjuncture between the main preoccupations of the public and intellectual debates and the experiences of the people concerned. Therefore, by studying the construction of identity among young people of North African origin, this book aims to concentrate on the register of experience.2 That is, by adopting an empirical or a ‘bottom-up’ approach, the apparent disjuncture between the various discourses about young people of North African origin and their experiences can be addressed. The views expressed by the young people themselves can be regarded as the third layer of ‘discourse’ to be examined in this book. Chapter 1 will focus on the politicisation of immigration as a process which was initially illustrated by the debates about the parameters of the French nation and the reform of the Code de la nationalité (the Nationality Code). This debate dominated the political landscape for well over a decade, stretching from the mid-1980s until 1997. It signalled growing hostility towards the descendants of Algerians in particular and North Africans in general (Weil 2002). In more recent years, we have seen the return of a politicised debate surrounding immigration and its consequences, first in terms of the insécurité (law and order) debates in 2001–2002, then in terms of the polemic about the Islamic headscarf in 2003–2004 and then most recently, with the idea of une immigration

Introduction

5

choisie versus une immigration subie being resuscitated by the Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, prior to the passing of his new restrictive law on immigration and border control in 2006. The succession of these debates has reflected continuing concerns about the ‘integrability’ of non-European immigrant populations and French-North African youth in particular. One of the aims of this book is to ask whether such political debates have actually corresponded to the trajectories of the youth of North African origin. On a purely ‘realist’ level, they have since, for example, changes to the Nationality Code have had direct effects on their rights to naturalisation, etc. However, on another level, it is possible to argue that the ideas or suspicions which informed the increasingly restrictive nature of the Code – i.e. that these individuals were somehow suspect and ‘un-integrable’ into French society, as well as the assumptions informing the insécurité, laïcité, immigration choisie/immigration subie debates a decade later – have been misguided because they were premised on what has often been perceived as rigid cultural difference, rather than on the need for the careful consideration of complex cultural and social factors which affect the ‘integration’ process. Chapter 2 focuses on the second level of discourse relating to immigration or young people of immigrant origin which is examined in this book: the intellectual debates. It reveals how one of the limitations of recent research concerning populations of ‘immigrant origin’, is a tendency either to foreground analyses which conceptualise these individuals in terms of their ‘cultural difference’ – hence the importance of a debate on the place of cultural difference in the Republic – or alternatively foreground analyses in terms which make little or no reference to their cultural ‘specificities’, but which portray them as part of a wider social phenomenon, referred to as ‘la jeunesse des banlieues’. Hence another main aim of the book is to enquire into whether this tendency to focus on either a cultural or socio-economic register of analysis, rather than both, translates into a disjuncture between certain aspects of recent academic research and the experiences of the young people concerned. This book therefore sets out to do two things. First, it establishes a link between the often ideologically motivated political and intellectual debates of the last twenty-five years (characterised, for example, by the dichotomies of universalism versus multiculturalism) and the actual experiences of young people of North African origin, by adopting an empirical approach. Secondly, it attempts to re-articulate the cultural and social registers of analysis through an examination of both the cultural and socio-economic specificities of young people of North African origin living in a stigmatised banlieue setting. For example, how do the public debates about immigration relate to the experiences of young people

6

Immigration: public and intellectual discourses

of North African and banlieue origin? How do the intellectual debates about cultural difference which, in France, have become entangled in an ideological battle between two ‘camps’ who have been called ‘les républicanistes and ‘les démocrates’ (or ‘les communautaristes’), relate to young people of North African origin?3 Do these discussions about the place of cultural difference in the Republic correspond to their problematic? If so, what does the notion of culture or cultural difference represent for French-born individuals of North African origin? That is, how do they perceive themselves in terms of their ‘origins’ in both the private and public sphere? How do they present their relationships to their parents’ country of origin, to language, marriage practices and to Islam? Do they conceive of their origins in terms of culture or with greater reference to socio-economic status, or in terms of both? What are the nature of their revendications or demands? Are these articulated in individual, in communautaire terms or in jeunesse des banlieues terms? Are these three registers articulated simultaneously or separately? Do the young people of North African origin collectively express any revendications or demands for recognition at all? These questions and objectives have been informed by a theoretical framework of subjectivity and, in particular, a sociological approach to the theme of subjectivity, as discussed in Chapter 3. The Subject is defined by sociologist Alain Touraine as follows: ‘The subject is individual and community; it is neither a natural being, nor a rational being. It escapes the community through instrumental reason and likewise the market, through collective and personal identity’ (Touraine 1995: 32).4 This rejection of an oppositional categorisation of individual and community in Touraine’s approach to subjectivity may be developed by a further idea: that of the rejection and increasing irrelevance of social and cultural roles. Thus François Dubet’s work on the sociology of experience can be seen as complementary to an approach which focuses on the emergence of the Subject. Indeed, Dubet defines the notion of ‘social experience’ as being the most appropriate way in which to take account of social practices which result neither from the internalisation of social or cultural norms, nor from strategic choice (Dubet 1994: 91). By using a framework of subjectivity, this book departs from previous studies of the construction of identity by focusing on the question of both individual and collective agency and how complex identification processes may or may not move from an individual to a public imaginaire. Of course, the question of to what extent young people of North African origin are able to articulate both individual and collective subjectivities raises broader theoretical and empirical issues beyond France’s borders. In other words, the challenges involved in moving from individually

Introduction

7

articulated subjectivities to collectively articulated subjectivities concerns post-migrant minorities in other European states with a history of post-colonial migration. Indeed, a number of parallels can be drawn between France and its cross-Channel neighbour, Britain. These parallels are pertinent not only in relation to the experiences of certain groups of young people of migrant background; they also concern the ways in which post-colonial immigration and settlement are described by both intellectuals and politicians. In other words, it should be pointed out that the disjuncture which exists between some of the key aspects of academic and political discourses and post-migrant experience in France is not specific to that country. Such disjuncture appears to exist in Britain as well. It is possible to argue that, as in France, British political and academic discourses about post-colonial immigration and settlement have been bifurcated along cultural and social lines. What is interesting about the case of Britain in particular is the questions it makes one ask more clearly about France. As will be demonstrated in this book, the emergence of a collective voice bringing together the interests of young people of North African origin is an elusive prospect. Could this be due to the Republican context which discourages the alliance of political rights with any (however vague) idea of cultural origins? In order to assess this issue, it is worthwhile briefly considering the case of Britain before moving onto the main case-study of this book, France. With its historical foregrounding of cultural difference and cultural identity as a mode for ‘managing’ its post-colonial minorities, Britain would appear to represent a very different picture to France. In terms of the question of whether young people of migrant origin have been able to articulate some form of collective ‘voice’, it is well known that Britain’s migrant communities have been electing ‘community representatives’ to government bodies for many years. Perhaps even more significantly, we have seen the recent emergence of young British Muslims onto the political scene, particularly following the Stop the War campaigns in 2001 and 2003 and then again in the May 2006 council elections in England (with the election of twelve councillors for the Respect party in Tower Hamlets, for instance). More specifically, then, it could be argued that a collective actor has emerged among young British South Asian Muslims. However, the ‘embeddedness’ of this collective actor in religious politics and politicised religion may mean that it offers a truncated perspective for socially and culturally relevant agency. It could be argued that it is the context in Britain, where cultural identity/cultural difference has until very recently been foregrounded by both politicians and intellectuals, which has in effect contributed to the emergence of a British Muslim collective (‘truncated’?) voice. Furthermore, the shift from an

8

Immigration: public and intellectual discourses

overtly culturalist (multiculturalist) policy paradigm to one focused on integration in the post-2001 context may have swung so far over into an anti-cultural perspective on post-migrant politics that it has closed the door on the possible emergence of a mature collective actor, capable of articulating socio-economic and cultural/religious identities within the same movement. So in a sense, France and Britain can be seen to illustrate, on a meta-level, the constant shift between overly culturalist or overly socio-economic (anti-cultural) paradigms within intellectual and political analyses of post-migrant generations and their capacity to become full citizens within European liberal democracies (where citizenship goes beyond the formal acquisition of nationality/political rights). If we consider the British case further, it becomes clear that over the last twenty years there has been a fairly consistent emphasis on the supposed cultural difference of post-colonial minorities, particularly those of South Asian and Muslim (Pakistani/Bangladeshi) origin. Indeed, as Modood (2005) writes, since the 1980s, whereas those post-colonial minorities of African descent have been portrayed in a racist manner (according to phenotype or physical ‘traits’), South Asians have been portrayed according to cultural assumptions or ‘traits’ (language, religion, family structures, cuisine, art forms, exotic dress). Modood further argues that in the late twentieth century, cultural racism was in a sense substituted for biological racism. I will first consider political discourses about post-colonial minorities in Britain and then consider the academic discourses dealing with similar issues. In his book Philosophies of Integration (2001), Adrian Favell shows how in Britain the question of ‘ethnic dilemmas’, as he refers to it, have been discussed and dealt with politically in a context characterised by a dual consensus. This dual consensus has, since the late 1960s, asserted that while unquestionably Britain’s borders should be controlled against unchecked waves of immigrants, a policy of race relations premised on a culturalist or multiculturalist paradigm should nevertheless be encouraged. An example of this schizophrenic approach to immigration is identifiable as early as the 1960s in Britain. While the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act put in place the first restrictions on immigration and distinguished between white and black (New Commonwealth immigrants), for whom it was more difficult to enter the UK, from 1964 we see the emergence of more ‘progressive’ Race Relations Acts (1965, 1968) and an integration strategy set out by Roy Jenkins in a speech in 1966. In this speech Jenkins’ emphasis on a cultural approach to ‘race relations’ can in some sense be seen to set the tone for the next thirty years: ‘I define integration, therefore, not as a flattening process of uniformity, but cultural diversity, coupled with equality of opportunity in

Introduction

9

an atmosphere of mutual tolerance’ (Jenkins cited in Favell 2001: 104). Fast forward ten years to 1976 to yet another Race Relations Act which, like its predecessors, did not tackle the socio-economic angle head-on. Indeed, Favell highlights the fact that the Act did not seriously attempt to deal with the issue of urban deprivation and the failing economy, although he does concede that the government’s reactions to the 1981 riots did take into account the issue of urban socio-economic exclusion as part of the relevant root causes. Furthermore, despite the restrictive 1981 Nationality Act which withdrew jus soli for children born in Britain to foreign nationals and asserted a clear nationalist sentiment, Favell argues that by this time, and during the early Thatcher period, a consensus had emerged across the political spectrum that Britain was a multicultural society. Such a consensus found expression in the 1985 Swann Report on education and ethnic disadvantage where there was a shift in focus from Afro-Caribbeans to Asians and where a multicultural agenda of ‘idealised cultural pluralism’ was being put forward (Favell 2001: 128). A negative reading of such a historical emphasis on multiculturalism can be seen as having its roots in the British colonial project which was premised on a notion of indirect rule of the ‘natives’ or colonised peoples. Brian Alleyne remarks pointedly that ‘the tribes are now in Brixton and Bradford’ (Alleyne 2002: 619). In a not too dissimilar vein, Anne-Marie Fortier writes about a sort of ‘multiculturalist nationalism’ which, according to her, emerged in the British public sphere, following the publication of the Parekh Report (The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, see Parekh 2000b) which, much to the disapproval of the British (mainly tabloid) media, had critiqued lingering colonial and racist attitudes in many areas of British society. The notion of ‘multiculturalist nationalism’ implies the public construction of a rather complacent or even chauvinistic discourse which insists (without little reflection, it would seem) on the multicultural nature of British society (Fortier 2005). A more positive reading could of course highlight the consequences of such an approach – namely, the fact that such an emphasis on multiculturalism has allowed for the development of a wider range of political participation of post-colonial minorities, at the local level in particular (e.g. through the election of local councillors). However, the ‘undertheorised vagueness’ which Favell argues has been characteristic of the multicultural consensus in Britain has meant that while issues such as minority language provision and the recognition of cultural practices particularly among South Asians has been the norm, issues such as institutional racism did not get much attention until the McPherson Enquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s murder published its findings in 1999

10

Immigration: public and intellectual discourses

(Favell 2001: 130). Favell also argues that one of the disadvantages of the race relations framework is that is has led not only to a conflation of race and culture, but also to a case-by-case approach in terms of discrimination – its ad hoc pragmatism being a further reason for the sidelining of a socio-economic perspective on the challenges facing postcolonial minorities. According to Favell (2001), the roots of a strong culturalist paradigm regarding Britain’s post-colonial minorities go back further than the colonial period, of course, and can be located in English political traditions which have been influenced by thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and his suspicion of the moral authority of the state. Since such a vision of government argues that the state’s power has to be limited, authority is embedded within smaller, devolved political bodies such as guilds, corporations and organisations of civil society. This English tradition of political pluralism is easily extendable to ethnic minorities, since such pluralism is considered to be in the interests of the wider society. Favell goes on to argue that a political environment which encourages the formation of civil society organisations to represent people can also be seen as one which will encourage culturalist understandings of social problems: ‘This is why cultural outlets for political grievances are the main safety valve for social tensions, outlets that have certainly been best used by parts of the Asian communities’ (Favell 2001: 139). Other political thinkers from England and Scotland can be seen as feeding into the notion of paternalist tolerance of diverse ways of life: J. S. Mill and his ideas on utilitarianism, John Locke’s writings on tolerance and Adam Smith and David Hume’s conception of laissez faire (see Favell 2001: 140–141). The current pervasiveness of a culturalist paradigm of ‘ethnic relations’ in Britain can also be located in the forms and expressions of racism. Modood has written extensively about the shift from colour/biological racism to the ‘new [cultural] racism’ in the twentieth century, as has Favell regarding the shift of the British National Party’s (BNP) discourse from colour to cultural racism, with a growing focus on Muslims. However, not all areas of political discourse in Britain have been characterised by a culturalist perspective. Indeed, some commentators have argued that the British anti-racist movement has consistently sidelined issues of culture and ethnicity, in favour of an attempt to foster a universalising concept of ‘political Blackness’. For example, Modood (2005) argues that by focusing their attention on a dualistic ‘white–black’ faultline, anti-racism has not only perpetuated the racist’s dualistic perspective, but has also left South Asians out of the mix. While such observations are on the whole justified, one wonders if such a critique is itself symptomatic of a wider overfocus on culture and ethnicity in some strands

Introduction

11

of academic discussion. Alexander and Alleyne argue that this might be so – or that, in any case, it is possible to refer to an academic division of labour where post-colonial minorities are concerned. Alexander argues that while a ‘politics of difference’ has been assigned to Black/ African-Caribbean identities, South Asians are ‘transfixed through attributions to “cultural difference”’ (Alexander 2002: 552). As such, while sociologists in Britain have tended to focus on race and racism (i.e. structural inequalities) and how this relates to African-Caribbeans, anthropologists have given greater attention to the ‘culture’ (rituals, traditions, cultural difference) of Asians. Yet, since Sociology’s cultural ‘turn’, the notion that African-Caribbeans ‘have problems’ while Asians ‘have culture’ has been altered somewhat so that while Asians are still seen as having culture, African-Caribbeans are now also seen as having culture – not the problematic type but the creative, ‘rich-mix’ type. Indeed, Alexander notes that African-Caribbeans are now seen as being at the forefront of a ‘cutting edge and infinitely marketable culture-of-desire’ (Alexander 2002: 557 alludes to Gilroy 2000). So while theoretically attractive concepts like hybridity, syncretism and urban cultures have cut across black/white divides from the late 1990s onwards, Asians have according to Alexander been left out in the cold. Such a conclusion is somewhat problematic, given that a wealth of ‘Asian’ cultural production (including music, films and fiction) has also enjoyed widespread success in Britain over the last decade (films like Bend it like Beckham, comedy shows like Goodness, gracious me and The Kumars offer just some examples). However, perhaps Alexander’s claim is more accurate if we consider it in relation to Asian Muslims in Britain, who cannot be said to have been part of the recent popularity of Asian hybrid mainstream cultural production.5 Thus her argument that what is promoted or celebrated in today’s Britain is the ‘acceptable face of difference’ is not without pertinence, given that while positive Black personalities have become visible in Britain in recent years (especially in world of media and sport), the same cannot be so easily said of Britons of South Asian origin generally and even less so for Britons of South Asian Muslim origin (Alexander 2002: 561). Alexander’s critique of this version of hybridity stems from a Marxisttype re-evaluation of hybridity discourses – underlining the absence of a socio-economic dimension in the chatterings of ‘the politics of difference’. However, Alexander does not only apply this critique to the proponents of hybridity theory as focused on African-Caribbean minorities (Gilroy, Hall, etc.), she directs it at academics such as Tariq Modood or Bhikhu Parekh who, according to her, have engaged in a ‘neo-culturalist version of difference’ (Alexander 2002: 563). This

12

Immigration: public and intellectual discourses

neo-culturalism, is, according to Alexander, premised on a perception that Asians are culturally bound, inward-looking and more marginal to mainstream culture than African-Caribbeans. This separation of postcolonial minorities in terms of colour (African-Caribbeans) or culture (South Asians) also has the effect of evacuating the socio-economic dimension from academic discussions of inequality. Alexander thus argues that the culture of South Asians becomes essentialised and notions of ethnicity are privileged over social or historical processes of exclusion, to such an extent that ‘ “cultural difference” becomes a ready-to-serve explanation for socio-economic disadvantage and discrimination’ (Alexander 2002: 566). Yet this growing insistence by certain commentators on the importance of the cultural can be seen in a sense as a reaction to the perception that British academic debates about post-colonial minorities have in the post-war period been too negligent of culture. Therefore, sociologists like Modood have critiqued other social scientists such as Michael Banton, Robert Miles, John Rex and Susan J. Smith for not according an important enough dimension to ethnicity and culture. In his book Multicultural Politics (2005), Modood argues that respected British specialists on racism such as Banton, Miles and Rex have not accorded ethnicity a central enough role. Miles’ Marxist approach to the study of racism and Rex’s focus on racism as class conflict means that ethnicity remains a secondary consideration. Modood argues that this ultimately has the effect of perpetuating a ‘white gaze’, hence deterring a focus on issues surrounding ‘group pride’ as a key anti-racist strategy (Modood 2005: 58). Modood is also critical of theorists such as Stuart Hall or Paul Gilroy who have attempted to nuance the anti-racism notion of political blackness through studies on ‘new blackness’ or ‘plural blackness’. In particular, he cites their ‘woeful neglect of religion’ and the failure to extend their analyses of African-Caribbean minorities to South Asians as the main problem. It would appear that Modood is making a broadly valid point, namely that that ‘race’ or racial categories should not be the dominant way in which we should think about minorities, nor should ethnicity be reduced to its resistance potential alone. However, one wonders if Modood’s approach in fact serves to produce an overfocus on ethnicity (as a cultural signifier), at the expense of more socio-economic modes of identification. Certainly, his definition of ethnicity appears to depend on mainly cultural categories such as cultural distinctiveness, creativity and identity (Modood 2005: 22). This brief discussion of how academic and political debates about postcolonial minorities have been constructed in Britain might be regarded as a sort of avertissement (caution) to France. In terms of academic

Introduction

13

discourse, Britain resembles France in so far as it is possible to observe a constant sliding between cultural and socio-economic analyses of the post-migrant ‘condition’. However, in terms of political discourse and practice, one is able to identify a difference: Britain has historically placed more emphasis on a cultural approach to its minority populations, to such an extent that it is possible to argue that young people of minority ethnic backgrounds are offered a truncated perspective for involvement in the British public sphere. It can be seen as truncated precisely because the institutional modes of political participation available to people from ethnic minority backgrounds in Britain have tended to encourage a cultural or religious collective self-definition. This cultural/ religious mode of collective bargaining and representation has been encouraged in Britain to such an extent that, in the wake of the riots of 2001 and the bombings of ‘9/11’ and ‘7/7’, the New Labour government has started to question whether the historic multicultural consensus was really such a good idea after all. However, what is significant about the British case is the fact that the government’s realisation that the emphasis on a cultural paradigm may have been counter-productive has not led it to incorporate other (socio-economic) modes of engaging productively with minority populations as a result. Rather, the government’s ‘path dependency’ (Favell 2001) with regard to a culturalist prism for minority populations seems to be quite clear because culture and, increasingly, religion (which is seen to be a repository of culture) remains at the heart of government thinking in this area except that, in the post2001 context, the New Labour government has decided to adopt a predominantly negative view of cultural difference. So, instead of building an integrationist agenda based on improving socio-economic equality for all sections of Britain’s diverse population, the government’s culturalist approach has been distorted into a culturally integrationist agenda – hence the focus on common culture and British values. So how does this all relate to France? Britain’s predicament highlights the importance of a careful balancing between cultural and socioeconomic analyses of the problems which affect France’s own minority ethnic populations. It has been argued that France’s persistent refusal to acknowledge cultural/religious identity as a category which may be positively relevant to Republican citizenship and political participation has also offered a truncated perspective to its young populations of immigrant origin (especially those whose origins are extra-European, such as those of North African background). Those who argue this do indeed have a valid point. Nevertheless, it would be surely be somewhat shortsighted to trade in this a-cultural perspective so characteristic of the official Republican discourses, for a more culturalist perspective. It is

14

Immigration: public and intellectual discourses

nevertheless fairly safe to predict that such a development is highly unlikely to materialise in France. What is more likely to occur is a sort of fragmentation of political discourse regarding the problems that face young people of immigrant (North African) origin – whereby certain camps insist on a culturalist reading of this population’s problems (thereby totally ignoring the socio-economic dimension) while others will be content to pursue a purely socio-economic analysis of the issues at stake. Indeed, this fragmentation has already been underway for a number of decades, and looks likely to continue. The basic premise of this book is to argue that unless descriptions of the empirical state of affairs in France are seriously taken into account, then this fragmentation at work in both political and academic discourses will pursue its course and the likelihood of the emergence of a mature collective voice representing both the socio-economic and cultural grievances of young people of immigrant origin in France will seem even more remote than ever. As such, this book aims to contribute not only to academic debates but to political and policy debates as well. Concerning those empirical descriptions, the research which informs this book was undertaken in Seine-Saint-Denis, a département to the north-east of Paris where the highest concentration of immigrants in the Paris region lives. In-depth interviews with young people of North African origin, aged between eighteen and thirty, teachers, youth workers and local government representatives were carried out between 2000 and 2007. So, following discussion of the political and academic discourses surrounding post-migrant populations in France in Chapters 1 and 2 of this book, Chapters 4–7 discuss the themes and various narrative ‘clusters’ arising out of the interviewees’ stories. Chapter 4 focuses on the question of individual identity and how this can be defined both in theory and in practice. Chapter 5 and 6 focus on both collective and community identity and how this can be understood in relation to both cultural and socio-economic experience. Chapter 7 synthesises some of the data which is discussed in Chapters 4–6 and considers how the young people of North African origin who took part in interviews articulate subjective identities by dealing with the parameters of individualism and community in original ways. As such, the presentation of empirical data draws on Michel Wieviorka’s ‘triangle of ethnicity’ model (Wieviorka 1993a). As mentioned above, the sense of disjuncture between certain aspects of political and academic discourses and post-migrant experiences is fairly striking. Indeed, the first indication that such disjuncture exists is that the young men and women of North African origin who agreed to participate in the fieldwork reveal that they are constantly mixing their references

Introduction

15

to their cultural (North African) origins and their social (banlieusard) origins. These observations suggest that it is unhelpful to foreground either their cultural specificities or their socio-economic specificities. Instead, a more accurate approach integrates both their sentiment that they are part of a culturally or religiously defined ‘community’ and a socio-economic community (however internally diverse these cultural and socio-economic communities may be). They also move around the space of identity, which suggests that the notion of individualism and community as consistently antagonistic categories is highly problematic. The fact that young people of North African origin in France’s banlieues are constantly combining multiple registers of identity as well as creating new ones through processes of bricolage identitaire (literally ‘identity DIY’), means that it is possible to see them as subjects.6 Furthermore, it could be argued that the capacity of certain interviewees to resist social exclusion and construct future plans in the face of racial or cultural discrimination demonstrates that they are actors who demand cultural and social recognition as full members of French society. The question of potential demands for cultural and social recognition in the public sphere, and hence the move from a sense of individual to collective subjectivity, is addressed in Chapter 8 of the book. Indeed, in order to study the relationship between North African origin youth and the public sphere, one of the objectives of the fieldwork was to focus on interviewees’ relationships with the mainstream political process as well as with alternative sites for political participation, such as associations. Chapter 8 shows how local government discourse about associations as espaces de démocratie is, to a certain extent, irrelevant to many of the informants’ experiences of associations since, as we shall see, their relationship to associations is often paradoxically characterised by a simultaneous ‘observation’ and ‘active complicity’ in a process of State-driven instrumentalisation of associations. As such, many civil society associations become reduced to socio-educational ‘service providers’ rather than alternative sites for political debate or contestation. The nature of their involvement in both the electoral process and associational life therefore suggests that there is a lack of collective imaginaire among young people of North African origin, or at least a lack of collective consciousness which simultaneously articulates a socio-economic and cultural specificity. Although this dual specificity may be articulated on an individual level, it is not expressed on a collective level or in the public space. Of course, the likelihood of a collective expression of demands is reduced among young people of high school age, but this problematic shift from individual to collective is prevalent among young adults as well. Participation in ‘the political’, then (where

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‘political’ is understood in its widest sense) remains relatively marginal to their various trajectories. However, ‘the political’, in the sense of public debate, can be regarded as a phenomenon that will have had an effect on the climate in which young people of North African origin in France are growing up and living. This debate and the politicisation of immigration will be addressed in Chapter 1.

Notes 1 The term ‘French-born’ is used here for convenience of expression since the author acknowledges that many young people of North African origin in France were brought to France at a young age – i.e. this book does not restrict itself to the study of those who were born in France and includes those who arrived as children. The terms ‘young people of North African origin’ and ‘young French-North Africans’ are also used interchangeably throughout the book. This book is based on a study of French-North Africans of Muslim origin or heritage and therefore does not reflect the experiences of other North African-origin populations, such as young people of North African Jewish origin. The decision to focus on North Africans of Muslim origin was linked to the current anxieties about Islam and Muslims in France. In addition, the North African-origin interviewees who took part in the field research all happened to be of Muslim background. 2 Guénif Souilamas (2000: 91) uses the term ‘les registres de l’expérience’. 3 See Wieviorka and Ohana (2001: 7–14) for a discusssion of the ‘républicanistes v. démocrates’ debates. 4 All translations from French to English are the author’s own unless otherwise stated. Touraine mostly refers to the subject with the ‘s’ in upper case (S), as though it were a proper noun. To avoid confusion, I shall reproduce this pattern when referring to Touraine’s work. Otherwise, I shall simply refer to the subject as a common noun. 5 See Werbner (2004) for further discussion of the implications of the Asian ‘success’ story in terms of cultural production in Britain. 6 Roger Bastide uses the term bricolage identitaire (Bastide 1970: 65–108).

1

Nation, immigration, integration: the public debates of the 1980s, 1990s and twenty-first century

Introduction This chapter examines the emergence of immigration as the subject of public debate in France from the 1980s onwards. In addition to a discussion of the conceptual framework which formed the parameters of the public debate, I aim to show not only how the question of immigration became politicised but also to reveal why this was the case. This chapter is divided into two parts. The section entitled ‘Nations and nationalisms’ takes the form of a discussion of the following concepts: nation, nationalism, nationality, the State and citizenship. After a brief overview of the different ways in which these concepts have been defined historically, their relevance within the post-revolutionary French context will be discussed. The section entitled ‘The politicisation of immigration’ will focus on the debates of the last thirty years, starting with the 1980s and 1990s and the context of the emerging far Right; the debates on nationality and integration; the recurring linkages made between immigration and law and order (l’insécurité); the ‘headscarf affairs’; the notion of selective immigration policy; and issues around discrimination and inequality. Of course, the emergence and intractable nature of such debates cannot be understood without taking into account the post-industrial or macro-social transformations, which have impacted on the manner in which immigration in France became politicised. This chapter thus focuses on one of the possible registers of analysis of the central theme of the book – namely, the construction of identity among young people of North African origin who live in a ‘disqualified banlieue’ context (Guénif Souilamas 2000: 350).

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Immigration: public and intellectual discourses Nations and nationalisms Defining the ‘nation’

Many authors have argued that it is not only impossible but also undesirable to define objectively what constitutes a ‘nation’. Eric J. Hobsbawm claims that the various attempts to do so have all proved unsatisfactory since they have focused too much on objective criteria such as language, ethnicity, common territory, history and cultural traits. Not only does he claim that factors such as language and ethnicity are ‘fuzzy, shifting and ambiguous’ and therefore unhelpful, he also argues that ‘since only some members of the large class of entities which fit such definitions can at any time be described as “nations”, exceptions can always be found’ (Hobsbawm 1990: 5– 6). He adds that an attempt to define the nation in subjective terms is also problematic since concentrating on how ‘human beings define and redefine themselves as members of groups’ reduces the notion of choice of one’s group to being focused solely on the ‘nation’ or ‘nationality’ (Hobsbawm 1990: 8). However, various authors still endeavour to apply some sort of definition to the term ‘nation’, some preferring to focus on the semantic origins of the word as a starting point, while others focus on the notion of a loose, working definition. Danièle Lochak points out that the word ‘nation’ comes from the Latin ‘natio’, meaning a group of people sharing the same birth place (Lochak 1988: 77). Gérard Noiriel also highlights the Latin origin of the word nation, which ‘designates a community whose members share the same origins’ (Noiriel 2001: 88). Whatever stance one takes about the utility – or, indeed, the futility – of defining the ‘nation’, it is evident that there is much uncertainty surrounding the term. Indeed, social scientists have lamented the relative ‘thinness’ of the sociological theory of the nation.1 Sociologist Pierre Birnbaum highlights the lack of theorisation of the nation among the ‘founding fathers’ of the discipline such as Max Weber and Émile Durkheim, claiming that it is all the more surprising, given the political context in which these late-nineteenth/early-twentieth-century thinkers were working. Birnbaum shows that although Durkheim’s work did deal with the notion of la patrie (fatherland) as a ‘community of historical memory’ and Weber did write about the nation in terms of a ‘a community of sentiment’ and ‘common descent’ with the State at the centre of his analysis, it is not possible to regard this as a clearly outlined sociological theory of the nation (Birnbaum 1997: 4, 10). In the absence of clarity surrounding the concept of nation, it is perhaps more useful to focus on nationhood, nationalism or the ‘logiques’ (dynamics) of the nation, to borrow a term used by Alain Renaut (Renaut 1991: 32).

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Nationhood, state and citizenship in France Nationhood In France, the Revolution of 1789 is widely regarded as the period during which the modern sense of nationhood emerged. Silverman states that: ‘Armed with the Enlightenment concepts of reason, will and individualism, the Revolution established the nation as a voluntary association or contract between free individuals’ (Silverman 1992: 19). The idea of the people is one of the main characteristics of what has subsequently become known as the Republican conception of nationhood, or the Republican tradition: In France, it is the need to combat the monarchy and aristocracy, which founds the Republican conception of the nation, developed by Enlightenment philosophy (Rousseau), then by the revolutionary activists. From this perspective, it is the ‘sovereign people’ and not the king, which incarnates the nation . . . In other words, the ‘one and indivisible’ nation is the collective will to exist as a sovereign people. (Noiriel 2001: 88–89)

Thus the transfer of sovereignty from the monarchy to the ‘people’ who, from then on, form an ‘indivisible’ and unified nation, is key if we are to understand the Republican conception of citizenship as the relationship between the individual and the State, the nation une et indivisible reflecting the homogenising dynamic of the Republican project. In the French context, the national phenomenon has tended to be understood in two ways – in either political or cultural terms. Both these understandings have had an impact on contemporary discourses about immigrants and their descendants. The nation as a progressive phenomenon: the political nation Sociologist Dominique Schnapper argues that the emergence of the nation in France should be regarded as a progressive force since it signalled the ‘triumph’ of the values of the Enlightenment: reason and universalism. Schnapper claims that the nation should be understood as the idea which allowed the development of le lien social (the social bond). Writing at a time when the French ‘nation’ was seen by many to be facing a number of divisive threats, Schnapper writes: ‘Today we are experiencing the weakening of civic life and political ties. Nothing can guarantee that the modern democratic nation will have the capacity to ensure the social bond, as it did in the past’ (Schnapper 1994a: 11). For such thinkers as Schnapper, the Revolution marks a progressive break with the Ancien Régime because, from then on, political legitimacy was to be invested in the political will of the people rather than in dynastic or religious principles. Schnapper also significantly opposes

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her understanding of the French ‘nation’ to the notion of ethnie (ethnic group): They [modern political nations] must be distinguished from ethnic groups, whatever name contemporaries and historians of today give to ethnic groups: pre-Revolutionary nations, 19th century nationalities . . . an ethnic group has two characteristics: it is a group of belonging; it does not necessarily have any political expression. (Schnapper 1994a: 29–30)

Schnapper therefore argues that it is erroneous to claim that there are two concepts of nation, the political/civic nation or the ethnic Volk nation, because she claims that the idea of an ‘ethnic nation’ is itself a contradiction in terms: ‘It is the effort to separate oneself from identities and belongings which are seen as natural, through the abstraction of citizenship, which characterises the national project. There exists only one idea of the nation’ (Schnapper 1994a: 24, emphasis in the original). Finally, Schnapper argues that the nation (or a national project) and nationalism should not be confused. Her distinction between a national project and nationalism is exemplified in her analysis of the break-up of Yugoslavia, where she argues that the war was not a national conflict, but rather a series of ethnic or nationalist conflicts resulting from the absence of a clearly defined national project which would have otherwise united the Serb, Croat, Slovenian, Bosnian and Albanian ethnicities (Schnapper 1994a: 36–37). The nation as a negative phenomenon: the cultural nation Schnapper’s definition of the nation emphasises the idea of a community of citizens rather than a community of ethnicity. However, it could be argued that even the notion of a civic community essentially implies that a distinction is made between those who are members and those who are not. In other words, contained within the concept of community is a mechanism of exclusion. This is the view of Maxim Silverman, who argues that racism or exclusion can arise out of a universalist perspective, even though universalism does not recognise ‘race’ as a valid category. Silverman refers to a ‘cultural racism’ which, according to him, is closely linked to universalist ideals. He argues that bound up with the myth of the French nation is the notion of a ‘trans-historical culture’ which becomes a manner of essentialising French people and their so-called national or cultural ‘character’ (Silverman 1992: 8). Therefore, according to Silverman, this has led to ‘the conception of a natural, organic, homogenous and exclusive collectivity as any discourse based overtly on “race.” It is precisely the ambivalence of the culturalist concept of nation which lies at the heart of racism in France’ (Silverman 1992: 8).

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21

Likewise in his analysis, Etienne Balibar is also rather sceptical about the notion of universalism and the nation: ‘There is no clear line of “demarcation” between universalism and racism. It is not possible to define two separate entities, one of which includes all ideas, which are (potentially) universalist, while the other includes ideas, which are (potentially) racist . . . universalism and racism are determined opposites, which means precisely that each one affects the other “from within”’ (Balibar 1989: 13–14).2 The nation and the State In order to understand the varying conceptions of the French nation or French nationhood, the dominant role played by the State should not be overlooked. Indeed, Marcel Mauss claimed that from the French Revolution onwards, ‘all of society became, to some degree, the State’ (Mauss cited in Noiriel 2001: 125).3 Dominique Schnapper points out that the Republican ‘nation’-builders of 1789 inherited and benefited from the centralisation of France and the development of the State, which had been initiated during the Ancien Régime. Furthermore, like Mauss, her enthusiastic approach to the concept of the French nation highlights the necessary link between the nation and the State, the latter being the rational supporting mechanism of the former. The necessity of the link between nation and State is, in Schnapper’s view, what distinguishes the political, modern or democratic sense of (the French/Republican) nation from ethnicised groups of belonging. If the nation is defined in political terms, it is the notion of a State as the guarantor of its citizen’s interests as a national ‘community’. This statist vision is central to the Republican myth of nation. Gérard Noiriel’s description of the nation-state focuses on the contrast between the pre-national monarchical State with the nation-state: Under the Ancien Régime . . . the nobility saw itself as a separate ‘race’, superior in essence to the people. This is why the people were excluded from political life. Inversely, the legitimacy of the nation-state is premised on the idea that there is no longer any qualitative difference between the governors and the governed. They form a community of equals. (Noiriel 2001: 126)

However, as Noiriel points out, the new nation-states were made up of millions of individuals which led to the development of indirect democracy through the delegation of legitimacy from ‘the people’ to elected representatives. This phenomenon, which he refers to as ‘remote links’, was the precursor for the development of the State. He qualifies these relationships between the ordinary citizens and the State on two levels:

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vertical links and horizontal links and argues that these links (liaisons) played a very significant role in the construction of what he refers to as ‘state-centred national communities’.4 Noiriel defines the vertical links as being incarnated by the elected representatives (‘les représentants de l’État’) and the horizontal links as being incarnated by the ‘agents de l’État (les fonctionnaires or civil servants)’ (Noiriel 2001: 127). The consequence of the development of these links is the centralisation and totalisation of the nation-state form. Furthermore, Noiriel shows that in order for the delegation of power from the ‘people’ to the elected representatives to succeed, a whole range of measures was necessary. These included the ‘codification’ of what are referred to as electoral ‘rituals’ (such as electoral lists, ballot papers, ballots, etc.) and the invention of certain symbols such as a national anthem, a national flag, etc. In a similar manner, in order to respect the principle of equality among citizens, the fonctionnaires were obliged to engage in the establishment of a highly developed state infrastructure in order to render concrete what Noiriel refers to as ‘the horizontal nature of the links between citizens’. This explains the development of certain ‘official’ publications such as the Journal officiel, the bulletin des lois, circulaires, etc. in addition to the creation of a means of identifying members of the population through the introduction of passports (Noiriel 2001: 127). So if we are to understand what Noiriel refers to as the process of the construction of French national identity, the role of the State should be at the heart of the analysis. He argues that it is possible to consider that, in France, the construction of the nation-state, which was undertaken by bourgeois intellectuals in the name of humanist values, patriotism and human rights, took place in two stages. The immediate aftermath of the Revolution marked the first stage: when Royalty lost most of its political power and when the legal equality of citizens was definitively established by the Code Civil (Civil Code). The second stage was initiated during the Third Republic (1870–1940), when the working classes became integrated into the machinery of the State (Noiriel 2001: 141). More significantly, the Third Republic also coincided with the project of producing the ‘model citizen’, an objective which was most ambitiously expressed in the educational reforms of Jules Ferry. Indeed, Silverman claims that the implementation of mass education under Ferry and the cultural homogenisation that this engendered can be seen as an internal equivalent of the mission civilisatrice (civilising mission) which was undertaken in France’s colonies. He argues that the ideals of both projects were essentially one and the same: cultural assimilation and homogenisation. He concedes that, in the colonial context, assimilation was juridical as opposed to political but that ‘Nevertheless, the requirements

Nation, immigration, integration

23

of cultural conformity were more or less identical in both forms of assimilation’ (Silverman 1992: 31). The State and the emergence of the concepts of nationality and immigration It was through the developing framework of the Republican State that the concepts of national territorial frontiers, foreigners and later nationality came to develop. Indeed, Danièle Lochak states that: The emergence of the modern figure of the foreigner is historically linked to the building of nation-states. The integration of hitherto multiple allegiances into a single allegiance in favour of a new political entity – the State – the placing of this political entity within a clearly delineated territory, the institutionalisation of power . . . all these developments, in their objectification of the relationship between the individual and the State, led to the ‘fixing’ of the notion of foreigner and national. (Lochak 1988: 76)

Although Rogers Brubaker argues that ‘By inventing the national citizen and the legally homogenous national citizenry, the Revolution simultaneously invented the foreigner’, other researchers claim that the distinction between the French national and the foreigner was not that significant in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution of 1789 (Brubaker 1992: 46). At the time of the Revolution, national frontiers were not even properly defined. For this reason, access to French citizenship for those of foreign origin was fairly straightforward. Furthermore, Noiriel points out that the term ‘immigrant’ was very rarely used in the documents dating from the revolutionary period and that it was not until 1888 that immigration became of interest to the Larousse dictionary editors (Noiriel 1988: 78). So the concept of nationality in France should be seen as emerging in the second half of the nineteenth century due to two factors. First of all, Silverman argues that the ever-extending role of the state through the development of state institutions and infrastructure in the second half of the nineteenth century meant that the idea of a natural frontier (and therefore nationality) separating different populations came to develop (Silverman 1992: 29).5 The second factor which can be associated with the emergence of the concept of nationality in France is the political and economic climate of the late nineteenth century. The rapid industrialisation of France, coupled with a demographic crisis, had led to an increasing demand for foreign labour (See Silverman 1992: 28). However, as Noiriel points out, the ‘Great depression’ which hit much of Europe during the 1880s led to the development of a consensus which henceforth regarded the nation-state as the provider of economic and

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social protection for its citizens – measures which were reserved for nationals. From this point on, the distinction between nationals and foreigners thus became increasingly important, and it was in such a context that the first laws on nationality were codified. Various governments implemented national ‘solidarity’ measures, marking the beginnings of the Welfare State. This new protectionism also led to measures designed to stop the national market from being ‘flooded’ by foreign goods – and, more importantly, by foreign labour. It was in this climate that the majority of developed countries passed the first laws on immigration (Noiriel 2001: 131). Nationality and the project of cultural homogeneity It is interesting to note that after the defeat of France in the FrancoPrussian war which ended in 1870, a new discourse surrounding ‘nationality’ developed: Forged at the outset to evoke a ‘spiritual force’, from then onwards, the word came to designate groups of individuals whose members share common characteristics which could be quantified thanks to techniques such as censuses or plebiscites. Defining nationality, from then on, becomes a process of isolating a simultaneously individual and collective quality, selecting an aspect of people’s identity (their language, their sense of belonging, etc.) in order to transform it into a criteria which defines the group to which they are supposed to belong. (Noiriel 2001: 161)

Such changing perspectives meant that the issue of national homogeneity became increasingly salient. Of course, we cannot ignore the impact of Ernest Renan’s famous lecture Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? (1882; see Psichari 1947) which argued that only those individuals who are seen to be the ancestors of the French nation should be admitted to take part in the ‘daily plebiscite’. Renan’s claim in 1882 that the nation had two main characteristics: ‘the common possession of a rich legacy of memory [and] the will to continue to value the heritage which we have jointly received’ clearly sets out his admiration for the idea of a cult of ancestors. The fact that Renan’s lecture developed into a general consensus meant that ‘ “assimilationist” concerns’, as Noiriel refers to it, were as a result attached to the concept of nationality (Noiriel 2001: 162).6 Although there was a polemic about how assimilation and homogeneity were to be achieved (the conservatives focusing on race and genealogical factors and the progressives arguing that State institutions, especially schools, should be central), it is more important to recognise that the notion of cultural homogeneity became central to the definition of French nationality, for it was only through

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25

the assimilation of a homogenous national culture that the transmission of national identity down the generations could be guaranteed. Finally, it is significant that in his lecture Renan specified that ‘the essence of a nation is that all the individuals have many things in common and that they have forgotten many things as well’ (Psichari 1947: 892). Here, it seems that Renan was referring to the need for ‘collective cultural amnesia’ as a necessary partner of cultural homogenisation.7 Citizenship In France, the development of the concept of the nation-state has been closely linked with that of citizenship, and for many authors the defining feature of the modern or ‘political’ nation-state is the fact that it embodies a community of citizens. The Revolution of 1789 can be seen as a key defining moment. In the same manner as the political definition of nation, the transfer of political sovereignty from the monarchy to ‘the people’ should also be seen as the main characteristic of prevailing understandings of French citizenship. The Constitution of Year I (1793) proclaimed in article 7 that ‘the sovereign people is the universality of French citizens’, thus laying down the principle that sovereignty was to reside with the people who are conceived of as a body of citizens (Le Pors 1999: 6). The revolutionary universalist ideal has meant that the French citizen is defined as an individual, regardless of his/her cultural specificities. Indeed, it is through transcendence thanks to politics or citizenship (to borrow the formula used by Schnapper), that individuals are expected to put their cultural/linguistic/religious ‘particularisms’ aside and become active members of the nation-state (Schnapper 1994a: 83). Citizenship and nationality While citizenship itself might be distilled into a fairly simple definition (a principle governing the rights and duties of the citizen), its relationship with other concepts is less straightforward. This is certainly the case where citizenship and nationality is concerned. Indeed, although these two concepts are often thought of as coterminous, they were not historically linked. De Wenden argues that: The notion of citizenship that emerged during the French Revolution was a new conception based on certain philosophical values (adherence to the Revolution, acceptance of the social contract) and was quite separate from the notion of nationality. Hence, in the Constitution of Year I (1793), it was possible to become a citizen without being French if the person had accomplished some civic tasks. (Wihtol de Wenden 1991: 329)

Gérard Noiriel also demonstrates that juristes or legislators showed little interest in the link between citizenship and nationality until the first

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Immigration: public and intellectual discourses

law relating to ‘la nationalité française’ (1889). Noiriel thus concludes that the distinction between the citizen and the national had not been established at this stage (Noiriel 2001: 158). Wihtol de Wenden shows that it was during the nineteenth century that the original meaning the revolutionaries attached to citizenship became transformed. First, there was the transfer from a more direct notion of citizenship to one based on election and representation. Secondly, the economic, military and political rivalry between France and other European powers, and the resulting implementation of many ‘protectionist’ measures, meant that the question of nationality became increasingly linked to citizenship, thus allowing governments to distinguish who should benefit from citizenship rights and who should not. So it is the modern sense of French citizenship which can be understood as a national citizenship. Brubaker argues that the modern French national self-understanding is indeed embodied in its citizenship laws: ‘The expansive, assimilationist citizenship law of France, which automatically transforms second-generation immigrants into citizens, reflects the state-centred, assimilationist understanding of the French’ (Brubaker 1992: 14). So if citizenship comes to be defined in terms of nation and assimilation from the nineteenth century onwards, then one cannot ignore the significant implications for contemporary France which, due to immigration in particular, becomes a culturally diverse society from the early twentieth century onwards (and even more so in the period since the end of the Second World War). And yet, French citizenship is formulated in such a way that it cannot formally accommodate the public assertion of cultural difference. Indeed, Jean Leca’s claim that: ‘According to the dominant model of the modern nation-state, citizenship is founded on a-cultural identities and the politicisation of cultural interests is regarded as illegitimate in such a public space’ is key to understanding the parameters of citizenship in contemporary France (Leca 1988: 323). Furthermore, Rainer Bauböck’s analysis of the progressive introduction of nationality as a prerequisite for citizenship in terms of ‘social closure’ is certainly relevant to the recent debates around citizenship and nationality in France (Bauböck 1992). The contemporary manifestations of the perceived link between nationality and citizenship can be illustrated by the various policy debates with regard to the Code de la nationalité. In the 1980s, a number of politicians expressed their concern about the development of a so-called ‘instrumental citizenship’ whereby young people of North African origin who became French automatically at the age of eighteen merely became ‘Français de papier’ (French in terms of their ‘papers’ or legal status). This is exactly the sort of phenomenon that Jacques Toubon, General Secretary

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27

of the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) protested against in 1986 when he told Le Monde: To be French means something. It is not only a paper, a formality, but a value. The current legislation cheapens that value . . . Today we feel the need to revalorise belonging to France . . . One cannot acquire French nationality out of simple convenience. It is necessary to recognise the value of being French . . . for other reasons than for the social and economic advantages it entails. (Toubon, Le Monde, 5 November 1986, cited in Brubaker 1992: 147)

The above statement was symptomatic of a general malaise at a time when France found itself confronted with a number of factors which seemed to threaten the ‘unity’ of the ‘one and indivisible’ Republic. However, there was one factor in particular which became extremely politicised: the permanent settlement of North and Sub-Saharan African migrants and the emergence of a ‘second generation’.

The politicisation of immigration Nationality, integration and insécurité In order to understand why the question of immigration became increasingly politicised, it is first of all necessary to return to the mid-1970s. The economic downturn Between 1974 and 1976 the French government believed the economic recession to be temporary (Weil 2002: 167). Although labour migration was suspended in 1974, no other austerity measures were taken with regard to immigration. In fact, the Secretary of State, Paul Dijoud, oversaw a modernisation of family re-unification and social policy in favour of immigrants. However, by 1977, with no sign of an economic recovery, unemployment and the economic crisis became the main preoccupation of the French population. In such a climate, President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing made the return of non-European immigrants, especially North African immigrants, one of his priority policies between 1978 and 1980. Weil points out that this policy was aimed at Algerians in particular, even if they had been resident in France for a number of years. Giscard d’Estaing’s policy, if successful, would have led to the renunciation of the Evian Accords (which had sealed the end of the Algerian War in 1962); quotas for non-renewal of residence permits; non-renewal of residence permits for the unemployed of over six months and the deportation of

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100,000 foreigners per year (Weil 2002: 167–168). However, these policy objectives were finally abandoned by the government in the face of mounting opposition from the Churches, associations, trade unions, political parties on the Left, foreign governments and from within government itself. After the victory of socialist François Mitterrand in the 1981 presidential elections, and the PS and PCF 8 in the legislative elections held immediately afterwards, government policy towards immigration underwent a thaw. Not only did the Left in power liberalise entry and residence laws, they also regularised 130,000 foreigners, re-established the family reunification policy, set up a Ministry for National Solidarity to defend immigrants’ rights and institutionalised the right of foreign nationals to freely associate (legislation passed on 9 October 1981; see Cole 1998: 223 and Weil 2002). In addition, the arrival of Mitterrand saw the proposal to grant local voting rights to non-French residents. However, faced with opposition from the Right and a half-hearted attitude from the Left, this proposal was abandoned. Then, in 1983, the municipal elections marked the arrival of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National (FN) party onto the mainstream political scene. 1983: the emergence of the Front National The 1983 municipal elections were a turning point, because from that point on immigration became ‘the object of bargaining between rival political leaders and parties’ (Wihtol de Wenden 1991: 323). The first major electoral success for the FN in 1983 was soon followed by an 11% score at the European elections held in 1984 (Weil 2002: 170). The FN emerged into the political mainstream on an anti-immigration and law and order platform, where immigration and crime (l’insécurité) were presented as being inextricably linked. Coinciding with these events, a national debate about French identity was initiated by both the mainstream right and the far right. In 1984, the publication of a book by Alain Griotteray (Union pour la Démocratie Française – UDF député and columnist for the Figaro-Magazine) can be seen as clearly contributing to the start of a politicised debate about immigration. The book’s title, Les Immigrés: le choc, in itself illustrated the message which essentially argued that immigrants from Muslim countries were too different in their outlook to be able to assimilate French cultural norms in a satisfactory manner and that, in any case, a multiracial France was undesirable. Significantly, Griotteray argued that the Nationality Code should be reformed so that nationality would be choisie (chosen) and no longer subie (imposed) (Weil 2002).9 In other words, Griotteray was arguing for the introduction of some form of voluntarism and he evoked Renan’s

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29

‘daily plebiscite’ vision of the French nation in order to defend his point. The following year, the extreme right-wing group, known as Le Club de l’Horloge published a similarly high-profile book entitled L’identité de la France. It was the widespread perception of a link between French national identity and nationality which led to a general debate on the question of the Nationality Code, and whether it should be reformed so as to restrict nationality acquisition for the descendents of North Africans in general and Algerians in particular (Weil 2002).10 It is first of all useful to look at what constituted French citizenship law before the debate took place. Since the Revolution, citizenship regulations have been (and still remain today) largely based on the ‘jus soli’/‘droit du sol’ principle (although this has not meant the complete absence of ‘jus sanguinis’/‘droit du sang’).11 In the early stages of the Revolution, legislation passed in 1790 stated that a foreign man would automatically become French after five years’ residence in France, after marrying a French national, or following acquisition of property or business in France. The Constitution of 1791 added that an oath of allegiance would also be necessary, thus challenging the automatic nature of nationality acquisition. However, in the 1793 Constitution of Year I, the notion of automatic acquisition was re-instated and it was established that all foreigners over twenty-one years of age, who had lived in France for one year, and who worked in the country or had acquired property there, a wife, a child, or an elderly dependant, would be granted citizenship (Lochak 1988: 80; Weil 2002: 23– 25). After this remarkably open period, the next phase of citizenship law development, under the Directory and the Consulate, saw the residence requirement increase to seven years (in Year III – 1795) and then to ten (in Year VIII – 1799). Furthermore, in 1803, the Code civil almost totally abandoned jus soli and returned to the jus sanguinis principle. However, in the mid nineteenth century, jus soli was reaffirmed, as a result of a law passed in 1851. This law stipulated that a child born in France to a foreign national who had also been born in France could automatically become French (the double droit du sol). The principle of jus soli was further reaffirmed by a law passed in 1889 (Lochak 1988: 80; Weil 2002). Indeed, from 1889 onwards, children born in France to foreign parents (i.e. parents who were born abroad) would become French and be able to exercise political citizenship (i.e. vote) once they had reached the age of majority (eighteen). This would take place automatically, according to article 44 of the Code de la nationalité and was conditional upon the fact that those eligible for naturalisation were obliged to have been continually resident on French soil for the five years preceding their eighteenth birthday. According to article 23 of the Code (the so-called double droit

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du sol), those born to parents who had themselves been born in Algeria before independence automatically became French at birth without having to wait until they reached the age of eighteen. This was because, before 1962, Algeria had been a ‘département’ of the ‘Métropole’, or mainland France (Lochak 1988; Weil 2002). During the 1980s, the children of Algerian migrants in particular were targeted because under article 23 of the Nationality Code, they benefited from the double droit du sol.12 When in the 1980s, the emergence of a sizeable ‘second generation’ of Algerian descent became apparent, many politicians began to criticise article 23 because it was felt that young people of Algerian origin were becoming French in spite of themselves; others argued that they did not ‘deserve’ such treatment (see Toubon’s remark on ‘Français de papier’, p. 27). These criticisms not only stemmed from a deep suspicion with regard to the loyalty and allegiance of the French-born individuals of Algerian origin in a context where the bitter memories of the Algerian War of independence were still fairly recent. They also must be seen in the context of the increasingly influential discourse of the FN which helped to produce a rightward shift in the mainstream political parties’ stances towards immigration. Reforming the Code de la nationalité In the spring of 1985, the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR)– UDF electoral campaign got under way.13 One of the main features of its proposed programme, which placed it strikingly close to the FN, was to reform nationality legislation by ending the automatic acquisition of nationality. The RPR–UDF platform won the 1986 elections which also saw the entry of thirty-five FN representatives into the Assemblée Nationale for the first time due to the introduction of proportional representation (Weil 2002: 171). And, as promised, the newly formed government, headed by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, proposed changing the Nationality Code by ending the automatic acquisition of French nationality. The proposal included several objectives which would have led to the suppression of the principle of jus soli, as established in 1889, and seriously challenged articles 23 and 44, thus marking a shift towards jus sanguinis. However, the Chirac government was temporarily forced to abandon these reforms in the face of NGO, student and cabinet opposition.14 1987–88: the Nationality Commission Yet, some months later, the government set up a special Nationality Commission (La Commission de la nationalité) under the leadership of Marceau Long, vice-president of the Conseil d’État. The Commission,

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which was composed of sixteen experts, became operative in June 1987. Between 16 September and 21 October 1987 it held fifty public hearings which were broadcast live on French television.15 Alec Hargreaves points out that the fact that the Commission was given carte blanche to discuss issues which were seen to be of importance among the public meant that, as a result, ‘Muslims in general and Algerians in particular occupied centre-stage in the Commission’s deliberations’ (Hargreaves 1995: 171). In addition, the Commission’s highly unusual decision to broadcast the hearings live meant that the debate became even more media-hyped. Dominique Schnapper, one of the Commission’s experts, is quoted as acknowledging that, with hindsight, there was perhaps an excessive focus on issues relating to Islam. Schnapper explains that the Commission was set up to: examine head-on the problems preoccupying public opinion, including the most sensitive issues. There is particular public concern over dual nationality, military service and Islam, so we prioritized those problems and perhaps went a bit far. (Schnapper cited in Hargreaves 1995: 171)16

The Commission submitted its report (Être Français aujourd’hui et demain – Being French Today and Tomorrow) to the government on 7 January 1988. Among various recommendations, the report’s authors suggested a revision of article 44 so as to include an elective dimension for young people born in France of foreign parents. However, as opposed to the Chirac government’s original proposals, the Commission report did not recommend an oath of allegiance (manifestation de volonté) (Hargreaves 1995: 172). With regard to the double droit du sol (article 23), the Commission recommended that in relation to Algeria and other ex-départements, the legislation should remain unchanged but that it should no longer apply to France’s other former colonies. However, the Commission still recommended that access to French nationality should be made easier for those individuals originating from independent states where French was now the official language (this, of course, included many of France’s former colonies). With regard to marriage, the Commission recommended that the system of ‘declaration’ of French nationality as opposed to the proposed shift to the more complex process of naturalisation be maintained yet the minimum period of marriage before any procedures could be undertaken should be extended from six months to a year. The Nationality Commission’s report was well received on the Right and Left of the political spectrum, where the feeling was that the recommendations could have been more severe (Weil 2002). However, it was too late to pass the appropriate legislation in time for the presidential

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and legislative elections due to be held in the early summer. Mitterrand won a second mandate and the Right lost their majority in the parliamentary elections that followed, so Chirac’s reforms and the Commission Report were postponed (Hargreaves 1995: 173). 1993: the Méhaignerie reform The next round of legislative elections in 1993 did see the return of a centre-right (UDF–RPR) government, this time headed by Edouard Balladur. The new government resumed the process of proposals to reform the Nationality Code and the Justice Minister, Pierre Méhaignerie, became responsible for the drafting of a restrictive bill which was adopted by Parliament in June 1993 and came into effect on 1 January 1994. The Méhaignerie nationality reforms were accompanied by a restrictive immigration policy which became known as the Lois Pasqua (after the then Minister of the Interior, Charles Pasqua). The nationality (Méhaignerie) reform made the following changes: 1

2

3

4

5

Children born in France of foreign parents would no longer automatically be French at the age of eighteen. Instead, they would have to request French nationality through a ‘manifestation de volonté’ between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. This reformed article 44. Foreign parents of children born in France could no longer request French nationality for their children when they were still minors. This also effectively changed the nature of article 44. Nationality could be declined if, after the age of eighteen, a youth had been convicted of crimes which were perceived as threatening to national security, or if he or she had served more than six months in prison for such offences as drug trafficking or murder. A foreign national would have to wait two years (instead of six months) before obtaining French nationality if he or she had married a French national. The new law could subject the couple to a fraud investigation if the marriage broke down within a year. Article 23 was reformed so that children born of parents who themselves were born in one of the French colonies or territories before independence would no longer be automatically French at birth. Even more significant was the fact that this reform extended to the children of Algerians. Otherwise, the so-called double droit du sol would come into effect only if one of the child’s parents had been living in France for the previous five years (Hargreaves 1995; Naïr 1997; Feldblum 1999: 147–151). As such, the Méhaignerie reforms signalled a serious challenge to the concept of jus soli and, subsequently, the jus sanguinis principle

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was reinforced (Feldblum 1999: 149). Many observers see the debates and the reform of the Nationality Code as symptomatic of the increasing pressure that the FN was placing on political parties who feared the loss of their traditional electorate (Hargreaves 1995: 176). In other words, they argue that there is a direct link between the debate on nationality and the electoral threat emanating from Jean-Marie Le Pen. From nationality to integration Unlike the mainstream Right, the Left’s initial response to the increasing influence of the FN was to stand its ground and focus on anti-racist discourse as expressed in the slogan le droit à la difference (the right to be different) (Hargreaves 1995; Favell 2001). The early years of the Mitterrand administration were thus characterised by a generous stance towards immigrants and the term insertion came to be used as a deliberate and symbolic shift away from the term assimilation which had, by now, become taboo due to its colonial connotations. Nevertheless, it was simply not feasible to maintain such a stance with regard to immigration, for various reasons. First of all, in a political climate where the FN was becoming increasingly successful, the Left’s droit à la difference discourse was hi-jacked by Jean-Marie Le Pen and his associates, who used the same slogan to highlight what they believed to be the essential difference and ‘unassimilable’ qualities of certain minorities. The FN therefore used the slogan to justify the return of non-European immigrants to their ‘countries of origin’. Secondly, the perceived threat to the French ‘nation’ (through increasing regionalism, the weakening of social solidarity, the emergence of the European Union as a potential challenge to national sovereignty), added to the increasing influence of lepéniste discourse, meant that ultimately the policy of insertion had to be abandoned (Favell 2001: 55). This climate placed increasing pressure on the Left to not be seen as ‘soft’ on immigration. As a result, the droit à la difference approach was dropped and a junior ministry which had been set up to deal with immigrants was abolished and merged into the Ministry of Social Affairs (Hargreaves 1995). The eruption of the Islamic ‘headscarf affair’ in 1989 only added to government’s desire to be seen to be ‘doing something’ about immigration. The ‘headscarf affair’ led to huge media coverage surrounding the expulsion of three Muslim pupils who refused to remove their headscarves in a collège in Creil. The head teacher in question believed that their refusal amounted to an assault on the Republic’s secular principles of laïcité.17 In December 1989, only a few days after the FN’s victory in local elections held in Dreux, where one of the main campaign aims of the victorious Mme Stirbois was to end ‘the colonization

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of France by Arab immigrants’, a new government post of SecretaryGeneral for Integration was established (Hargreaves 1995: 195; Wihtol de Wenden 1991: 328). In addition, Prime Minister Rocard set up the Haut Conseil à l’Intégration (High Council on Immigration – HCI) to discuss possible policy proposals. The Haut Conseil, which was nominated in March 1990, consisted of nine members and was presided over by Marceau Long, the vice-president of the Conseil d’État. The other members were generally députés, sénateurs and other political personalities. The HCI was to have a consultative role and report back to the prime minister at regular intervals. Thus integration from this point onwards became the key policy approach for the Left. The political scientist Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux took part in the discussions surrounding the establishment of a working definition for the concept of ‘integration’. Indeed, the HCI’s first Report to the prime minister, entitled Pour un modèle francais d’intégration (For a French Model of Integration, published in 1991), drew on some of the ideas of Costa-Lascoux, as expressed in her book entitled De l’immigré au citoyen (From Immigrant to Citizen, 1989). The HCI’s definition of integration in 1991 was as follows: integration must not be conceived of as a sort of path halfway between assimilation and insertion but rather as a specific process. Through this process, active participation in national society, of various and different elements is to be encouraged, while accepting the survival of cultural, social and moral specificities and maintaining as true that the whole is enriched by this variety and complexity. Without denying differences, and knowing how to take them into account without glorifying them, a policy of integration highlights resemblances and convergences, equality of rights and duties, in order to create solidarity between the different ethnic and cultural components of our society and to give everyone, regardless of their origins, the opportunity to live in this society whose rules he/she has accepted and of which he becomes a constitutive member. (HCI 1991: 18)

Later on in the report, the authors underlined that their understanding of a policy of integration is that it should ‘obey a principle of equality and not a principle of minorities’ (HCI 1991: 19, emphasis in the original). It was claimed by the authors of the HCI report that integration does not just apply to immigrant populations. However, the report focused on the following groups in particular: ‘the foreigner’, ‘the immigrant’, ‘people of foreign origin’, and while the ‘excluded or marginalised’ category is less specific, it was not evidently central to the HCI’s concerns (HCI 1991: 15–17). For although there was a brief reference to those exclus of French de souche origin, in the actual definition of integration, only newcomers – i.e. des nouveaux membres – were referred to.18

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In a later text published by the HCI, entitled Affaiblissement du lien social, enfermement dans les particularismes et intégration dans la cité (Weakening of the Social Bond, Segregation and Integration in Society, 1997), a number of observations with regard to facilitating integration are made. The authors of the report claim that children should be kept in school for as long a period as possible so that they can assimilate a maximum of what are referred to as ‘principles of life in our society’ (HCI 1997: 57). The conclusion of the report reads as follows: ‘if we want those who live here to be, in spirit and sensibility, as similar as possible to ourselves, to the point of joining us, if we want them to believe in our principles, let us try to live out the values we believe in, and which we claim as ours’ (HCI 1997: 66). On the basis of the statements in the 1997 report, two observations can be made. First of all, the fact that the document makes several references to ‘our society, our values’ reinforces the notion that the report addresses a public which is perceived to be outside of French society. This, in turn, appears to designate an ‘us’ and ‘them’, despite the HCI’s earlier claims that integration is a policy which supposedly addresses all sections of French society. Secondly, this report does not just address those immigrants who have recently arrived in France. It concerns children of migrants who have been born and brought up in France. One could, as a result, question the viability of stressing the importance of adhering to certain values when addressing people who have been born or educated in France. In the final analysis, the HCI reaffirmed the principle of integration, which would take place thanks to the Republican ‘melting pot’. Nevertheless, it was accepted that traditional modes of integration (school, Army, employment) had been challenged and partially replaced by other mechanisms of integration (associations, the media). The government’s highly visible attempts to clarify a public policy of integration and its simultaneous ‘no-nonsense’ approach to immigration continued throughout the 1990s, with 1997 seeing the passing of the controversial Loi Debré under Alain Juppé’s leadership as prime minister. The Loi Debré introduced further restrictive measures concerning entry to, and residence in, France and made the expulsion of illegal immigrants easier (Freedman 2000: 16–17). However, the Left’s return to a government headed by socialist Lionel Jospin signalled a relaxation of immigration and nationality policy. The Loi Guigou was passed on 17 March 1998, under Jospin’s gauche plurielle government. It abandoned the manifestation de volonté clause, which had been introduced by the Méhaignerie reforms five years earlier and re-established full rights to the acquisition of French nationality at the age of eighteen for those born of two foreign parents, provided that the individual had resided

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on French soil for five years preceding his/her eighteenth birthday. In the six months preceding his/her eighteenth birthday and in the year following it, the youth in question could reject French nationality. In addition, the Loi Guigou meant that nationality could be acquired at the earlier age of thirteen upwards, with parental consent, and from the age of sixteen upwards, without parental consent. This law also re-established the granting of French nationality at birth for those whose parents had been born in pre-independent Algeria, though not for those from other former French colonies. The most significant consequence of the Loi Guigou is the fact that it strengthened the droit du sol principle, which had seriously been called into question by the Méhaignerie reform of 1993.19 The passing of the Loi Guigou in 1998 seemed to signal an end to the fifteen-year-long debate about nationality, citizenship and integration and no such legislation regarding naturalisation has been enacted since. More importantly, a number of factors led to the dilution of the negative and xenophobic discourse concerning non-European immigrants and their descendants. The second half of the 1990s saw an easing of the economic crisis and increasing confidence of voters with regard to unemployment. Michel Marian shows how the creation of 350,000 public sector jobs for young people for five years (the emplois jeunes programme) and the introduction of the thirty-five-hour week which created a further 250,000 new jobs, meant that public perceptions about the economic climate were generally better than they had been in the 1980s (Marian 2002: 259–260). In a climate of increasing public confidence, the FN’s appeal as an anti-immigration party waned, as did the need to find scapegoats. Pascal Perrineau argues that the ‘fizzling out’ of the public debate about immigration had its consequences for the decline of the FN. Perrineau also evokes the success of certain sections of the Left in regaining potential right-wing and far-right voters due to their new tough stance with regard to fears about globalisation (Perrineau, cited in Weil 2002). This factor, in addition to the emergence of Charles Pasqua’s right-wing Rassemblement pour la France (RPF) party meant that some elements of the FN electorate were ‘re-absorbed’ back into the mainstream. Furthermore, however marginal and temporary its effect may have been, it is also necessary to take into account the 1998 World Cup (hosted by France) and the so-called ‘World Cup effect’ which signalled that many people were finally beginning to positively accept that France was clearly a plural and mixed society. The fact that Zinedine Zidane, a Frenchman of Algerian Kabyle origin emerged as a national ‘hero’ of French football (and remains so today), while clearly not being the reason for the demise of the discourse and impact of the FN, is reflective of a changing political and social climate in the France of the late 1990s.

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37

In addition, the FN became increasingly divided and in 1999, eventually split into two separate parties, the Front National (FN), still headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Mouvement National Républicain (MNR), headed by Le Pen’s former deputy, Bruno Mégret. In addition to a changing economic, social and political climate, this split has also damaged the electoral potential of the ‘old’ unified FN. So in the run-up to the 2002 presidential elections, Jean-Marie Le Pen was not seriously expected to proceed to the second round.20 Indeed, it was generally assumed that the second round would be a predictable battle between Chirac and Jospin. This widespread assumption was accompanied by a generalised disenchantment with mainstream politicians and numerous political corruption scandals. There was also a sense that Jospin’s socialist gauche caviare government had ‘sold out’ on its socialist principles and abandoned ordinary people. In addition to these factors, the fragmentation of the Left’s candidates (sixteen candidates in the first round, seven of whom were candidates of the Left), the decision of many voters to engage in a first-round protest vote, an unprecedented abstention rate and the domination of l’insécurité throughout the campaign, all contributed to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s toppling of Jospin as the runner-up candidate, thus provoking what has come to be known as un séisme politique (political earthquake).21 The massive wave of mobilisation which ensued after the shock result of 21 April 2002, the rallying cry of which was to faire barrage au Front National (to block the National Front), reveals that although ‘law and order’ (l’insécurité) – which dominated electors’ concerns – was in many ways a veiled way of discussing old ‘xenophobic’ fears about les jeunes des banlieues – i.e. les jeunes issus de l’immigration – Jean-Marie Le Pen was not going to be allowed to succeed. This suggests that the séisme politique of April 2002 was essentially the unforeseen result of a protest vote phenomenon rather than the reaffirmation of a xenophobic trend. However, the wave of mobilisation which had developed between the first and second round had already waned by the legislative elections which took place on 9 and 16 June. An even higher record abstention rate in the first round of these elections reveals a more profound disillusionment on the part of the French voter with regard to party politics and politicians.22 It is possible to argue that the presidential and legislative elections of spring 2002 and the unprecedented success of Jean-Marie Le Pen are different to the earlier electoral gains of the FN. The France of the early 1980s and the first half of the 1990s was one which was beset by economic crisis and as a result immigration became increasingly and negatively politicised, reflecting a rather classic scapegoat scenario. As

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we have seen above, the malaise of this period was slightly different to that of the late 1990s and the early twenty-first century. One of the main factors in this shift is an ever-increasing sense of la crise du politique, and a growing sense of décalage between politicians and ordinary French voters.23 Although this dimension was a feature of the emergence of the FN in the first place, it is possible to argue that the sense of disenchantment with political corruption was not as great in the 1980s and early 1990s as it was in the run-up to the 2002 elections. In addition, while immigration was at the forefront of previous elections, it was not as overtly central to the 2002 elections. This difference between the 2002 elections and previous successes of the far right in France can perhaps be qualified in the following manner: while past FN victories of the 1980s, in particular, were the expression of a xenophobic or nationalist backlash directed primarily at non-European and North African immigrants, the 2002 elections were more the expression of a general populist backlash, directed against la classe politique.24 However, the dominance of l’insécurité as a theme of the 2002 elections barely masks the spectre of the old fears and suspicions about les jeunes issus de l’immigration maghrébine, who are generally referred to in the media and by politicians, as though in code language, as les jeunes or les jeunes de banlieue. This generalised preoccupation with l’insécurité in France, coupled with renewed concerns about fundamentalist Islam in the post-‘9/11’ context and the tensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (the ‘second intifada’) has indeed led once again to discourses of fermeture (closure) vis-à-vis the ‘second and third generations’ of North African immigrants. Indeed, the re-establishment of the HCI in October 2002 could be seen as symptomatic of renewed concerns with regard to immigrants and their descendents. The post-2002 context Integration revisited It was President Chirac’s Discours de Troyes, on 14 October 2002, which can be seen as the precursor for the re-establishment of the HCI and the development of a range of policies regarding immigration, integration, anti-discrimination and diversity. In his speech, Chirac set out the State’s objectives, clearly placing the emphasis on two themes: local democracy and national cohesion. The juxtaposition of these two objectives is curious. While the first is about de-centralising, loosening the rigidities of the French State so as to favour economic, administrative and fiscal dynamism, national cohesion is about ‘tightening up’, top-down measures and keeping things in check. However, beyond this apparent mismatch,

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39

what was significant about Chirac’s Troyes speech was that it set the tone for the next five or so years and in that way can be read as a sort of presidential programme for his coming quinquenat (five-year presidential term of office). The national cohesion that Chirac outlined in his speech was clearly about France’s immigrant-origin communities, since it focused not only on the question of ‘difficult neighbourhoods’ (les quartiers difficiles) and the risks of ‘extremist drifts’ (dérives extrémistes), but also on three key areas for policy redefinition: law and order in the housing estates; urban regeneration; and integration. Given that integration was at the heart of Chirac’s speech, the mission of the HCI was renewed. It deliberated over the next three years, publishing a number of reports and then a final report in 2006, reviewing the Republic’s policy of integration between 2002 and 2005. In this Report, we once again find familiar attempts to define integration, echoing the earlier reports of the 1990s, and in particular the report published in 1991 entitled Pour un modèle français d’intégration (see p. 34). Once again, the HCI argues that integration should not be understood either as assimilation which is culturally imperialist, yet nor should it be conceived in terms of insertion, which is too superficially socio-economic in nature. Rather, the report authors argue that integration needs to be clearly understood as a reciprocal effort by both immigrants and the majority society where there is openness to diversity and the building of a common democratic culture. In this sense, the 2006 Report did not diverge from the 1991 Report. However, perhaps the main difference between the HCI’s – and, indeed, the government’s – approach to integration in 1991 and 2006 is the emphasis on the notion of contract (contrat). Indeed, the contrat d’accueil et d’intégration is what Chirac’s Troyes speech was essentially calling for. The explicit idea of a contract which the Republic would establish between itself and new migrants constitutes a major shift and it became part of the Comité interministériel de l’intégration (Interministerial Committee on Integration, also reinstated, in 2003) as well as the Plan de Cohésion sociale launched by the Minister for social cohesion, Jean-Louis Borloo in 2005. While actual integration contracts can be set up only with the newly arrived migrant, this does not mean that the focus on contract has not had an impact on those of immigrant origin. In fact, the idea of a contract underpinning a redefined public policy of integration is part of the French state’s self-proclaimed efforts to re-establish a ‘Republican identity’. The contract can therefore be seen as a sort of ‘renewal of vows’ whereby populations of immigrant origin are expected to refuse communautarisme, abide by laïcité and reject l’insécurité in the quartiers difficiles. In return, the Republic will combat discrimination and promote

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equality of opportunity. Indeed, it is the notion of equality of opportunity (l’égalité des chances) which can be seen as giving the idea of contrat some substance. The Republic and Islam The re-establishment of the HCI could be interpreted as a positive step to enhance the Republic’s egalitarian project. And, indeed, it probably was. However, it can also be regarded as an indicator of the concerns that the French state had vis-à-vis its immigrant population, especially those of Muslim origin. Indeed, the final Report clearly posits le communautarisme as being the only real (dangerous) alternative to the Republican model and argues that the fact that both Britain and the Netherlands have now called their multicultural models into question only serves as further proof why the Republican model of integration must be upheld and reinforced (HCI 2006: 15–16). While the HCI’s bilan was clearly not a report on or about la laïcité, concerns about cultural and religious segregation do inform the objectives of a renewed integration policy. Islam is mentioned a number of times in the Report, often in relation to the need to improve the image of this religion through education and its representation in the media. The positive stance towards the second religion of France is nevertheless shot through with a sense of anxiety – the ever-looming threat of le communautarisme and the dilution of Republican values. This cultural anxiety is not straightforward, though. It appears to be a mix of a desire to tentatively engage with Islam and Muslims, yet somehow control both. This is how the establishment of the Conseil français du culte musulman (CFCM) in 2003 could be interpreted. Indeed, it has been argued by a number of scholars that the process to set up a representational organisation for Muslims in France, initiated under the socialist coalition government’s Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement in 1999, was accelerated following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (Laurence 2005). Chevènement had taken up the task of establishing some form of consultative exercise with Muslim leaders in France in October 1999. Six national federations, six large mosques and six ‘Islam experts’ were invited to take part in the consultation. By 3 July 2001 a formal agreement had been reached which would pave the way for the establishment of the future organisation representing Islam in France. However, in aftermath of ‘9/11’, President Chirac addressed the members in October and reminded them of the importance of their task in light of the previous month’s events (Laurence 2005: 54). After the 2002 elections and return of the Right, Nicolas Sarkozy (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire – UMP) took over from Chevènement.

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The CFCM was not only seen by government as important in the aftermath of ‘9/11’, but also seen by some, including Sarkozy, as an instrument of social peace for the banlieues, especially in terms of calming the tensions between French Muslims and Jews which had arisen and been stirred up by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So, while the establishment of the CFCM was generated by a motivation to institutionalise Islam in the same way as the other major religions in France, and thus create some element of representation for France’s Muslims, it does appear that a certain degree of cultural anxiety with regard to Islam in France may have informed the process. Indeed, Laurence (2005) argues that the CFCM can be regarded as a typical example of a corporatist organisation, whereby the State remains the broker of relations by nominating those associations and federations which are subsequently given access to decision-making circles. (They are then made to adopt certain rules laid down by the State and, in the case of the CFCM, these took the form of a conduct Charter outlined by Chevènement in 1999. Members had to sign up to the charter asking them to respect the fundamental principles of the Republic (Laurence 2005: 53).) Thus, on a meta-level, it is possible to argue that the last seven or eight years have been defined by a simultaneous and paradoxical desire on the part of the French State to engage with Islam and France’s Muslims yet, on the other hand, extend greater control over those same constituencies. This dynamic was present in the process which established the CFCM and it was also present in the most recent affaire du foulard in 2003 and 2004. The 2003–2004 ‘headscarf affair’ was in effect sparked off by comments made by the interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy when speaking publicly at the annual meeting of the l’Union des organisations islamiques de France in Le Bourget (19 April 2003). Sarkozy’s presence at the meeting can be interpreted as a desire to engage with France’s Muslims and indeed it came just one week after the elections to the CFCM, an enterprise to which he had committed himself since taking office. His speech started off by celebrating the fact that the Muslims of France were now able to sit at the ‘table of the Republic’ and openly live their religion as full citizens. However, Sarkozy’s comments about the necessity for veiled Muslim women to remove their scarves for the purposes of national identity card photographs reflected an anxiety regarding France’s Muslims. His comments sparked off anger among the audience at Le Bourget but, more significantly, they led to an eighteenmonth-long debate about the veil, la laïcité and the place of religion in France’s State schools. The culmination of this debate was the passing of legislation to ban conspicuous religious symbols in France’s State schools in March 2004, and while the legislation did not explicitly

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mention Islam in its wording, the debates in the media and political arenas largely focused on Muslim women. There were a number of recurrent themes in the debates, including the protection of women’s rights and the dangers of cultural relativism. But, significantly, the notion that the wearing of religious symbols constituted a provocation to the Republic was particularly prominent in the debates that took place in the Assemblée nationale (Kiwan 2007). The anxiety produced by the idea that the Republic was being provoked by extremist demands also defined Sarkozy’s speech at Le Bourget and is further evidence of a sense that although France is not at present under siege from its ‘minorities’, such a scenario could develop in the future. The 2005 riots and beyond Stemming the tide of particularisms has reflected the cultural and religious anxieties of political elites regarding populations of North African (Muslim) origin. However, the nature of this anxiety is not purely related to cultural and religious difference. For there also exists a form of social anxiety among French political elites regarding France’s banlieues. It could be argued that this is nothing new; that France and in particular Paris has always felt threatened by its internal enemies or classes dangereuses who are perceived as menacingly massing on the outskirts of the city. Yet what is arguably new about this social anxiety is that it has only recently become negatively ethnicised. Fassin and Fassin remark upon this slide into a racialised political discourse and argue that Nicolas Sarkozy’s now infamous remarks about the need to clean les Quatre Mille housing estate in La Courneuve with Karcher and get rid of the la racaille (scum) once and for all was an example of the racialisation of social questions in the lead-up to the urban riots of October and November 2005 (Fassin and Fassin 2006: 7). Muchielli and Le Goaziou (2006) also show how Sarkozy made a link between polygamy and the riots in an interview with the weekly magazine L’Express on 17 November 2005: [These rioters] are legally fully French. But let’s say things as they are: polygamy and acculturation of a certain number of families means that is more difficult to integrate a young person originating from Sub-Saharan Africa than it is a young French person from another origin.25

Sarkozy was not alone in his ethnicised reading of the riots. In separate interviews with the press, both the President of the centre-right and governing UMP group in the Assemblée nationale, Bernard Accoyer, and the Employment Minister, Gérard Larcher, also argued that polygamy was linked to the causes of the riots.26 In addition to polygamy, Islam was cited (albeit indirectly) by a number of UMP politicians as one of

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the causes of the urban unrest. Sarkozy himself made remarks about the threat of extremisms, as did Eric Raoult, G. Tron and R. Karoutchi (Le Goaziou 2006: 43). Yvelines député, Jacques Myard, remarked that the banlieue could be described as ‘the anti-French ghetto’, further adding to the ethnicised reading of the riots (Le Goaziou 2006: 38). As far as the left of the political spectrum were concerned, Le Goaziou shows that the Parti Socialiste (PS) hardly discussed the socio-economic causes of the unrest at all and instead seemed to adopt the security approach of the UMP. Perhaps even more surprising was the PCFs’ silence on unemployment as being one of the major causes for riots; and furthermore the silence of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) and the Lutte Ouvrière (LO) (Le Goaziou 2006: 41–42). One of the crucial events during the riots was the implementation of a curfew from 9 November onwards. Clémentine Autain argues that the decision to introduce a state of emergency was by no means symbolically anodyne since the last time it had been used was during the Algerian War of Independence (Autain 2006: 9). Furthermore, the fact that it was Marine Le Pen (spokesperson for the FN) who first called for the implementation of a state of emergency reveals to what extent the FN still held a powerful position in French politics. The fact that the leader of the right-wing Mouvement pour la France (MPF), Philippe de Villiers, referred to the riots as ‘ethnic civil war in the suburbs’ and used the exact phrase of Jean Marie Le Pen in a special meeting which he convened during the events, based on the theme: ‘France, love it or leave it . . .’, further reveals how political discourses about the episode clearly bore the imprint of an FN-style ethnicised perspective. Finally, Sarkozy’s calls for the expulsion of foreign national rioters on 9 November demonstrates to what extent the events had been constructed by the Interior Ministry as France’s ‘war’ with its immigrants and their descendants (Le Goaziou 2006: 45–48). Of course, the campaign against immigration had been initiated by Sarkozy some months earlier, with the announcement at the UMP Convention on 9 June 2005 that the government would pursue a policy of immigration choisie rather than immigration subie (i.e. a selective as opposed to an imposed immigration policy). Immigration choisie would represent an immigration policy designed to attract well-qualified individuals for specific shortage areas of the economy and was presented by Sarkozy as a median between an unrealistic policy of l’immigration zéro (zero immigration) and an irresponsible policy of l’immigration sans limite (immigration without limits). However, the announcement of a special Comité interministériel de contrôle de l’immigration pour une immigration choisie (Interministerial committee for immigration control

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and selective immigration) by the government on 29 November 2005, just twelve days after the end of the riots and Sarkozy’s recommendations for the expulsion of foreign rioters on 9 November, only served to reinforce the message that immigration itself was a cause for the unrest in the banlieues. Some seven months later, the message about a direct link between immigration and the riots in the banlieues was confirmed by Sarkozy’s presentation of the White Paper to the Sénat in June 2006 where he claimed that: we must not hide from the truth. The Cour des Comptes has analysed perfectly the seriousness of the situation in its recent report on the hosting of migrants: ‘The situation of a significant proportion of populations of the most recent immigrant origin is more than worrying. Besides the fact that it is characterised by situations which are often undignified, it is also the direct or indirect cause of serious social and ethnic tensions, full of threats for the future.’ After thirty years of blindness and denial in the face of the crucial issue of immigration, we should not be surprised by the violence in our suburbs (banlieues) . . . The twenty-seven nights of riots which we had in October and November are the direct result of the breakdown in our system of integration.27

The immigration choisie policy continued to wind its way through the policy machine and the projet de loi (White Paper) on immigration and integration was presented by the UMP government in March 2006. It was then adopted by the Assemblée Nationale and Sénat in June 2006 and was subsequently promulgated as law on 24 July. Not only did the law make it more difficult to enter France, it also made it more difficult to stay and challenged existing rights to family re-unification (regroupement familial). The calling into question of the right to regroupement familial was denounced by many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as an attack on fundamental human liberties, and the policy as a whole was described by its critics as dangerously introducing a notion of immigration jetable (disposable immigration) where the migrant is conceived of solely in terms of his/her ability to slot into the economic needs of France. The government, and Sarkozy in particular, were also severely criticised for pursuing their policy of deportation of both undocumented migrants whose children were educated in France and undocumented migrant schoolchildren. This objective was announced by the Ministry of Interior by a 2004 circular to all regional prefects asking them to speed up the deportation procedures. Even though another circular was sent to prefects on 31 October 2005 asking them to wait until the 2005–2006 school year was finished before pursuing the deportation policy, a further communication was sent out by the Ministry of Interior on 13 June 2006, reminding prefects of their duties to invite illegal immigrants and

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their children to take advantage of the aide volontaire au retour (voluntary return aid) policy which offered from 150 Euros per person up to 2,000 Euros for a single adult and 3,500 Euros for a couple, to which 1,000 Euros per child would be added for up to three children; over and above three children per family, 500 Euros per child would be offered.28 This policy direction does not only recall the attempts of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing between 1978 and 1980 to send non-European immigrants home; it also echoes Le Pen’s tough stance on immigration (his épargne pour le retour/savings for return policy), albeit not going as far as promising the immigration zéro pledged by the FN. It can be argued that fears of a second-round presidential battle between Le Pen and the Right in 2007 (as was the case in 2002) was the driving force behind the ‘lepénisation’ of politics and the shift rightward in terms of presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy’s discourse regarding immigrants and the descendents of immigrants. Indeed, Sarkozy’s electoral pledge to establish a Ministry of Immigration and national identity during the 2007 presidential campaign reflected this rightward shift very clearly.29 Into the anti-discrimination age of equal opportunities? The recent manoeuvres of the UMP government in general, and Nicolas Sarkozy in particular, can be seen to simultaneously reflect and fuel the cultural anxieties present within French society with regard to immigrants and their descendants. However, the whipping up of the debate about immigration, integration and national identity by Sarkozy sits rather oddly with the attempts of the 2002–2007 government to develop a policy of diversity and equality of opportunity.30 Indeed, in May 2004, a Stratégie nationale pour l’égalité des chances was launched by the Raffarin-led government; in 2005 the Haute autorité de luttes contre les discriminations et pour l’égalité (HALDE) was established and 2006 was declared the year of equal opportunities, reflected in the passing of a law on equal opportunities in March. The law on equal opportunities can be seen as the culmination of number of government-led initiatives and reports on the question of diversity and equality dating back to 2004. It cannot be argued that the Raffarin government ‘led the way’ on diversity. Rather, the position of the government was initially more reactive. Indeed, the first government-commissioned Report, published in November 2004, can be seen as a response to a Report published by the independent Institut Montaigne think-tank in January of the same year (Les oubliés de l’égalité des chances, Those that Equal Opportunities Forgot). In fact, the law on equality of opportunity which was adopted by parliament in March 2006 can be seen as a culmination of a number of government-commissioned reports on the question of diversity and

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equality of opportunity. The first of these, the so-called Bébéar Report, was published in November 2004. This Report, entitled Des entreprises aux couleurs de la France (Companies the Colour of France) looked at the need for greater diversity in France’s private sector workforce, and conspicuously promoted the concept of la minorité visible. However, the notion of visibility is not related to culture or cultural difference. Indeed, the report’s author, Claude Bébéar, points out that the term ‘minorité visible’ (which is borrowed from the Canadian model) was adopted precisely because it avoids ‘sensitive’ terms such as ‘l’origine’ or ‘la race’ and refers to those people who are not autochthonous to a particular society, who are not white or who do not have white skin (Bébéar 2004: 10). Although the term is in fact chosen to designate those ‘co-citizens of foreign origin’, the report contains no discussion or conceptualisation of discrimination which might stem from any cultural preconceptions that employers may have (Bébéar 2004: 10). The Report intimates that discrimination is about difference, but what the nature of this difference is is not problematised. The only mention of the term ‘culture’ occurs on the very last page of the Report and here culture is presented as potentially dangerous or socially divisive and thus is alluded to in relation to ‘communautarisme’. Furthermore, even though the Report acknowledges that visible minorities are affected by discrimination, the statistics are discussed through socio-economic identifiers such as the quartier and les jeunes. The avoidance of discussing discrimination in relation to ethnicity or employer perceptions about cultural difference reflects a reluctance to conceptualise diversity in this sense. Just as the concept of minorité visible had been suggested as a working principle, a significant shift once again appeared in government discourse. The Versini Report on diversity in the civil service was published in December 2004, just one month after the Bébéar Report on diversity in the private sector, and clearly rejects the notion of visible minority in favour of a ‘minorité vulnérable’ which it argues is less stigmatising than ‘visible minority’ (Versini 2004: 35). Once again the conceptualisation of diversity remains firmly within a socio-economic and territorial paradigm. Furthermore, the Versini Report rejects the idea that tackling discrimination and promoting diversity might be linked with questions of culture or perceived ‘ethnicity’. Instead, a clear case is made for ‘une diversité à la française’, which draws on Eric Keslassy’s call for a ‘discrimination positive socio-économique’. While such an approach may do something to attenuate ‘post-code discrimination’, it is difficult to see how the refusal to think in terms of the cultural or ‘ethnic’ features of discrimination can lead to the development of an effective policy of equal opportunities and diversity.

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The predominantly social understanding of diversity and equality of opportunity has prevailed and was inscribed in the Charte pour l’égalité des chances dans l’accès aux formations d’excellence (Charter for Equality of Opportunity in Access to Educational Excellence), which was signed in January 2005 by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Employment and Social Cohesion, the Ministry of Integration and Equal Opportunities and the Presidents of many universities and grandes écoles. The aim of the Charter is to establish a partnership between the different key institutional players so as to widen participation and integrate currently marginalised groups into the existing system of ‘streams of excellence’ by building on current Zones d’éducation prioritaire (ZEP) policies.31 The preamble to the Charter clearly addresses the question of widening participation in elite higher education institutions as a social question – that is, there is no explicit mention of the post-migrant nature of much of the populations concerned by the Charter: the ZEPs are, after all, established on territorial criteria, as opposed to ethnicised criteria. The issue of the orientation process and whether it tends to encourage pupils of immigrant origin into less academic and more vocational sectors than their ‘French-origin’ counterparts is not addressed. The Charter refers instead to ‘l’origine sociale’ and diversity in terms of ‘milieu’. In relation to the media, public discourse on equal opportunities and diversity became more innovative. In March 2005, a Report commissioned by Prime Minister Raffarin, entitled Diversité culturelle et culture commune dans l’audiovisuel (Cultural Diversity and Common Culture in the Audio-Visual Sector) was published. In February 2004, Raffarin had written to the HCI asking them to engage further with the issue of diversity in the media and subsequently the HCI organised a conference on the same theme in partnership with the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA) and Le Fonds d’action sociale et de soutien pour l’intégration et la lutte contre les discriminations (FASILD) in April 2004 at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris. (The conference title was ‘Écrans Pâles? Diversité culturelle et culture commune dans l’audiovisuel’, i.e. ‘Pale Screens? Cultural Diversity and Common Culture in the AudioVisual Sector.) It is significant that whereas the term cultural diversity is avoided in reports and initiatives relating to the business sector and the civil service, ‘cultural diversity’ is a key watchword in CSA and HCI discussions about the media. In the recommendation presented to the Prime Minister following the Conference, the HCI Report quoted Institut du monde arabe president Denis Bauchard’s remark, made at the Écrans Pâles conference, about the need to: ‘take into account the immigrant origin public and more precisely the Arab component in French and European society’ (HCI 2005: 4). Furthermore in the 2006 Law

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on Equal Opportunities, there is an article dedicated to the need for the media to reflect the cultural diversity of French society in its programming.32 However, the notion of cultural diversity is absent from the other fifty-one articles of the Law. It is perhaps through the establishment of the HALDE that the 2002– 2007 government went furthest in its declared objectives to combat discrimination and enhance equality of opportunity. Jacques Chirac inaugurated the HALDE on 23 June 2005 and his speech refers to a very broad understanding of the nature of discrimination, absent in the other government reports and initiatives discussed above. Chirac argued that discrimination affected millions of people: ‘descendants of immigrants, refugees, harkis . . . our overseas compatriots . . . the disabled . . . women . . . It [discrimination] stigmatises political or religious convictions, trade union membership, sexual orientation, health, age.’33 The mentioning of religious discrimination set Chirac’s speech apart from other government discussions of the nature of discrimination, and how best to tackle it. However, it is interesting to note that the speech also appears to be torn between two opposing ideas: one which was based on the notion of maintaining the status quo, as incarnated by the pacte républicain, and one which was about innovation and progress. The desire for maintaining the status quo was reflected by Chirac’s claim ‘so that France remains itself, we must untangle the tensions which divide our society today and which run the risk of tearing apart our Republican pact’. The notion of movement and progress was manifest in Chirac’s insistence that the HALDE is a new, modern institution, whose brief is to bring about a ‘conception of dynamic equality’ and that ‘diversity is equally essential in order to encourage creativity and innovation’.34 So how can these diversity and equal opportunities campaigns be interpreted? On one level, it appears as if there is a real desire on the part of France’s leaders to enhance the Republic’s egalitarian project, as demonstrated by the various government-commissioned reports, charters, conferences, the declaration of 2006 as the year of equal opportunities and the Law on Equal Opportunities passed in March 2006. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the fact that much of the impetus behind this equal opportunities drive appears to be economic rather than ethical. On a number of occasions, ministers have highlighted the fact that racial and socio-economic discrimination is bad for companies and the competitiveness of the French economy. Furthermore, the reluctance on the part of policy-makers to conceptualise diversity beyond socio-economic identifiers offers up a somewhat truncated model of diversity, with there being little taking into account of cultural diversity beyond the question of representations in the media. The predominant focus of the national

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strategy for equality of opportunity and the promotion of diversity is socio-economic, and the visibility of minorities is to be advocated up to a certain point, as long as it does not contravene certain norms such as la laïcité. In this sense it is possible to regard the 2002–2007 government’s strategy as a policy of ‘colour’ diversity, rather than cultural diversity. The return and intensification of the laïcité debates in 2003–2004 ultimately reveals that the parameters of Republican integration have remained unchanged. While the Report of the independent Stasi Commission (named after the Commission President, Bernard Stasi) on la laïcité did call for une diversité spirituelle and the introduction of Kippour and Aïd-el-Kebir as public holidays for schools and the possibility for employees to substitute a day off in order to observe a particular religious festival, these suggestions were not taken into account in the actual 2004 Law.35 Some commentators might argue that the establishment of the CFCM in 2003 points to a readiness of the Republic to engage with its religious (and hence cultural) diversity. Yet, as Méhaignerie and Sabeg point out, there is a contradiction between the attempts to uphold and maintain laïcité and using Islam as a key ‘prism’ for interaction with the North African population (Méhaignerie and Sabeg 2004: 28). It would seem that the government finds it easier to deal with conservative Islam in the ‘containable’ form of the CFCM than with the messier affairs of a ‘laïcité through otherness’ or individuals’ decisions to visibly express their religious appartenance in the public sphere (whether at school or in certain workplaces) (Guénif-Souilamas 2003).36 This suggests that while the Stasi Commission did tentatively begin to address the question of cultural complexity, such a reflection on cultural complexity and cultural discrimination does not feature in the current government’s Stratégie nationale pour l’égalité des chances. The emphasis on visible minorities continues to be at the heart of the agenda in the Sarkozy government which was formed in June 2007. The nomination of Rachida Dati (a Moroccan-origin woman) as the Minister of Justice, Rama Yade (a Senegalese-origin young woman) as the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights and Fadela Amara (a left-wing Algerianorigin feminist and president of Ni Putes Ni Soumises) as the Secretary of State for Urban Policy clearly marks Sarkozy’s desire to play up the image of ‘l’ouverture’ (openness).37 The posts which Dati and Yade hold are also key roles. However, given the policy drives of Sarkozy as Minister of Interior and now as president, it seems unlikely that his approach to la diversité will shift from one based firmly on colour and visibility to one which is positively complexified by issues of culture. So, it can be argued that the last thirty years of political debates around the questions of immigration and integration have been simultaneously

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constructed around socio-economic and cultural axes. From as early on as 1974, with the economic downturn, we see a fairly constant correlation between economic anxieties about the level of immigration in France and cultural anxieties about the difference of immigrants and their descendants. Following a relatively more confident economic and cultural climate in the 1997–2002 period, the post-2002 period has been marked by the return of economic anxieties about France’s role in a globalised world and what is perceived by many as an increasingly neoliberal European Union (hence the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in May 2005). At the same time, cultural anxieties about France’s immigrants of non-European and particularly Muslim origin have been heightened by international fears regarding Islamic extremism. The last thirty years of politicised debates about immigrants and their descendants have defined the context in which many young French-born individuals of North African origin have grown up. In other words, the debates surrounding nationality, integration, l’insécurité, Islam, the banlieues and diversity will have had an impact on the young people who took part in the field research, and the ways in which they construct their own experiences. The main feature of this book, namely the discourses of the young French-North Africans, will follow in Chapters 4 –8. However, it is first of all helpful if we concentrate on another important layer of discourse surrounding immigration in France: the academic debates. This will be the focus of Chapter 2.

Notes 1 Noiriel (2001) makes this point about the differences in approach of the social sciences such as sociology or anthropology and legal studies or diplomatic history studies, which tend to produce more objective definitions of the nation. 2 Balibar is cited in Silverman (1992). 3 Noiriel cites Marcel Mauss, ‘La Nation’ (1920), in Mauss (1969: 593). 4 (Noiriel: 126). 5 Silverman (1992) cites D. Nordman, ‘Des Limites d’État aux frontières nationales’, in (Nora 1986: 51–52). 6 Noiriel (2001) cites Renan (1882, which is in a Presses Pocket edn, 1992). 7 Anne Donadey uses the term ‘collective amnesia’ with regard to French attitudes to the Franco-Algerian war. See Donadey (1996: 215–232). 8 PS: Parti Socialiste; PCF: Parti Communiste Français. 9 Griotteray (1984: 170). 10 See Le Club de l’Horloge (1985). 11 Droit du sol or jus soli means that nationality and citizenship can be acquired if one is born in a certain country or through residence. Droit du

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12

13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26

51

sang or jus sanguinis means that nationality and citizenship can be acquired only by affiliation – i.e. if the individual concerned has ‘blood’ links with the country concerned. Weil (2002: 169) points out that nationality was awarded at birth without the possibility of refusal. See the endnotes in Weil (2002) for statistics regarding people requesting ‘liberation’ from the ‘liens d’allégeance’, i.e. regarding article 23. The RPR and UDF are both parties of the Right. For a fuller account of the circumstances surrounding the formulation of this projet de loi, and its abandonment, see Weil (2002: 170–173). The Nationality Commission was composed of four Law professors; three senior civil servants (hauts fonctionnaires), including Marceau Long; three historians; two sociologists (Dominique Schnapper and Alain Touraine); two doctors; a lawyer; and a film-maker. Hargreaves (1995) cites Schnapper (1988: 15). For further discussion of the ‘headscarf affair’, see Cole (1998) and Feldblum (1999). Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux, cited in HCI (1991: 18). For further discussion see Weil (2002: 180). See also Feldblum (1999: 153– 154). See Haby (2001–2002: 199–200) for more details on misleading polls. For example, Le Monde dossier thématique about the presidential and legislative elections of 2002 is entitled ‘Retour sur un séisme politique’, LeMonde.fr, 25 June 2002 (see Courtois 2002). In the first round of voting, Chirac obtained 19.88% and Le Pen 16.84%. Jospin came third with 16.18% (Haby 2001–2002: 195). See ‘L’abstention record assure la victoire de la droite’, LeMonde.fr, 25 June 2002. Gérard Courtois refers to the ‘crise du politique’ in ‘Crise du politique, crise de l’État’, LeMonde.fr, 25 June 2002. The abstention rate at the first round of voting in the presidential elections was 28.4% (reaching more than 30% in Île de France), the highest abstention rate ever recorded under the Fifth Republic. See Haby (2001–2002: 195) for more details. For more discussion of the dynamics of populism and nationalism, see Wieviorka (1993a). ‘Banlieues: changeons de cap’, Interview de Nicolas Sarkozy, 17 November 2005, cited in Demiati (2006: 70). B. Accoyer argued that ‘polygamy [is] certainly one of the cause[s]’ because it leads to ‘the inability to provide the education necessary in an organised society’, in a radio interview with RTL (16 November 2005). G. Larcher was quoted in the Financial Times as saying that to allude to polygamy as a possible cause was not a value judgement but an acknowledgement that in the quartiers there was a serious problem of ‘cultural poverty’ among certain families. Both interviews cited in Le Goaziou (2006: 50– 51).

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27 Sarkozy’s speech is available on-line, www.senat.fr/cra/s20060606/ s20060613/s20060613.pdf; accessed 26 March 2007. 28 Circulaire No. NOR/INT/K/06/00058/C from Le Ministère d’Etat, Ministère de l’Intérieur et de l’Aménagement du Territoire to the Préfets de Région, the Préfets de Département and the Préfet de Police (13 June 2006); www.interieur.gouv.fr; (accessed January 2007). 29 Sarkozy set up this Ministry in June 2007 and nominated Brice Hortefeux as the Minister for Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development. 30 This section of the chapter draws and expands on material published in Kiwan (2007a: 157–172). 31 ZEP policies involve the channelling of extra funding and teaching resources to schools based in certain deprived areas. The evaluation criteria for the allocation of such resources is geographic although a large number of ZEP establishments concentrate large numbers of recent immigrant and immigrant-origin pupils. 32 LOI no. 2006–396 du 31 mars 2006 pour l’égalité des chances, article 47, available at www.legifrance.gouv.fr; (accessed January 2007). 33 Discours du Président de la République lors de l’installation de la Haute autorité de lutte contre les discriminations et pour l’égalité, Palais de l’Elysée, 23 June 2005, available at www.elysee.fr.; (accessed December 2005). Harkis are Algerian Muslims who fought for France in the Algerian War of Independence. 34 Ibid. 35 Commission de réflexion sur l’application du principe de laïcité dans la République (2003: 68– 69). 36 Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, ‘La laïcité dans l’altérité’, Le Monde, 9 December 2003. Apportenance (belonging). 37 Ni Putes Ni Soumises is a feminist association which was set up by a group of immigrant-origin women in protest against violence against women in France’s banlieues.

2

‘Cultural difference’, citizenship and young people: intellectual responses

Introduction While it may be exaggerated to argue that young people of North African origin are simply ‘the products’ of the political and intellectual climate of the last thirty years, their attitudes will nevertheless have been informed by the ambient political and intellectual discourses, their representations and their polemics. In terms of intellectual discourse, we can distinguish three main areas of academic debate concerning North African immigration in contemporary France. First of all there is the normative or ideological approach to the question of immigration. This research concentrates on the implications of immigration in three main ways: in terms of how it affects majority conceptions of ‘national identity’; in terms of what status immigrants and their descendants should have in the new society; and in terms of questions related to cultural difference. In the French intellectual debate of the 1980s and 1990s, discussions often became paralysed around the notion of ‘multiculturalism’, which was largely seen as an ‘American’ import and therefore a threat to the Republican ‘nation’. This intellectual polarisation continued into the early twenty-first century. The second area of debate has focused on immigrant associations, their history and their changing aims. This discussion has tended to be dominated by political scientists such as Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, Rémy Leveau and Jocelyne Cesari. It could be argued that this area of debate is less normative than the work carried out on questions of cultural difference. It maps out the associational landscape as well as describing the main changes that immigrant associations have undergone in terms of their aims and outlook, since 1981, when the law governing the formal organisation of foreigners into associations was liberalised.1 A third area of intellectual enquiry regarding immigration in France – and, in particular, North African immigrants – can be broadly identified as focusing on the descendants of immigrants, or les jeunes as they are generically referred to. The discussions are normally dominated by

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the following themes or social ‘problems’: the banlieue, family conflict, juvenile delinquency/violence, unemployment and more recently, discrimination. Much of the existing literature on young people of ‘immigrant origin’ has taken the notion of integration as its framework, thus asking how and to what extent young people of immigrant descent are being integrated into mainstream society. One of the limitations in all these debates is the lack of explicit linking between the different perspectives. For example, the more theoretical debates tend to remain normative in character, discussing the merits and disadvantages of universalism and particularism as organising principles in culturally plural societies. Yet, although the less normative research, such as that carried out by Wihtol de Wenden on immigrant associations, does contain some discussion of the implications of findings for traditional models of integration and citizenship, the voices in the debate which call for an end to the perpetual opposition between universalist and differentialist approaches to immigrant incorporation are rather rare. A second limitation which, as we shall see below, is remarked upon in the work of Wihtol de Wenden and Éric Fassin, is that the register of the normative debate about immigration is often out of step with the empirical ‘realities’ on the ground. The first part of this chapter will focus on what I will hereafter refer to as the ‘ideological’ or ‘normative’ debate, which is essentially centred on the question of cultural difference in democratic societies. The second part will discuss the contours of the academic debates which are concerned with collective mobilisation among immigrant populations and their descendants. The third section will present the main parameters of research on young people of ‘immigrant origin’. A critical evaluation of recent and current intellectual discourse on immigration can point towards alternative perspectives for intellectual engagement with the topics of immigration, integration and citizenship in culturally diverse societies today.

Cultural difference and multiculturalism As discussed in Chapter 1, the last thirty years have been characterised by a sense of malaise. This malaise can be seen as the result of three profound changes, which Michel Wieviorka argues took place in the France of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (Wieviorka 2002). This first major change was de-industrialisation. The second major change was more institutional, that is the institutions of the Republic – school, the police, the justice system, the public services – were undergoing a crisis, yet any attempts at reform were generally met with defensiveness on the part

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of the fonctionnaires who feared loss of status. The third major change has been of a cultural nature and can be summed up as the growth of individualism (the desire to participate and be a consumer, for example, but also the desire to express one’s own cultural subjectivities in the political or public sphere (Wieviorka et al. 2007: 40). Economic crisis, globalisation, the permanent settlement of non-European-origin immigrants, fears regarding their cultural ‘difference’, and the rise of the FN have been some of the main features of the period. Since it is not possible to consider political discourse as wholly separate from intellectual debate, it is not surprising that the academic discussions in France have reflected the tensing up of the political climate. The intellectual discourses in France were intertwined with the ‘question’ of immigration which, as we saw in Chapter 1, had by the 1980s and 1990s become extremely politicised. On the whole, the debate about cultural difference and increasing demands for official recognition of difference by ‘minority’ groups has been divided into two camps. The first camp has often been referred to as ‘les républicains’. Its protagonists tend to argue that any recognition of cultural difference in the public sphere would be contrary to the principles of the ‘one and indivisible’ Republic and would therefore have a devastating effect. Examples such as civil-war Lebanon or the war in the former Yugoslavia have often been cited as the path France could be going down, if it embraces ‘American-style’ multiculturalism. The opposing camp, the ‘démocrates’ who are less wary about the recognition of difference, have been accused by the républicains (also known as ‘les républicanistes’) of being ‘communautaristes’ and of undermining the French Republic. One of the main images throughout this debate has been America and, more recently, Britain (Wieviorka and Ohana 2001: 7–14). ‘Anglo-Saxon-style multiculturalism’ has been caricatured by the républicaniste camp, which has argued that the recognition of cultural difference would lead to the increasing fragmentation or ‘ghettoisation’ of French society. This polarised and ideological debate reached its height in the 1980s and 1990s and has returned since 2001. Michel Wieviorka claims that, in terms of the French debate, it is possible to distinguish four ideal-type positions with regard to cultural difference.2 The first ‘pole’ promotes the principle of assimilation, and is defined as follows: ‘It is essentially based on the idea that the universalism of individual rights is the best response to the risks of discrimination which are posed by every categorisation of people in collective and notably cultural terms’ (Wieviorka 1999b: 12). The second pole defends the idea of ‘liberal tolerance’ which accepts the expression of cultural specificity in the private sphere and even in the public sphere ‘as long as

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they [the specificities] do not pose any disturbance through their demands, their claims or even through their simple visibility’ (Wieviorka 1999b: 12). The third pole is referred to as ‘la reconnaissance’ (recognition): ‘This implies trying to reconcile the demands of cultural particularism and those of universalism in linguistic, religious, educational terms or in terms of access to the [public] public good, employment, housing, . . . It is no longer a question of tolerating cultural difference but of implementing an albeit difficult balance to establish and maintain, between respect for difference and respect for universal rights and values’ (Wieviorka 1999b: 12–13). The fourth pole is the communautariste school of thought, which promotes the notion that is possible to ensure ‘the coexistence of communities within the same political space, whereby rather strict rules (possibly imposed or managed by a foreign or distant power) govern inter-community relations and access to power’ (Wieviorka 1999b: 13).3 This typology of four ‘poles’ has marked the debate about immigration, nation and cultural difference during the 1980s, 1990s and early twenty-first century. Below are some arguments made by key ‘protagonists’ (some cited by Wieviorka 1999b) in the cultural difference debates. An ‘assimilationist’ view In his book Le Destin des immigrés: assimilation et ségrégation dans les démocraties occidentales (1994), Emmanuel Todd argues that the principle of assimilation should be upheld, not least because it is effective: ‘Never has the process of assimilation been so fast, never has the destruction of immigrant cultures been so easy’ (Todd 1994: 445). Todd criticises the slogan which became popularised in the 1980s, ‘le droit à la différence’, claiming that such a notion is a ‘facteur d’anomie’ (Todd 1994: 456). It is claimed that ‘le multiculturalisme anglo-saxon’ barely masks its own suspicion of those who are different. Todd argues that, rather, assimilation which does not celebrate difference is a preferable approach (Todd 1994: 470). His reaction to the riots of 2005 similarly illustrates an assimilation perspective. He argued that the young people participated in the revolts precisely because they had internalised ‘some of the fundamental values of French society, such as, liberty–equality, for example’. He further argued that young people who had taken part in the riots were ethnically a heterogeneous group, reflecting the Republic’s success in avoiding ethnicised ghettoisation, as in the UK or Germany. Todd’s yardstick for measuring such phenomena is the proportion of mixed marriages, which are higher in France among women of Algerian origin than among women of Turkish origin in Germany and Pakistani origin in Britain.4

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Events such as ‘9/11’, the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the re-emergence of the ‘headscarf affair’ in 2003–2004 have led not only to increasing polarisation in France’s intellectual debates on cultural difference, but also to the ‘hardening’ of a certain number of public intellectuals’ positions – into something which some describe as a new form of ‘intégrisme républicain’.5 One such intellectual who has radicalised his position is the philosopher and historian, Pierre-André Taguieff. In the 1980s and 1990s, Taguieff was well known for his work on anti-racism, and his critique of some of the ambiguities of the anti-racist movement which, he has argued, has led to an ‘intégrisme de la différence’ (the cult of cultural difference).6 More recently, Taguieff has devoted more attention to the theme of religious difference (as have many French public intellectuals – reflecting broader concerns and fears about Islam and Islamism in Europe). In La République enlisée (literally, The Republic Bogged Down) (2005), Taguieff criticises the emergence in France of what he calls ‘hyperpluralism’ and ‘hypertolerance’, both of which serve to destroy the very fundamentals of pluralism and tolerance which underpin western political liberalism. Taguieff aligns multiculturalism with communautarisme and argues that ‘warrior communities’, ‘undeclared enemies’ and ‘veiled enemies’ are trying to surreptitiously undermine the Republican model of liberal pluralism through their defence of ‘la laïcité plurielle’ or ‘la nouvelle laïcité’ (Taguieff 2005: 11, 19, 20, 23–24, 27). As in the debates of the 1980s and 1990s, the USA still serves as the societal anti-model par excellence yet, paradoxically, the philosophical debates of North America are still a key reference in Taguieff ’s theoretical reflection, as they are in so many other French intellectuals’ writings. Taguieff ’s deep suspicion with regard to claims for recognition of cultural and religious difference places him within an assimilation perspective, where he argues that la laïcité is the only possible model which can favour a sense of common ground within French society and that la nouvelle laïcité is nothing but a modern-day manifestation of ‘heatedup third worldism’ (Taguieff 2005: 336–337, 19). A ‘liberal tolerance’ view Dominique Schnapper is one of the main French authors in theoretical debates about immigration, cultural difference and citizenship. The nation is central to Schnapper’s paradigm since, in her view, a unified national context is the best way to incorporate immigrants and populations of immigrant origin. The idea of the nation is opposed to the notion of identifying with an ethnicity. The implication is that the nation is a rational mode of existence and participation and is therefore preferable

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to ethnic identity, which the immigrant or his/her descendants should engage with only in the private sphere. The dichotomy between the individual/group and the private/public sphere defines Schnapper’s approach to cultural difference. It is therefore expected that foreigners should integrate into the nation-state as individuals as opposed to culturally/linguistically defined groups: ‘What underpins the principle – and the values – of the democratic nation, is the opposition between the universalism of the citizen and the specificities of the private man/woman, member of civil society’ (Schnapper 1994a: 92). In the public sphere, all citizens are recognised as individuals and their origins are not taken into account. Indeed, according to Schnapper, political citizenship signifies the overcoming of cultural specificities and adhesion to the political project of the nation, that is, democracy. This is what Schnapper calls ‘Transcendence through citizenship or the principle of the separation from tangible modes of belonging, through political society’ (Schnapper 1994a: 113). The affirmation of cultural difference can thus be tolerated in the public sphere as long as it does not contradict universalist values. An argument employed against the official recognition of ethnic groups or minorities is that such a process could engender the fixing of difference. In other words, those who are recognised as ethnic, religious or cultural minorities may subsequently always be viewed and stigmatised as such by the majority population. Schnapper remains critical of a cultural frame for public policy and argues that the policies such as the ZEPs, which are established on the basis of geographic and socioeconomic criteria, are clear examples of how France has attempted to implement its own policy of ‘positive discrimination’. While a geographic and socio-economic framework to a public policy of integration is considered by Schnapper to be preferable to a public or institutional recognition of collective cultural identities, her main concern is focused on the question of how integration can be thought of in its broadest terms, as a universalist political project of citizenship, concerning all citizenindividuals, i.e. not simply those of immigrant origin (Schnapper 2007: 205). Recognition and the ‘subject’ Some researchers’ approaches to the question of cultural difference attempt to think through the conditions which would allow for a combination of universalism and difference within the public space. In this sense, they draw on the ideas of ‘communitarian’ political philosophers based in North America, such as Alistair McIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer. Among these authors is Michel Wieviorka,

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who argues that the debate should no longer be about discussing the tensions between the universal and the particular. In his essay ‘Culture, société et démocratie’, Wieviorka states: We must abandon Manichean perspectives which all too easily oppose two registers, the universal and the particular, the Republic and multiculturalism, all the while developing an increasingly abstract and unrealistic image of the former, and caricaturing the latter so as to use it as an antimodel. (Wieviorka 1997b: 43)

It is argued that the best way to manage cultural difference within a democratic society is through a politics of recognition.7 This would promote a situation whereby the political parties would deal with specific demands. This is seen as preferable to institutionalising the recognition of cultural difference through the granting of cultural rights which could, according to Wieviorka, lead to laws and principles which are too rigid and which would ‘freeze’ certain groups within their ‘otherness’. The rejection of the notion of fixed cultural rights leads to the promotion of the idea of the sujet (subject) instead. The sujet is an independent individual who is able to make his or her own choices about his or her cultural identity and then employ this cultural identity to participate politically in society (Wieviorka 2007: 40). This links Wieviorka’s argument to that of Alain Touraine, and so Wieviorka suggests that the debate on cultural difference should no longer be situated around just two axes (universalism and particularism) but instead around three: universalism, particularism and the subject or actor (Wieviorka 1999b: 15). The idea of the sujet implies that individuals are able to combine their cultural specificities and the principles of universalism so that they are neither subordinated by the cultural ‘group’, nor by the notion of l’intégration républicaine. It is this more supple approach to Republicanism, advocated by Wieviorka, which leads him to argue that laïcité can in fact be regarded as giving the Republic a tool with which to openly recognise Islam in the public space (Wieviorka 2005: 119). It is the 1905 law on the separation of the Church and the State which Wieviorka sees as being a useful legal framework, not the 2004 law banning religious symbols in state schools, which he argues is problematic since it does little to solve the structural problems of the French education system or the social and ethnic inequalities it reproduces. Furthermore, he argues that it stigmatises Muslim populations (Wieviorka 2004). Wieviorka also claims that the notion of culture should not be the central element of the debate concerning immigrants and their descendants since, for the most part, the recognition of someone’s culture is rather meaningless if their existence is characterised by poverty, unemployment and discrimination (Wieviorka 1999b: 20).8 His analysis of

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the October–November 2005 riots echoes this wariness of framing the debate in solely cultural terms, arguing that the main motivations of the rioters were social, and linked to neither ethnic nor cultural demands (Wieviorka 2007: 48). As will be shown in Part II, the fieldwork carried out in Seine-Saint-Denis also reflected the salience of socio-economic modes of identification, particularly with regard to the public space. Another sociologist whose work is important in what I have called the ‘normative’ debate is Alain Touraine. Touraine’s treatment of cultural difference or diversity places him within the ‘recognition pole’ of the debate and he argues for the combination of universalism and particularism through the introduction of the sujet. With regard to immigrants, he clearly rejects the notion of assimilation or acculturation, distinguishing his approach from the more conservative républicaniste positions. It is argued that the immigrant’s integration cannot be seen as successful if he/she is just blended into the masses. Rather integration can be seen as successful if others recognise and respect their difference. However, a ‘politics of recognition’ should not lead to cultural relativism. In the end, Touraine moderately argues for some sort of balance between universalism and the recognition of cultural specificities: It is desirable that minorities are recognised in a democratic society, but on the condition that they recognise the law of the majority and that they are not absorbed by the assertion and defence of their identity. Radical multiculturalism, like the so-called politically correct version in the United States, ends in destroying a sense of belonging to political society and the nation. (Touraine 1994: 98)

While Touraine has been seen as someone who has consistently promoted the idea of cultural rights, his position is fairly guarded. As such, he has argued that cultural rights should be accorded as long as the rights of the individual still take precedence. This partly explains his position during the most recent ‘headscarf affair’ (2003–2004). As a member of the Stasi Commission which was set up to deliberate on the issue of laïcité in France (see Chapter 1), Touraine was in favour of the introduction of a law banning conspicuous religious symbols in schools, since he argued that legislation was needed to stem the rise of communautariste practices within schools and the rise in ‘Islamist tendencies’ (Renaut and Touraine 2005: 50). Touraine’s view that it is possible to uphold la laïcité and respect cultural diversity clashes with that of philosopher Alain Renaut, who argues that laïcité and the defence of cultural rights or cultural diversity are effectively irreconcilable since la laïcité is based on a civic conception of the nation which engenders the transcendence of cultural differences in the public sphere through adherence to unitary

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political or civic project (Renaut and Touraine 2005: 127–128). Renaut has emerged as defending a minority position in the French intellectual debates since 2003–2004 because he fundamentally challenges the principle of laïcité and Republican universalism, instead calling for a ‘universalisme critique’ which implies ‘an element of arrachement [rupture] and an element of attachement [belonging] at one and the same time’ (Renaut and Touraine 2005: 138). It is also significant that Renaut has criticised Touraine, not without reason, for retreating from his previous position as one of the few respected intellectuals in France to defend the recognition of cultural difference in the public sphere (Renaut and Touraine 2005: 142). Indeed, it is significant that, in 2005, Touraine aligned multiculturalism (no longer radical multiculturalism, as in 1994) with the possible dangers of communautarisme, or the affirmation of collective cultural rights. This makes his position similar to that expressed by Taguieff in La République enlisée. While the two intellectuals do not adopt the same the perspective, there does appear to have been a shift in Touraine’s own thinking – a retreat away from his more critical Republicanism of the 1990s (see Touraine 1992, 1994, 1997). A ‘communautariste’ view There are not many French intellectuals who would explicitly describe themselves as communautariste, such is the negative connotation of the term. However, the ethno-psychiatrist, Tobie Nathan, is one of the rare French authors whose position can be described as communautariste. However, his work on cultural difference relates to the field of mental health and so remains fairly specific. In his book L’Influence qui guérit (The Influence that Heals), Nathan’s argument that Africans who suffer from mental health problems would respond better to ‘healers’ from their own cultures as opposed to the West’s ‘science’ and medicines, has laid him open to charges of cultural relativism (Nathan 1994). The French versus the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model Much of the academic debate surrounding immigrants and their descendants has taken the form of a polemic about so-called ‘national models’ of immigrant incorporation, with a focus on multiculturalism and French Republicanism as two opposed paradigms. French sociologist Éric Fassin is one academic who calls for more attention to be paid instead to empirical studies of immigration and multiculturalism, because he claims that in French discussions of immigration and ethnicity, the most common starting point is to compare France with the USA, thus

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obscuring social realities in France. Fassin argues that in French academic circles ‘“America” does not refer to the United States; it should be understood only as a French mythical construct purporting to portray the United States’ (Fassin 1999: 224). Central to Fassin’s argument is that it is misleading to oppose ‘France’ and ‘America’ in discussions of ethnicity and immigration because national models cannot be essentialised and referred to as if they have not developed and changed over time. Fassin calls instead for the introduction of ‘intellectual hygiene’. He claims that ‘there is a risk, when discussing social phenomena, that discourse could replace empirical work, if not reality’ (Fassin 1999: 236). In this way, he argues that the language or rhetoric that is used to discuss society does not always reflect the social phenomena themselves. Fassin also makes a significant observation by claiming: ‘That “multiculturalism” should be an intellectual issue, here and there, may not imply that it makes sense socially, neither here, nor there. It may simply indicate that this is the language we have at our disposition now’ (Fassin 1999: 237). It is therefore suggested that in order to overcome the shortcomings of academic discourse, perhaps multiculturalism should not be taken as a starting point, but rather the question of discrimination instead, as it is universal, i.e. experienced in most societies, whereas multiculturalism tends to start from a US or British premise. The advantage of this more pragmatic approach is that solutions, according to Fassin, do not need to be drawn from a particular national model or past. Fassin argues that once this shift in discourse takes place, discrimination will be more openly discussed in France. The reason why it is not discussed widely enough is, Fassin suggests, precisely because the language needed to do so does not exist in France. Fassin was making these arguments in 1999 – before the debate about racial discrimination had developed in the French public sphere. However, the emergence of racial discrimination as a major theme in French political, intellectual and media debates since 1999 leads Fassin to argue now that there has been a growing ‘racialisation’ of the ‘social question’ in France (Fassin and Fassin 2006). In a collective volume edited by Didier and Éric Fassin, both authors claim that this process of racialisation in public discourse (political and intellectual discourses surrounding the 2005 riots, ‘diversity’ and ‘discrimination positive’) has become so prevalent that it obscures key social questions. Fassin and Fassin are arguing that French public debates about recent immigrants and their descendants have undergone a paradoxical trajectory: whereas issues relating to race and racism were obscured by social euphemisms in the 1980s and 1990s, today we have arrived at a situation where racial framing of the debates about these populations has reached such a level

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that questions relating to persistent social inequalities that affect them have been sidelined (Fassin and Fassin 2006: 5–7). Both authors are keen on the articulation of social and racial analyses of the problems and discrimination that populations of recent immigrant origin face (Fassin and Fassin 2006: 259). However, it is interesting that the issue of culture is treated warily by both these authors, despite their calls for the need to ‘complexify’ intellectual and political perspectives on immigrant-origin populations in France. Indeed, they argue that a policy of recognition which takes into account culture and cultural identity is not helpful since la logique identitaire (identity logic) can be exclusive and restrictive in its expectation that individuals display some sense of belonging to a particular group or a particular cultural identity. Instead they argue that a logique minoritaire, which emerges as the result of discrimination, is not exclusive and can allow for alliances and coalitions across different cultures – examples given are the Representative Council of Black Associations (CRAN) which has drawn Africans, West Indians, Jews and Whites together within the same movement (Fassin and Fassin 2006: 251–252). So although Didier and Éric Fassin’s contribution to the French intellectual debates is a useful one, not least because they argue for a complexification of the debates about immigration in contemporary France, their calls for a need to articulate the social and racial means that the main issue at stake remains one of ‘colour’ and ‘colour discrimination’, and the issue of cultural discrimination is not theorised. It would appear then, that the process of intellectual complexification they call for is somewhat truncated – in the same manner as the debates on diversity (see Chapter 1) remain truncated by their lack of critical engagement with the issue of culture and cultural discrimination. Despite this ambiguity in the Fassins’ argument, a key merit in Éric Fassin’s work in particular is his call for more empirical research which allows for a grounding of some of the philosophical questions which have dominated this area of intellectual enquiry since the 1980s (Fassin 2006: 106–107). An area of academic debate which does focus less on normative approaches to cultural difference and more on empirical questions is the research on immigrant associations and the roles they play in immigrants’ and their descendants’ everyday lives.

Citizenship and community Catherine Wihtol de Wenden writes extensively about immigrant associations and associations set up by people of ‘immigrant origin’ (Wihtol

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de Wenden, 1992a, 1997, 2002–2003). Associations in France are governed by the 1901 law which defines them as ‘a convention by which two or more people permanently pool their knowledge or their activities . . .’ (Wihtol de Wenden and Leveau 2001: 7).9 1901 associations are non-profit organisations. Wihtol de Wenden’s work tends in particular to focus on ‘beur’ and ‘French-North African’ associations. In an article entitled ‘Les Associations “beur” et immigrées, leurs leaders, leurs stratégies’, Wihtol de Wenden claims that between 1980 and 1990 it was mainly the French-North African associations which set the tone (Wihtol de Wenden 1992a: 31). These associations (which developed after the 1981 law liberalising the association of foreign nationals) are shown as playing an important role in the affirmation of ‘collective, ethnic, religious or communitarian identities’ (1992a: 31). However, despite this reference to the non-‘Republican’ concepts of ethnicity and community identity, the article argues that research on immigrant associations must be placed at the centre of the debate on the integration of immigrants and their descendants. Thus Wihtol de Wenden writes: ‘As integration progresses, the diversity of the ways in which populations of immigrant origin occupy the political, social, economic and cultural space, both at the national and local level, becomes accentuated’ (1992a: 31). So it would seem that her analysis allows for a combination of, rather than the opposition of, two registers: the affirmation of identity and integration. In addition, Wihtol de Wenden claims that the choice to take action through associations rather than through the traditional party political system represents a certain combination of individualism and cultural difference: ‘This effectively leaves more place for personal initiative and the expression of particularisms’ (Wihtol de Wenden 1992a: 37). However, the choice of associational life should not be seen as a complete break with more mainstream political action and indeed she argues that the engagement of ‘French North-African’ actors within associations actually favours integration into the national political system since it is a ‘formative space’ (1992a: 37). Wihtol de Wenden also claims that as far as the choices or orientations of association leaders are concerned, there are ‘two modes, one individual, one communitarian . . . (the choice of one or the other can be reversed in the case of failure of the initially chosen mode)’ (1992a: 38). Thus, she shows that the association movement’s elites manage in fact to successfully combine their cultural specificity and the more ‘individual’ values such as citizenship and democracy. In the same way, it is revealed how certain élites associatives readily assume the ‘beurgeois’ label and ‘play out integration through difference, all the while reaffirming the

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values of secularism, citizenship and democracy’ (1992a: 39). The combination of the two registers is claimed to be central to the action of the leaders of the association movement: ‘The leitmotivs of their discourse are cosmopolitanism, citizenship, secularism, Europe, communitarianism – only certain Islamist associations escape this register’ (1992a: 44). Three types and three generations of assocation ‘Franco-Maghrébine’ Wihtol de Wenden develops the observations made in her 1992 article in a later publication entitled ‘Que sont devenues les associations civiques issues de l’immigration?’, which discusses the findings of a study of fiftytwo associations which she carried out with fellow political scientist, Rémy Leveau (Wihtol de Wenden 1997).10 The article’s main claim is that French-North African associations have become more apolitical than they were in the 1980s and have turned towards more socio-educational activities such as le soutien scolaire (school/homework clubs) or anti-drugs education programmes (la prévention). Wihtol de Wenden identifies three categories of association: (1) ‘les associations de militants politiques’ (e.g. Association des travailleurs marocains en France); (2) ‘les associations de militants civiques’ (e.g. Jeunes Arabes de Lyon et banlieue – JALB); and (3) ‘les associations de quartier’ (e.g. Les Femmes FrancsMoisins in the Cité des francs-moisins in Seine-Saint-Denis). Wihtol de Wenden shows how this typology corresponds to three generations of militants and leaders (1997, 2002–2003). The first group are often linked to the first generation of North African immigrants, whose associations were set up before the associational ‘explosion’ of the 1980s. They tend to have a worker, trade-union identity and as a reaction to the beur movement (which symbolised the emergence of a permanent presence of individuals of North African origin in France) they turned instead towards issues in their countries of origin. The civic activist (‘second-generation’) associations should be seen as the beneficiaries of the beur movement. They tended be politically leftward leaning and very much part of a French secular (laïc) context. The theme of ‘new citizenship’ also played an important role in the emergence of this category of association. The ‘third-generation’ activists distance themselves from political matters such as the voting rights of immigrants and are purely active around socio-educational/socio-cultural activities. They tended to emerge in the 1980s but some associations date back to the 1970s when the bidonvilles (shanty-towns) were re-absorbed into the banlieues of big cities. Part of the trend for a growing depoliticisation is perhaps the shift that has taken place in terms of association

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projects. Wihtol de Wenden’s and Leveau’s study of North African associations (2001) revealed that the debates between ‘citizenship and communitarianism, the right to be different and right to be the same’ have become increasingly irrelevant. These themes are described as ‘hardly mentioned, in the same manner as the headscarf and multiculturalism themes’ (Wihtol de Wenden 1997: 62). de Wenden further observes that the social issues that are now discussed are seen as more important. This is very significant because it would suggest that much of the normative discussions on cultural difference (see p. 53) are out of step with what is taking place among migrant and post-migrant communities. Wihtol de Wenden’s and Leveau’s findings certainly reflect some of the associational landscape in Aubervilliers. As will be discussed in Chapter 8, the associations the young people tend to get involved in are very localised and oriented towards social activities. Wihtol de Wenden’s and Leveau’s research thus gives a closer insight into the issues that concern immigrant or immigrant-origin populations in France. Of particular importance to our problématique are the two following observations: (1) Demands for recognition of a cultural specificity are not portrayed as existing in opposition with universalist notions of citizenship; (2) Immigrant associations are shown to be increasingly ‘a-political’ in their aims. Both these observations would suggest that the public and academic debates about cultural difference and their threat to the Republic are inaccurate on two counts: first, because references to ethnicity can be either instrumental and/or articulated in a universalist framework and, secondly, because immigrantorigin populations are often more concerned with social and economic (a-political) demands rather than purely cultural or symbolic ones.11 Another political scientist whose research has focused on associations and, in particular, French-North African associations in Marseille, is Jocelyne Cesari. Her book Être musulman en France: associations, militants et mosquées, contains the findings of a study which concentrates on the different forms of political mobilisation of North African immigrants and those of North African origin, either in associations or in the local party political network. Besides the associations de quartier, which are shown to have existed well before 1981, but were later eclipsed by grander more media-friendly movements such as SOS-Racisme and France Plus, Cesari’s analysis also focuses on what she calls ‘associations with an ethnic or cultural reference’. It is claimed that the main role of the North African associational milieu is to facilitate the legitimisation of the group within their immediate environment (Cesari 1994a: 179). The multiplication of associations with this legitimising role led to the development of what Cesari describes as an artificial actor, namely

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the ‘second generation’ or the beurs, whose situation of cultural integration and socio-political exclusion is rather paradoxical: Such is the paradoxical and contradictory situation of these new generations: steeped in the French model’s values of equality and social mobility, they cannot find space for their demands, neither through the authorities in their countries of origin, nor through the authorities in the countries of first-generation settlement and they are simultaneously unable to use the habitual institutions due to their lack of effectiveness and the consequences of a conflictual history between the French State and the countries of their parents, a history of which they are the ‘illegitimate’ offspring. (Cesari 1994a: 180)12

Demands for recognition of social experience To a certain extent, Cesari’s discussion of the associations de quartier echoes Wihtol de Wenden’s argument, in that the issues which are more important for the generation of immigrant origin are localised and depoliticised and therefore are not reflective of the discourse which so often depicts their experience within the framework of the normative debates about cultural difference and multicultural policies. Cesari thus writes: In the housing estates, where the North African population forms the numerical majority without being dominant, these associations are a space where ethnicity is irrelevant. Specificity is less centred on culture than on the accumulation of certain social constraints, linked to the phenomenon of exclusion. The territorial (the neighbourhood, the housing estate) and ‘youth’ reference are the motors for action. (Cesari 1994a: 183)

This would suggest that there is some disjuncture between the academic and political discourses – centred around the complexities of cultural difference and the threat this poses to the public/private dichotomy – and Cesari’s findings. Indeed, Cesari’s study allows a more flexible approach than is possible from a predominantly normative position. Cesari is able to distinguish the reference to a ‘particularité’ on the part of those of immigrant origin from more formalised cultural minority demands (often sensationally referred to as ‘la poussée des identités’ in academic or public discourses). For example, Cesari writes: The specificity of the anti-racist claims, when they are made by these actors, stems from the fact that minority identity somehow overlaps with social exclusion and as a result, it is perceived to be the cause of exclusion. It follows that social demands become overloaded with a claim for the recognition of a particular identity. That particular identity is not really

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located in a culture per se but rather in the specific experience of postcolonial racism. The paradox stems from the relationship between cultural identity and racism, which forces the dominated individual to integrate and to contest integration, to defend and to contest his/her culture of origin within the same movement. (Cesari 1994a: 197)

This paradoxical stance was common among fieldwork participants from Seine-Saint-Denis, many of whom were fiercely critical of any notion of integration – arguing that it was completely irrelevant since they were born or brought up in France and were already integrated. However, such a stance did not mean that they did not simultaneously seek to valorise their culture of origin. Here, the generational question is key since there are not only crucial differences between the first- and secondgeneration immigrants, but also between the second and third generations. Indeed, some interviewees were keen to distinguish between what they considered to be a ‘third-generation’ banlieue identity, centred on the social setting and a ‘second-generation’ immigrant identity, articulated around cultural, national or regional origins. Instrumentalised ethnicity Furthermore, unlike some of the wider, more normative debates, Cesari also points out that the notion of a collective identity is often used for an individual purpose. Thus (echoing Wihtol de Wenden’s and Leveau’s ‘beurgeois’ analysis) she claims that ‘The ethnic register is thereby used as a bargaining tool in the integration process. This is the case of individuals who are moving up into the middle classes and who use a cultural heritage or specificity as a political resource’ (Cesari 1994a: 227). This analysis is rather different from some of the more ‘macrosociological’ interpretations that seem to take the ‘registre ethnique’ at face value and thus deduce, in some cases, a ‘repli identitaire’ and some form of societal fragmentation. Developing the idea of the instrumentality of ethnicity, Cesari argues that the social actors in immigrant (or immigrant-origin) associations are forced to translate their social demands to fit the parameters of a political system which is based on a dual register: civil equality and cultural difference.13 So, in a similar manner to the research carried out by Wihtol de Wenden, Cesari’s observations upset the assumptions which are generally made in the more normative debate regarding the opposition of so-called ‘national models’ of immigrant incorporation. Cesari does this in two ways. First, she shows that demands for recognition should not be interpreted as revendications culturelles (cultural claims) in a classic multicultural sense. Secondly, and consequently, she illustrates how references

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to ethnicity and recognition are sometimes an instrumental means to an end, and that demands for such recognition are more oriented towards social experience rather than around abstract cultural recognition. A not dissimilar but more recent study of young people of North African Muslim origin in Roubaix (northern France) was undertaken by the political scientist Nancy Venel (Venel 2004). Ten years on from Cesari’s research, Venel’s empirical approach to the question of ‘ordinary citizenship’ and religious (Muslim) identity reveals that there are multiple ways of being French/Muslim/a citizen and that these categories are not the discrete repertoires that the normatively inflected debates about cultural difference and the Republic might suggest. The notion of ‘ordinary citizenship’ is heavily dependent on the everyday experiences of young Muslims and the ways in which these are presented by the individuals concerned. Such everyday experiences are the focus of research on young people of immigrant origin. The next part of the chapter will consider this research and its place within French academic discourses.

Les jeunes and La banlieue This area of intellectual debate tends to concentrate on individuals aged between twelve and twenty-five and themes such as the banlieue, the family, juvenile delinquency/urban violence, unemployment and discrimination are central. The various debates are all constructed within the conceptual framework of integration – whether this is defined by commentators in cultural, social, economic or political terms. Integration Although the term ‘intégration’ can be used to describe the socialisation process of adult immigrants (i.e. those not born in France) and one would perhaps assume that the term would be more applicable to this population, the word intégration in France has come to refer to the children of immigrants. The process of intégration was formerly referred to in France as assimilation. The 1970s and 1980s saw successive French governments become increasingly aware of the colonial ring of the term assimilation, and so other words, such as insertion or acculturation were adopted, as they appeared to be more neutral. Finally, intégration became, and has remained, the term to describe the process of socialisation and inclusion which, in the public mind, concerns immigrants and, more often than not, their children.14

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In terms of intellectual discourse, the question of integration is dealt with from a number of angles. There is a ‘classic’ approach, where integration is discussed in the following terms: it is part of the Republican tradition, was used as a policy after the Revolution to integrate regional populations into a ‘national culture’ and is therefore indispensable with regard to immigrant populations. The notion of a ‘crisis of integration’ has been very prevalent in recent academic debates and this often entails comparison with other types of immigrant incorporation such as in Britain and the USA, which generally serve as ‘anti-models’. For many, the validity of the concept of integration is not questioned. This is the case of demographer Michèle Tribalat, for example, or ethnologist Camille Lacoste-Dujardin. In 1996, Michèle Tribalat published De l’immigration à l’assimilation: enquête sur les populations d’origine étrangère en France (Tribalat et al. 1996).15 The book contained the results of a study of ‘geographical mobility and social insertion’ among immigrants and their children in France. What was new about this study, and quite radical in the Republican ‘colour-blind’ context, was that it constructed ‘ethnicised’ categories, according to respondent’s mother tongue, their birthplace and their parents’ birthplace. In fact, Tribalat and her team had obtained special dispensation from legal restrictions which prohibited asking anything else apart from the respondents’ nationality. The study aimed to show that the descendants of immigrants were actually relatively well integrated or ‘assimilated’ and the following eight factors were taken into consideration: unemployment rates; marriage practices (proportion of mixed marriages according to origin); language (which language(s) were most frequently used; linguistic proficiency in French); levels of participation in French national military service; sociability and intermixing; religious practices; culinary habits; participation levels in associations and elections. Individuals from the following countries and regions were taken into account: Algeria, Morocco, Portugal, South-East Asia, Spain, Sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey and France, the inclusion of the ‘Français de souche’ category serving as a comparison, control or, perhaps in reality, as the model to aspire to. The study showed that the children of immigrants’ outlooks were very similar to their Français de souche counterparts and so it was concluded that their integration or assimilation, as the book title would suggest, was well under way. It is argued that because ‘French-origin’ young people and those of immigrant origin are similar in terms of social and cultural practices, the French model of integration is functioning. One of the main ambiguities of the study is that Tribalat and her team appear to have chosen certain criteria which they consider as indicative of integration, and there is no questioning of the pertinence of these

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categories in the respondents’ eyes. Another ambiguity of the study is the emphasis it places on cultural modes of integration or assimilation – five out of the eight criteria of evaluation are cultural (marriage practices; language; sociability and intermixing; religious practices; culinary habits). Indeed, despite revealing huge disparities in unemployment rates for young men of Algerian origin and those of French origin (40% as opposed to 11%) there is little discussion of the issue of discrimination and social exclusion throughout the book – since the focus is above all, on acculturation. Another example of research which falls within the parameters of integration and its ‘measurement’, where integration is conceived and foregrounded above all in cultural terms, is the work of ethnologist Camille Lacoste-Dujardin. In Yasmina et les autres de Nanterre et d’ailleurs: filles de parents maghrébins en France (1992), Dujardin presents her study of twenty-one young women in terms of how they have ‘dealt with’ what are referred to as their ‘handicaps’ and the extent of their integration. The criteria used to measure this integration, which is portrayed as being dependent on the young women’s own efforts to struggle for their ‘emancipation’ as well as their ‘duties’ as members of French society, are as follows: relationships between the women and their parents (the latter being qualified merely as either ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’ parents); family education (‘liberal’ or leading to un repli identitaire); degree of fidelity to Islam: (the less faithful, the ‘better’ the degree of integration); relationship with the Maghreb (the more distant and critical the stance, the ‘better’ in terms of integration); education levels (Lacoste-Dujardin 1992: 260). Dujardin’s study conceptualises the family unit as a possible ‘brake’ on a successful integration process, and little attention is given throughout the book to more structural obstacles such as the existence of discrimination in French society itself (Lacoste-Dujardin 1992). The disparity between the preoccupations of academic debates and the discourses used by the young people concerned is no less clear than in relation to integration. Most young people who took part in my field research either made a point of rejecting the concept or simply did not refer to it, suggesting that, for many, it was irrelevant. This contrasted with the terms used by their teachers, or by municipal députés, who often automatically (mis)-interpreted my research project as being ‘about integration’. La banlieue Like integration, the banlieue is a major theme in much of the ‘scientific’ debate regarding young people of immigrant origin in France and its

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prevalence has become more pronounced since the riots of 2005. However these riots were not new and in his book, La Peur des banlieues (Fear of the Suburbs) (1996), Henri Rey argues that ever since the riots of the Cité des Minguettes in 1981, the banlieue has been at the centre of political and media debates. Rey claims that, from 1981 onwards, the banlieue has become synonymous with notions of a gradually eroding social fabric; unwanted North African and African immigrants; threats to Republican values; insecurity and crime; ‘ghettoisation’16 and fundamentalist Islam. More recently there has been increased focus on violence against women in the banlieue. In short, according to Rey, the banlieue has become a highly symbolic mode of designating all that is ‘an unprecedented form of counter-society’ (Rey 1996: 7). Two key studies of the banlieue which have marked the intellectual landscape in France are François Dubet’s La Galère (1987) and David Lepoutre’s Cœur de banlieue (2001). Dubet and Lepoutre have quite different approaches, but essentially their work focuses not only on young people in the urban periphery, but also on those of immigrant origin. ‘La galère’, referred to in the title of Dubet’s book, is a term used by young people themselves to describe their situation, which in turn must be situated in the wider context of economic crisis and mass youth unemployment. La galère refers to young people’s sense of uncertainty with regard to their future and their difficulties in finding employment. Dubet analyses la galère in terms of disorganisation, exclusion and rage. Despite the fact that a large proportion of the individuals who took part in Dubet’s study on banlieue youth were of North African origin, Dubet claims that their experiences of la galère (although somewhat heightened among those of North African origin) are not fundamentally different to their ‘Français de souche’ counterparts. Yet, they are still referred to as ‘jeunes immigrés’, thus distinguishing them from their ‘Français de souche’ peers. Dubet claims that at the start of the research project on la galère, he was tempted to discuss the experience of les jeunes immigrés as different to the French banlieusards, but that one main factor made him change his mind: none of the young people referred to immigrant origins as a parameter for relationships among themselves. Their friendship and peer groups were ethnically mixed. So Dubet’s study privileges a social reading of the experiences of young people in the banlieue, since its central conclusion is that the main problem facing this ethnically diverse population is unemployment and inactivity. While there is some mention of racial discrimination having a more adverse effect on young people of North African origin, there is no discussion of the question of culture (national, regional, religious origins) and cultural discrimination.

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David Lepoutre’s book discusses the findings of an ethnographic study of adolescents and pre-adolescents in La Courneuve, Seine-Saint-Denis. The study looks at youth culture in the Quatre Mille housing estate, and in particular the use of language, peer groups, neighbourhood relations and social activities. Lepoutre’s book can be seen as a response to Dubet’s La Galère, in terms of both methodology and findings. Lepoutre argues that French sociology has overfocused on the notion of social disorganisation, and that instead an ethnographic approach can concentrate on the cultural dimension of youth experience in deprived suburbs. Furthermore, Lepoutre claims that, contrary to what Dubet qualified as violence anomique in the banlieues, his own study of interpersonal adolescent relationships revealed a ‘meaningful, codified, controlled violence . . . , in sum, a cultivated violence’ (Lepoutre 2001: 24). This sense of organisation which contrasts with Dubet’s notion of disorganisation is further reflected in Lepoutre’s conclusion that the interpersonal violence between adolescents in the Quatre Mille housing estate bore witness to the existence of a ‘système culturel’ or a ‘culture des rues’ (Lepoutre 2001: 28). Despite Lepoutre’s insistence that the notion of ‘culture’ needs to be taken into account, his understanding of culture is primarily a social or ‘behavioural’ one – i.e. linked to street culture, adolescent culture, rather than culture in terms of the immigrant origins of the young people who are at the centre of his study. The emphasis that Dubet and Lepoutre both place on class counterbalances the focus on culture in the normative debates, but it could be argued that they go so far as to eclipse the role of culture in their analysis. As will be discussed in Part II, many of the young people of North African origin draw on both their socio-economic and cultural origins, which means that they do not necessarily align themselves with fellow banlieue inhabitants of French origin. L’insécurité urbaine A significant element of intellectual approaches to les banlieues has focused on the question of urban violence. The riots of autumn 2005 have once again led to a flurry of intellectual activity on violence in the banlieue, because although the 2005 riots were not strictly speaking a new phenomenon the scale of the events was unprecedented. What emerges from this debate is quite a polarised field whereby some commentators have argued that the 2005 riots had no social significance whatsoever, while others have argued that, on the contrary, the riots signalled a social and political awakening of banlieue youth. Some intellectuals within the first camp have dismissed the riots as simply being

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the senseless expression of deviant youths. Such readings of the riots can be found in the writings of philosophers Raphaël Draï and JeanFrançois Mattéi (Draï and Mattéi 2006). Draï and Mattéi’s culturalist reading slides, at times, into a more racialised mode of analysis: they refer to the riots as ‘ethnic riots’. Draï and Mattéi blame the riots on the failure of the rioters to sufficiently integrate the norms of ‘la culture française’ (Draï and Mattéi 2006: 20). Indeed, the authors argue that the ‘badly acculturated’ rioters need to be seen as part of a broader context of ‘la fracture culturelle’ which, in France, has led to the development of an ‘an “idiotic” language, a source of barbarism’ (Draï and Mattéi 2006: 22).17 This cultural fissure which afflicts French society has apparently developed out of the violent rejection by recent immigrants of the ‘offer of civilisation’ by the French State (Draï and Mattéi 2006: 23). While these authors adopt a negatively culturalist perspective on the 2005 riots, others foreground a more socio-economic approach. Clémentine Autain develops a clearly economic reading of the events and argues that one cannot understand the riots without paying particular attention to the rise of economic liberalism and the rioters’ anti-liberalism as being a major motivation for their revolt (Autain 2006: 11). Similarly, François Dubet sees a continuity in the dominance of social preoccupations which have concerned French society from the strikes of 1995, the 2002 presidential election campaign, the rejection by the French of the EU Constitutional Treaty in 2005 and finally the riots. Dubet argues that all these events should be interpreted as expressions of anxiety regarding social exclusion, or the threat of it (la précarité) (Dubet 2006: 62–63).

From theory to practice: fieldwork in Seine-Saint-Denis This overview of the various themes which have characterised intellectual discourses on immigration and its related topics highlights the main differences between academic disciplines (i.e. Anthropology, Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology). It is, of course, to be expected that each academic discipline will have its own methodology or narrative ‘clusters’. However, there is little dialogue between the disciplines themselves. For example, direct interchange between the sociological discussions of immigration and ethnicity and the political science research carried out on the same subject is rare. It could be argued that in order to complexify intellectual discourses about immigration and its related subjects there should be more communication between the different ‘corners’ of the debate. For example, in the discussions on cultural difference and

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multiculturalism, there is little mention of the empirical work carried out on the attitudes of populations of immigrant origin and the types of revendication (claims) they make. Wihtol de Wenden shows that the identities of association leaders of immigrant origin do not correspond with the ideological debates about how cultural difference should be dealt with in the public sphere – a question which has dominated academic enquiry over the last twenty-five years. A lot of intellectual debates also remain influenced by the ideological oppositions of ‘French Republicanism’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism’, and this runs the risk of obscuring the empirical dimension of migrant and post-migrant experiences. If one approaches the experiences of immigrants and their descendants within this oppositional framework, we are forced to oscillate between analysing their revendications as manifestations of either universalist aspirations or demands for recognition of their difference, which this ideological approach portrays as purely cultural.18 Re-articulating the ‘cultural’ and the ‘social’ A third limitation in the recent and current academic debates about immigrants and their descendants in France is the tendency either to foreground cultural issues which are thought to concern this population or, alternatively, to foreground a more social reading of their experiences. One example of this is the abundant literature which, taking its cue from political philosophy debates, has focused on normative or abstract issues surrounding the question of cultural difference and how this should be ‘managed’ within a liberal democratic framework. As discussed on p. 53, these intellectual debates have been concerned with the ‘challenges’ associated with recent non-European waves of immigration in general, and increasingly with the question of the place of Islam in the French, laïc context. A further example of this tendency to foreground either cultural or social approaches can be found in the body of research which examines the lives of the descendants of North African immigrants. On the one hand, we find studies which are framed within the normative parameters of cultural integration (in the sense of acculturation), where issues related to class and socio-economic identity are sidelined (see Lacoste-Dujardin (1992) and Tribalat et al. (1996), as discussed above). On the other hand, there is research of the type conducted by Dubet on la galère (Dubet 1987) or Lepoutre on adolescent interaction (Lepoutre 2001) which adopts a socially inflected perspective on immigrant youth, with little attention paid to broader issues of cultural (e.g. national/regional/ethnic/religious) identities and experiences.

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Immigration: public and intellectual discourses Triangles of identity

Bearing in mind these limitations in the current and recent intellectual debates, this book aims to move beyond some of the ambiguities within existing academic discourses. The empirical analysis does this by considering how the young people of North African origin who took part in the field research are simultaneously constructing individual, community and subjective identities. This three-way examination of experience draws on the notion of a ‘triangle of identity’. The ‘triangle of ethnicity’ was originally developed as a theoretical model by sociologist Michel Wieviorka and the three poles of the triangle relate to individual identity, community identity and subjective identity (Wieviorka 1993a). The pole ‘of individualism’ is civic: it is linked to the individual’s demands for equality, liberty and democracy. This first pole is also social, whereby the actor rejects social exclusion, economic inequalities and poverty. The second pole relates to ‘community’ (communautaire) identity and has been defined in terms of cultural belonging – for example, an individual’s desire to maintain certain family structures or a close relationship with their country of origin or family. Community identity is conceptualised by Wieviorka as involving the submission of the individual to the group. The third pole relates to the subjectivity of the actor and their successful management of both individual and community elements of their identity (Wieviorka 1993a: 124–136). The notion of a ‘triangular space’ challenges the binary oppositions (universalism–particularism) which are frequent in academic discourses as discussed above. The ‘triangle of identity’ thus constitutes a model which facilitates going beyond the polarisation of much academic debate. In other words, it can be a useful tool in the study of young people of North African origin, whose experiences cannot accurately be translated into the two-dimensional model of identité individuelle/universelle or identité culturelle/particulariste – a model which has tended to dominate academic debates on immigrants and their descendants in France, whether this has been in discussions relating specifically to France or in the frequent oppositions between France and its ‘others’ – i.e. the USA and Britain. However, Wieviorka’s model can be extended in order to address the third limitation detailed in the critique of academic discourses – the tendency for overstating social factors or cultural factors in young French-North Africans’ modes of identification. Whereas in the triangle of identity developed by Wieviorka, the pole of individualism relates to social and civic identity, this book seeks to expand the understanding of individual identity to include more cultural modes of identification, not normally associated in social science with individuals of ethnic minority

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origin. Those cultural modes of identification are language use, kinship (marriage) and religious practice. By extending Wieviorka’s model to incorporate cultural modes of identification (see Chapter 4) within an individualist paradigm, Part II of this book attempts to analytically re-articulate the social and the cultural dimensions of young FrenchNorth Africans’ experiences. The ‘cultural’ or cultural identities can be understood in terms of how one defines oneself in relation to things such as regional, national, religious and linguistic origins. This might translate into how individuals position themselves in relation to certain cultural practices which might be seen as ‘maghrébin’ (North African). The ‘social’ can be understood as how individuals define themselves in terms of social origins and might include issues such as ‘class’, spatial identity (where they live – a cité HLM or pavillon) or income.19 (These are non-exhaustive definitions.) Chapters 5 and 6 reflect a further extension to the ‘triangle of identity’ model because here Wieviorka’s conceptualisation of community identity is developed beyond a definition which focuses on the subordination of the individual to the community of origin. As such, the notion of collective and communautariste identities are distinguished from each other and addressed separately.20 Chapter 6 also extends the triangle of identity model by foregrounding a socio-economic reading of community identity, thus departing from Wieviorka’s model, which is mainly focused on ethnicity. Chapters 1 and 2 have concentrated on two registers of discourse in relation to North African immigrants and their descendants. Chapter 1 focused on the political debates which have dominated over the last three decades. The focus of this chapter has been academic discourses. The picture would remain incomplete without an investigation of a third level of analysis – that is, the ‘discourses’ generated in the field by the actors themselves. The empirical research which underpins this book was undertaken in an attempt to nuance some of the ideological debates about multiculturalism versus universalism; the a-cultural/social studies that tend to be carried out on male immigrant-origin youth as well as the a-social/cultural studies that tend to be carried out on young women of North African origin. While all these types of approaches to research are useful, they do not allow, nor indeed aim, to study the link between the social and the cultural in a detailed manner. Drawing on a theoretical framework of subjectivity, the aim of the field research was to evaluate the social and the cultural in terms of the construction of identity among young people of North African origin in the Parisian banlieue. Rather than examining the experiences of this heterogeneous group within the frameworks of multiculturalism, integration, urban violence or social

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exclusion, the main objective of the fieldwork was to understand how young men and women, who are involved neither in marginal nor highly visible activities, construct their everyday existence socially and culturally. Field research in Seine-Saint-Denis With this aim in mind, an extensive field study was carried out in and around Aubervilliers, a Parisian suburb situated in the Seine-Saint-Denis département, just north of Paris’ nineteenth arrondissement. Most interviewees either lived, worked or studied in Aubervilliers but about a third of them also lived in surrounding banlieues in Seine-Saint-Denis. These included the following towns: Bobigny, Drancy, Dugny, Fontenay-sousbois (Val-de-Marne département), La Courneuve, Le Blanc-Mesnil, Le Pré-Saint-Gervais, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and Villeneuve-la-Garenne (Hauts-de-Seine département). Aubervilliers was chosen as the focal point for the fieldwork primarily because it was traditionally a working-class town with a long history of immigration, due to its proximity to several major industrial employers and sites. The town’s immigrants first came from Italy, Spain, Portugal, then the Maghreb, Sub-Saharan Africa, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Turkey and the Indian sub-continent. The last census recorded 29.7% of the 63,524 inhabitants as being of foreign nationality and three-quarters of these nationals were from outside the European Union. This is the secondhighest proportion of foreign nationals in the département, the highest proportion being 33%. The overall departmental proportion of foreign nationals is only 18.7%. This means that many more inhabitants are, as a result, of ‘foreign origin’ as well, since those born in France can obtain French nationality at the age of eighteen. The high proportion of immigrants in Aubervilliers is visible in the town’s markets, cafés and public transport. Although Paris is ten minutes’ away and is linked to Aubervilliers by the metro (line 7), the local demography is strikingly different. A large proportion (41.3%) of its population lives in council housing (HLMs) and the unemployment rate is high (22.6% in 1999, 15.8% in 1990) compared to an average of 11.5% (1999) and 8.6% (1990) for the Île-de-France region. The low level of activity is immediately obvious when arriving at the Quatre Chemins metro station in Aubervilliers. Large numbers of young men of visible immigrant origin ‘hang around’ the station for long periods of time – which suggests that they are not in work. Similarly, a large number of the town’s cafés and tabacs are occupied by large numbers of young men throughout the day. In addition, a high proportion of young people residing in the town (aged between sixteen and twenty-five) are underqualified (33.3% of

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the population have no qualification whatsoever); 41% of the town’s active population are described as ‘workers’. The departmental proportion is 32% and the regional proportion is 21%.21 However, it is important to point out that although Aubervilliers is a banlieue, it is also a relatively structured town with a certain sense of itself as a historical entity. It is a banlieue populaire, with a communist tradition, as opposed to being an isolated and soulless zone of tower blocks. The people who live and work in Aubervilliers are therefore on the whole, conscious of belonging to a town with a fairly clear sense of identity. The field research focused on the younger section of the North African origin population – that is, those aged between sixteen and twenty-five – the main objective being to examine the ways in which they construct and narrate their cultural and social identities. In addition, a significant element of the fieldwork examined the nature of the relationship between this age group and the political (whether in the mainstream electoral process or in civil society associations). Indeed, young people’s involvement in the political could represent an externalised form of construction de soi in the public space.22 The age group (sixteen to twenty-five years) was chosen since this period of transition from late adolescence into early adulthood can be seen as one when young people are confronted with the challenges of forming their own personal and professional aspirations. In addition, as regards associations, a significant amount of research has already been carried out on the leaders or militants (activists) of immigrant-origin associations, yet there is little existing research on the younger, ‘new’ generation of association members, or beneficiaries, and their relationship to associational life.23 The field research thus set out to gain a nuanced understanding of the attitudes and opinions of a crosssection of the descendants of North African immigrants. More importantly, it gives an insight into how they construct themselves as subjects. By focusing on the notion of subjective identity (integrating both the cultural and social registers), the aim is to go beyond the oppositions between universalism and particularism, a dichotomy which has been central to much of the French academic and political debates about immigrants and their descendants. Similarly by conducting a detailed analysis of the experiences of young people of North African origin, the separation between social and cultural analyses of their lives can be addressed.

Notes 1 Prior to this law, passed on 9 October 1981, non-French nationals wishing to set up their own association were legally obliged to make a declaration to the Ministry of the Interior beforehand.

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2 The debate on cultural difference and multiculturalism in France should be seen in the wider context of the North American discussions about cultural difference, which were effectively launched in 1971 with the publication of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. This debate, although complex, was essentially between two camps, the ‘liberals’ and the ‘communitarians’. Rawls, a ‘political liberal’ argues that the individual’s identity should not refer to the person’s community of reference. The ‘communitarian camp’, which included Alistair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer have argued that the individualist or ‘atomised’ vision of identity, which is proposed by political liberalism, leads to a false vision since identity is always formed in relation to one’s community. See de Lara (1996). 3 However, Wieviorka distinguishes between what he refers to as communautarisme in this fourth pole, and communitarianism. The communitarian position, which characterises Charles Taylor’s standpoint, is one which views the individual as a subject who should be allowed to define him/herself with reference to his/her specific culture. 4 Emmanuel Todd, ‘Rien ne sépare les enfants d’immigrés du reste de la société’ (‘Nothing separates the children of immigrants from the rest of society’), Le Monde, 12 November 2005, interviewed by Raphaëlle Bacqué, Jean-Michel Dumay and Sophie Gherardi. 5 This term is used by Alain Renaut and Alain Touraine in their debate on la laïcité (Renaut and Touraine 2005). 6 See Taguieff (1990, 1995). 7 Here Wieviorka borrows the term used by Charles Taylor in his book Multiculturalism and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ (1992). 8 A discussion of the dilemma which cultural minorities have to contend with, in the face of cultural recognition and socio-economic inequality (or inequity) can also be found in Nancy Fraser’s article ‘From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a “post-socialist” age’ (1995: 68–93). 9 Catherine Wihtol de Wenden cites the 1901 law. 10 The study was carried out by the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales, Institut d’Études Politiques, Paris (CERI) and headed by Catherine Wihtol de Wenden and Rémy Leveau. It was commissioned by the Fonds d’action sociale (FAS) and the Report was entitled ‘Associations créées dans les années quatre-vingt par de jeunes militants issus de l’immigration: bilan de leurs activités et de l’engagement de leurs promoteurs’. The empirical research took the form of fifty qualitative interviews with association leaders and was carried out in 1996. Wihtol de Wenden has since republished the findings of this study in an article, ‘Le creuset de la “beurgeoisie” ’ (2002–2003). 11 It could be argued that it is problematic to regard social and economic demands as ‘a-political’ since demands for the redistribution of wealth can be inspired by a socialist (and therefore political or politicised) outlook. The use of the term ‘a-political’ is instead being employed here to contrast with the association movements of the 1980s, when the ‘beur’ leaders sought

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political representation within the mainstream political structure, particularly within the Parti Socialiste (PS). Here, Cesari is alluding to Abdelmalek Sayad’s article, ‘Les Enfants illégitimes’ (January 1979: 61– 82 and March–April 1979: 117–132). This corresponds to Wihtol de Wenden’s ‘deux logiques: une communautaire, l’autre individuelle’, see Wihtol de Wenden (1997). In L’Immigration en Europe (1999a), Wihtol de Wenden argues that even the term intégration has colonial roots to a certain extent, since it was employed under French colonial rule in Algeria. The book was co-authored with Patrick Simon and Benoît Riandey. Much of the research on la banlieue includes a comparison with the violence of American inner cities. For example Sophie Body-Gendrot and Loïc Wacquant’s research on urban violence can be seen as using the ‘transatlantic comparison’ as a model of identification and opposition. See, for example, Wacquant and Body-Gendrot, ‘Ghetto: un mot de trop?’, Le Monde, 17 July 1991; Body-Gendrot (1993); Wacquant (1993). ‘La fracture culturelle’ most likely alludes, in ironic fashion, to the term ‘la fracture sociale’ which has dominated political evaluations of French society since the Chirac camp adopted this term, coined by Marcel Gauchet, during the 1995 presidential election campaign. Abdelmalek Sayad criticised the tendency of social science research to focus too much on the polemical or sensational aspects of immigration. He argued that this tendency meant that immigration was more often than not approached on a ‘problèmes sociaux’ register, as opposed to being thoroughly constructed as an ‘objet d’étude’ [sociologique]’. See Sayad (1984: 219–304, at 238). An HLM is council/social housing/accommodation; pavillon refers to a detached house. The term communautariste refers to cultural, religious and ethnic segregation or even ghettoisation (It has a negative connotation.) Communautaire, however, refers to community-related phenomena but is not necessarily referring to cultural segregation/ghettoisation. Statistics from Recensement de la population de 1999: les grandes tendances à Aubervilliers et des comparaisons départementales et régionales (Observatoire de la Société Locale, Mairie d’Aubervilliers, March 2001) and Foussat (1999). This study by Foussat contains statistics taken from the earlier 1990 census. Didier Lapeyronnie uses the term ‘construction de soi’ in Wieviorka (1997a: 251–266). This ‘new generation’ of actors can be understood as those who were neither primo-arrivant immigrants, nor those old enough to have been observers of, or participants in, the ‘beur’ movement of the 1980s.

3

An alternative approach to post-migrant narratives? Subjectivity and identity

Introduction If, as we saw in Chapter 2, it is not accurate to discuss the experiences of young people of North African origin in France purely in terms of cultural ‘difference’, nor purely in terms of social exclusion, then an alternative framework of analysis must be used in order to make some sense of their experiences. This alternative tool of analysis can be located in the sociology of the subject. The sociology of the subject emerged from the end of the 1970s onwards in a context when classical sociological approaches were increasingly being challenged. This chapter will therefore first provide a brief overview of the ‘decline’ of classical sociology and the resulting re-emergence of the subject as a way of renewing social enquiry in a post-industrial context. The first part will focus on the themes of subjectivity and the sociology of experience. The second part will consider ways in which the notion of the subject and the sociology of experience can be used in empirical research on identity, ethnicity and subjectivity.

Subjectivity The decline of classical sociology and the emergence of a sociology of the subject Classical sociology was at its height in the 1940s and 1950s, reflected by the dominance of Talcott Parsons’ functionalist social theories. The main ideas advocated by Parsons and other functionalists (such as Émile Durkheim and Max Weber) or ‘neo-functionalists’ (such as Alfred Marshall or Vilfredo Pareto) were based on the notion of an integrated society which could be described as reflecting a ‘pyramid structure’ (with values at the summit, norms lower down and the notion of roles at the

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base). However, from the mid-1960s onwards, these ideas became increasingly challenged, in a context of growing strength of protest movements in the USA and Europe (the anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights movements, the student movement and the events of May 1968). The emergence of such movements undermined the notion of an integrated society. According to some, it also marked the fragmentation of Sociology as an academic discipline (Wieviorka 2000a).1 However, in his overview of the shifts in Sociology as a discipline (see Wieviorka 2000a), Wieviorka argues that in the 1960s and 1970s it was still possible to regard Sociology as a relatively integrated discipline characterised by four different ‘schools’. One of these was the ‘Neo-Functionalist’ school, represented by scholars such as Jeffrey C. Alexander, who tried to revive Parsons’ increasingly challenged ideas about society reflecting an integrated pyramid of values, norms and roles. The second pole of scholarship in the 1970s was Critical Sociology. Marxist variations of this critical thinking could be found in the structuralist ideas of Louis Althusser or Nicos Poulantzas, who both argued that the subject was irrelevant to social enquiry since it was the ‘system’ and the reproduction of roles, within institutions such as the school, which were more pertinent as analytical tools. A neo-Marxist dimension of this school of thought was to be found in the writings of Pierre Bourdieu about the habitus and the reproduction of social subordination. The third pole of sociological enquiry was represented by Political Sociology, which focused on rational choice and strategy. Influential authors included Raymond Aron and Thomas Schelling and their work on international relations, as well as Michel Crozier and his work on organisations. The fourth pole of the 1970s was the Sociology of Action, whose theorists argued that social life should be studied through the activities of social movements. This pole was developed in particular by Alain Touraine. During the second half of the 1970s the idea that the ‘actor’ and ‘the system’ were becoming increasingly separated gained ground. The first pole, neo-functionalism, was challenged. The second pole, la sociologie critique, went into decline in the 1980s, only to reappear with renewed popularity in the second half of the 1990s in the context of the 1995 general strike in France, from which point on Bourdieu became its main spokesman. The third pole, la sociologie de la décision, was no longer as relevant as it had been during the Cold War and consequently has increasingly restricted itself to narrower areas of research. The fourth pole continued to develop in parallel with mounting interest in the notion of interaction between individual subjects, with less and less focus on political and historical contexts, thus reflecting the growing individualism of

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an era characterised by increasing political and economic neo-liberalism. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges to classical sociology was reached at the start of the 1980s, when post-modernist theories became increasingly popular. Ideas about ‘le vide social’ as described by Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard, as well as the theory that modernity had ‘decomposed’ into identities and cultures on the one hand and the market and rationality on the other, met with great success. Two authors are often cited as providing a response to the postmodernist approach – Jürgen Habermas and Alain Touraine. Habermas’ notion of ‘communicative action’ and Touraine’s notion of the Sujet are identified as possible ways out of the impasse presented by postmodernism. The theme of globalisation has largely succeeded the postmodernist debate of the 1980s. Michel Wieviorka argues that sociological analysis in terms of globalisation is useful because it has overcome the postmodernist dilemma in which the dichotomy between homogeneity and particularism was depicted as almost absolute. However, Wieviorka claims that the danger of the globalisation theme is that it can be used to explain everything and that it focuses excessively on the notion of ‘the system’ and a-social determinism, with nation-states and individuals being simplistically portrayed as powerless entities. Instead, Wieviorka argues that the most useful approach to adopt once one accepts that ‘markets’ are becoming increasingly separated from individuals and their cultures, is a ‘bottom-up’ perspective. This entails starting with ‘the specific person, not conceived of as an individual taking part in collective life, as a consumer in the marketplace, but as subject’ (Wieviorka 2000a: 19). By focusing on the subject, we can proceed from the simple observation of the disassociation of system and actor (an observation which forms the basic premise of a globalisation approach) to an analysis which highlights the ways in which these two dimensions can be re-articulated. Thus a return to the idea of the subject can be seen to revive sociological enquiry, and counter the denial of the subject which is characteristic of critical and functionalist perspectives. Of course, this ‘return’ to the subject is visible in the work of other disciplines beyond Sociology. The interest in subjectivity concerns a very broad range of social science and humanities disciplines (too broad in range to be considered here). For example, in political philosophy, Sylvie Mesure and Alain Renaut have focused on the theme of the subject or subjectivity in La Guerre des dieux: essai sur la querelle des valeurs (1996).2 Furthermore, transformations of modernity and the emergence of the subject have been the source of debate for anthropologists such as Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman in Modernity and Identity (1992). Mesure and Renaut’s definition of the sujet moderne focuses on ‘the manner in

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which he/she has affirmed him/herself as author, or if one prefers, as ultimate foundation of his/her acts, ideas or representations’ (1996: 200). However, this book concentrates on the theories of subjectivity as developed by Alain Touraine, since they illuminate the experiences of young post-migrant generations more clearly than the approaches of Lash, Friedman, Mesure or Renaut. The relevance of the theme of subjectivity to young people of immigrant origin emerges from the idea of a ‘decomposition’ of modernity. In Critique de la modernité, Touraine defines modernity as ‘that relationship between a scientific culture, an ordered society and free individuals’ (Touraine 1992: 11). Touraine argues that it was this definition of modernity, which placed reason above all other principles, which has become increasingly problematic. Critics have pointed out that there is no necessary link between happiness, liberty, democracy, economic growth and the concept of reason. Touraine shows how more radical challenges to the notion of modernity have argued that modernity as the dominance of reason has led to an overbearing ‘system’ with little regard for the ‘actors’. Indeed, Touraine’s own critique of modernity is that it has excessively championed reason, science, progress and rationalisation, to the detriment of the Subject. He argues that, instead, modernity should be understood as being made up of two halves: reason and progress on one side and the subjective, more ‘human’ or creative face of modernity on the other. Thus, the ‘triumphalist’ advance of reason, progress and ‘objectivity’; the dominance of ‘the system’; the utility of ‘social roles’; and, in the worst cases, totalitarianism, is shown to have led to the negation of the Subject. Touraine describes the resulting modern society as ‘a society without actors’ (1992: 238). He proposes that our current modernity be redefined through a re-articulation of its two estranged facets: reason and subjectivity. New analytical approaches: the subject and the sociology of experience The attempt to re-articulate what has become increasingly disassociated (reason and subjectivity) thus involves a return to the idea of modernity.3 The end of the pre-modern era implied the replacement of the divine principle with both the impersonal law of science and the ‘I’ of the subject. The Subject is defined by Touraine as follows: The Subject is the desire of an individual to act and to be recognised as an actor . . . The Subject represents the shift from the Id to I, towards control over one’s life, so that it has a personal sense, so that the individual becomes an actor and becomes part of social relations by transforming

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them, but never completely identifying with any group, with any collective. The actor does not act according to the place he/she occupies in the social order, but rather, modifies the material and above all social environment in which he/she lives, by transforming the division of labour, decisionmaking, relations of domination or cultural orientations. (Touraine 1992: 242–243, emphasis in the original)

Touraine argues that the idea of the Subject is indistinguishable from that of the ‘actor’ since it is only through the conjunction of these two concepts that the actor is able to resist against a ‘system’ which promotes rational progress and prescribes social ‘roles’ to be fulfilled by citizens, employees and consumers, etc. This process – by which the Subject emerges – is described as ‘subjectivation’: What was once the order of the world, becomes a guiding principle for actions. Subjectivation is the opposite of individual submission to overarching values . . . the central tenet of morality becomes liberty, and a creativity which is an end in itself and which is opposed to all forms of dependence. (Touraine 1992: 244– 245)

One of the most significant implications to emerge from Touraine’s critique of modernity is that it is misleading to oppose modernity and tradition, since to do so is to highlight only one facet of modernity – rationalisation – and ignore the equally important second facet – subjectivation – where all is not simply progress, reason and science, but human creativity and liberty, and reference to one’s ‘community of belonging’. Touraine argues that the Subject is distinct from the individual because the Subject manages to combine both individual and community identity: ‘The subject is individual and community; . . . He/she escapes the community through instrumental reason and the market [rational forces] through both collective and personal identity’ (Touraine 1995: 32). Closely linked to Touraine’s ideas about the Subject and subjectivation is the notion of social movements. Social movements are concerned with the relations of production and hence the workers’ movement can be described as one of the major social formations of the twentieth century. Two major elements of Touraine’s definition of social movements are the notions of collective action and the conflictualisation of social relations: A social movement is a call to the self and the creative freedom of an actor who combats his/her de-humanisation, exploitation, dependency. And this relationship to the self implies a possible consciousness, a sense of action which is reinforced by action itself. (Touraine and Khosrokhavar 2000: 168)

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Action is thus central to Touraine’s understanding of social movements because, as he points out, the mere denunciation of exclusion does not constitute the formation of a social movement since this would not indicate what course of (re)action, if any, follows. For Touraine, the study of social movements is relevant to the Subject since it involves a perspective on struggles for equality and liberty which is devolved from ‘the system’ to the ‘actor’. This leads him to argue that social movement and Subject should be regarded as synonymous since ‘the appeal to subjectivity is expressed in terms of social combativeness’ (Touraine and Khosrokhavar 2000: 171–172). From the prescriptive to the analytical How does a sociology of subjectivity relate to empirical research on young French-North Africans? Two ideas in particular are of direct relevance. The first is Touraine’s insistence on the rejection of roles and the notion of the creativity of the Subject. How do the young men and women who participated in the field research construct their own sense of identity, and how does this relate to the question of roles? The second idea which is relevant to the analysis of empirical observations is the challenge to the communautarisme–universalisme dialectic found in many of the public and intellectual debates of the last thirty years. As such, we may avoid becoming trapped in an analysis which either focuses on the extent to which young people of immigrant origin are becoming ‘integrated’ or to what extent they can be seen as simply ‘reproducing’ family or community ‘models’ of behaviour. By adopting a framework of subjectivity, we are also able to go beyond the mere observation of the elasticity of identity, to consider the conditions under which political subjectivity or agency may emerge through identity negotiations. As discussed above, the notion of ‘modern’ society as a coherent system of values and beliefs into which the actor is integrated has become increasingly challenged over the last few decades. Sociologist François Dubet argues that, traditionally, the sociological portrayal of ‘society’ was based on four assumptions. The first was that society was opposed to the idea of community and was therefore an inherently modern concept. The second was that society was necessarily a nation-state. The third was that society was synonymous with system and, finally, the fourth was that society was built on the notion of regulated industrial conflict (Dubet 1994: 46). Dubet shows how this understanding of society has disintegrated over the last thirty to forty years. First, the evolutionary and progressiste (progressive) vision of society as essentially ‘modern’ has been challenged by the acknowledgement that the twentieth century saw the proliferation of authoritarian regimes which

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claimed to be modern. Second, the identification of society as a nationstate has also been undermined in an era of increased globalisation and the spread of ethno-nationalist movements which have challenged nation-state borders. Sociologist John Urry’s writing about ‘sociology beyond societies’ also hints at the new tools needed to understand increasingly transnational and globalised ‘objects’ of study (Urry 2000). Thirdly, the notion that society is a functional and integrated organism or system has also been seriously challenged, for the reasons evoked in the first section of this chapter (see p. 83). Finally, the transition to a postindustrial society has undermined the idea that society is synonymous with regulated class conflict. If it is no longer appropriate to refer to ‘society’, then social action must be described in new terms. Indeed, Dubet argues that whereas ‘modern society’ was once characterised by the unity of the actor and the system, the increasing separation of these two necessitates a new framework of analysis – the sociology of (social) experience: In so far as the social system . . . is no longer identifiable with ‘society’, it cannot engender one single mode of action. The actor does not engage in one ‘pure type’ of action, but is obliged to manage several modes of action. The pure types of action are not organised in hierarchical terms and do not succeed one another; they co-exist within the experiences of individuals. (Dubet 1995: 111)

So whereas peoples’ everyday actions have often been conceived in terms of prescribed roles or modes of action, Dubet argues that it is now more accurate to discuss individual and collective actions as experiences. In the absence of prescribed roles and overarching values, it is the capacity of the actor to construct meaning out of heterogeneous social experiences which becomes the object of a sociology of experience and the subject. It is the construction of one’s own social and cultural experience which defines the subject (Dubet 1994: 92). However, a sociology of the subject should not be considered as celebrating the individual’s capacity entirely to shape their own experiences as though they were completely a-social. Indeed, Dubet argues that, to a certain extent, the process of subjectivation is socially defined by the dialectic which develops between a given culture and a context of domination (Dubet 1995: 116). In this way, then, a sociology of the subject manages to combine a social and cultural conceptualisation of action and experience. The indication that subjectivity becomes more visible in a context of domination means that it can also be applied to the experiences of young people of North African origin, some of whom are concerned by a context of social and cultural marginalisation (Dubet 1995: 118). While a sociology of the subject

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and experience are clearly socially embedded, the more personal notion of self-identity remains central. The next section will consider the ways in which subjectivity can be located within narratives of self-identity and culture.

Identity Identity, ethnicity and subjectivity Over the last three–four decades, much has been written about the theme of ‘identity’ in many academic disciplines. This widespread interest should be seen as reflecting the decline of a triumphant and rationalist representation of modernity, which eclipses any notion of ‘community’ identity. In Francophone research much debate has therefore taken place over the ‘emergence of identities’, and in Anglophone research the discussions have largely focused on the concept of ethnicity. This book does not adopt the term ‘ethnicity’ as its central analytical category since it is not a notion that is widely used in the discourses produced by young French-North Africans about themselves. To a significant extent, this reflects the Republican ‘colour-blind’ context within which they live and, furthermore, illustrates the negative connotations of the term ‘ethnicity’/‘ethnic’ in French public discourse. While more generally ethnicity can be a useful tool of analysis, the analysis of ethnicity in itself will not form the main element of the discussion. This is the reason why the book does not focus on the notion of the ‘ethnic group’ (Barth 1969). While classic studies such as Barth (1969) and Eriksen (1993) are crucial, their focus on ‘ethnicity’ and the notion of the ‘group’ does not correspond to the central premise of this book, namely to study how identity is constructed in both cultural and social terms. Yet the notion of ethnicity tends to imply a more cultural prism for the analysis of ‘minority’ identity. So, when thinking through some of the shifting discourses of young French-North Africans, a combination of the following three conceptual frameworks lends itself well to the French context and is a useful starting point: the triangle de l’ethnicité, construction de soi and la sociologie du bricolage. The triangle of identity Michel Wieviorka draws on Touraine’s theory of subjectivity by adapting it to what he calls le triangle de l’ethnicité (Wieviorka: 1993a). The triangle de l’ethnicité is useful since, as discussed briefly at the end of

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Chapter 2, it enables us to introduce a third element to the otherwise two-dimensional model which subsequently encourages a perspective on the experiences of young people of North African origin in terms of culture and whether they assimilate as individuals or whether they ‘remain’ within their ‘traditional community’. Despite the fact that this model is called the triangle of ethnicité (i.e. it foregrounds ethnicity), it remains useful because it can be extended and developed further to apply to the construction of identity in a wider sense. It is for this reason that in Chapters 4–7 it will generally be referred to as the ‘triangle of identity’ as it is not my aim to focus on the nature of ethnicity. The triangle of ethnicity, as defined by Wieviorka, corresponds to different aspects of an individual’s identity. Wieviorka identifies the three poles of the triangle as follows: individual identity and universal values; community identity (e.g. religious identity, communautarisme); and subjective identity (la subjectivité). Ethnicity, according to Wieviorka, necessarily includes all three points of the triangle: ‘Individualism, communitarianism, subjectivity: ethnicity is none of these elements taken in isolation . . . It is the difficult, fragile and unstable effort of combining or articulating them, with the constant risk that this effort will fail and that the actor will shift to situating him/herself on only one of these poles’ (Wieviorka 1993a: 124). So this definition conceptualises ethnicity as a space within which the actor circulates with varying degrees of difficulty between all three poles. It is only when the actor is able to circulate between all three that they partially become subjects, since they are able to negotiate the contradictory elements of their experience in the public sphere. Of course, we are all negotiating our identities constantly, regardless of ethnicity. So in this way Wieviorka’s model can be developed further, the key issue becoming not simply how identity is negotiated, but how multiple identifications are managed in the public sphere through viable expressions of political and cultural agency (see Chapter 8 and Conclusions). Le pôle de l’individualisme This pole has two main aspects. The first dimension is civic and is linked to the individual’s demands for equality, liberty and democracy. The second aspect of the individualism pole is more social, whereby the actor rejects social exclusion, unequal conditions in the workplace and poverty. Placing oneself solely within this pole is problematic: ‘The consequences of this can be tragic, once assimilation is not regarded as complete by those concerned, or by the rest of society’ (Wieviorka 1993a: 126).

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Le pôle communautaire This point in the triangle can be seen as one which locks the individual into a close relationship with their country or region of origin and may lead them to maintain a certain family structure, live in a certain area, or engage with their religion in a particular manner. The community of origin is a life source and a network of economic and social solidarity. Here the individual is subordinated to the will of the group and the community. If the individual situates him or herself only in relation to their community of origin, then in extreme cases this could lead to cultural and social ‘ghettoisation’ (Wieviorka 1993a: 126–127). Le pôle de la subjectivité des acteurs This point in the triangle aims to nuance discourses around modernity and tradition. For example, Gaspard and Khosrokhavar have argued that if a Muslim woman decides to wear a headscarf, this cannot be systematically interpreted as subordination to the ‘rules’ of one’s community. Rather it might signify a socio-political stance or a distancing from parental religious practice (Gaspard and Khosrokhavar 1995). Like the other two poles, if the actor situates him or herself solely in terms of his/her subjective identity, Wieviorka argues that this entails a risk of matters slipping out of control and sliding towards an individualist ‘hedonism’ founded on ceaseless ‘cultural consumerism’ (Wieviorka 1993a: 131). Although, it is undesirable to remain within one dimension (on one pole) of one’s identity, Wieviorka points out that ethnicity should not be seen as a simple synthesis of all three poles, or of all three aspects of one’s identity. So, subjective identity is not just about syncretism or ‘hybridity’. Rather, it is a continual tension between all three facets and an ability to engage with all three that constitutes subjective ethnicity, which is defined in the following manner: subjectivity . . . requires individuation through lived experience, a capacity made possible by the ‘cultural fragmentation’ which Didier Lapeyronnie discusses in relation to French and British society; an ability to behave in a rather original manner with regard to these societies; but it dissolves if this individuation is dependent on the abandonment of a collective identity. (Wieviorka 1993a: 132–133)

Extending the ‘triangle of ethnicity’ While applying the triangle of identity to the empirical findings which are detailed in the chapters that follow, this book nevertheless seeks to extend our use of Wieviorka’s model in three ways. First, it does this by extending the conception of the pole of individual identity to include

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more cultural modes of identification, which are not normally associated in social science with the individual of ‘minority’ origin: language use, kinship (marriage) and religious practice. In the model developed by Wieviorka, the pole of individualism relates to social and civic identity. By extending Wieviorka’s model to incorporate cultural modes of identification within an individualist paradigm, Part II of this book attempts to analytically re-articulate the social and the cultural dimensions of young French-North Africans’ experiences. Second, Wieviorka’s conceptualisation of community identity can be developed beyond a definition which focuses on the subordination of the individual to the community of origin. As such, the notion of collective and communautariste identities can be distinguished from each other and addressed separately.4 Third, the ‘triangle’ can be further extended if we integrate a socio-economic reading of community identity, which departs from Wieviorka’s model, mainly focused on ethnicity and culture.5 Construction of the self and bricolage identitaire The historical significance of the notion of integration as a sociological concept (theorised and developed by the ‘founding fathers’ of Sociology, including Durkheim as well as the sociologists of the Chicago School, albeit from a rather different angle) cannot be ignored. Similarly, one cannot ignore the fact that integration has continued to be present in political discourse and government policy (see Chapter 1). However, as this chapter has shown, the term ‘integration’ is not always appropriate to the situations of young people of North African origin in France, nor for that matter to all individuals, since the notion of the integrated ‘society’ has been severely challenged. For some young people of North African origin, the increasing absence of societal roles and the prospects of social exclusion means that cultural origins become a source of resistance. This resistance process, referred to by Didier Lapeyronnie, leads us to consider an alternative analytical tool for young people of North African origin in a banlieue context: la construction de soi (Lapeyronnie 1997). The notion of la construction de soi can encourage us to think through the relationship between the cultural and social elements of identity. Roger Bastide’s sociologie du bricolage (sociology of self-construction) is also a useful conceptual tool and is still relevant today. Bastide uses Marcel Mauss’ ideas about the Black inhabitants of Bahia in Brazil and Lévi-Strauss’ study of Blacks in the USA as a starting point. Both these authors wrote about the phenomenon of transplantation from Africa to the ‘new’ societies and the attempts made by the descendants of the

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first slaves to ‘reconstruct’ former customs and a shattered cultural heritage. The reconstruction process is said to transform the ‘old’ culture into something new: ‘past rituals . . . detached from former systems and bound into a new ensemble, naturally change in signification’ (Bastide 1970: 97). This reconstruction process is referred to as le bricolage and is said to take place in the absence of collective memory: ‘Bricolage is neither invention, nor part of an imaginary scheme. It signifies the repair of an existing object, such as a chair with a missing rung . . . it involves the establishment of structures, based on events, or to be more precise, memories, which are detached from any chronology’ (Bastide 1970: 100, 108). Bastide’s notion of une sociologie du bricolage could be applied to some young people of North African origin in France who, while not engaged in reconstructing a ‘lost’ cultural heritage in a post-slavery context are, as we shall see, engaged in a process of reconstruction and bricolage identitaire in a post-colonial context. So by adopting the general framework of a sociology of subjectivity and experience, while drawing on the triangle of identity, construction de soi and bricolage as specific analytical tools, we are able to understand more fully the lives of young people of North African origin. If we envisage subjective identity as the precariously successful circulation around all three poles of the triangle of identity, it is possible to view the experiences of these individuals in a way which takes into account the diversity of their everyday lives. In other words, we can try and make more ‘sense’ of the seemingly contradictory stances and attitudes of the sample of young men and women who were interviewed. Subjective identity is not about ‘hybridity’ or simple syncretism. Some scholars have argued that hybridity discourse is problematic since its familiarity has often led to the commercialisation of ‘difference’ and the evacuation of political agency based on cultural difference (Modood and Werbner 1997). The remainder of the book, which will focus on the experiences of young French-North Africans, therefore simultaneously looks at ways in which these individuals narrate their identity and the modalities of a potential political agency based on their post-migrant cultural and social specificities.

Notes 1 This section draws upon Wieviorka (2000a), who provides useful overview of these changes in sociological debates, especially in France. 2 Renaut and Mesure (1996) – the title translates as The War of the Gods: Essay on the Quarrel of Values (author’s translation). See also Renaut (1989)

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– the title translates as The Era of the Indvidual: Contribution to a History of Subjectivity (author’s translation). 3 Touraine mostly refers to the subject with an ‘s’, as though it were a proper noun. To avoid confusion, I shall reproduce this pattern when referring to Touraine’s work. Otherwise, I shall simply refer to the subject as a common noun. 4 See Chapters 5 and 6 for a discussion of communautariste and collective dynamics among fieldwork participants. 5 Although Wieviorka’s definition of the communautaire pole of ‘the triangle of ethnicity’ does mention the importance of economic networks of solidarity, these are economic networks which are established within an ethnically defined community (Wieviorka 1993a).

PART II

Post-migrant discourses

4

Individualist trajectories: social worlds and cultural positionings

Introduction and data collection method In this chapter I will discuss, in part, the findings of the empirical study I carried out with young people of North African origin from SeineSaint-Denis. While this chapter focuses on the notion of individual identity, Chapters 5–7 deal with collective and subjective modes of identification. From September 2000 to September 2001, and then in 2003–2004 and 2007, sixty-six young people aged between sixteen and thirty-one were interviewed (the majority were aged between sixteen and twenty-five; only three interviewees were aged twenty-seven and over).1 However, I have concentrated more closely on the findings of forty-six individuals, twenty-three young men and twenty-three young women. Before going on to discuss the fieldwork findings, it is first of all useful to highlight a number of methodological considerations. All interviews were semi-structured – that is, a general ‘interview guide’ formed the basis of the vast majority. The interview guide was loose enough so that interviewees were able to introduce topics of their choice if they wished. Some interviews were collective – i.e. with two or three respondents – and this was the case for several of the interviews conducted with high school pupils and the further education students. The group interview method was especially useful because it gave an insight into the ‘group’ dynamics between friends and peers and became of particular interest in the analysis of collective or community identity. However, the combined method of group and individual interviews meant that the risk of considering the interviewees in a group context only was avoided. Frequent visits to Aubervilliers meant that as I became more familiar with the town and the interviewees I was able to combine the interviews with participant observation, for example, when invited to an interviewee’s home or during visits to the maison de jeunes and other associations. The option of questionnaires was rejected in the planning stages, given that the fieldwork aims were more qualitative in nature. Regarding access,

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high school pupils were contacted through two lycées in Aubervilliers, the ‘Lycée Pablo Picasso’ (a mainstream high school) and the ‘Lycée Vincent Van Gogh’ (a vocational high school) as well as through a local youth association.2 Both lycées are what are known as ZEPs (‘special measures’ schools) and therefore receive extra funding and staff. The Lycée Vincent Van Gogh was also classed a ‘zone of violence’ at the time. The further and higher education students were contacted either through their educational institution or through a local association. Some interviewees were contacted as a result of a ‘snowball’ effect. Interviews were generally conducted either at lycées, further education colleges, the local maison de jeunes, the workplace, an association’s premises (local), or an interviewee’s home. While numerically, a sample of forty-six youths is, of course, not representative of an entire sociological ‘category’, the interviewees can nevertheless be seen as qualitatively representing the ‘mainstream’, as far as young people of North African origin living in a Parisian banlieue are concerned. That is, there are generally no social, cultural or religious ‘extreme cases’, with a couple of possible exceptions. (For further details about the social fabric of Aubervilliers, see Chapter 2.) As outlined in Chapter 3, an individualised sense of identity (‘the pole of individualism’) can be understood in the following terms: active individual participation in a given ‘society’ by aspiring to gain access to material wealth, employment, health or the political process. The individualism ‘pole’ can also be understood as representing universalism or Republican norms. It concerns the actor’s demands for equality, democracy and liberty (Wieviorka 1993a). However, it appears insufficient to understand the individual facet of a person’s identity solely in civic or social terms. Indeed, it would also seem necessary to understand the individual pole in cultural terms as well.3 As we shall see in this chapter, some young people of North African origin clearly strive to distance themselves from their cultural background and try to present their life experience in terms of an ‘assimilated’ ‘Français de souche’ citizen of the Republic. In other words, we can also understand individual identity as a person’s desire to distance him/herself from his/her social and/or cultural ‘community’, where ‘community’ can be understood as an individual’s social or cultural peer group. This definition of individual identity should not be confused with subjective identity, which will be discussed in more empirical detail in Chapter 7, since a subject can be described as someone who chooses to ‘construct’ him or herself by electing, in a more or less reflexive manner, what they would like to constitute their history, their present and their future. On the other hand, individuals who choose to distance themselves from their ‘cultural’ community because they are ashamed of certain aspects of it, or because

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they want to present themselves as successfully assimilated into the dominant mainstream society, are not acting as subjects because of their incapacity to recognise the fact that those people (their parents, their siblings, their peers of the same background) who ‘remain’ in the community of origin may have actively chosen to continue to define themselves according to certain community norms. Instead, the individual often continues to believe that those that they have ‘left behind’ are simply the passive and unquestioning victims of ‘tradition’. When considering how certain interviewees construct themselves as individuals, it is possible to identify several recurring themes – that is, there are several areas of their lives which are governed either by a desire to participate as individuals in French society or by their desire to ‘escape’ their community/ies of origin. The image of escape is used here to convey the negatively driven desire for assimilation. Chapters 5–7 consider modes of collective and subjective identification. By organising the analysis of the fieldwork in this way, I will show how the interviewees try to deal with the tensions inherent within the ‘space’ of identity. I will also show how some interviewees are able to ‘circulate’ more successfully than others around the three poles of the triangle of identity, and why.

Individual identity and the social The world of work One manner of examining the ways in which young people present themselves as individuals is to consider how they project themselves in terms of future career plans. Is the notion of individual success important? How do the interviewees understand success? Gender would appear to have a tangible effect on the way interviewees construct their projects, in that the young women articulate greater confidence in their professional futures than their male counterparts. Of the forty-six young people interviewed, about half can be said to have confident professional plans. (They were generally asked what they would like to do once they had finished their studies.) Two main themes arise out of the data collected during the interviews. ‘Il faut s’en sortir’ (‘You have to make it’) This phrase is very widely used among male interviewees who participated in the field research. It is curious that this expression is never used among the young women respondents. Its widespread use among the young men, however, suggests an internalisation of the possible threat

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of professional or financial ‘failure’, a threat which would seem to be less significant for their female counterparts. Judging by the young men’s responses, there are two possible routes out of this situation. An individual can attempt to get on by means of educational success, as twenty-year-old Bobigny BTS accountancy student ‘Abdel Majid’ puts it: ‘when you work, you understand, you have to make it, you have to get qualifications, that’s why we’re working now.’4 Alternatively, one can ‘s’en sortir’ without qualifications thanks to financial gain. This perspective emerges in a number of the young men’s comments, especially among those who are experiencing or have experienced difficulties in obtaining their baccalaureate or who have generally had rather ‘chaotic’ educational experiences. For example, twenty-two-year-old Aubervilliers local council worker ‘Mansour’ reflects on his own trajectory: ‘I used to do security [while at the Lycée Van Gogh] so I focused on money so as to have a little capital to be able to make it; I was sixteen, I was at school and you’ve got to have a little bit of money for later . . . I’ve already got a little capital . . . so, there, personally, I think I’ve done well.’5 Mansour did not finish school nor did he obtain his baccalaureate and he admits that he regrets this. He claims that his childhood aspirations of becoming a lawyer are now unrealistic. However, in financial terms, Mansour is fairly satisfied.6 Playing safe Another theme which emerges is the similarity in the types of chosen profession. All bar four interviewees’ chosen career falls into one of the following four categories: the education sector (as either teachers or chief school supervisors), health-related and caring professions (as nurses or nursing auxiliaries), legal careers (lawyers), or careers in business and commerce. For some of the young people interviewed, the public sector remains an attractive prospect, while others are clearly seduced by a more ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model of material embourgeoisement (upward mobility) through private sector employment. Narratives of the banlieue As will be shown in Chapter 5, the idea of the banlieue as an imagined community (Anderson 1991) is a very prevalent one. The majority of interviewees demonstrate a strong sense of attachment to the banlieue, and use this register of their experience as an antagonistic mode of self‘valorisation’ in relation to Paris and everything that Paris represents, such as comparative wealth and ‘les Français’, who are perceived to be more or less hostile towards the young people of North African origin

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from the suburbs. However, a minority of interviewees make a point of trying to distance themselves from their suburban surroundings. There seem to be two dominant models which reflect this process of disengagement from one’s social environment: upward mobility and escape. ‘Upward mobility’ Respondents were generally asked where they lived, or where they had grown up. This often led the interviewee to develop their response further. The first type of narrative concerns the notion of ‘upward mobility’ whereby the interviewees concerned try to distance themselves from the socio-economic community which surrounds them in order to ‘get ahead’ professionally and/or financially. Eight interviewees fall into this category (five young men and three young women). Twenty-two-year-old ‘Tayeb’ is studying for a BTS in Accountancy at the Cité scolaire Pablo Picasso in Aubervilliers. He was born in Algeria and has lived in Aubervilliers since the age of nine. He does not hold French nationality, but has recently requested naturalisation. Throughout the group interview Tayeb was keen to distance himself from the banlieue and it becomes clear that he has a very negative image of the young people who live in the less welloff suburbs of Paris, despite the fact that he too lives in this environment.7 We talk about the Lycée professionnel Van Gogh, and I ask him if he attended this lycée. He replies: ‘They only take young people from the housing estates [jeunes des quartiers].’ The term ‘jeunes des quarters’ is a coded way of designating those young people who live on notorious housing estates, who have ‘dropped out’ of school and who are seen as socially deviant (and possibly delinquent). A quartier, literally meaning a district or area, can of course refer to a bourgeois area as well, but Tayeb’s use of the term changes its meaning rather drastically, so that it becomes a way of stigmatising youths in the suburbs. For instance, les jeunes des quarters is a term which is frequently used by the French media in the frequent reports about rising levels of street crime and juvenile delinquency in urban and suburban areas. When discussing his friendships and social life Tayeb once more reveals his desire to distance himself from the banlieue and all that it represents for him: ‘We don’t go out much in the suburbs. We’d only meet young people from the suburbs, but when we go on holiday, we can meet people from all over.’8 Tayeb also says that he would like to live in Paris when he finishes his studies but is uncertain whether he will be able to afford it. ‘Larbi’ is a twenty-two-year-old BTS Accountancy student. He was born in Algiers and came to France when he was four. He has always lived in the Île-de-France region, has lived in Aubervilliers for fifteen years and holds dual French–Algerian nationality. Larbi is Tayeb’s classmate

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and took part in the same group interview. Like Tayeb, Larbi seems to be very sensitive about projecting himself as different to the peers in his immediate environment. When I ask him which quartier he lives in, he responds in a defensive manner: ‘it’s not a neighbourhood [estate]. Yeah, everyone just lives in their own building peacefully.’9 ‘Djamel’, a thirty-one-year-old chief school supervisor of Algerian origin, was also keen to show how he was eager to ‘escape’ from the banlieue since for him this process was closely linked to upward mobility. Djamel grew up in nearby le Blanc-Mesnil, a town in Seine-SaintDenis with a similar socio-economic profile to Aubervilliers.10 Without being asked directly to talk about his environment, when discussing his past Djamel mentions that he was desperate to attend a university outside of Seine-Saint-Denis: I didn’t want to stay in the suburbs. I wanted to escape the suburbs a bit because I felt that we were missing out on something in Paris . . . For me, the Sorbonne was always sort of mythical for me . . . I mean I always liked the so-called challenge, of whether a little bloke from the suburbs could succeed in Paris, at a Parisian university . . . I wanted to see what Paris was all about. What it was like to hang around with Parisians.11

Like Djamel, ‘Amir’, a twenty-two-year-old care auxiliary trainee, also presents education as a means of escaping one’s surroundings. He was born in France and is of Algerian origin. Amir talks about his childhood and adolescence on a relatively deprived housing estate in neighbouring Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, and how he managed to avoid any serious problems because, as he puts it, he was very involved in his studies and judo: ‘It was hard but since I was focused on my sport, on my studies, I didn’t have much time to see what was going on around me so . . .’ It is significant that Amir seems to refer to two supposedly opposed ‘categories’ of person living in his immediate surroundings: ‘the person from the suburbs and the person who goes to school, who educates him/herself, who is articulate.’12 ‘Arwa’ and ‘Hala’ are the only young women who distance themselves from their suburban surroundings in an attempt to achieve greater upward mobility. Eighteen-year-old Arwa was born in France (Paris) and will soon hold French and Moroccan nationality. She is one of the few interviewees who is in effect a member of the ‘third generation’ since it was her grandfather who emigrated from Morocco to find work in France. She lives in Aubervilliers but attends a lycée d’enseignement professionnel in nearby Drancy, where she is studying for a BEP in Accountancy.13 When discussing her friendships and her free time, it becomes clear that she has chosen to distance herself from her banlieue surroundings and her peers:

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it’s better to be on your own than with other people, . . . I’m trying to make my way, to be different . . . I want to have a future . . . Before we were all together. Not now. Now I’m trying to think more about the future . . . I don’t want to be a street girl.14

Eighteen-year-old Hala is a pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born and brought up in Aubervilliers and both her parents are Tunisian (she holds dual French–Tunisian nationality). She is a high achiever and plans to go on to the preparatory classes for the entrance competition to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure.15 She wants to become an interpreter for an international organisation such as UNESCO. Hala’s case is slightly different to Arwa’s, in that she presents herself as already being upwardly mobile, and in many ways she is. This is demonstrated by Hala’s reference to the fact that the local municipal youth association (L’Office municipal de la jeunesse d’Aubervilliers, l’OMJA) is ‘more a meeting place for suburbans (banliesuards), than anything else’. Hala is strictly speaking a ‘banlieusarde’ herself since she too lives in Aubervilliers, but she chooses not to present herself in this way and her comment constructs ‘les banlieusards’ in the same negative manner as Tayeb’s reference to ‘les jeunes des quarters’. In addition, like Larbi, Hala wants to distance herself from the general socioeconomic profile of Aubervilliers’ inhabitants: ‘I live really far away from the estates, in a small building.’16 The two remaining interviewees who attempt to distance themselves from their environment in a bid for upward mobility focus more on their future families and express their desire to move away from Aubervilliers in terms of wanting the best for their future children. Mansour reveals a very negative view of his surroundings: ‘It’s not good to live on an estate . . . you have to avoid it, you should avoid it for the sake of your children . . . you should avoid it.’17 Seventeen-year-old ‘Leila’ also expresses a similar point of view when she claims that she would like her children to attend a private school in Paris: Well, you can say that if you’ve not got any personality, you can fall into the trap and so I wouldn’t want that. On the one hand, I would prefer my children to be surrounded by French people [laughs]. You could say that with the mentality there is here, . . . I think that later I’ll put my children into the private sector.18

‘Je m’arrête pas au quartier’ (‘I don’t stop at the neighbourhood’) The second dominant narrative which emerges when interviewees distance themselves from the collective social ‘community’ is less closely linked with a desire to ‘escape’ the banlieue. Indeed, these interviewees claim to be living happily in their respective suburbs and are pursuing

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their own projects with reasonable levels of satisfaction. ‘Yasser’ and ‘Waleed’ both reveal that they feel no particular sense of belonging to the cité where they live. Eighteen-year-old Yasser emigrated from Algeria with his mother, brothers and sisters, at the age of ten. He lives in neighbouring Pré-St-Gervais and holds Algerian nationality only, but is planning to request French nationality. He claims: ‘I live there and that’s it . . . I’ve got my own life.’19 The other three interviewees to distance themselves from their quartier all point out that they may live in a certain quartier but that this has nothing to do with how they construct their own sense of self. Twenty-four-year-old ‘Samira’ has a Licence in History from the Université de Paris XIII. She also works part-time as a surveillante (school supervisor) at the Collège Pablo Picasso in Aubervilliers.20 She was born and brought up in Saint-Denis, her parents are Algerian (Kabyle) and she holds dual French–Algerian nationality. When asked about neighbouring Saint-Denis, where she lives, Samira replies: ‘I don’t feel that I belong to the neighbourhood. For me, I live in that building and full stop. I don’t stop at the neighbourhood.’21 Indeed, this is a very similar response to ‘Khadija’s’: ‘I live in La Maladrerie [a rather notorious quartier in Aubervilliers], but that’s all, I mean, that’s it.’22 Twenty-sixyear-old ‘Nacira’ is another interviewee who makes a point of demonstrating that the notion of feeling a sense of belonging to the banlieue as a whole or to one’s quartier as a microcosm of the banlieue means little to her: ‘I’m not involved at all.’23 Gender and age seem to be two factors which have some impact on an individual’s relationship to their environment. As such, it would seem more acceptable for the young men to distance themselves from the banlieue/quartier if they are seen to be searching to ‘better their lot’ or that of their children in socio-economic/professional terms. Only two young men out of twenty-two (Yasser and Waleed) distance themselves from their respective cités for non-professional motives. The young women seem to be slightly more at liberty to ‘break away’ from their quartier/banlieue for non-professional reasons. With regard to age, apart from those interviewees with professional and/or financial motives, only one interviewee (Khadija) of high school age rejects the notion of a collective banlieue experience (The other two women to distance themselves from the quartier in this manner, Nacira and Samira, are twentysix and twenty-four years old, respectively.)

Individual identity and culture In the introduction to this chapter ‘individual identity’ was defined as a person’s demands for equality, democracy and liberty. I also argued

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that another dimension could be added to this definition, namely, a cultural dimension. This concerns issues such as self-perception or cultural positioning, language, marriage and religion. Cultural positionings A small number of interviewees situate themselves on the ‘individualism pole’ of the ‘triangle of identity’ with regard to cultural positioning. Three young men and one young woman see themselves in universal or individual terms. More specifically, only these interviewees openly acknowledge any French element in their self-identity.24 The ‘instrumental’ model Waleed and ‘Mohamed’ are two young men whose self-definition is universal rather than related to their ‘origins’. Their rejection of the notion of ‘l’origine’ is articulated in a rather defensive manner. Nineteen-year-old ‘Waleed’ is in his first year studying Geography at the Université de Paris IV – Sorbonne. His parents are Moroccan, he was born in France and has always lived in Aubervilliers. He is of French nationality. When discussing the issue of self-perception, he becomes rather annoyed: ‘I don’t see why we want to understand origins. I don’t see why. I don’t see why, origins, origins . . . I don’t see a French person who is of French origin . . . I don’t see any. I don’t see the point of talking about origins.’25 Likewise his younger brother, sixteen-year-old Mohamed, a première ES pupil at the Lycée Pablo Picasso who was born in France and has dual French– Moroccan nationality and who was interviewed separately, responds in a similar manner: ‘To start with I see myself as a human being – because . . . that’s all. There’s no difference between people. I don’t see why we say “I’m French, I’m African or Asian” ’, that’s all. We’re human beings.’26 So both brothers’ articulation of self-identity in universal terms is linked to an expectation of equal political and social rights. In contrast to many of the other interviewees, Abdel Majid claims to speak only French at home, whereas most other interviewees claim to speak a mixture of Arabic/Amazigh (Berber) and French when in the parental home. Abdel Majid spends two months in Algeria every summer and visits his extended family there. He has little or no extended family in France; most of them live in Algeria. However, despite Abdel Majid’s rather close and more frequent contact with Algeria, he still makes a point of distancing himself from his parents’ origins: ‘I was born in France. My parents are foreign.’ Most interviewees introduce themselves as ‘d’origine algérienne’ or ‘marocain/e’, or as ‘kabyle’ (of Algerian, Moroccan, or Algerian Amazigh origin). Rarely do they make a distinction between themselves and their parents in the way Abdel

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Majid does. However, Abdel Majid’s insistence on his ‘Frenchness’ should be seen in the context of his concerns for equal access to employment. This is hinted at when, after having pointed out that he is not Algerian, but the descendant of Algerians, he hastily adds ‘I’ve got dual nationality for work.’27 So, Abdel Majid’s self-definition appears linked to his desire for equality in employment. The ‘experiential’ model Only one young woman (and no young men) in the sample openly articulates her sense of self-identity in terms of being French. Sixteenyear-old ‘Amira’ is a bac littéraire pupil at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in France, has French nationality and has always lived in Aubervilliers until her family’s recent move to neighbouring La Courneuve. Her parents are Tunisian, she goes to Tunisia every other summer with her family and she is one of the few interviewees who can speak Arabic and read and write it as well. Yet, despite her close links with Tunisia, she describes herself in the following way: ‘French. I’ve lived in France so . . .’28 So as far as self-definition is concerned, there seem to be two different patterns that arise out of the interviewees’ responses. First of all, there is the ‘instrumental’ model, which corresponds more to Abdel Majid, Mohamed and Waleed. Secondly, there is the more ‘experiential’ model, which reflects Amira’s experience. Language One area where some interviewees can be seen to present their relationship to their origins in distant, more individualist, terms is language. Respondents were asked if they could speak/read/write Arabic or Amazigh and if so they were asked to self-assess their level of competence and to indicate when/with whom they spoke it. While most interviewees are keen to show that they can manage with minimal problems in their parents’ language (whether this is Arabic or Amazigh), those interviewees who are actually enrolled in extra-curricular language classes in their parents’ language deny that they attend these classes for sentimental reasons. Indeed, they reject the notion of ‘going back to one’s roots’. For example, ‘Naima’, Khadija and Waleed have all attended Amazigh lessons in the same association in a banlieue neighbouring Aubervilliers and all claim to have followed this course purely in order to be able to gain more points in their baccalaureate. Naima and Khadija attend the classes together and although the association in question organises Amazigh cultural activities, neither

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interviewee shows any interest in this aspect of the association. Eighteenyear-old Naima (Waleed and Mohamed’s sister) is a terminale ES pupil at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born and brought up in Aubervilliers and holds dual French–Moroccan nationality. With regard to the wider cultural activities organised by the Amazigh association, Naima states: ‘No, we don’t even take part . . . they organise cultural events, poetry-readings, dances, dance shows, they organise a lot, a lot of things.’ She then later emphasises her own motivations for attending the association’s Amazigh course: ‘quite frankly, I’ll tell you the truth, . . . personally it’s a class like any other, it’s, I don’t know, it’s normal . . . it’s like I was learning another language except that this one I understand, but um, otherwise, it’s the same.’29 Seventeen-year-old Khadija reveals that she shares the same motivations as Naima: If I’d had the choice, I would have taken Arabic, I wouldn’t have chosen there, because I want to learn several languages in fact, . . . I took chleuh because for Arabic, they expect you to be able to read and write [it] – OK, I can’t, so I took Berber.30

Naima’s younger brother, Mohamed intends to enroll in an Amazigh class and he echoes this rather instrumental relationship with his parents’ language: ‘No personally, it’s to get more points for the bac because I’m alright at Berber.’31 Waleed is keen to show that he has used his knowledge of Amazigh to enhance his educational achievements. When asked about his level of competence in Amazigh, he replies: ‘Very good, very good. Besides, I did the baccalaureate in Berber. I got a really good mark even though . . . I hadn’t even revised . . . without learning the texts, just by reading them once, I got fifteen.’32 So the relationship of these four respondents to their parents’ language can be seen as rather instrumental. They use an aspect of their cultural origins in order to achieve academic success and they do not see their motivations as regards the Berber course in terms of an ‘ethnic revival’.33 So concerning this issue, it can be argued that the interviewees situate themselves on the pole of individualism. Marriage For a variety of reasons, not all interviews involved a discussion about marriage. The main reason was that in some cases, the research context did not lend itself to this type of personal question. This was particularly the case among the younger interviewees. As a result, only twenty-six out of the forty-six interviewees discussed future marriage partners, whether they themselves had any particular criteria for choosing their future partner and whether their parents had any specific criteria. Only

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three (two young men one young woman) out of the twenty-six can be seen as subscribing to a universal/individualist approach with regard to marriage. Two models reflect the ideas of these three interviewees: first, what could be called the ‘emotional model’ and secondly what could be referred to as the ‘personal choice model’. Two young male interviewees fall into the first category and one young woman falls into the second. The emotional model Mansour, who subscribes to a universalist outlook in many areas of his life, expresses his thoughts about future marriage partners: ‘my parents, I know they’d be happy if I brought a Moroccan girl from Casablanca home. That’s for sure, . . . but me, would I be happy?’34 Nineteen-year-old ‘Majdi’ is a BEP (Carrosserie) pupil at the Lycée Van Gogh. He was born in Algeria, arrived in France at the age of six and lives in La Courneuve. He holds dual French–Algerian nationality. Majdi’s anger when a fellow female interviewee of Tunisian origin comments that her parents expect her to marry a Muslim and, if possible, a Tunisian, reveals a similar view to Mansour: ‘People like that, I don’t understand them because it’s not her parents who are getting married!’35 ‘Personal choice’ Twenty-eight-year-old ‘Aicha’ is a trainee care-auxiliary. She was born in Algeria (Kabylia) and was brought to France at the age of two. She holds Algerian nationality only. Her ideas about relationships and marriage are more unusual than the interviewees mentioned above because her preferences lie outside a whole range of conventional responses. Aicha does not agree with the institution of marriage and she vows that she will herself never get married, preferring instead to cohabit with a partner: I’m against marriage . . . It’s out the question that I relive what my parents have been through . . . because for . . . marriage . . . it’s ‘you’re going to listen to your husband’ . . . and me, it’s out of the question that anyone would tell me what I should do . . . whereas co-habiting, well, if you’re not happy, then good-bye, that’s it.36

Aicha’s statement reveals a firm rejection of what she perceives to be her parents’ experience of marriage. Through the articulation of her preferred type of relationship, there is an element of self-construction and subjectivity. However, the fact that Aicha equates all marriages ‘for [North Africans?]’ with the unequal relationship her parents have, means that her predicament corresponds more to a negative process of ‘escaping’ what she perceives to be the ‘maghrébin’ marriage.

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Religion or religiosity? Religion is often portrayed in the social sciences as being an expression of ‘tradition’ or traditional values and hence it can be conceptualised as existing antagonistically with modernity and universalist ‘reason’. While avoiding the modernity versus tradition trap which might claim that those interviewees who strive to present themselves as individuals are the ones who are agnostic or atheist, some interviewees can nevertheless be described as subscribing to an individualist stance on religion because they express their unconventional ideas in the presence of their peers who think otherwise. As we shall see in Chapter 5, peers play a very prominent role in maintaining – even ‘policing’ – the notion of a socioeconomic and/or cultural ‘community’. Interviewees were encouraged to share whether they had any religious beliefs and, if so, whether they considered themselves as practising. ‘Mona’, ‘Karine’ and ‘Hicham’ can be described as young people who are keen to assert their own individual stance despite pressure exerted by their peers to conform. Seventeen-year-old ‘Mona’ is a pupil in seconde ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. Like her Kabyle-origin mother, Mona was born in France. Her Kabyle father emigrated from Algeria at the age of seventeen. She holds dual French–Algerian nationality and has always lived in Aubervilliers. Mona took part in an interview with her friend and peer Hala, a high school pupil in the year above. Hala is a committed Muslim and although Mona seems at first to be reluctant to air the doubts she has about Islam and her faith, she then goes on to say: honestly, I don’t know if I’m interested . . . before I know that I really believed in God . . . I’m a bit lost. I’m going through a stage where I have to think things over, let’s say . . . the fact that I don’t believe in God, the fact that it’s a bit contradictory.37

Karine and Hicham are similar in that they are both from ‘mixed’ backgrounds. Seventeen-year-old Karine is a pupil in première ES (Lycée Pablo Picasso) and Hicham is in terminale ES. Karine’s father is Algerian and her mother is South American. She was born in Paris and was brought up by her mother in both Paris and Antony (Hautsde-Seine département). At the time of the interview, Karine was a newcomer to Aubervilliers and it was her first term at the lycée. Karine was interviewed in the largest group interview that was conducted (five young women took part). Despite of, or perhaps because of, being a recent newcomer to the lycée, Karine shows that she has no qualms about expressing her doubts with regard to certain received wisdoms. When the issue of religion is introduced, Karine disagrees with one of the dominant figures of the group, ‘Nabila’, who automatically presumes

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that all respondents must obviously be practising Muslims. Nabila’s assumptions lead her to speak on everyone’s behalf: NK: ‘And in terms of religion . . . [Nabila interjects:] Whether we practice our parents’ religion, is that it? Well yes!’

However, Karine promptly replies: ‘Nobody can say that they’re Muslim, in any case, not young people, it’s impossible to say that.’38 Karine’s point of view runs contrary to the vast majority of young people of North African origin who, even if they are not particularly devout, tend to use certain code language to convey this, the general ‘acceptable’ response being: ‘I’m not very practising. I do the minimum, just out of respect.’ Karine’s outspokenness reveals that she is not concerned about distancing herself from her community; the community, in this case, being represented by her school mates. Eighteen-year-old Hicham was born in France to a French mother and Algerian (Kabyle) father. He is a pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. His religious practice does not differ greatly from the majority of other young men of North African origin. However, what does differ is the way in which he presents his practice, or rather nonpractice, of Islam: I don’t pray, I do Ramadan, I don’t eat pork but I don’t really see myself as a Muslim because a Muslim, normally a Muslim prays, he should respect the Koran. Me, I can’t say that I’m very Muslim because I don’t respect everything. I don’t pray, I don’t do this, I don’t do that . . . I can’t really consider myself as really Muslim.39

Let us compare Hicham’s response with that of seventeen-year-old ‘Mouloud’, his fellow interviewee. Mouloud’s answer is representative of the standard unwillingness of interviewees to portray themselves as having ‘strayed’ too far from the accepted religious ‘minimum requirements’. Indeed, Mouloud, like Hicham, fasts but does not pray, yet he does not want to go as far as Hicham in his self-definition: I don’t really know. Let’s say I’m an apprentice Muslim. I’m a bit like Hicham. I don’t pray but I respect certain rules. Actually, I don’t feel mature enough yet to respect all these rules so I’m waiting. I do what I can for the moment and I’m waiting to be ready to practice.40

Hicham’s response reflects a more extensive degree of selfacknowledgement and thus a more individualised approach than Mouloud’s, who presents himself as passively waiting for the time to arrive when he will be mature enough to pray.41

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‘Fouad’ can perhaps be seen as one of the most exceptional of interviewees because of his rejection of Islam. His ideas are very different to his entourage and family. Thirty-year-old Fouad is an unemployed volunteer at a North African-origin association in Aubervilliers. He was born in France and both his parents are Algerian. He has dual French– Algerian nationality. Fouad violently rejects all form of religion and through this rejection it would seem that he aims to provoke his peers. When the question of religion is developed in the interview, Fouad’s response is as follows: the question in fact, ‘does He exist or not?’ . . . for me, . . . it’s really crystal clear . . . the Bible is a great piece of theatre, the Koran is a great piece of theatre . . . me, personally, I eat pork, alcohol, etc., I do all the bad stuff . . . I please myself, . . . it’s very simple so religion, no, I don’t get into that at all . . . I live for each day so personally, death, what happens after death, there’s nothing after death, there’s nothing at all.

During the interview, it becomes apparent that, by declaring his atheism, Fouad wishes to criticise his peers, especially those of North African origin (or those whose parents are Muslims), for what he perceives to be their conformism: for three quarters of them here, it’s more a question of identity than religion. They don’t eat pork because they’re Arab and it doesn’t look good to eat pork. It’s got nothing to do with religion. For three quarters of them, it’s a question of upbringing . . . here it’s about following, indoctrination . . . yes, following the herd.

Fouad prides himself on being ‘different’ to his peers and ensuring that they are aware of this. He therefore sets out to ‘provoke’ and shock them, especially during the fasting month of Ramadan: [During Ramadan] I walked around the estate with a big ham sandwich in front of everyone. I do it every year. Every year I wander around with a ham sandwich in front of everyone and as soon as they ask me a question, I say ‘have a taste, eat’.42

Fouad’s remarks about religion are not constitutive of a subjective stance since, in his denunciation of Islam and religion in general, he refuses to recognise that those who practice are in some, or many cases, subjects who to a certain extent have chosen to observe a minimum of religious practices. In other words, Fouad’s continual ‘provocation’ as he calls it and the fact that he claims that most of the cité’s inhabitants are merely following ‘the herd’ means that it is difficult to describe his distancing from Islam and religion in general as a positive process of self-construction.43

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In all, twenty-three out of the forty-six interviewees can be seen to present certain aspects of themselves or their experience as individuals who subscribe to universalist values. As I have shown above, some young people in the sample articulate certain elements of their lives according to the ‘individual pole’ of the triangle of identity illustrating their desire for more social and economic equality. Others try to present themselves as culturally ‘assimilated’ individuals and as part of the ‘mainstream’ of French society, in relation to certain issues, and within this process they seem to look down on the element of their community values from which they claim to have ‘escaped’. In the light of the data which have been discussed in this chapter, two main concluding remarks can be made. First, the analysis of the field research shows that when thinking about the articulation of individual identities and values among young people of North African origin, it is misleading to restrict our understanding of individualism to one which is embedded in notions of the civic and the social. By integrating a cultural dimension into our understanding of individualism, we are able to consider people’s desires to distance themselves from their community (whether this community is defined in social or cultural terms). This self-distancing should not be interpreted as subjectivity if the person involved is unable or unwilling to recognise in others (or the ‘Other’) the capacity to become subjects. The second concluding remark that can be made is that although the interviewees discussed in this chapter reveal their desire to present themselves as individuals regarding certain issues, these attempts, in most cases, represent only one facet of their experience. Indeed, most interviewees ‘hop’ from pole to pole of identity in a rather erratic manner. Of course, this ‘hopping around’ reflects the inherent tensions that lie within the notion of identity. Therefore, in Chapters 5–7, I shall look more closely at how the young people who have been discussed in this chapter can also be seen in some situations to be very much tied to their cultural or social community (Chapters 5 and 6) and in other situations to be more capable of constructing themselves as subjects by simultaneously drawing on elements of their community identity and elements of individual identity (Chapter 7).

Notes 1 This figure does not include the association employees and animateurs, éducateurs, teachers, policemen and municipally elected députés who were also interviewed as part of the field research (twenty-five people). The time period of the field research corresponds with France’s last municipal electoral cycle.

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2 In order to protect the identities of those interviewed, all high school names and interviewees’ names are pseudonyms. 3 ‘Le pôle de l’individualisme’ will be referred to in translation as ‘the individual pole’, ‘the individualism pole’ or ‘the pole of individualism’, and no distinction in meaning is intended between these three terms. 4 Interview with Abdel Majid, ‘Ahmed’ and ‘Maliha’, 22/05/01. Abdel Majid, was born in France. His parents are Algerian and he holds dual French– Algerian nationality. 5 Interview with Mansour, 29/03/01. Mansour was born in France and both his parents are Moroccan. He holds dual French–Moroccan nationality. 6 Since the interview, Mansour has now returned to security and works as a gym security guard. 7 Tayeb was interviewed with two other BTS students from the same class – Larbi and ‘Ibrahim’. 8 Interview with Ibrahim, Larbi and Tayeb, 23/05/01. 9 Interview with Ibrahim, Larbi and Tayeb, 23/05/01. 10 Not all interviewees actually live in Aubervilliers. However, all of them are from Seine-Saint-Denis and all of them have a connection with the town, either because they live, study or work there. 11 Interviews with Djamel, 10/05/01, 17/01/04. Most interviewees simply see it as a matter of course that if they continue into higher education that they will either attend the Université Paris VIII in Saint-Denis or the Université Paris XIII in Villetaneuse and Bobigny. Both these universities are situated in the Seine-Saint-Denis département. 12 Interview with Amir, 21/12/00. 13 BEP – Brevet d’études professionnelles or a school certificate of technical education. A BEP is completed prior to the baccalauréat professionnel or can in itself constitute a school-leaving certificate. 14 Interview with Arwa, 23/03/01. 15 The École Normale Supérieure is a very selective higher education institution which trains future teachers, researchers and university lecturers. 16 The Office municipal de la jeunesse d’Aubervilliers (OMJA) is a municipally funded youth project which provides leisure, cultural and educational activities for the young people of Aubervilliers. It is organised into different secteurs with different maison de jeunes and youth workers for each of the quartiers of Aubervilliers. Both citations from interview with Hala and Mona, 18/05/01. Terminale is the equivalent to Year 13 in the English and Welsh school system. 17 Interview with Mansour, 29/03/01. 18 Interview with Leila, 15/05/01. Leila is a première littéraire pupil at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in Aubervilliers and has lived there all her life. Her parents are Algerian and she holds dual French–Algerian nationality. 19 Interview with ‘Aziz’, Majdi, Yasser and ‘Ibtisam’, 17/09/01. Waleed is a Geography D.E.U.G. (Diplôme d’études universitaires générales) student at the Sorbonne. The D.E.U.G. is awarded at the end of the first two years

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of university study. Note that the French university system has now moved to the Licence–Master–Doctorat model, and the D.E.U.G. has been phased out and replaced by the Licence which is awarded after three years of study. He was born in France and is of Moroccan origin. He has always lived in Aubervilliers and holds French nationality. In the French university system, the Licence is obtained after three years of study. A Collège in France is roughly equivalent to a middle school and accepts pupils from ages twelve to fifteen. Interview with Abdel and Samira, 16/11/01. Interview with Naima and Khadija, 13/03/01; interview with Naima 08/12/03. Khadija is a terminale ES pupil at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in Morocco and came to France at the age of three. She has always lived in Aubervilliers and will imminently acquire French nationality. Interview with Malika and Nacira, 21/11/00. Nacira is a student nurse. She was born in Algeria and was brought to France at the age of one. She grew up in Nanterre but is studying to become a nurse in Aubervilliers and now lives in neighbouring Bobigny. She has dual French–Algerian nationality. Anthony Giddens (1991) writes extensively about the psychology of the self and self identity. Interview with Waleed, 06/02/01, 19/02/01, 23/02/01. Interview with Mohamed, 30/04/01. Interview with Abdel Majid, ‘Ahmed’ and ‘Malika’, 22/05/01. Interview with Amira, 09/11/00. Another interviewee, twenty-four-year-old ‘Myriam’, also explicitly expresses an attachment to France in emotional terms. However, her case will be discussed more thoroughly in Chapter 7. Interview with Naima and Khadija, 13/03/01. Interview with Naima and Khadija, 13/03/01. The term chleuh is used by interviewees of Amazigh Moroccan origin to refer to their Amazigh Souss origins and the Moroccan Amazigh language, Tachalhit, in the same way as Algerian Amazigh call themselves, and their language, kabyle. Interview with Mohamed, 30/04/01. Interview with Waleed, 6/02/01, 19/02/01, 23/2/01. Wieviorka (1993a), p. 110 discusses the ‘ethnic revival’ movement as taking place principally in the USA and Western Europe from the 1960s onwards among previously ‘assimilated’ cultural, religious, regional and linguistic minorities. Interview with Mansour, 29/03/01. Interview with Aziz, Majdi, Yasser and Ibtisam, 17/09/01. A BEP in Carrosserie is a qualification in automobile body-repair work. Interview with Aicha, 12/12/00, 14/12/00. Interview with Hala and Mona, 18/05/01. Seconde is equivalent to Year 11 in the English and Welsh school system. Interview with ‘Bintou’, Karine, Nabila, ‘Nour’ and ‘Salikha’, 19/10/00.

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39 Interview with Mouloud and Hicham, 16/11/00. Mouloud is in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. He was born in Algeria and brought to France at the age of three. 40 Interview with Mouloud and Hicham, 16/11/00. 41 The notion of passively waiting as if for some sort of exterior intervention which will galvanise one into committed religious faith and practice is very common among the younger interviewees. 42 Interview with Fouad and ‘Yacine’, 05/07/01. 43 One of the main features of subjectivation, as described by Alain Touraine is the recognition of ‘the Other’ as subjects; see (1992: 259).

5

Collective identities and cultural communities?

Introduction Chapter 4 examined some areas of the interviewees’ lives which are defined in terms of the ‘individualism pole’ of identity. It looked at how certain interviewees expressed their desire to participate in ‘society’ according to universalist principles. Also included in the analysis were those interviewees who could be described as wanting to ‘escape’ their communities of origin, whether the term ‘community’ is defined in cultural or in socio-economic terms. Still using the ‘triangle of identity’ as our analytical tool, this chapter will look more closely at how the same interviewees can also construct their experiences in more collective terms. In other words, the analysis which follows will correspond to the second pole of the triangle of ethnicity, ‘le pôle communautaire’. Wieviorka defines the pole of community as follows:1 The community pole . . . can lock the actor into his/her ties with the country or region of origin, through the maintenance of a particular type of family structure, and can take on, an above all, religious nature. It can be associated with forms of desired or non-imposed residential segregation. The community provides its members with networks of economic and moral solidarity. (Wieviorka 1993a: 126–127)

This definition shows how communitarianism can be linked to the notion of enfermement (enclosure), but that this is not necessarily the case since it can also be about economic and moral support networks. However, Wieviorka goes on to describe ‘la communauté’ in the following terms: ‘It always implies the subordination of the individual to the group, and this can . . . move towards a counter-society’ (Wieviorka 1993a: 127). However, it is also possible, and perhaps desirable, to discuss the everyday lives and trajectories of young people of North African origin in Seine-Saint-Denis in terms of collective social and cultural experiences which do not involve pressure exerted by the group or the community on the individual. Therefore, Chapters 5 and 6 will deal

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with two separate but closely linked dimensions of the interviewees’ lives: the aspects of their experiences which can be described as being governed by the ‘pôle communautaire’/communautariste and the aspects of their experiences which can be described as being merely collective rather than communautariste in character. Without wishing to resort to reductionism, it could be argued that we can conceptualise communautariste experience as the more coercive aspect of community cohesion and collective experience as the more elective element of community dynamics.2 A number of themes will be discussed in this chapter, including how interviewees see and present themselves; their relationship to the country ‘of origin’; language; attitudes to Islam and religiosity; and attitudes towards marriage and future marriage partners. This chapter will therefore focus on a more cultural definition of community. Chapter 6 will focus on the more socio-economic and spatial aspects of community and will therefore consider the relationships of interviewees to the banlieue, their quartiers and experiences of discrimination.

Cultural positionings About a quarter (and equal proportions of men and women) present themselves first and foremost in terms of their cultural origins. Of course, all the interviewees acknowledge to varying degrees their cultural and/or linguistic ‘heritage’. However, the following ten interviewees have been ‘singled out’ here because they tend to refer to themselves in a rather ethnicised and, at times, essentialised manner. For example Aicha (twentyeight; trainee care-auxiliary at the Centre de formation Louise Couvé, born in Algeria; Algerian nationality only) sees herself as ‘une Kabyle’. Most of her close friends are kabyle and she admits that she has difficulty establishing close friendships with young people of Algerian Arab origin: I’ve got more friends, I mean, I’ve got more Kabyle friends than Arab friends . . . and well, we end up socialising with people who are similar to us because, well, we have the same ideas, we’ve got the same opinions.3

The notion that one’s origins informs one’s ‘ideas’ and, in turn, one’s relationships with other people, reveals how Aicha believes herself to be part of a community of kabyles. This kabyle identity is presented as oppositional to Arab identity and values. This becomes even more apparent when Aicha talks about religious practice: we see them everywhere now with their outfits, their scarves and then their robes for the men, going to pray . . . more the Arabs. When I talk

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about Arabs, of North Africans more generally, because in general, Berbers, when they’re practising or believers, they keep it to themselves, it’s at home. That’s what’s different . . . I’ve noticed that. With us, we make it a private matter, it’s for oneself. We won’t oblige our neighbour or cousin to pray, to do Ramadan.4

Here, Aicha further distances herself from ‘North Africans more generally’, and it is interesting that she perceives Berbers (Amazigh) as being more secular than Arabs. As regards marriage, Aicha’s sense of being Algerian and of having certain values as a result, is also very prevalent: I’ve never been interested in people who are of different origins to me. It’s always an Algerian who I manage to . . . to fall in love with, . . . a French person, no, frankly, I’ve always refused, no, I can’t, . . . I’ve already tried with a Moroccan, it doesn’t work ! [laughs] it’s the mentalities, it’s the mentality, it’s um, . . . you’ve got the impression that’s it not possible.5

Aicha’s insistence that the difference in mentalities constitutes an absolute barrier to a successful ‘mixed’ relationship reveals to what extent she believes that being Kabyle or Algerian means that one is more likely to have certain values. However, as mentioned in Chapter 4, Aicha also claims that she is ‘anti-marriage’ and that she intends to cohabit with her future partner so as to avoid experiencing a marriage similar in nature to her parents’. So, here, Aicha’s self-definition corresponds more to a collective sense of heritage, values and identity where she wants to maintain certain links with her country and more particularly, her region ‘of origin’ (Kabylia). She cannot be described, however, as communautariste since her rejection of marriage as an institution suggests that she defines herself in rather individualised terms as well. Another interviewee who defines herself in ethnicised terms is Samira (twenty-four; part-time surveillante at the Collège Pablo Picasso; born in France; dual French–Algerian nationality). Once again, this mode of self-presentation comes to the fore when we discuss future marriage partners (see p. 136). For Samira, as for Aicha, being part of a certain ‘ethnie’ (she introduced the word) suggests that one automatically has certain values. Samira also claims that she is very attached to her ‘culture’ and, like Aicha, she conceptualises this culture in terms of music and cuisine: ‘Me, well, I’m actually very attached to my origins and in particular the traditions that my parents have given me, like, or brought me and frankly, I’m very interested in North African music as well.’6 However, as we saw in Chapter 4, Samira also defines herself in a rather individualist manner with regard to her quartier. Other interviewees who tend to present themselves in an ethnicised mode are Khadija, Naima, Waleed and Mouloud. These interviewees

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are all of Amazigh origin. Khadija (seventeen; pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso; born in Morocco; brought to France at the age of three; Moroccan nationality only, but about to obtain French nationality) and Naima (eighteen; pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso; born in France; dual French–Algerian nationality) are in the same class and are close friends. When interviewed together, they are both keen to present themselves as Moroccan Amazigh. Khadija, who seems, at least in the first half of the interview, to be the dominant personality, presents her and Naima’s identity in a sort of ‘united front’ manner: ‘We, we’re Chleuhs’ (Moroccan Amazigh).7 Waleed (nineteen; Geography D.E.U.G. student, Université de Paris IV – Sorbonne; born in France; dual French–Moroccan nationality) is the older brother of Naima and Mohamed and on our first meeting at the maison de jeunes in his neighbourhood there are a number of other young men present, notably a young man of Algerian Kabyle origin. Waleed makes a point of differentiating himself, as a Moroccan Amazigh, from Algerian Amazigh: ‘I’m Chleuh, you shouldn’t mix us up!’8 Although this comment was made in a context of ironic exchange between the young men at the maison de jeunes, it shows to what extent one’s ‘origins’ become not only a source of competition and pride but a manner of putting down others; that is, those who do not ‘belong’ to the same community of ‘Chleuhs’. It is interesting to contrast Khadija, Naima and Waleed’s self-perception here with their relationship to language, where they adopt a very individualist approach (see p. 106). In addition, Waleed’s insistence that one should not forget that he is Chleuh as opposed to Kabyle, contrasts with his criticism of the notion of cultural origins in Chapter 4 (see p. 105). Mouloud (seventeen; pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso; born in Algeria; arrived in France at age of three) is also of Amazigh origin, but in his case he is originally from the Kabylia region of Algeria. The manner in which Mouloud introduces himself is interesting because he at first seems to present himself using the discourse of the dominant group: ‘OK, so I’m called Mouloud. I’m seventeen and I’m of Mahrebian origin.’ Mouloud then seems to realise that he has reproduced the dominant terms (i.e. ‘d’origine maghrébine’) and immediately ‘corrects’ himself: ‘actually I’m Kabyle.’9 So it would seem that, for Mouloud, the generic term, ‘d’origine maghrébine’ is of little personal significance and he prefers to present himself in a more regional manner. Although the interviewees discussed above tend to present themselves as though they belonged to a rather essentialised ‘imagined community’ which can govern one’s ‘mentality’ and approach to life, there does seem to be an element of choice and therefore an absence of subordination in their desire to present themselves as members of such a community.

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However, some other interviewees, notably the young men, would seem to be assigned their sense of identity in a more passive and negative manner. ‘Mahmoud’ (nineteen; pupil in terminale bac pro mécanique-auto at the Lycée Van Gogh; born in Paris and lives in neighbouring Saint Ouen; parents of Algerian origin – that is, both his parents were themselves born in France – and holds dual French–Algerian nationality) claims: I see myself according to how people judge me, as an Arab. If people saw me as French, I’d see myself as French. I see myself according to how I’m judged. I know I’m an Arab. People see me as an Arab, I am Arab and I’m proud to be one.10

Mahmoud’s sense of identity is passive and imposed by what he perceives to be the gaze of the dominant group. He tries to save face in front of his peers and fellow interviewees by turning his stigmatised sense of identity into a more positive experience by claiming hastily that, in any case, he is proud to be Arab.11 Nevertheless, it is clear that Mahmoud’s sense of self is negatively dictated to a significant extent. Whereas Mahmoud highlights his socially imposed sense of identity, Mohamed (sixteen; pupil in première ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso; born in France; dual French–Moroccan nationality; Amazigh origin; younger brother of Naima and Waleed) highlights an inherited sense of identity and so talks about the insignificance of being born and growing up in France: ‘I’m more Moroccan . . . yes, because my parents, they, they were born in Morocco and all that, there’s only me who was born here but I’m Moroccan.’12 In fact all of Mohamed’s siblings (he is the third of five children) were born in France, yet what he suggests when he points out that he was the only one born in France is that his own experience is insignificant in relation to family heritage. And yet, as we saw in Chapter 4, Mohamed adopts an individualist, rather than a community approach to learning Amazigh, in the same manner as Naima, Khadija and Waleed (p. 107). Not only can an individual’s sense of identity be imposed on them by the dominant group – that is, mainstream French society – it can also be imposed on him or her by their own peers in an attempt to maintain group unity. This becomes apparent in some of the group interview situations. For example, Aziz (nineteen; not attending school; born in France; dual French–Algerian nationality) seems to feel more ‘French’ than Algerian. However, Aziz’s true feelings would appear to be stifled somewhat by his peers. Aziz took part in a group interview and there were three other interviewees of North African origin who participated. Two of his fellow interviewees were also his friends and it is clear that Aziz came under a certain amount of pressure from his peers to respond

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in a certain way. It is, for instance, significant that when discussing origins, Aziz remarks: ‘If I say I’m French these two will come down on me!’13 How interviewees think about themselves is of course linked to the relationship they have with their parents’ country of origin. The next section will consider this theme.

‘La Descente au Bled’: dominant discourse and the parents’ country of origin Once again, when interviewees were asked about the frequency, duration and the purpose of their visits to the Maghreb, a number of ‘models’ emerge as regards the relationship of interviewees to their own or their parents’ country of origin.14 A number of interviewees can be described as constructing their relationship to their parents’ country of origin in terms of the ‘pôle communautaire’ of the triangle of identity (Wieviorka 1993a). Gender appears to have a tangible effect on the relationships interviewees construct with their parents’ country of origin, in that the young men in the sample present themselves as more closely tied to their parent’s countries than the young women. Only two young women can be described as having a particularly strong or community-defined relationship with their parents’ countries. Holidays Leila (seventeen; pupil in première littéraire at the Lycée Pablo Picasso; born in France; dual French–Algerian nationality) would appear to have a strong ‘bond’ to Algeria although she was born and brought up in Aubervilliers and would prefer her children to be surrounded by ‘des Français’ rather than ‘des banlieusards’ (see p. 107). The strength of her attachment governs her views on her future marriage partner since she claims that she would prefer to marry a French man of Algerian origin rather than a Tunisian or a Moroccan for fear of loosening her link with Algeria: a Tunisian is a Muslim, but when the holidays come around, where do they go? To Tunisia? To Algeria? And the house, where do we build that? In Algeria? in Tunisia? There you are. And it’s a real problem, it’s true . . . if during the holidays, you could never take me away from Algeria . . . it’s my country, I love it, the holidays, I have to spend them in Algeria so if I marry a Tunisian, I’d have to go to Tunisia and not Algeria, I’d have to build my house in Tunisia and not in Algeria and that, no, I don’t think I could put up with that so . . .15

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Not only does Leila claim that Algeria is her country, she also plans to reproduce the same residential pattern as her parents. Many immigrants who emigrated to France from North Africa build a house back in the ‘bled’ where they spend holidays and their prospective retirement. Many immigrants never actually return permanently to the country of origin, instead perpetuating an ‘aller-retour’ (back and forth) relationship. Despite the fact that Leila was born and grew up in France, she seems to see it as simply a matter of course, that she, too, will build her own house in the ‘bled’, just as her primo-arrivants parents have done.16 Nabila (seventeen; pupil in première ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso; born in France; dual French–Moroccan nationality) is another interviewee who seems to see her relationship with her parents’ country as a stable given. She does not go as far as Leila in her plans to reproduce the primo-arrivant residential pattern, yet when asked about her visits to Morocco her reply: ‘Yeah! We go to the bled!’17 would seem to indicate that, for Nabila, the annual family visits to Morocco are an unquestionable and obvious aspect of the descendant of immigrants’ lives. Both Leila’s and Nabila’s comments reveal a strong degree of attachment towards Algeria and Morocco yet they express a temporary or transient relationship. That is, the country of origin is viewed in terms of the place one visits during the holidays. Long-distance residence The second way in which interviewees present their relationship to their parents’ country is by claiming that they are ‘from’ a certain country, region or town, regardless of whether they have lived there or not. For example, ‘Nasser’ (eighteen; recently dropped out of a baccalauréat professionnel programme; born in Algiers; came to France at the age of one; Algerian; has recently requested French nationality) refuses to reappropriate the notion of l’origine, since he says: ‘I am from Algeria, from Algiers, the capital.’18 Although it could be claimed that Nasser responded in this way because indeed, he is officially an Algerian citizen, the fact that he focuses on his origins in a geographical sense, naming the city of his birthplace, suggests a strong degree of attachment to Algeria. In addition, unlike Nasser, most other interviewees, even those who were not born in France, generally tend to claim that they are somehow Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, but that they are from France. Like Nasser, ‘Abdel’ (twenty-six; maîtrise student in Education at the Université de Paris VIII; part-time surveillant at the Collège Pablo Picasso; born in France; French of kabyle origin) presents himself as coming from Algeria, despite the fact that he was neither born there nor has been

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back for the last four years: ‘I’m from Algiers. Me, since I live in Algiers, I’m between Algiers and Greater Kabylie.’19 He goes even further than Nasser by claiming that he actually lives in Algiers. This, of course, refers to his holidays in Algeria, yet these rather infrequent visits of a duration of two months are expressed in terms of residence. Reproduction of dominant discourse Some interviewees claim that their parents’ countries are also their countries, and generally make the following type of statement: ‘it’s my country, I feel at home there.’ However, although the degree of attachment can thus be said to be substantial, it would appear that, in many cases, this type of statement does stem from some element of positive or subjective stance, i.e. subordination is absent. This is not the case for all respondents in the sample. For instance, Mouloud claims that he has not been back to Algeria since coming to France with his parents at the age of three. He adds that he does not want to return: ‘I don’t think that it’s a good idea because I don’t know anyone there and . . . I don’t know . . . I’m not interested in going back there.’20 Despite his rejection of Algeria, he still refers to it as ‘his country’: ‘I’ve never been back to my country.’21 It is possible that Mouloud refers to Algeria as ‘mon pays’ because of the research context and his knowledge that I am carrying out a qualitative study of young people of North African origin. In one sense, then, it is arguable that the research context seems to reproduce the types of dominant discourse which one finds in France, regarding the target group. As such, young people of North African origin can be encouraged to continue to see themselves as immigrants or as ‘jeunes immigrés’ (young immigrants) or ‘jeunes étrangers’ (young foreigners). This process is reinforced by the media as well as by experiences of discrimination. As a result, some tend to discursively reproduce, the relationship their primo-arrivant parents have with Algeria, Morocco, or Tunisia by claiming that they are from these countries, despite the fact that their lives are clearly in France. In this sense, it is possible to understand Mouloud’s reflex statement as an example of alienation (albeit in a rather moderate form) because he seems to be partially unable subjectively to define himself in an autonomous manner. Migration The fourth ‘model’ which reflects the attitudes of some of the interviewees, can be described as being more extreme since it suggests an even greater reproduction of the parents’ trajectories. Even some interviewees who

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were born and brought up in Seine-Saint-Denis claim that they would like to go back and live or retire to their parents’ countries. Mahmoud is effectively part of the ‘third generation’. He nevertheless presents himself as a primo-arrivant immigrant. He evokes his plans to have a house built in Algeria so that he can live there later in life: ‘that’s the immigrants’ dream that . . . to go back, to have a house built, once they grow old, they want to go back to their countries, that’s what everyone does, that’s what we’ll do as well.’22 As mentioned above, Mohamed and Waleed are brothers. Although they were interviewed separately, both interviewees expressed their desire to ‘return’ to Morocco. Mohamed simply wants to retire to Morocco: ‘I’d prefer to spend my retirement there. I don’t know what I’d do here. I don’t know, I’d prefer to go back to see my family.’23 Waleed goes a step further when he talks about his plans to set up a business in Agadir: Actually, me, I see my future there. We – the majority of Chleuhs, the Berbers – they see their future over there, . . . I hope to set up a business over there or something like that which will be profitable . . . it’s a beautiful town Agadir . . . I feel better there; I like it, how can I put it? There’s all my family, everything’s there, I like the atmosphere, it’s always beautiful weather.24

In a similar fashion to Waleed, Fouad (thirty-one; unemployed volunteer at a North African-origin local association; born in France; dual French–Algerian nationality) would like to establish his own business in Algeria. He dreams of leaving France and setting up a music production company: I really don’t see my future here. I see my future more over there . . . I don’t see myself doing great things in France . . . I see myself more over there, living there . . . I personally got to know Algeria in ’93, for a funeral and personally, I fell completely in love with the country, I discovered my family which I didn’t know because they never came to France and I was stunned, I missed out on lots of things. I was so angry with myself and I was really angry with my brothers and sisters most of all, who told me each time ‘we had a really bad time, it’s disgusting etc.’ and since then I’ve only got one thing in mind, and that’s to really go back and travel all around the country.25

Fouad’s ‘falling in love’ with Algeria could be an attempt to turn his negative experiences in France into a more positive mode of identification. This creativity could be interpreted as a process of subjectivation. However, it can be argued that, instead, Fouad’s relationship with Algeria corresponds to the ‘pôle communautaire’ of the ‘triangle of identity’ because it leads him to reject everything which is French (‘personally,

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I don’t give a damn about anything that’s French’26), and in this sense his attitude can be seen as an ‘enfermement’ or a closing in on himself. Yet, we saw in Chapter 4 how Fouad adopts a very individual approach to Islam (p. 111). So it would appear problematic to link communitarianism with religious practice (as is often the case in political and academic discourse).

The dynamics of group unity Language – that is, the mother tongues spoken by the interviewees’ parents – informs a sense of collective cultural experience for several young people in the sample. Once again, the ways in which these interviewees discursively express their experiences of languages is heterogeneous. Nevertheless there are two types of attitude which dominate: first, what can be called the ‘group unity’ model and, secondly, the ‘heritage’ model. Language and group unity ‘Salima’ (twenty-six; aide-éducatrice – assistant youth worker at the Collège Pablo Picasso; Algerian origin; born in France; dual French– Algerian nationality) works on an emploi jeune basis at the Collège Pablo Picasso.27 She has always lived in Seine-Saint-Denis (currently in Drancy). ‘Lamia’ (twenty-five, aide-éducatrice – assistant youth worker at the Collège Pablo Picasso; born in France; dual French–Moroccan nationality) is her colleague and friend. Although the Arabic spoken in Algeria and Morocco differs, Salima and Lamia speak to each other in Arabic at work. Communicating with each other in Arabic seems to acquire a comic, almost ironic quality, and it plays a significant role in the proximity of the women’s relationship, to such an extent that it is sometimes used to exclude other colleagues. Salima and Lamia were interviewed together and when asked if they speak Arabic to their parents, Salima responds as follows: ‘Both of us to each other, for a start.’ Lamia explains: ‘It’s because we want to . . . sometimes it’s to hide stuff, other times it’s just for a laugh, that’s all! [laughs].’ The two women’s use of Arabic also becomes a sort of tool in their relationship with Kévin, their colleague and a school supervisor of French origin. Salima and Lamia are currently teaching Kévin some Arabic words. Kévin was present during the interview since it was carried out in the surveillant’s and aide-éducateur’s office and his presence seemed to bother Lamia in particular who exclaims: ‘Why does he want to take part? He’s gutted because he’s French.’28 So their use of

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Arabic seems to be a way in which they can include Kévin by teaching him a few words as well as a manner by which they can exclude him (albeit in an ironic fashion) and thereby maintain group unity because, as they point out, they sometimes speak Arabic so that others, such as Kévin, will not understand. Abdel is Salima’s and Lamia’s colleague. He often peppers his speech with Arabic or Amazigh words. This becomes particularly noticeable when the colleagues eat lunch together in the Collège canteen. Abdel’s constant use of words and phrases in Arabic and Amazigh establishes group unity among the colleagues and thereby excludes those who are unfamiliar with such expressions. For some interviewees, language is not only a source of shared experience; it is also a source of comic irony. ‘Fawzia’ (seventeen; pupil in première ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso; born in France; dual French– Algerian nationality) talks about her use of Amazigh: ‘we have a laugh with my cousins. Sometimes we talk to each other, like that, with our accents.’29 Like Salima and Lamia, her amusement and the sense of commonality with her cousins through speaking Amazigh outside of the habitual context of the family gatherings in the ‘bled’ suggests that Fawzia feels part of a ‘post-migrant’ linguistic group, no matter how transient the sense of linguistic community may be. The remaining interviewees whose practice of language corresponds to the ‘group unity’ model are Nabila, Malika and Nacira (for a discussion of Nabila, see Chapter 7). Whereas Salima’s, Lamia’s, Abdel’s and Fawzia’s use of Arabic and Amazigh allows them to feel part of an imagined or real community, throughout the interview with Maliha (twenty-five; trainee nurse at the Centre de formation Louise Couvé; born in France; dual French–Moroccan nationality) and Nacira (twenty-six; student nurse at the Centre de formation Louise Couvé; born in Algeria; brought to France at the age of one; dual French–Algerian nationality), there seems to be an element of competition between the two women. This competitiveness becomes evident when I ask the women whether they are able to speak Arabic; to give an indication of their levels of fluency and how/if they use the language. Malika is from Rennes, studying to become a nurse in Aubervilliers, where she was living until recently; she now lives in nearby Fontenay-sous-Bois. Malika responds first, claiming that she can get by and that since her mother speaks French there has always been tendency to use French exclusively at home. Nacira responds by explaining at some length that she mostly spoke algérois when she was young, but that as her younger siblings grew up the family began to increasingly mix Arabic and French.30 She describes the classical Arabic lessons she took at an association in her cité in Nanterre from the age of

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ten until she sat her baccalaureate in Arabic. This appears to encourage Malika into adding to her initial answer, despite my attempts to move the discussion onto other topics: Me too, . . . I took lessons – well – just next door to my house, there’s an Islamic centre, a mosque where we took Koran lessons but really young. We had several teachers who came from Morocco, who taught the Koran from the middle school upwards.31

Language and heritage The second type of linguistic practice can be called the ‘heritage’ model because first it refers to the interviewees’ strong emotional links with their parents’ (extended) family and, secondly, because their use of the language seems to inform their sense of belonging to a particular country. Hala (eighteen; pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso; born in France; dual French–Tunisian nationality) talks about her motivations to enrol in Arabic lessons in a Tunisian association: Because basically, I like speaking languages. I like it a lot, whether its English, German . . . now I’ve started Spanish, for a year I did Japanese but it was hard and frankly, I said to myself, why would I learn languages and not speak my own? So I started to take mine and it’s also to be able to speak because I go to Tunisia every year. When I get there, I don’t know how to talk to them. It’s a bit embarrassing.32

Hala decided to learn Arabic formally so as to be able to establish closer links with her extended family in Tunisia and save face since she feels that her inability to communicate effectively with her parents’ family in Tunisia is a source of embarrassment. Fouad is one of the few interviewees who explicitly articulates the link between his use of his parents’ language and identity: One thing which played a role in my identity in saying that I’m 100% Algerian is, outside I speak French but at home, once I’ve put the key in the lock, French is prohibited. It’s not prohibited but my parents, not being able to speak French . . . I speak with a dirty accent, but fluently. That affects my identity a lot. At home, it’s really algérois, algérois.33

In comparison to religion, language seems to be a slightly less salient feature of collective experience and discourse among young people of North African origin.34 Not only is Islam a significant element in their own construction of identity on a personal level, it is also of significance on a group or community level and is part of many of the interactions between the young men and women.

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Durkheim defined religion as a ‘set of beliefs and practices, relating to the sacred, which create[s] social bonds between individuals’ (Durkheim 1961).35 In his Essays on Religion, Georg Simmel discusses the Latin root of the word religion, from religare, which literally means to tie back together that which has been ‘torn asunder’ (Simmel 1997: xii). Since this chapter is concerned with the ‘communautaire’ pole of the ‘triangle of identity,’ I will focus on the relationship between Islam, community and group unity. It is for this reason that the analysis and discussion will also concentrate on the notion of the subordination of the individual to the group and the instances when this occurs. As regards religion, the interviewees were encouraged to share whether they had any religious beliefs and whether they considered themselves as practising. We also discussed religious practice and degree of observance within the wider family – i.e. parents and siblings. In the same manner as linguistic practice, two themes dominate in the interviewees’ responses: group unity and obligation. Several interviewees’ responses and reactions during discussions about Islam and their own religious practice expressed ideas which would indicate that they themselves are subordinated as individuals to the group (where the group is represented by their religious peers) because they have simply internalised certain roles and codes of conduct regarding religion.36 Equally, some respondents reacted in a way which indicated that they themselves try to ensure group unity or a uniformity of ideas and of practice. In other words, some interviewees are the ‘subordinated’ while others are the ‘subordinators’. In all, the group unity and obligation models concern thirteen respondents. Islam and group unity Salima can be described as being a subordinator or insurer of group unity in terms of how she and Lamia define themselves religiously. I broach the topic as follows: ‘Can we talk a little bit about religion?’ Lamia is the first to respond: ‘Believers, yes. Practising, um? . . .’ Salima interjects: ‘We do follow!’ At this point, Lamia seems to realise her ‘outspokenness’ and tries to rectify it by providing the sort of response required by Salima: ‘Yes, we do actually!’ Salima then takes the liberty of describing how she and Lamia practice, which rites they observe and do not observe: ‘we do Ramadan . . . um, we don’t eat pork . . . yeah, that’s it really, we do follow . . .’, to which Lamia hastily adds: ‘Yes, yes we do follow but I was talking about prayer.’37 Abdel is also an insurer of group ‘protocol’ with regard to Christmas. One lunchtime, when the group of colleagues (surveillants,

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aides-éducateurs) are eating together in the Collège canteen, the subject of birthdays and Christmas comes up in conversation. Abdel comments that Muslims do not celebrate birthdays; that birthday celebrations are only appropriate for young children. Salima, who is the mother of a baby boy, is alarmed by Abdel’s remark and insists that birthdays are governed by tradition rather than religion and that it is only natural to celebrate the birth of a child. She appears to be searching for reassurance from the group that she is not doing anything ‘haram’ (‘sinful’) – support which she receives from her ally, Lamia, who then informs Abdel that he will think differently when he has his own children.38 The discussion then moves onto the subject of Christmas and the women (Lamia, Salima and Samira) become the guarantors of group unity, while Abdel becomes the individual to be ‘disciplined’. The lunchtime discussion acquires a confessional quality with Abdel ‘admitting’ that his father had bought a Christmas tree for his younger brother. Salima and her supporters Lamia and Samira thus seize on the opportunity to gain the moral high ground by claiming that while it may be ‘acceptable’ to hang a few Christmas decorations around the house, since after all, Christmas has become just as commercialised and secularised as Halloween, actually putting up a Christmas tree is ‘excessive’. This allows Salima to regain face in front of the rest of the group for being told by Abdel that Muslims, and therefore she, should not celebrate birthdays. Observation of this canteen discussion sheds light on the notion of a pressure dynamic between the individuals. This dynamic is continually shifting in a spirit of competition, which is shown by the fact that initially Abdel seems to be the enforcer of religious protocol but then rapidly loses his position to Salima, who is backed up by Lamia and Samira. Although the group seems to be divided because of this element of competition, the ultimate aim of these discussions seems to be to maintain some sort of homogeneity of beliefs and practices, to reassure the individuals that they all belong to some sort of group. In this respect, Georg Simmel’s observation of the link between group unity and religion is particularly illuminating: as far as the conscious mind is concerned, unity often develops not from within but through the practical needs of the group to assert itself, and largely through the idea – proved in practical deeds more powerfully than by any prevailing authority – that this complex of beings is a unified group. (Simmel 1997: 173)

Yasser (eighteen; pupil in terminale BEP Carrosserie at the Lycée Van Gogh; born in Algeria; Algerian nationality only, but planning to request French nationality, who in Chapter 4 was shown to adopt a fairly

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individualist approach to participation in local issues, p. 104) also tries to assert himself as the communautaire guarantor of group unity, along with fellow interviewee, Majdi (nineteen; pupil in terminale BEP Carrosserie at the Lycée Van Gogh; born in Algeria; brought to France at the age of six; dual French–Algerian nationality). They both apply pressure on their peer and fellow interviewee, Aziz, who claims that Muslims should not feel obliged to pray five times a day. Aziz is arguing that a decision to pray should result from a desire to do so on the individual’s part so as to avoid a ‘mechanical’ approach to Islam. However, his peers, Majdi and Yasser become angry and pounce on him: ‘But normally, the fact that you’re a Muslim . . .’ (Yasser); ‘a Muslim has to pray . . .’ (Majdi). Majdi and Yasser thus attempt to restore some sort of homogeneity and bring Aziz ‘back into line.’ They refuse entirely to engage with Aziz’s concern for religiosity rather than religion, wishing instead to impose their view that Islam is about duty and roles, hence Majdi’s insistence on the centrality of obligation.39 The most extensive and heated discussion about Islam developed during a group interview with Mahmoud, ‘Fayçal’ and ‘Razak’ – three pupils at the local Lycée Van Gogh. Mahmoud is of Algerian origin, Fayçal of Tunisian origin and Razak of Mauritian origin. From the outset, it became clear that Mahmoud and Fayçal (nineteen; pupil in terminale bac pro mécanique-auto at the Lycée Van Gogh; born in France; dual French– Tunisian nationality) wanted to distance themselves from Razak (twenty; pupil in bac pro mécanique-auto at the Lycée Van Gogh; born in France; dual French-Mauritian nationality) and, likewise, Razak tried to distance himself and his experience from the other two. Razak’s views on religion are unconventional compared with Mahmoud and Fayçal’s. This departure from the ‘norm’ by Razak becomes tantamount to ‘blasphemy’ for Mahmoud and Fayçal, who try to impose some sense of order and homogeneity on the interview group. The source of the argument is twofold. First of all, Razak claims that he would not want a non-Muslim marriage partner to convert to Islam simply because she was marrying him. Razak bothers Mahmoud and Fayçal further by claiming that he has read the Bible, the Koran and the Torah and that he has come to the decision that the Koran is the most just of all three. This provokes Mahmoud and Fayçal. Mahmoud addresses Razak: You’re Muslim thanks to your parents! Your parents teach you to be a Muslim, you’ll be Muslim . . . I’ve got a Muslim background. I accept it and I don’t want to choose . . . A French person, when he’s born, is he Christian or not? He’s born Christian, don’t you think? It’s a cultural question.40

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Fayçal also criticizes Razak’s ideas: ‘What do you know about what’s fair or not fair? . . . you’re playing with religion . . . For us, that’s it now – me, I’m a Muslim, I don’t want to change.’41 Mahmoud’s and Fayçal’s aggressive reactions place them within the a more communautariste understanding of Islam, where religion as opposed to religiosity is favoured and thus where the homogeneity of the group and group practice is of paramount importance. Razak’s ideas present a threat to their position and therefore must be challenged and preferably neutralised. Thus far, the interviewees being discussed have been the subordinators, or the group unity guarantors. Few admit to feeling obliged to behave in a certain way. However, ‘Touran’, for example (twenty-one; D.E.U.G. sports science student at the Université de Paris XIII; born in Algeria – Kabylia; Algerian nationality only, awaiting French nationality) talks about the latent pressure to which young people of North African origin can become subject with regard to fasting during Ramadan since they make up the overwhelming majority in certain neighbourhoods. Indeed, Ramadan is a rather public aspect of Islam and is thus more subject to group pressure. Touran remarks: ‘Other people’s stares. If there’s one who’s not doing it, he’ll be like, “oh no, what will they think of me?’’ ’42 Fayçal may try to be an enforcer where Razak is concerned but he is also one of the subordinated as regards attending the local mosque: ‘It’s on Fridays on my estate. There’s a mosque at the bottom of the building and it’s them [eux] who come to get us in the hallways every time . . . I don’t go out of my own choosing.’43 By ‘eux’, Fayçal is referring to the mosque representatives and his comments hint at wider issues of the islamisation of certain banlieues. Islamic obligation The second ‘model’ which corresponds to the interviewees’ various attitudes towards religion and religious practice encompasses the idea of obligation, since the young people concerned by this pattern tend to view being a Muslim in terms of duty and heritage.44 The belief that one is automatically Muslim because of one’s heritage also seems to engender passivity with regard to observing the five ‘pillars’ of Islam. That is, those interviewees who do not observe all five pillars of Islam (this is, in fact, the case for the vast majority, with only a minority of the sample regularly praying as well as fasting, for example) state that they hope that they will somehow develop a more dedicated approach to their faith. For example, Abdel Majid (twenty; BTS Accountancy student at the Cité scolaire Pablo Picasso; born in France; dual French–Algerian

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nationality) who, as we saw in Chapter 4, adopts an individualist approach as far as his self-perception is concerned (pp. 105–106), reveals a rather passive attitude to Islam in the following statement: I try also to pray regularly . . . um, I’m not straight down the line . . . I pray now and . . . later on, I hope, as we say – God willing – that when I know the Koran very well and everything, then I’ll stay straight.45

The notion of hoping that somehow, as if by an external process, one will be galvanised into practising more fully is also a feature of the interpretation of religious practice held by Ahmed (twenty-two; BTS Accountancy student at the Cité scolaire Pablo Picasso; born in France; Tunisian nationality only), since he adds to the group discussion on the topic, in a similar manner to his peer and fellow interviewee: ‘I hope to practice soon.’46 The notion of duty and obligation leads some interviewees to view Islam as a set of practices. They focus therefore less on the state of being a Muslim but rather on the institution of formal religion.47 For example, Tayeb (twenty-two; BTS Accountancy student at the Cité scolaire Pablo Picasso; born in Algeria – Kabylia; Algerian nationality only, but has recently requested naturalisation French nationality), who fasts during Ramadan but does not pray, reflects on prayer: Ramadan, I do that but I don’t pray . . . I should pray as well, and praying – you can’t do it when you’re going clubbing, when you’re young, when you’re trying to enjoy yourself. That’s why I don’t do it, perhaps later. I hope so anyway, well later . . . in any case, in the Muslim religion, prayer is obligatory so we have to do it to be a practising Muslim.48

The notion of duty can be transmitted to the interviewees by their peers as well as by their parents, as the comments of ‘Zina’ (eighteen; pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso; born in France; Algerian – Kabyle origin) reveal: ‘personally, I’m counting on doing it [prayer], but they [the parents] really want me to respect a minimum, that’s it.’49 So it can be argued that some of the interviewees’ experiences of Islam correspond to a more communautaire model. Their relationship to religion can, to a significant extent, be described in terms of the internalisation of roles and values which are perceived to be the bricks and mortar of a religious community which, it seems, must be maintained as a unified whole. This is often contrasted with their more individualist stances as regards self-perception and political or social demands.

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Ramadan I have shown the interviewees’ experiences of Islam to be closely related to a dynamic of group pressure – sometimes the young men and women are the enforcers – that is, they are among those who apply the pressure on others to be seen to be faithful, practising Muslims; sometimes they are the pressurised parties. However, it would be inaccurate to claim that pressure or the coercive dynamic is the only way in which to conceptualise the religious experience of these young people of North African origin. On the contrary, some interviewees reflect on their sense of belonging to a community in a more ‘positive’ manner. Simmel wrote about the significance and effects of religious festivals on the sense of group unity: ‘religious festivals . . . display in the clearest possible concrete form the unity of all those captured by the same religious excitement’ (Simmel 1997: 178). This notion of ‘excitement’ which Simmel wrote about is present in some respondents’ discourse about the fasting month of Ramadan. Several interviewees referred to Ramadan as a period of building and deepening ties with their friends, classmates or neighbours. ‘Sara’ (twentysix; full-time animatrice; born in Algeria; Moroccan nationality only) alludes to the sense of community that develops among the young people who attend the maison de jeunes, where she works as a socio-cultural activities coordinator (animatrice) for the young people in the Vandrezanne cité: There’s a bizarre tendancy during the fast. Everyone fasts. Even the French fast. That’s to say that the French, they’ve got a little problem at the moment, well at the moment, they identify with Arabs . . . and well they identify with the North African community [la communauté maghrébine]. OK, sometimes, it comes from the heart, it’s people who convert completely to Islam but other times, it’s – there you go – do what my mate is doing and because it’s good to say some words in Arabic, to swear on the Koran, etc., so here, Ramadan, it’s really special. It’s that everyone fasts and at the break of fast, at the mealtime, we try to eat all together.50

Although Sara does talk about the notion of group unity and the coming together of young people from all sorts of backgrounds, she is not naïve about this. She claims instead that some young people simply want to project a certain image in a society where the figure of the ‘Arabe’ or ‘jeune maghrébin’ is stigmatised by the media and dominant group discourse yet also emulated by some young white people in a similar manner to young African-Caribbean men in Britain.51 In this way, then, Sara recognises that, in the stigmatised banlieue setting, Ramadan has acquired a social character in addition to its religious and cultural significance. It is also interesting to note that Sara uses the term ‘la communauté

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maghrébine’. This term is rarely employed by interviewees and the choice of the term ‘la communauté’ highlights the collective in a more positive light than ‘les rebeux’ or ‘les Maghrébins’, which are terms the interviewees tend to use when they adopt the discourse of ‘non-migrant’ society. Thirdly, Sara claims that all the young people and the animateurs eat together at the maison de jeunes. This suggests that the maison de jeuenes/quartier community has supplanted the family community in this respect: Ramadan is no longer a religious festival which (in the country of settlement) takes place within the private sphere, as may have been the case with the primo-arrivant immigrants who remained ‘des figures ombrageuses’ (people who remained in the shadows/invisible) (Guénif Souilamas 2000). Rather, Ramadan emerges as a public festival and in the process becomes somewhat secularised since, as Sara and other interviewees claim, young people of non-Muslim origin also like to take part in a religious activity which has become synonymous with the banlieusard ‘image’ in general.52 Experiencing Ramadan at the level of the quartier is also present in Touran’s reflection: ‘I love it, me, the Ramadan period in my neighbourhood. I’m telling you, it’s great . . . we spend time together.’53 Touran presents Ramadan as a period of bonding as well as a time when there is a positive atmosphere in his neighbourhood. This attitude contrasts sharply with his insistence that religion should be kept in the private sphere. Marriage and relationships In much of the social sciences literature about migrant groups or minorities, marriage practices are often cited as one of most significant ways of measuring the extent to which migrant families and their children have become ‘integrated’ or even ‘assimilated’ into the new society, or to what extent they have maintained country of origin values. However, as Guénif Souilamas points out in her study of young women of North African origin and their families, the very act of migration, for the first generation of immigrants, constitutes in itself a break with the past and with ‘traditional’ practices in the country of origin (Guénif Souilamas 2000: 99–100). So marriage cannot simply be conceptualised as an area of the interviewees’ lives which is either governed by ‘traditional’ family values or the individual’s preferences. It is significant that the study of marriage in migrant or post-migrant communities focuses on women and tends to ‘narrate’ them in terms of emancipation and victimisation. Those who contravene so-called family practice or wishes are often held up as heroic individuals. Yet, most of the interviewees who discussed marriage demonstrated a subjective stance towards their choice of future

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marriage partner where they took into account parental expectations as well as their own. However, many expressed conflicting ideas, at first claiming that they would marry the partner of their choice, regardless of their parents, and then retreating on this initial stance later on in our discussions. In short, it is not possible to describe the following interviewees’ attitudes towards future marriage partners as wholly corresponding to the communautaire pole of the ‘triangle of identity’, just as it is not possible to conceptualise their attitudes as wholly corresponding to a more individualist or subjective model. This sub-section will discuss those aspects of respondents’ discourse which reflect a more communautaire experience. This should not, however, be understood as the only way in which they construct their stance towards marriage (see Chapters 4 and 7 for examples of other approaches to marriage). A number of individuals can be described as articulating their ideas about marriage in terms of community and heritage. What is interesting is that similar proportions of men and women adopt this more communitarian stance. However, while the young women may indeed come under more pressure than their male counterparts to satisfy their parents’ and the wider community’s tacit expectations, generally they manage to negotiate their preferences to a significant extent, which recalls Guénif Souilamas’ description of the young women of North African origin in her study as ‘artisans of tempered freedoms’ (Guénif Souilamas 2000). In the various discussions with interviewees about marriage partners and relationships, two ‘narrative clusters’ emerge: the importance of ‘mentality’, and group unity. Mentality Abdel Majid and Ahmed both agree that it would be preferable to marry a young woman who has grown up in the ‘bled’, rather than a woman of North African descent who, like themselves, has lived in France. Both stress the importance of marrying a woman who has been ‘well brought-up’ and they reject their female counterparts who have grown up in the banlieue. Abdel Majid sets out the criteria as follows: she’s got to have had a good upbringing too. Not like a girl from the suburbs. She should be a good girl, who doesn’t hang around, who doesn’t drink, . . . for me, it’s like Ahmed, preference for a girl who lives in Algeria . . . they’re different but that’s good. There, they’re well brought up, they’re brought up strict and everything, that’s it.54

Abdel Majid’s communautaire and sexist stance with regard to marriage partners contrasts with his eagerness to distance himself from his

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origins in Chapter 4 (p. 105) (‘No I don’t see myself a simply an Algerian. I am the descendent of an Algerian’). His remarks encourage Ahmed to complain about the ‘filles des banlieues’ (girls from the suburbs): ‘I don’t know, it’s true that there are girls who are . . . they haven’t kept their femininity, and then, often it’s trainers, tracksuit, baseball cap and they speak worse than us . . . she’s got to be well brought up.’55 Ahmed goes further in his ‘requirements’ than Abdel Majid because he feels that, for his mother’s sake, it is important to find someone who is Tunisian: I know that it’s more likely that I will marry a Tunisian than another girl because me . . . I know that for my mother, she’s got to have someone who understands her, who’s got the same mentality and also that they manage to live together.56

Samira is very aware of her parents’ preference that she marry a man of Kabyle origin. She expresses her understanding of their position more extensively than most other interviewees: ‘it’s in relation to traditions. It’s about my family, it’s about my parents and our ancestral tradition because actually, they’re from Kabylia and so they’re used to marrying among themselves.’ She then goes on to claim that she herself would like to marry someone of Kabyle origin as well. However, she argues that this is nothing to do with her parents and that her preference stems rather from personal choice. What interests us here, is not whether she is obliging her parents or not, but rather the fact that she feels she is part of a Kabyle ‘ancestral tradition’: Frankly, in relation to that, I think that, you’ll find me a bit sectarian [laugh] but I’ve had boyfriends, I’ve known boyfriends who were atheists even. I’ve had relationships with people of different ethnicities to me and um . . . it always broke up after a while because there was something that just wouldn’t work and differences pose problems each time, and it’s got nothing to do with my parents, . . . it’s to do with points of view [idées], it’s upbringing [éducation] which plays a part and then there were differences and then there were compromises which wouldn’t be made.57

Samira’s claim that her preference has nothing to do with her parents seems somewhat defensive since she then goes on to argue that her preference for a Kabyle young man is a question of ‘éducation’ – or, in other words, how one was brought up by one’s parents and the values or ‘idées’ that one has as a result. Perhaps Aicha, whose parents are also Kabyle, is more aware of the influence of her parents and family on her choice of partner because she claims that she cannot see herself with someone who is not of Kabyle origin because of family ‘conditioning’ or ‘le conditionnement’ as she refers to it (see p. 108 and Chapter 7).

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Fawzia, like Aicha and Samira, sees herself as Kabyle and the importance of her sense of being part of a Kabyle community is made clear when we discuss marriage preferences: ‘For me – I’d like, for me – my dream, would be to marry a Berber, Kabyle . . . Me, my dream, is a Berber Algerian.’58 She claims that by choosing to marry an Amazigh Algerian, she would be able to perpetuate certain ‘traditions’ and it transpires that these traditions are not just Amazigh-oriented but that Fawzia’s desire to marry an Algerian Amazigh is also of a religious nature. Indeed, she seems to associate being Kabyle and being a practising Muslim within the same register: but I don’t want to lose the traditions . . . I don’t want to lose the traditions, you see because I know that if for example, I marry a Portuguese man I wouldn’t have the same traditions. OK it’s true I’d still do Ramadan, but it wouldn’t be the same when we got home in the evening, it wouldn’t be like if I was married to a Muslim who would be doing Ramadan at the same time with me.59

Through her desire to marry someone from the same background, she claims that in this way she won’t ‘forget’ her ‘origins’: Me – with a Kabyle, like that, at least you don’t forget your origins. No, we’re not like because we’re in France, we’re French . . . me, when I say French, it’s really pure French people, where their father is French, their mother; they’ve really got French origins. Otherwise, Italians, Spanish, who were born here, for me, they’re not French, they’re foreigners.60

Here, then, the community of origin, which is viewed as something stable, makes its mark permanently on the individual who, in turn, perpetuates that stability through marriage. What is interesting in this construction of partner choice is the extent to which a fairly narrow conceptualisation of culture and the culture of origin is seen to be a marker of identity, mentality and, beyond that, relationship compatibility.

The community as a socio-economic and socio-cultural entity The communautaire pole of identity can also be applied to socio-economic identity. That is, individuals sometimes reveal a strong sense of belonging to a community, which may be defined by socio-economic factors such as ‘class’ or neighbourhood.61 However, the socio-economic can also represent the interface between social and more cultural forms of identity. One of the main forms of socio-economic community among the young people of North African origin who participated in the field research was the banlieue. For many interviewees, the banlieue becomes

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synonymous with the département, Seine-Saint-Denis. For these respondents, the banlieue also exists in opposition to Paris because of the disparities in wealth and ‘mentalities’ that are deemed to exist between the inhabitants. For some interviewees, the opposition which exists between the two ‘worlds’ is mainly of a ‘racial’ nature – that is, Paris is associated with ‘les Français’ and the suburbs are associated with les immigrés, les rebeux and les renoix.62 Other interviewees deny that this is the main dividing line, yet the precise nature of the cleavage is not made explicit. Some commentators have claimed that it is possible to conceptualise the experience of young people living in a stigmatised suburban setting in purely social terms and thus claim that there are no major cultural differences between the young people of non-European origin and their ‘Français de souche’ or European-origin banlieusard counterparts, apart from the experience of racism. Yet the term ‘jeunes de banlieue’ increasingly and implicitly tends to refer to young people of North African and Sub-Saharan African descent. The post-‘9/11’ context, concerns about the rise of fundamentalist Islam, the renewal of the Islamic ‘headscarf affair’ in 2003, tensions between young French Jews and young French Muslims and the 2005 riots have all served to ethnicise political, media and, to a certain extent, academic discourses about the banlieue. Sometimes this negatively constructed ethnicised register has almost eclipsed previous socio-economic constructions of the banlieue. Yet I would argue that it is nearly impossible to separate the socio-economic and more cultural registers of experience. The consideration of both the socio-economic and cultural registers must take place simultaneously. So, in Chapter 6, I shall look more closely at three aspects of collective socio-economic and cultural experience: the banlieue, the quartier (or cité) and racial discrimination as a collective cultural and collective social experience.

Notes 1 I shall use the term ‘community’, ‘community-based’, or ‘communitarian/ist’ in order to translate communautaire/communautarisme. Note that in the French context communitarian/ism should not be confused with the liberals versus communitarians debate in North America between political philosophers such as John Rawls and Charles Taylor. See Chapter 2 for further details. 2 In the article ‘Culture and identity: contesting constructivism’ (2001), Veit Bader also questions the assumption that ‘the construction of collective identities . . . refers to culture or community at all and, if so, to ethnic culture’ (2001: 261). 3 Interview with Aicha, 12/12/00, 14/12/00.

Collective identities and cultural communities? 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11

12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33

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Ibid. Ibid. Interview with Abdel and Samira, 16/11/00. Interview with Khadija and Naima, 13/03/01; Naima 08/12/03. ‘Chleuh’ is the expression used to describe southern Moroccan people of Amazigh origin, as opposed to Moroccan Arabs and as opposed to Algerian Amazigh who are generally referred to as kabyles, since they originate from the Kabylia region of Algeria. This comment was made by Waleed during our first meeting in February 2001. Interview with Hicham and Mouloud, 16/11/00. Interview with Fayçal, Mahmoud and Razak, 13/09/01. Erving Goffman writes about the desire of stigmatised individuals to reverse their ‘misfortune’ by drawing on a number of possible strategies, one of which is the refusal to remain discrete in a society which rejects and excludes them: ‘Instead of cowering, the stigmatised individual may attempt to approach mixed contacts with hostile bravado’ (see Goffman 1963: 29). Interview with Mohamed, 30/04/01. Interview with Aziz, ‘Ibtisam’, Majdi and Yasser, 17/09/01. The term ‘bled’ comes from the Arabic ‘belad’, literally meaning ‘country’. It is used by immigrants of North African origin and their descendants to refer to their countries or regions of origin. It has also become commonly used in informal or spoken French (by non-Arab speakers) to refer to small towns and villages in general. Interview with Leila, 15/05/01. The term primo-arrivant refers to the first ‘generation’ of immigrants, i.e. those who emigrated as adults to France. Interview with Bintou, Karine, Nabila, Nour and Salikha, 19/10/00. Interview with Nasser, 06/03/01. Interview with Abdel and Samira, 16/11/00. Interview with Hicham and Mouloud, 16/11/00. Ibid. Interview with Fayçal, Mahmoud and Razak, 13/09/01. Interview with Mohamed, 30/04/01. Interview with Waleed, 06/02/01, 19/02/01, 23/02/01. Interview with Fouad and Yacine, 05/07/01. Ibid. The youth employment scheme – emploi jeune – was a scheme implemented by the Jospin government to fund the creation of jobs for young people, with contracts running for five years. All remarks from interview with Lamia and Salima, 14/11/00. Interview with Fawzia, 18/04/01. The term algérois refers to the Arabic which is spoken in Algeria. Interview with Malika and Nacira, 21/11/00. Interview with Hala and Mona, 18/05/01. Interview with Fouad and Yacine, 05/07/01. Algérois is the spoken variant of Arabic in Algieria.

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34 All interviewees who were of North African origin were also of Muslim background, hence the decision to focus the discussion of religion on Islam. 35 Turner (1983) cites Durkheim (1961) in Bocock and Thompson (1992: 322). 36 See Dubet (1994: 112) re. the internalisation of values and roles. 37 All quotes from interview with Lamia and Salima, 14/11/00. 38 The Arabic word ‘haram’ literally means that which is forbidden in an Islamic context. 39 Interview with Aziz, Ibtisam, Majdi and Yasser, 17/09/01. 40 Interview with Fayçal, Mahmoud and Razak, 13/09/01. 41 Ibid. 42 Interview with Touran, 22/03/01. 43 Interview with Fayçal, Mahmoud and Razak, 13/09/01. 44 It would of course be possible to include Fayçal and Mahmoud in this category; see p. 130. 45 Interview with Abdel Majid, Ahmed and ‘Maliha’, 22/05/01. 46 Ibid. See also Mouloud’s reaction as compared to Hicham’s in Chapter 4 (p. 110) regarding religious faith and practice. Mouloud’s stance is similar to Ahmed’s. 47 Simmel (1997: xiii) distinguishes between ‘religion’ and ‘religiosity’, which can be understood as personal faith. 48 Interview with Ibrahim, Larbi and Tayeb, 23/05/01. Note that most young people in the sample tend to fast during Ramadan and may pray intermittently or not at all. The majority do not observe prayer at all, but do observe Ramadan. 49 Interview with ‘Fatima’ and Zina, 09/11/00. 50 Interview with Sara, 06/03/01, 09/03/01. 51 For further discussion of masculinities, especially among young boys and men of Caribbean origin, see Frosh et al. (2002). 52 Of course, this does not exclude the possibility that people then go home to eat a proper meal with their families. 53 Interview with Touran, 22/03/01. 54 Interview with Abdel Majid, Ahmed and Maliha, 25/05/01. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Interview with Abdel and Samira, 16/11/00. 58 Interview with Fawzia, 18/04/01. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 It is, of course, possible to argue that the notion of ‘class’ has undergone vast change and is no longer as pertinent as it once was. For an interesting discussion of the changing nature of the notion of class, see Mendras and Cole (1991: 31– 48). 62 In the same way that ‘beur’ has become altered by backslang (verlan), the word ‘noir’ has been ‘verlanised’ to give ‘renoi’ and ‘renoix’ in the plural. This term is used to refer to Blacks.

6

The socio-economics of community

Introduction This chapter focuses on three aspects of collective experience among young French-North Africans in Seine-Saint-Denis: the banlieue, the quartier (or cité) and racial discrimination. While the banlieue and the quartier are often considered as predominantly socio-economic categories, I argue that they can be seen as representing an interface between social and more cultural forms of identity. The interface between the socioeconomic and the cultural is also discussed in relation to the interviewees’ narratives of racial discrimination.

The banlieue as a community: solidarity, mentality and stigma The notion of belonging to a community which is primarily defined in terms of an antagonistic relationship between Paris and la banlieue (both geographical entities existing as mythical or as ‘imagined’ communities) is a fairly prevalent phenomenon among the young people who took part in the fieldwork. About a quarter of the sample of forty-six expressed a sense of belonging to the banlieue in terms of a community. ‘Solidarity’ One of the ways in which this sense of identity was articulated was to refer to the notion of solidarity. In fact, the question of solidarity emerged in four separate group interviews and several interviewees talked about the main distinctions between Paris and Aubervilliers (and other neighbouring suburbs in Seine-Saint-Denis) in these terms. For example, although Mona argues that she would not like her own children to grow up in Aubervilliers (see Chapter 4 on the detachment from the banlieue/ quartier), she argues that she herself does not want necessarily to live

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in Paris, which she regards as a place where it is pleasant ‘to go and wander around sometimes’. However, she remarks on what she perceives as the lack of solidarity in Paris and, in doing so, she presents Aubervilliers in a more positive light than in her previous comments: Here there’s more solidarity than there I think . . . We’re not necessarily more united because we’re all North African, I don’t know why . . . The fact that we’re all from Aubervilliers, it’s small, I mean, where I live it’s small so that means that we’re closer to each other . . . I mean we’re all supportive of each other . . . in Paris . . . it won’t be the same . . . I don’t know why but it won’t be the same thing.1

Fawzia also talks about Aubervilliers in terms of solidarity and close community ties but, like Mona, she rejects the idea that people are more supportive of each other because they are from North African families: Aubervilliers . . . I like it . . . I know everyone, I’ve been here a long time . . . Paris, I think that the people are different. I don’t know, me, I’ve already been there, for a short time, just for an evening, . . . I don’t know, I see Paris as another world, it seems depressing, it’s not like here, you see people talk to each other. No, it seems like it’s every man for himself . . . Aubervilliers, everyone knows everyone, it’s things like that, I don’t think it’s origins [origines] . . . you can go to the countryside, you find foreigners just as you find French people, like in the suburbs, there are pure French people. No it doesn’t mean anything.2

Here, Fawzia’s comments which dismiss the notion of ‘origines’ in relation to spatial identification, contrast with her earlier insistence on the importance of ‘les origines’ with regard to a successful marriage (p. 137). The notion of belonging to a ‘family’, which is represented by Aubervilliers, or the neighbouring suburb where some respondents otherwise live, is a very prevalent one. Interviewees often refer to how they have grown up with all their neighbours and talk of a family bond with the people in their immediate quartier. For example, Tayeb refers to Aubervilliers (which has a population of approximately 63,000) in terms of one huge family. This is rather paradoxical since he was very keen to distance himself from his immediate surroundings, for fear of being stereotyped as a ‘jeune de quartiers’ (see Chapter 4, p. 101). Fellow interviewee, Larbi talks about what he perceives to be the differences between Parisians and Albertivillariens: Aubervilliers OK, we know it, we grew up here so we’ve adapted . . . in Paris . . . they haven’t had the same mentality as me, in relation to where I’m from, the suburbs. They haven’t got the same outlook. They’ve got, I know people who live in Paris and frankly, they’ve really not got the same mentality. I don’t know, I think it’s different.

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This leads Tayeb (who had initially claimed that he would like to live in Paris) to retreat: It’s true that we’re more of a family. When we go on holiday with our friends, from time to time, we go away with a holiday club . . . we see how people who live in Paris are and they’re nothing like us . . . yeah, I think that we’re more generous than them, I don’t know, in relation to people that I’ve met . . . there’s a lot of showing off there too.3

Mahmoud and Fayçal also allude to a perceived lack of solidarity which manifests itself in the different types of relationship between neighbours. This seems particularly to trouble Mahmoud: ‘In Paris, you can lie on the ground dying, nobody helps us . . . in Paris, people have got neighbours and they don’t even know each other . . . we, everyone knows everyone with us.’4 Fayçal backs Mahmoud up when he adds: ‘they [Parisians] don’t look at each other.’ Indeed, this so-called inability to communicate is evoked in many of the interviewees’ statements, where Paris and its inhabitants are homogenised and stereotyped by the young men and women, who know that they themselves can be subject to social and cultural stigma as young French-North Africans who live in a banlieue setting. It is in effect this criticism of Parisians and the so-called ‘Parisian mentality’ which is one of the main reasons that interviewees give for their antagonistic stance towards Paris and their simultaneous exaltation of the banlieue or of Aubervilliers’ inhabitants as though they represent a homogeneous whole. Most of the individuals cited the differences in ‘mentality’ and ‘atmosphere’ as the main motivations for wanting to continue to reside in Aubervilliers, for example – or, on a more general level, for rejecting Paris. ‘Mentality’ It is not possible to discuss all the interviewees concerned by this question. This sub-section will focus rather on a select number of responses. Like her fellow interviewee, Mona, Hala is also wary about Paris, but her critique is more extensive. Although, as was shown in Chapter 4, Hala tries to distance herself from the banlieusard image which in fact she perpetuates by referring to Aubervilliers’ youth in this way, this does not mean that she aspires to a life in Paris. Rather she associates Paris with excessive moral liberalism: actually I’d prefer my children to go to Pablo Picasso rather than Janson de Sailly or Henri IV [two prestigious Parisian Lycées] because we can say all we like, here there are some dodgy people but there it’s no better . . . they’re all made in the same mould and I don’t know, they all smoke and drugs for example . . . it can go further because they’re obviously more

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rich . . . and there’s a certain mentality . . . the Parisian mentality – . . . ‘I go out, I party, I listen to music’. I’ve got completely different interests, completely different.5

In a similar manner to Hala, and despite her earlier declaration that she would prefer her children to attend a Parisian private school (p. 103), Leila later rejects Paris and Parisians as being too different in outlook. However, although Leila’s rejection is based on a critique of so-called ‘Parisian values’, she wishes to remain resident in Seine-Saint-Denis, preferably in nearby Saint-Denis, in order to be close to her ‘roots’, as she puts it: I’m a bit of an exception because I live in Aubervilliers, just as I could have lived in Paris. We could have lived in Paris but I didn’t want to, . . . to be in a private school, but I didn’t want to, it’s not my scene, because I don’t like it at all. I’ve got my aunt who lives in Paris. When I go to see her on the week-end, it’s not my scene, it’s not my thing . . . I’m more likely to be in Saint-Denis . . . I stayed there [Paris] for a week once with my cousin, I don’t like it, the atmosphere, oh no, it’s really and we also feel, it’s not that we feel excluded, we’re not excluded, it’s that you’re surrounded by French people . . . that’s it . . . No, it doesn’t bother me to be surrounded by French people but I want to feel my roots, I don’t know, my little history, my origins.6

Her rather extreme reaction to Paris is also linked to her experience of her aunt’s family who live in Paris. Not only is Leila keen to maintain close links with her cultural ‘community’, it seems that she also rejects Paris in an attempt to reverse a perceived stigma of residing in a socially deprived suburb. Leila’s story can thus be seen as a good example of the interface between social and cultural experience: I’ve got my aunt who lives in Paris and . . . during Aïd we had Lacoste tracksuits, it was my, it’s my milieu and then they say ‘ah well, we’re here, it’s great, we don’t have to buy that for our children because, well, they don’t look at that at all’ and then ‘you can’t understand that because you’re suburban’. That expression has always stuck in my mind until now . . . so it’s because of experience that I wouldn’t like to live in Paris.7

The rejection of Paris on the basis that the city does not have enough atmosphere or convivial spirit is present in other interviewees’ narratives. For example, Khadija and Naima agree that they would not want to live in Paris, Khadija claiming that: ‘it’s quiet, it’s really quiet’ and Naima adding that: ‘regions [sic] like Paris, there’s nothing, well, there’s the Eiffel tower but that’s it!’8 Abdel Majid also criticises Paris in the same manner: ‘It’s not the same atmosphere, Me, personally, I couldn’t live in Paris.’9

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Khadija’s, Naima’s and Abdel Majid’s dismissal of Paris, and hence their implicit exaltation of Aubervilliers (which is only ten minutes away on the metro from Paris’ nineteenth arrondissement) as representative of the banlieue seems to stem from their limited experience and knowledge of the city. Waleed, however, actually has some experience of Paris and its inhabitants. Waleed studies at the Sorbonne, yet he still feels a sense of unease with regard to the Parisians he meets. Like Hala and Leila, he claims to have a different outlook and wants to remain in his immediate surroundings. Waleed refers to the difficulties he encountered in his first semester at the Sorbonne: I was the only person from the suburbs – they were all French – at the start, I found it hard to adapt . . . because, I don’t know, it wasn’t my environment I think . . . I don’t know, different. Here, I think, the North African community, when we see someone, we speak to each other actually. It’s convivial but there, it was cold, I don’t know . . . you say hello to people one day, the next day, you saw them passing by you and they didn’t say hello and it was normal. I asked someone else there and he went ‘yeah, here it’s normal’ and I didn’t find that normal, . . . I also think that they’re reticent about North Africans because they’ve got prejudices.10

The notion that the Parisians (or ‘les Français’) do not ‘know how’ to communicate with one another is often contrasted with the perceived ‘openness’ of the ‘communauté maghrébine’, as it is in Waleed’s statement. Waleed’s only friend at the Sorbonne is a girl whom he knew previously from Aubervilliers: ‘Yeah, I’ve kept my friends from here . . . I’ve got friends at university but really, they’re university friends, from there, that’s it . . . I met up with a friend of mine from here, there, . . . and most of the time, I’m with her.’11 Waleed’s unsatisfactory experience and sense of partial rejection at the Sorbonne, further illustrated when he was stopped by a campus security guard and was informed that he must be in the wrong place, could be one of the main reasons for his ultimate rejection of Paris: ‘I don’t see what’s beautiful about Paris, I don’t like it.’12 Stigmatised identities The prevalent notions of ‘jeunes de banlieue’ or ‘jeunes des cités’ are labels that can be either a negative or positive experience. Some interviewees try to reverse the stigma by transforming what could be a negative (and assigned) categorisation into a more self-affirming one. Nasser boasts about how he comes from ‘neuf-trois’ (nine-three), the urban vernacular way of referring to Seine-Saint-Denis, since the administrative number of the département is 93. However, Nasser seems to have internalised

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the negative and violent image which is often assigned to the socially deprived suburbs to the north of Paris. On the several occasions when I met Nasser, he often alluded to the violence and underground economy as if this was the main way in which he viewed his immediate surroundings. Farhad Khosrokhavar observed this phenomenon among young men in particular, when he carried out a study of young people living in the Val d’Argent, Strasbourg and Dreux areas. He argues that the more excluded an individual is/feels, the more violent or chaotic his/her immediate surroundings appear to them and the more likely he/she is to adopt the negative image the outside world assigns to these sorts of neighbourhoods (Khosrokhavar 2000: 431).13 In terms of stigmatised identities, the young male interviewees articulate these sorts of views more than the women. Nasser seems unable or unwilling to detach himself from the image which is, to a significant extent, assigned to him. Of course there may have also been an element of bravado arising from the research context, which may have contributed to Nasser’s portrayal of his surroundings. It appears that Tayeb is more aware than Nasser of the stigma he is subject to: they’ve opened lots of things for us so that we stay among ourselves, so we don’t go and see the Parisians . . . for people in Paris, they associate young people from the estates, young people from the estates, what is it? It’s North Africans, and Paris, what is it? It’s French people . . . When we go to Paris, we’re looked down on.14

The above interviewees can thus be described as identifying the banlieue as a wider community which, for many, exists in opposition to Paris. They present the differences between Paris and Aubervilliers in a rather naturalised manner and sometimes emphasise a Français versus Maghrébin divide and sometimes a more socio-economic divide. Their shifting identifications with the banlieue are at odds with the wider public debates which, from the 1970s until the early 1990s, gave too much focus to the banlieue sociale and then, more recently, to the notion of the banlieue ethnique. On the whole, the interviewees claim to want to maintain their close relationships with their socio-economic and/or socio-cultural communities of origin and thus for the most part reject the idea of living in Paris. The relationship they have with an imagined Paris is antagonistic but it is not necessarily conflictual in nature. In other words, one does not get the sense that they might draw on their attachment to the banlieue in order to actually counter the stigma many of its inhabitants suffer. Rather, the solution to this antagonistic relationship tends to be articulated in individualist terms, either through a strategy of self-segregation in the banlieue or flight from the banlieue.

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Perhaps only two interviewees are able to take the antagonistic relationship one step further by conflictualising their stance with regard to Paris. Majdi attempts to reverse the stigma to which he suggests he is subject as a resident in the notorious Quatre Mille housing estate in La Courneuve in the following way: ‘as citizens of the suburbs, we’re intelligent. That’s what I want to say to you . . . we’ve got everything, everything, just like a French citizen.’15 Touran initially talks about his quartier in the generally negative mode, but then seems to realise this and instead insists that the young people living in Aubervilliers and similar suburbs have a lot of potential: how can we allow ourselves to say that in the suburbs there’s nothing, there’s only theft or break-ins? No, I’m sorry, it’s the reserve . . . of, it’s got an enormous potential . . . The proof – all the young people who’ve succeeded in the sports world, they’re all from here, lots of them, for the most part, is that true or not? So me, I feel like telling people, please stop . . . saying suburb, neighbourhood . . . no, we’re normal people, we live normally, we go to school, we try to work, like everyone.16

Touran’s recognition of the talent of his peers from Seine-Saint-Denis reveals that he does not just simply want to accept and internalise dominant group discourses. Yet his failure to recognise the potential of his peers outside of the sporting world might suggest that Touran has absorbed the social stereotype of the banlieusard who succeeds through sport or music.17

Micro-communities within the banlieue In addition to a strong sense of identity with regard to the banlieue, which is simultaneously conceived as a socio-economic and cultural ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991), existing as a broad category in opposition to Paris, some interviewees also reveal that they enjoy close ties with their immediate quartier. These ties are expressed in a number of ways. For example, some twenty-nine, or two-thirds, of the interviewees are or have been involved in local neighbourhood associations that organise socio-cultural, educational and sporting activities for young people in a particular quartier or housing estate (cité). More often than not, those involved in such activities as animateurs or animatrices themselves benefited from associations when, as youngsters, they attended homework clubs (soutien scolaire) or participated in excursions and holidays (sorties, colonies de vacances) organised by the association involved.

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It would seem that there is quite a widespread acceptance and admiration for young people who are involved with their immediate community in the cité or neighbourhood where they live. The theme of the idealised image of the ‘grand frère’ (older brother) who protects their younger brothers and sisters (or their younger female and male acquaintances) is very prevalent in the respondents’ narratives. It develops possibly as a result of the relative invisibility of the parents who make up the first generation of immigrants – the father is a largely absent figure in the interviewees’ narration of their experiences, either because he is at work or eclipsed at home due to chronic unemployment and, in several cases, illness. Some mothers and fathers are absent or in the background because of their lack of fluency in French. The absence of the first generation from the public space in the immediate environment means that it is the oldest brothers and sisters who become the ‘parents’ in a certain sense, since it is they who deal with administrative matters such as banking, benefit claims, etc. Older brothers and sisters may also have a significant influence on the educational and professional lives of their younger brothers and sisters since some parents are often unable to advise their children. Settlement in the new society would thus seem to have challenged some parents’ ‘roles’, and hence, to a certain extent, the notion of the North African family headed by a domineering father must be revised to more accurately reflect the post-migration context. Indeed, Guénif Souilamas writes about the migrant father as ‘a broken figure’ (Guénif Souilamas 2000: 124). The role of the ‘grand frère’ is of course played by some biological brothers and sisters, but it can also take on a more social meaning in the sense that the older inhabitants of the cité or the quartier are expected to look after the younger residents. Hence the animateur can be seen as the institutionalisation of the ‘grand frère’ model as well as part of a process of erosion of paternal authority and capability once migration has taken place. The ‘grand frère’ phenomenon is thus possibly linked with the high number of young people in the sample who were or had at one point been an animateur or animatrice in a youth association.18 The notion of animateurs and animatrices taking on the roles of surrogate parents or older siblings is visible particularly in the case of Sara, due to her close relationship with many of the young women who attend the maison de jeunes in the cité de Vandrezanne.19 In addition, a general sense of pessimism with regard to the possibility of finding employment, combined with financial difficulties, also means that many of the young people who were interviewed had obtained or were hoping to obtain their BAFA (Brevet d’aptitude aux fonctions d’animateur de centre de vacances et de loisirs), a recognised qualification in socio-cultural activities’

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coordination or animation) so as to be able to obtain part-time or summer employment. In terms of gender, it would appear that the young men who are animateurs focus more on the quartier than the women. The ‘grand frère’ and ‘grande sœur’ attitudes of the interviewees mean that the quartier or the cité is, for many, a metaphor for the family in a context of family disorganisation or de-institutionalisation.20 The quartier thus becomes, to a certain extent, the family of the public sphere. However, the quartier and youth activities within it can become a fairly closed space. Brothers Mohamed and Waleed frequent the local maison de jeunes in the cité de Vandrezanne. When I ask Mohamed why he thinks he has a good relationship with the youth workers at the maison de jeunes, he claims that it is helpful that they come from the same housing estate: We understand each other better . . . we’ve already known each other before. Afterwards there’s nothing taboo between us . . . we find it less difficult to talk to them, we already know them . . . when they come from Aubervilliers, it’s more young people from housing estates, young people like us and when they come from outside, they’re more, they’re . . .21 [sentence trails off].

This belief that it is not possible to understand each other unless one comes from the same sort of banlieue setting is perhaps not very surprising, but it does reveal the extent to which living in Aubervilliers can be seen as a collective experience which leads some interviewees, such as Mohamed and his older brother Waleed, to ignore the capabilities or skills of the animateurs who are perceived as different because they are not from Aubervilliers. Waleed, for instance, contrasts the youth workers from the cité and those from elsewhere: Yeah, here, the youth workers are good I find. Saïd, I like him, I like Saïd. Loads of young people like Saïd . . . because, first of all, they’re people from here . . . from the estate, because they’re from here. They try to help us, we respect them, . . . they brought in someone else, another adult from nowhere, like that, it’s not the same.22

Saïd is the maison de jeunes animation coordinator at the Vandrezanne cité. This confidence in the skills of a youth coordinator from the area can also take on a more ‘ethnicised’ justification, as Sara, the animatrice, reveals when discussing her former role as an animatrice in the Maladrerie cité and that when they recruited: a Frenchwoman or whatever, it was, ‘no, you’re not’ . . . ‘she’s not like us’ . . . They think that they have to be united among themselves, between Arabs and that the rest of the world is bad . . . Every time we brought them someone who wasn’t of North African origin, it was a bloody mess.23

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Almost half of the sample of forty-six young people of North African origin claimed to have experienced some form of discrimination.24 Fourteen men and seven young women (i.e. twenty-one in total) claimed to have experienced some form of racial discrimination in the workplace; when trying to obtain employment or work placements (stages); or when trying to gain access to leisure activities such as nightclubs. Among the fourteen men, four claimed to have experienced, or to fear the experience of, discrimination in the workplace, because of their physical appearance or their North African-sounding name. Six men spoke of difficulties when trying to enter nightclubs and six men claimed to have experienced racial discrimination either in terms of insults or in a more latent manner. (Note that some interviewees claimed to have experienced discrimination in more than one of these situations.) Only two young women claimed to have experienced some form of direct discriminatory treatment in the workplace and the remaining five women concerned referred to their experience of ‘racist remarks’. Gender is a significant variable since the young men appear to suffer more racial discrimination, or at least they are more vocal about their experiences than their female counterparts. Age also seems to be a factor, since among the men only five are of Lycée age (Aziz, Fayçal, Mahmoud, Majdi and Yasser) and among the women only two are of Lycée age (‘Idaya’ and Naima). Another feature which links the respondents is the general sense of helplessness or resignation in the face of racial stereotyping. Only a minority (three) interviewees out of the twenty-one concerned can be described as demonstrating a desire and ability to react against the discrimination they may suffer, in a subjective manner. Fouad, Mahmoud and Fayçal’s reaction in the face of actual and anticipated discrimination with regard to employment and work placements is fairly characteristic of the sense of resigned acceptance which seems to be reasonably widespread. For example, Fouad talks about his former job at a large Parisian department store, where he had worked for ten years in the music department: I worked for ten years in a department store, . . . very, very, very, very motivated, very very quick, very professional, . . . I even was doing the same work as a manager and why I left, I left, it was in ’98, I went up to the office and said to the director, listen, now that’s it, I earn 9,000 francs, that’s good but I’d like my work to be recognised, I work like mad, . . . I do all this work so make me a manager now. The director very kindly said to me ‘listen, go and have a little walk round the shop. If you see a foreign manager, I’ll make you manager in the next five minutes.’ I got the message, it means, ‘get lost, you’re foreign’ . . . the management

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didn’t recognise my work in the sense that a pure French person called Damien, Jean-Pierre or Jean-Patrick would’ve straight away got his management training and his orange badge . . . I wanted real recognition . . . whatever we do, it’ll always be the same.

When asked if he pursued the incident after he left his job, Fouad replies: ‘What will it change? What will it change? They don’t want a foreign manager, they won’t have one.’25 Mahmoud and Fayçal are also very pessimistic about their chances of finding work placements or employment, although they do not refer to any specific incident. Mahmoud describes his experience of looking for a work placement below: It’s complicated looking for a job. It’s difficult when they see your surname on your CV – there you go. It counts for a lot. Like us, we’re looking for work placements – it’s difficult for us to find work placements. In our class . . . , the French guy finds one straight away but us, they think it over ten times before taking us on . . . That’s how it goes. Send a French guy to Renault – there are vacancies at Renault. There’s a French guy who’ll go for it, an Arab after him. The boss will say ‘I’ll take the French guy’. That’s for sure that he thinks that.26

Discrimination at nightclubs is a fairly common theme affecting the young men. Tayeb, Larbi, Ahmed, Abdel Majid, Mansour and Mahmoud all mention this issue. No young women interviewees allude to this phenomenon, however. This could be due to a combination of factors: because the women interviewees suffer this type of discrimination to a lesser degree and/or because they do not frequent nightclubs as much. The interviewees who do complain of such experiences tend to argue that they are discriminated against because they are from the Seine-SaintDenis département (‘le quatre-vingt-treize’ – ‘the 93’) and are visibly of North African descent (Ahmed and Mahmoud refer to how if they arrive at a nightclub by car, they try to park it some distance from the venue for fear that should the doormen see the Seine-Saint-Denis licence plate they will be refused entry). The reference to ‘le 93’ and how this can be a stigma does, however, seem to be less significant than the concern that they are visibly of North African origin. Indeed, although Ahmed and Mahmoud both argue on separate occasions that Seine-Saint-Denis is synonymous with les immigrés, they and Mansour claim that someone of French or European appearance from Seine-Saint-Denis who has cultivated ‘le look banlieusard’ has less difficulty gaining entry to nightclubs, restaurants or hotels.27 The remaining young men’s experience of racism is more diffuse. For example, Mansour argues that his teachers and animateurs had a

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detrimental effect on his childhood aspirations because they had a negative impact on his self-confidence when he was growing up. Waleed complains of being stereotyped: ‘I don’t really like it – immigrant origin . . . they label us as immigrant . . . of North African origin, because – here, that’s got a bad image . . . I think that it’s a bit of a cliché.’28 This contrasts with his insistence that he is ‘Chleuh’ and should be seen as one (p. 119). Amir refers to daily identity checks and ‘police insults’ and Aziz, Majdi and Yasser talk at some length about their antagonistic relations with elderly French people on their respective housing estates.29 Aziz, Majdi and Yasser claim that they have been the victims of racist comments and jokes and they all speak quite aggressively about the elderly people in question. The despondency and rage of these interviewees’ reactions to their experience of racism is problematic.30 Many of the young women who participated in the field research can, to a certain extent, also be qualified as despondent observers of their own exclusion. Malika comes from Brittany and has been living in the Paris region only for the last two years. She contrasts the visibility of North African origin employees in Île-de-France with their invisibility in Brittany and her views reveal limited expectations: at home [Brittany] there’s not a lot of work. There are actually some racists at home. We find it harder to find work than here. I mean, I see a lot of friends there who’ve studied and all that, they have to move away to find work . . . we still find it hard to find work . . . in Brittany, whereas in Paris, no, it’s still more accessible for finding work. But in the media, they talk about it, that there are problems but I find, I don’t know, when I arrived here, Arab cashier, it was like, they find it difficult, near me, to take on an Arab cashier but here, it was ‘oh wow’, it was great! Oh yes! I’m saying – well – I was unemployed for three years and . . . I’ve experienced that. I was almost a saleswoman in a little shop, I was offered it, and in fact, at the last minute the manager didn’t want to because of the fact that I’m Arab . . . yeah, I found out because I knew the saleswoman who worked in the shop but otherwise I wasn’t supposed to know . . . but in Paris it’s different.31

Malika is the only female interviewee (apart from Sara) to have been confronted with discrimination when applying for a job. The other young women who do actually claim to have had experience of discrimination allude to more diffuse situations. For example, Idaya and Naima refer to racist comments on the public transport system. Salima and Lamia also refer to several occasions when work colleagues have made remarks about North African families wanting to take advantage of the social security and family benefits system in France. Myriam vaguely alludes to ‘strange looks’ in certain areas of Paris.

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So it is possible to argue that racial and cultural discrimination, in all its various forms, is a fairly common experience among young people of North African origin living and working in Aubervilliers and its neighbouring towns. However, it does appear to be more present in terms of a collective conscience among the young men who took part in the research. Not only are the young men who claim to have suffered racial discrimination more numerous, they are also more likely to have related their experiences as a unified group, such as during a group interview situation. Tayeb and Larbi; Ahmed and Abdel Majid; Fayçal and Mahmoud; Aziz, Majdi and Yasser all presented their experiences of racism in a group context, and it is possible to argue that the individuals were perhaps encouraged to speak about their experiences by their peers and fellow interviewees. This dynamic is largely absent among the young women where, if in a group discussion, one of the female interviewees does relate an incident, the peer rarely adds information in the same vein. (The exception is the interview with Lamia and Salima.) Nevertheless racial or cultural discrimination or the fear of future discrimination is something many of the interviewees share. It is part of a collective sense of experience – an experience which leads to the formation of a particular identity, though not necessarily a communautariste identity. However, this sense of collective experience can develop into a more communautariste stance. Less serious but equally ‘desubjective’ in character are the experiences of Fouad, Mahmoud, Fayçal, Mansour and the young women.32 Although they identify their own exclusion (through recounting their experiences of discrimination) they remain resigned observers. Only a handful of interviewees are able to demonstrate a more subjective stance towards their past or anticipated experiences of discrimination and they will therefore be discussed in Chapter 7, which will focus more broadly on the formation of subjective identities.

Notes 1 Interview with Hala and Mona, 18/05/01. 2 Interview with Fawzia, 18/04/01. 3 Both Larbi’s and Tayeb’s comments are cited from the interview with Ibrahim, Larbi and Tayeb, 23/05/01. The notion that one belongs to a family in Aubervilliers is, of course, likely to be one of the specificities of the town where, as pointed out at the end of Chapter 2, there is a fairly strong sense of shared history and identity. It should therefore be noted that this sentiment is not likely to be a universal feature of la banlieue since this is, in itself, a heterogeneous category. 4 Interview with Fayçal, Mahmoud and Razak, 13/09/01.

154 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26

27 28 29

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Interview with Hala and Mona, 18/05/01. Interview with Leila, 15/05/01. Ibid. Interview with Khadija and Naima, 13/03/01; interview with Naima, 08/12/03. Interview with Abdel Majid, Ahmed and Maliha, 25/05/01. Interview with Waleed, 06/02/01, 19/02/01, 23/02/01. Ibid. Ibid. For a further interesting discussion of the processes of alienation among young people of minority background, see Joly (1998). Interview with Ibrahim, Larbi and Tayeb, 23/05/01. Interview with Aziz, Ibtisam, Majdi and Yasser, 17/09/01. Interview with Touran, 22/03/01. See Chapter 8 for discussion of ‘Khir-Din’s’ association, which is working on breaking down negative stereotypes of the banlieue. The following interviewees are or have at some point been animateurs/ animatrices in associations: Abdel, Amir, Amira, Djamel, Fouad, Lamia, Leila, Mansour, Mona, Nasser, Salima, Sara, Touran and Yacine. However, Djamel, Fouad, Mansour, Nasser, Sara and Touran were all contacted through the association where they worked/were volunteers, and so in this sense, these interviewees cannot be fully included in an evaluation of the extent of associational/animation involvement among interviewees. (Note that Fouad and Touran were initially contacted through an association but they are involved in animation activities in other associations elsewhere.) The cité de Vandrezanne is a pseudonym. See Guénif Souilamas (2000: 97–101) on the notion of the ‘deinstitutionalisation’ and disorganisation of the family. Interview with Mohamed, 30/04/01. Interview with Waleed, 06/02/01, 19/02/01, 23/02/01. Interview with Sara, 06/03/01, 09/03/01. This discrimination can either be seen to be racial (i.e. perceived to be based on physical appearance) or more cultural in nature (i.e. perceived to be based on generic cultural stereotypes). It is for this reason that it is possible to refer to cultural and/or racial discrimination. Not all interviewees will be discussed here, due to lack of space. Interview with Fouad and Yacine, 05/07/01. Interview with Fayçal, Mahmoud and Razak, 13/09/01. Mahmoud also alludes to discrimination when trying to gain entry to nightclubs in Paris. However, once again, it is not entirely clear whether he has actually experienced this first-hand. ‘Le look banlieusard’ refers generally to the wearing of well-known sports labels, baseball caps and trainers. Interview with Waleed, 06/02/01, 19/02/01, 23/02/01. Interview with Amir, 21/12/00.

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30 I use the term discrimination to refer to racist/discriminatory practice, such as refusal to employ someone on the basis of their origins, and the term racism to refer to a more diffuse or latent behaviour, as expressed by a remark, comment or general attitude. 31 Interview with Malika and Nacira, 21/11/00. 32 The term ‘désubjectivation’ is used by Alain Touraine and Farhad Khosrokhavar in Touraine and Khosrokhavar (2000: 104–106, for example) to refer to the undoing of a process of subjectivation. See also Chapter 3, p. 86, for further discussion of subjectivation.

7

Subjective identities

Introduction Chapters 4–6 have shown how the young people of North African origin who participated in the field research constructed some of their experiences and practices according to individual–universalist values whereas other areas of their lives tended to be constructed with reference to a cultural or socio-economic (or spatial) community. This chapter will focus on the subjectivity of the interviewees. Do they manage to articulate contending aspects of their identity? Do they oscillate between individualist representations and more community-imposed representations of the self and their experiences? Recent academic debates on identity have tended to focus on syncretic identities or hybridity. Using the ‘triangle of identity’ in order to focus on the question of to what extent young French-North Africans articulate the contending aspects of their identities is not simply about looking for illustrations of hybridity or syncretism. Indeed, as Pnina Werbner et al. point out, the idea of hybrid identities has become so familiar that its potential to fulfil any transgressive potential for political change has been compromised (Werbner and Modood 1997). John Hutnyk argues that hybridity has even become a commodity which can be packaged up and sold, most notably in the music and food industries (Hutnyk 1997).1 In other words, the simple existence of hybrid identities which are in flux and ‘rootless’ does not easily translate into potential political agency which, according to Aijaz Ahmed, requires some ‘stable commitment to one’s class or gender or nation’ (Ahmed 1995: 14). However, the idea of a process of subjectivation or subjective identities contains within it the notion of action or agency, which emerges as a possible mode of resistance within a context of domination. In this chapter, a number of interviewees will be discussed by way of a ‘portrait’. The first section will focus on those interviewees who can be described as engaging in a process of subjectivity. The second section will focus on those interviewees whose experiences are characterised by

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a more fragmented or precarious subjectivity and the third will consider those interviewees who demonstrate very little subjectivity at all. However, before presenting the analysis and portraits of the interviewees, it is helpful to revisit the concepts of the subject, subjectivity and subjectivation, which were discussed in Chapter 3. The subjective ‘pole’ of identity implies an original or creative articulation of community and individual identity (Wieviorka 1993a). By ‘creativity’, I am referring to the ability to reinterpret the ‘roles’ which are transmitted to an individual by their own ‘private’ community of origin, as well as the more Republican or universal ‘roles’ which the public sphere applies to citizens. This fragile subjectivity means that the actor maintains a reference to a community but also distances him or herself from this community of origin, and within this process the actor reveals a capacity to demand recognition, often in a context of racism (indirect or direct) and exclusion. It is this capacity to demand recognition and change which links the concept of the subject with that of the social movement. Subjective identity should not, then, be understood as merely the synthesis of collective–community and individual– universalist identity. Rather, it is more about managing the tensions between individual and community. It is for this reason that we should not expect individuals to circulate around the poles of identity in a coherent manner. However, we can still argue that some individuals circulate more easily than others – i.e. they manage these ‘tensions’ more successfully. Subjectivity is therefore perhaps best understood as a process, and it is for this reason that I shall generally use this term rather than ‘subject’, since it conveys better the notion of tension and action. This process is precarious in that there is always a risk that the individual will fall back on one of the two other poles, either attempting to subscribe entirely to individualist–universal values or, on the contrary, remaining within the realm of the community (Wieviorka 1993a). So it is possible to identify three main themes which characterise this definition of subjectivity: the notion of unstable identity, the theme of innovation or creativity (also present in the sense of bricolage identitaire or Roger Bastide’s sociologie du bricolage and Lapeyronnie’s construction de soi) and the notion of action or social movement (Bastide 1970; Lapeyronnie 1997).2 The notion of subjectivation, as discussed by Alain Touraine, is linked to broader themes of resistance and agency. At the heart of Touraine’s understanding of the ‘Subject’ and subjectivation is the notion of action and change: The Subject is the desire of an individual to act and to be recognised as an actor . . . The actor does not act according to the place he/she occupies

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in the social order, but rather, modifies the material and above all social environment in which he/she lives, by transforming the division of labour, decision-making, relations of domination or cultural orientations . . . Subjectivation is the opposite of individual submission to overarching values: man used to project himself in God; from now on, in the modern world, it is man who becomes the basis of values because the central tenet of morality becomes liberty, and a creativity which is an end in itself and which is opposed to all forms of dependence. (Touraine 1992: 242–243, 244–245, emphasis in the original)

So in relation to the interviewees who took part in the field research, it is interesting to examine to what extent they engage with or submit to the ‘overarching values’ of their community (in the sense of their family, for example) and whether they are capable of this creativity or bricolage identitaire with regard to their own experiences. Drawing on Touraine’s notion of ‘créativité’ in terms of how individuals might construct their identity on an individual, personal, or micro level, this process can also be understood on a more macro level – that is, in terms of social movement or action. So as well as considering how the interviewees manage their individual–universalist and collective–community identities, the analysis of the various trajectories will also attempt to show whether they can be described as potentially forming a social or cultural movement. My understanding of social movement draws on Touraine’s: ‘A social movement is not a current of opinion, because it challenges the power relationship which clearly manifests itself in institutions and organisations but it is the goal of cultural orientations across relations of power and inequality’ (Touraine 1992: 282). However, unlike Touraine, my understanding of social or cultural action/movement does not equate to an expectation of formalised or institutional organisation. Rather, in the interviewees’ contexts, it can be understood as the capacity for political agency or the positive conflictualisation of social and cultural relations. We have shown how racial or cultural discrimination (actual, anticipated and perceived) is a phenomenon which links many of the young people who took part in the research. However, can the interviewees be said to conflictualise their experience of exclusion and domination into social or cultural action?

Three axes of subjectivity So the main axes of the analysis of the subjectivity of the interviewees are as follows: (1) the degree of circulation around the ‘triangle of identity’; (2) the extent to which the interviewees can be seen to ‘re-invent’

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their roles and sense of identity (bricolage identitaire/construction de soi) and (3) the extent to which they can be seen to potentially be social or cultural actors (on an individual level) as well as the extent to which they can be seen as potentially becoming part of a collective consciousness which not only denounces cultural and social domination (e.g. racial discrimination, socio-economic inequalities) but also advocates change. When I refer to the capacity to become a social or cultural actor on an ‘individual’, ‘personal’ or ‘micro’ level, this should not be confused with ‘individualist’ action or action purely for individual gain, such as the desire to be a consumer, for example. Rather, the use of the term individual social/cultural action as opposed to collective social/cultural action is used to distinguish between, for example, an ‘ethnic minority’ individual’s denunciation and desire to overcome discrimination, etc. and their identification with a collective and politicised movement which attempts to overcome this discrimination, whether that means going on a demonstration, voting for a particular party or joining a particular association. These three axes of subjectivity will be discussed in relation to the various interviewees’ portraits. Since the sample comprised fortysix interviewees, it is not possible to discuss each respondent’s case in detail. Rather, I have chosen to concentrate on a reduced number of interviewees whose experiences correspond to three different categories of subjectivity. Each category reflects, as pointed out above, the varying degrees of subjectivity ‘achieved’ by the interviewees. The interviewees to be discussed in this chapter have already appeared in Chapters 4, 5 and/or 6. However, whereas Chapters 4–6 showed that the interviewees subscribed to individual–universalist values in some areas of their lives, while adopting collective–community values with respect to other aspects of their lives, the portraits of the interviewees in this chapter will be more holistic.

Advanced subjectivity Myriam Myriam featured to a certain extent in Chapter 4, which dealt with the individualist modes of identification. She also featured in Chapter 6, but only marginally in the section on discrimination. In other words, although her experience was discussed in Chapter 6, it should be pointed out that she is more concerned by the collective as opposed to communautaire dynamic. Myriam (twenty-four; a student nurse training at

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the Centre de formation Louise Couvé; born in France; dual French– Algerian nationality) lived in Paris’ eleventh arrondissement for most of her life until she and her mother moved to the nineteenth arrondissement when she was twenty-two. Her father, who is no longer alive, emigrated to France from Algeria (Kabylia) in the 1960s and was a chef de rang in a restaurant. Her mother later joined her father and worked as a nursing auxiliary until recently. Myriam is the second of three children. She understands ‘kabyle’ (Algerian Amazigh) very well and, as she puts it, speaks it with a French accent. Myriam is a rather unusual interviewee because of her insistence on her link with France throughout the interview. Where Myriam’s selfdefinition differs from that of the majority of the interviewees is that she claims that she has ‘the French mentality’. Although most other young women interviewees distance themselves from the ‘mentality of the “home” country’, they do not explicitly argue that they have a French ‘mentality’ since this would indicate that they equated themselves and their life-styles with their French-origin counterparts – a life-style which many (about half) of the young women implied was too liberal in their view. Myriam identifies more or less unproblematically with the notion of being French: ‘I was born in France, I’ve got the French mentality . . . I think of France as my country.’3 However, she does not refer to herself as ‘française’ unequivocally – that is, she does not perceive herself as sharing the same values as ‘French-origin’ young people. By articulating her sense of identity in terms of being French, she is not trying to show that she has become ‘assimilated’. Rather, her articulation of identity is an active individual process where she ‘takes and leaves’ what suits her when it comes to what she perceives as ‘the French mentality’. Indeed, when alluding to the stereotypes that North African families are subjected to with regard to marriage (arranged marriages, for example) she reveals that she does not fully agree with liberal discourses: all the prejudice that there can be against Arabs, all of that, it gets on my nerves a little bit . . . that they’ve all got arranged marriages, that the girls aren’t allowed to go out . . . when it’s not true, they’re not all the same, a certain amount of freedom, it’s true, but, well, . . . freedom, but, OK, freedom – freedom’s all very well, I mean, I don’t know, they do some stupid things as well.4

When discussing her choice of future marriage partner, Myriam also swings over to a more community-type approach, emphasising the importance of her Kabyle background. She insists that her choice (that he is a Muslim, above all – born or converted) is of the most utmost importance but that she will also take into account her family’s preferences

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for a Muslim (non-convert) man of Kabyle origin. She adds that she would also prefer a Kabyle partner herself if possible, the reason being linked to the notion of ‘mentality’: my mother’s not going to force me to marry such a bloke or such a bloke. I choose, I’ve got my studies, I choose the person I want to marry, . . . it’s true that I’d prefer, in relation to culture, that the person was Muslim, if possible, Kabyle. Well, we’ll see who I find but Muslim above all else, because in relation to cultures . . . and also in relation to the family.5

When asked if she can explain her preference for a Kabyle partner Myriam replies: ‘Well, it’s because of language. We speak the same language. We’ve got the same – in inverted commas – the same mentality, that’s it. For me – I’d prefer it.’6 So, on the one hand, Myriam is keen to point out that she has a French ‘mentality’, yet at the same time she claims that it would be preferable to marry a Kabyle because he would share the same outlook as her. Her individualist outlook or ‘mentality’ comes into play in terms of personal choice, and her sense of Kabyle identity also comes into play as far as relationship compatibility is concerned. With regard to religion and religious practice Myriam demonstrates a certain degree of subjectivity because of her combination of a commitment to Islam and a critique of the aspects she does not agree with. Myriam claims that she is a practising Muslim, yet she adds that, for her, religious faith and practice should remain in the private sphere: ‘I do my religion at home, that’s all, so, I don’t . . . so, I practice, but, I’ve got the faith and only for me. I don’t show it to others, so . . . I really believe and that’s all.’7 Myriam does not pray because she says that she has no knowledge of Arabic. However, she is learning Arabic so as to able to pray in the future. She observes Ramadan and dietary restrictions. Myriam also volunteers her thoughts on the Islamic headscarf despite the absence of a question concerning this issue: ‘well in terms of the headscarf, etc., I’m against it. . . . I’m civilised – that means I dress as a European, I mean, I’m in France, I’m completely adapted to the way French people live, completely.’8 Despite her refusal to recognise the possible subjectivity of those Muslim women who may choose to wear a headscarf, Myriam adopts multiple modes of identification and demonstrates a desire to reinterpret certain roles and therefore create her own experience. So it is possible to argue that Myriam’s subjectivity is expressed according to the first two axes of subjectivation outlined above (circulation around the three ‘poles’ of identity and bricolage identitaire). However, it is more difficult to claim that Myriam could potentially be part of a collective

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consciousness (social movement) since although she does express some frustration at the stigmatisation of ‘les Arabes’, she generally does not see the need to react against this and demand particular recognition of such a state of affairs: ‘No, something to claim, no, me – I’m Kabyle, I’m Muslim, I’m proud of it and I’ve got my life, I live it at home, I wear what I want so as far as I’m concerned, it’s OK.’9 Nevertheless, it is still possible to argue that Myriam subjectively constructs her experiences. Why does she manage this? The fact that she is well integrated in educational and professional terms may be of significance (she is a trainee nurse and has a clear career path before her). Myriam also took part in an individual interview as opposed to a group forum and this may mean that she felt more ‘free’ to express her ideas without pressure from classmates and peers. We saw in Chapter 5 how the notion of group unity and presenting a homogeneous image to the researcher was fairly prevalent in group interview situations. Furthermore, Myriam has always lived in central Paris and for most of her life in the eleventh arrondissement.10 Her mother works and her father was a service sector employee as opposed to a worker. Her socio-economic background and inexperience of social exclusion is surely also linked to her increased capacity to circulate around different poles of identification and invent her own categories since she does not feel that she is assigned her Algerian origins in a negative and stigmatising manner. Djamel Djamel featured in Chapter 4 (see p. 102) because he tends to articulate his experience according to an individual–universalist mode. However, he clearly reconciles his individual–universalist values with his Algerian origins. Djamel completed a maîtrise (Masters Degree) in Social Communication at the Université de Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle (Censier) and now works as a conseiller principal d’éducation (chief school supervisor) in a Collège. He was born in France and grew up as an only child in le Blanc-Mesnil, a suburb close to Aubervilliers.11 Djamel is one of the few interviewees to visibly take a keen interest in his parents’ past. He points out that his father fought for France during the Second World War then returned to his village near Constantine in Algeria shortly afterwards. He returned to France in 1954 and found employment with the SNCF (French Railways) as a railway layer, where he worked until retirement. His mother emigrated to France in 1955 with her sister and married Djamel’s father in 1965. His mother, who is now dead, had worked as a cleaner.

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Djamel is very aware of the significance of his cultural origins and his education in France within a Republican, secular education system and how both have informed his sense of identity: we’ve got an important cultural heritage, which we shouldn’t deny and which we should accept completely. It’s like religion I think, values, [you] shouldn’t forget your roots because it’s important, it’s the cornerstone of our individual identity and at the same time, we have to adapt, adapt to a context, a place, an environment which isn’t the family environment . . . So how do we adapt? We adapt through friends, through friends around us who are of French origin. We also adapt at school. I think that the education system at the time when I experienced it, in the seventies, ’78, ’79, ’80, really contributed to creating a sort of social identity at the same time as a cultural identity which my parents gave me – between school, Republican secular values and friends who showed us something other than what we were culturally so that, that helped to make a mix.12

Djamel’s comments clearly stand him apart from the younger interviewees and reveals the generational difference between those young people who arrived or were born in France in the 1970s and those who arrived or were born in France in the 1980s. Although most other interviewees who participated in the study are also profoundly marked by the fact that they have been/are being educated in a Republican, secular school system which informs how they relate to their families and their background, very few would explicitly comment upon this in such a manner. It is not clear whether this is because the younger interviewees are less reflexive or whether they are wary of acknowledging this in front of their peers or an interviewer. Djamel discusses the advantages of mixing with people from different backgrounds and he claims that the reason some of his friends have not achieved the same level of success academically and professionally is due to their lack of exposure to people from different horizons: For me, it pretty much went well because academically, it was pretty much OK. I had a lot of friends from different backgrounds, from different horizons but I know that it can be difficult . . . for some who are very attached to the family environment and at the same time have got friends of the same cultural origin as them, i.e. of North African origin . . . I’ve got friends who find it harder to find their place in society because there was a little, how can I put it, there was a community . . . basically and they find it a little difficult to succeed.13

Djamel has an individualised or personalised practice of Islam. He does not reject the notion of being a Muslim. Rather, he tends to ‘take or leave’ what he personally believes to be legitimate. Djamel’s own

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convictions become apparent in his explanation of why he has never observed Ramadan: Me – Ramadan, I’ve never done it . . . and when they used to say to me ‘why don’t you do it?’, I used to say ‘yeah, well I don’t feel like doing it’ . . . because I wasn’t interested. It wasn’t a strong marker for me, culturally . . . on the other hand, I’ve never eaten pork . . . because for me, it was really an important mark of cultural identity.14

Although it could be argued that Djamel is simply reproducing his parents’ more secular attitudes to religious practice and thus is just as much represented by the ‘community’ model of Islam, the community model should not only be understood in family terms, but in terms of the social/peer group community. In this respect, then, Djamel can still be seen to construct his experience of religion in a subjective manner because he mentions that his school friends and peers who fasted often questioned why he did not fast as well. It is perhaps surrounding the question of discrimination that Djamel’s attempts to become a sujet or an agent actif, in the Tourainian sense, are most visible since he insists that young people of North African origin should not fall into the trap of the victim: it [discrimination] must exist, without a doubt. I haven’t experienced it. I went into the civil service and I haven’t experienced it. It must exist, that’s for sure. Be careful not to position yourself as a victim of it. We have to work to change things, that’s for sure. Who can work to change things? Those who . . . those in their forties, those who’ve experienced discrimination but above all, people shouldn’t position themselves as victims . . . if we position ourselves as victims, we do nothing.15

One of the main differences between Djamel and many of the younger interviewees (particularly the young men who were interviewed at the local Lycée Van Gogh) is that Djamel sees his cultural and social ‘origins’ as just one aspect of his identity whereas some of the younger, more disillusioned men see them as the only thing they have. This is therefore experienced in a paradoxical manner because they think that they will find it difficult to find employment because they are visibly of North African origin, yet in order to deal with this stigma they try to transform it into something positive, something to be proud of, sometimes in a rather aggressive manner. This overinflated ‘pride’ resulting from stigmatisation is one of the main factors which prevents them from reconciling all three poles of identity. There are a number of factors which are most likely linked to Djamel’s ability to circulate around the various poles of identity while creating his own sense of identity and displaying potential political agency.

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First of all there is Djamel’s age (thirty-one). He talks about his period of ‘identity crisis’ when he was in his late teens and it is possible to argue that his increased maturity allows him to reflect on his past and current trajectories: at certain times, that period of sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old, the mix sort of clashes with itself. We no longer think that it’s complementary. We’ve got the impression that it’s contradictory so either we say I’m all North African or I’m all French, anti-North African basically. A real clash. That’s what I experienced at that time, sixteen–eighteen years old. It was a little hard because precisely, that sort of culture clash . . . once that [period] has passed, we adapt, we adapt and then I think we take on the cultural model without any problem because we sort of build our ideology on it but at the same time, we especially attach ourselves – well, that’s what I did – to a social model, I mean, to our being, [sic] [having] a social identity . . . because that’s what’s going to allow me to grow and develop, to get a sort of social promotion.16

Secondly, Djamel establishes a link between his lack of experience of discrimination and his entry into the civil service. The sense of security he has achieved through stable employment also leaves him the ‘space’ to create his own repertoire of identifications that those in the shadow of social exclusion do not enjoy. Thirdly, Djamel’s family and upbringing also represent significant factors. His mother appears to have been a central figure in his life, his father receding into the background, like so many of the interviewees’ immigrant fathers.17 Djamel talks about his mother’s supportive stance with regard to his education and use of the French language. Thus the linguistic home environment complemented Djamel’s identification with the ‘French’ aspect of his experience. Djamel’s relationship with the extended family in Algeria, reflected in his recounting of the unpleasant aspects of going back to the ‘bled’ during the school holidays, may have been encouraged by his mother’s own detachment and disillusionment: I’ve always had mixed memories about over there because there were people who used to insult me, who didn’t respect me, who used to say ‘dirty immigrant, go back to your country’. In other words, ‘you’re not Algerian, go back to France’ basically, ‘your country’s France’. So I had some conflicts with some of them, including my cousins who looked down on me a bit, especially when I was young. It wasn’t easy when I was young . . . My mother was considered to be one of those people who had money, because we came from France . . . so we went back to those little villages there, so we had to bring things for people because we had money, we had to bring things back . . . so we brought things back for the family, of course but it was a bit too much . . . so my mother, since she was quite

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a strong character, she didn’t shy away from telling them ‘you shouldn’t milk us, . . . we work, it’s not easy to find work’.18

Fragmented subjectivity Not all interviewees manage to circulate around the various poles of identity. They may hover on one of the poles more than the others, or their experience may be characterised by an erratic oscillation between individual–universalist and more collective–community values. For different reasons, a number of interviewees can be described as articulating a ‘fragmented subjectivity’. This section will focus on their experiences. Aicha Aicha (see p. 108) is an example of an interviewee whose subjectivity is more erratic or fragmented. Aicha’s father – who is now retired – was a worker and emigrated to France in 1962. Her mother also no longer works but was formerly a nanny. Aicha is one of six children (the thirdborn). Despite the absence in the interview guide of direct questions concerning the relationship between the interviewees and their parents, Aicha alludes to the difficult relationship she has with her parents at the start of the interview, and it remains a central theme throughout. Indeed, it would seem that this is a major element in the construction of her experience. Aicha complains of her parents’ inability to communicate with her and to ‘transmit’ their values and heritage. (The theme of the lack of or total absence of communication between interviewees and their parents is fairly common within the fieldwork sample.) Thus, once again the theme of the ‘obsolete’ or ‘incapable’ parents is present. It would seem that Aicha’s troubled relationship with her parents is linked (either as a cause, or as the effect, or as both) to her attempts to redefine her experience. She talks about her enrolment in a Berber cultural association while she was in Year 13 at school. Her motivations for joining were linked to her desire to fill her ‘knowledge gap’ regarding her origins (a knowledge gap which she blames on her parents’ inability to communicate with her). Aicha’s lack of knowledge with regard to her heritage and her subsequent desire to reconstitute a cultural ‘map’ of her origins by joining the Berber Cultural Association illustrates Roger Bastide’s notion of a sociologie du bricolage which can also be understood as a reconstruction process in the absence of collective memory (Bastide 1970: 100, 108). However, according to Aicha, the association in question became too politicised for her liking and she left after three

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years of membership. She adds that her decision to withdraw from the association also coincided with her increasing desire to ‘detach’ herself from her ‘origins’ and her ‘culture’: at that time, I wanted to learn lots of things. I was a lot closer to my culture. Now, I’m detaching myself a bit . . . because I find that it’s not vital anymore. It’s not like before. I’ve got other interests. I’ve got other projects . . . and I’ve not got the time anymore.19

Aicha is very keen to talk about this process of ‘detachment’ and she introduces this theme when asked about her career history: I worked at an airline catering company . . . it’s really having worked at that company that I detached myself a little from my origins . . . it’s because I found something else . . . and well, there was a time when I accepted it [my culture] . . . and then after a while, well, I realised that, well, life’s not about that. It’s, there are lots of things and for us, we’re frustrated. I realised that it had become a sort of frustration and that it was stopping me from moving on and the fact that I didn’t want to close myself into this – I live in France, I’ve got to adapt. Just as well to say to myself that I’ve got two cultures and I might as well take the best of both. And you’ve got to move on, not stagnate, which is what my parents, I don’t know if they’re conscious of it, but it’s that – stagnation and it’s not good.20

Part of this ‘detachment’ is visible in her attitude to marriage. Indeed, as discussed in more detail in Chapters 4 and 5, Aicha is the only interviewee to argue that she does not agree with marriage, favouring cohabitation instead. However, her stance is rather original because although she rejects marriage because she vows to never ‘go through’ what her parents have been through, she does still argue that she would like to find a partner of Kabyle origin because she insists that she is not able to enjoy a functional relationship with a man of any other ‘origin’. Aicha’s approach to marriage and relationships is thus an example of bricolage identitaire. Her ‘take or leave it’ approach also reveals itself in relation to her sense of place. Aicha is training in Aubervilliers but she lives in another town in Seine-Saint-Denis (le Blanc-Mesnil). She points out that she would prefer to move to Aubervilliers so as to able to live within ‘her community’: well, this is going to seem bizarre to you, you’re going to say – because I say that I’m detaching myself [from my culture] but I think that I’d like to go to Aubervilliers or Saint-Denis . . . [laughs] . . . why? Because you find that mix, you know, that . . . let’s say, cosmopolitan atmosphere . . . it’s lively . . . When you live in a neighbourhood where there are quite a lot of French people, it’s, there’s no atmosphere, there’s no . . . French

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people . . . I get the impression that they find it difficult to approach others whereas us, with us, it’s not hard to say hello . . . it’s normal . . . They – you get the impression that they’re afraid, I don’t know . . . living with French people, well, I find, it’s, well boring whereas living within your community, well – even if there are things which you don’t tolerate . . . I feel that, warmth, human warmth.21

Aicha is one of the few interviewees to link both a social and cultural dimension with regards to her social and political outlook: ‘well, that they recognise us . . . in terms of culture, in terms of everyday life.’22 She adopts a simultaneous reference to individual–universalist values, fuelling her rejection of exclusion and racism, and an ‘anchoring’ in a more cultural–collectivist dynamic. Aicha’s understanding of recognition is two-fold. On the one hand, she conceptualises recognition in terms of a fuller acceptance of minority North African ‘culture’, and on the other hand she defines recognition in an ‘a-cultural’ manner – that is, she demands a form of recognition which does not take into account any cultural ‘specificity’. This complex position is also apparent in her comments regarding racial discrimination in the workplace: ‘that they [employers] don’t talk to them [employees/young French-North Africans] about integration or, yeah, that we recognise them as French people living in the country and that they have the same rights.’23 So Aicha’s subjectivity is illustrated in her insistence on the importance of the recognition of a culturally defined community and a demand for universal rights. In her balancing act of these two concerns, Aicha is able to mobilise a form of socio-cultural agency. However, Aicha’s potential social and cultural agency is not always so apparent. For example when encouraged to further develop her initial comments with regard to cultural recognition, she reverts back to a more ‘standard’ Republican approach: French society, you’ve seen, it’s very secular. It lets you – like that – set up associations, of all origin so concerning that – nothing’s forbidden. On the contrary. On the contrary. No, as far as that’s concerned, it [French society] lets you, from the moment that everything, everything’s done within the law . . . When all that is respected in France, there’s no problem, you can do what you want. Oh no, as far as that’s concerned, there’s no claim to make. On the contrary. On the contrary. Yeah, there’s a total democracy . . . here in France, . . . it’s great.24

So, here, Aicha adopts a mode of discourse which focuses on the concept of tolerance through civil society associations as opposed to recognition of difference in the mainstream political sphere. This suggests that Aicha does not develop the link she makes between the accordance of greater

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legitimacy to minority ‘cultures’ and their greater social integration into the world of work (and politics) – an issue which she does complain about at some length. Aicha also seems to adopt a ‘tradition versus modernity’ explanation of her experience (‘everything to do with tradition and all that, in the end, suffocates’). This is particularly apparent in the way she describes her relationship with her parents. She therefore highlights one of the more familiar themes – family (especially daughter–parental) conflict. Her allusion to her parents’ opposition to her desire to take French nationality allows her to evoke this conflictual relationship: for them, they still find it difficult to accept that their daughter wants to be naturalised. For them – although it’s only a question of papers . . . it’s difficult all the same to live with parents who follow the mentality of the home country . . . I mean, it’s, they’re still living, twenty years behind so it’s difficult, communicating is difficult.25

Aicha’s conflict with her parents also extends to religious practice since her mother does not easily accept the fact that Aicha does not fast during Ramadan. On this issue, Aicha claims that she has abandoned trying to communicate with her parents, which suggests that her experience is one of rupture rather than negotiation: It’s true that she sees her children not doing Ramadan. That bothers her. It bothers her in relation to her convictions . . . she doesn’t understand, she doesn’t understand. I don’t fight, it’s over [laugh] . . . I’m tired of talking, I’m tired of talking to them. I’m tired because I’ve got the impression that it’s like talking to a wall . . . it’s true that there is actually a generation’s difference so we can’t understand each other . . . no . . . it’s hard.26

So, in some ways, Aicha is creative in the construction of her identity. However, at times she seems to negatively associate her ‘culture d’origine’ uniquely with ‘tradition’, which might suggest that her creativity (or bricolage) is an external mixing up of ‘culture d’origine’ and ‘universalist’ values rather than a re-interpretation of each dimension from within. Aicha can thus be described as being more engaged in a process of bricolage identitaire (identity creativity) rather than a more holistic process of subjectivity or subjectivation because she tends to either situate herself on the communautaire pole or the individualist pole. She has distanced herself from what she calls ‘her culture’, has very personalised views on marriage and relationships, argues that religion should remain in the private sphere, yet claims that she could only have an enduring relationship with a partner of Kabyle origin because of similarity in mentalities. She would also prefer to live in Aubervilliers so as to able to live within ‘her community’. Her difficult relationship with

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her parents (non-communication) could be seen as one of the main reasons for her fragmented subjectivity since it leads her to oscillate even further between these two ‘poles’ in a rather contradictory manner. Mansour Mansour’s fragmented subjectivity is articulated in relation to his attempts to mobilise social agency. He has featured in Chapters 4 and 6 for his individual viewpoints and his experience of racial discrimination (see pp. 103, 151–152). However, it is his role as a social actor which is of particular interest here. Mansour (twenty-two; of Moroccan origin; born in France; dual French–Moroccan nationality) has always lived in Aubervilliers with his parents and siblings. His father, a retired factory worker and mechanic, emigrated to France from Agadir in search of work. His mother formerly worked as a child-minder. Mansour is the youngest but one in a family of ten children. Mansour’s experience of school was rather chaotic (‘Me, personally, the experience I had of school, was that it didn’t give me anything . . . I was a tourist at school’) and since the age of nineteen he has been been working on an emploi jeune basis for the municipality as a local ‘mediator’.27 Mansour is also one of the leading members of a local association, Les Potes de Vandrezanne.28 The association’s main aims are to facilitate dialogue between the elderly and younger residents living in the local cité. The association’s premises are located in one of the cité’s apartment blocks and there young people can access careers advice, computer facilities, a television and a sound system. Mansour and his fellow association committee members also organise sports and music activities for the young people (mostly boys) living in the Vandrezanne cité. It would seem that Mansour’s grand frère (older brother) image within the cité is linked to his involvement in the association. It allows him to become one of the social actors in the neighbourhood. Here Mansour explains the association’s role in relation to an ongoing dispute between two housing estates: we’re respected a little bit around Aubervilliers . . . I know the older ones from their neighbourhood and I try to talk to them. They talk to their young people and we’ll talk to our young people. The first time, it calmed down, and the second time again. We talk to their older ones. We try to sort out all the problems. It calms down, it starts up again. Each time, you only need a spark to start it off again. We only have to go on holiday and that’s it, it starts again, the young people over there, they come here, the young people from here, they go over there. As long as we’re here, the young people from over there don’t come here.29

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However, there is a certain element of ambiguity with regard to Mansour’s involvement in the association. It was not his, nor his associates’ idea to establish Les Potes de Vandrezanne. Rather, those involved in the association already constituted a group of friends who regularly ‘squatted’ the entrance halls and basements of various apartment buildings on the housing estate. The group’s behaviour had become antisocial and certain members were allegedly involved in illicitly lucrative activities such as the breeding of pit-bull dogs. When they were discovered and successfully ousted from the premises, the group requested their own ‘meeting place’ since they felt that they were too old to attend the local maison de jeunes. The municipality agreed that they could be granted an apartment by the OPHLM (the social housing property company) in one of the housing estate’s apartment buildings on the condition that they establish themselves as a 1901 association. Mansour claims that he nominated himself for a leader position because nobody else wanted to do the job and that he would like to be relieved of his responsibilities as soon as possible. So although it does seem that the association has accomplished some positive goals such as organising activities for young people and ameliorating resident–youth tensions (‘. . . now, things are fine with the tenants . . . and now we work with all the young people’30) it should be pointed out that there would seem to be an element of the municipality delegating important socio-cultural work to young underqualified individuals who themselves are rather marginalised. Mansour’s attitude towards the association also suggests that it would be inaccurate to unequivocally describe him as a social actor or as active within a ‘social movement’ paradigm. Mansour explains the difficult task he and his associates are assigned and he points out that they are not necessarily capable of playing the grand frère role: we try to tell them to do certain things. To go to school, to not hang around . . . it’s older brother stuff . . . setting an example. We can’t set an example because we . . . they saw us when we were young like them . . . we were worse than them . . . so we can’t now say to them ‘no no’, to not do things which we did because they’ve already seen us do them.31

This contradictory discourse with regard to his and the association’s role is also apparent when Mansour talks about his own academic/ professional goals. Mansour had wanted to become a lawyer, however, he did not even obtain his BEP (Brevet d’études professionnelles) in mechanics.32 He now claims that his childhood ambitions have been ruined and that it is too late to pursue this career path. On the one hand, he seems to want to take responsibility in a mature manner: ‘I don’t

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reproach anyone for anything. If I’d really wanted to do something, I would have done it, I know . . . I know that I’m capable of a lot of things.’33 He alludes to the difficult relationship he had with his teachers yet he does not seem to think that this had a particularly detrimental effect on his career: ‘when you’re young, your teachers and all that [they tell you] that you’ll never succeed, that you’ll end up a tramp, that you’ll never find a job, that you’ll never be responsible . . . I’d like to see those people today.’34 On the contrary, Mansour considers that he has succeeded and is proud of his achievements: ‘look at me, I’ve become a normal bloke, calm, I’m settled, I live my life.’35 However, at other points in the interview, this apparent self-confidence recedes and a more bitter discourse comes to the fore when we discuss the issue of discrimination: It’s affected me. Well – my childhood dreams – it’s over – before, when you’re young, you don’t pay too much attention to people, the racists all that, your teachers, they’re white and all that, you like them, you say ‘she’s my teacher, he’s my teacher, he’s my youth worker’. Yes, that’s it, but later, when you see, when you think, those people, they didn’t like you really . . . so those people, you think about yourself, you say to yourself, they weren’t the only racists.36

In addition, he further contradicts his earlier comments about responsibility and free choice with regard to what one can achieve when he complains of the lack of job opportunities in Aubervilliers and SeineSaint-Denis: the only jobs on offer here are tiling, deliveries . . . warehouse operative, those are the four jobs [sic] or in security . . . it’s not great. They’re not jobs I saw myself doing when I was young . . . well, we don’t choose what we become in any case.37

Mansour’s narration of his sense of identity is also contradictory in nature. For example, he seems to distance himself somewhat from his family’s practice of Islam and from Morocco, yet he seems to have a less elastic stance when it comes to his self-definition. When asked whether he is a practising Muslim, Mansour answers in the following manner: ‘I’m not too into religion. As I told you, I do Ramadan, I know that there’s a God who’s watching us, that we’re going to be judged and at home, they’re practising, they’re really practising.’38 He therefore makes a point of distinguishing his own practice from that of his family. However, this more subjective or bricoleur relationship to his ‘cultural community’ is later contradicted when discussing Mansour’s self-perception. In this respect, he reverts to a more assigned mode of identification:

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Oh me, I’m Moroccan, Moroccan, Moroccan . . . In any case, you can’t change that. My father is Moroccan, my mother is Moroccan. I’m Moroccan, Moroccan! . . . there is an identity check, I take out my French identity card and they ask me, I say I’m from Morocco.39

Mansour can thus be seen as someone who is trying to be a social actor (or an agent actif in the ‘Tourainian’ sense) through his job, his role in the association and through his self-reliance and sense of responsibility: I don’t ask anyone for anything. I’m trying to sort myself out all on my own. Like that, later, when I’ve made it, I’ll say to myself that I sorted myself out on my own. I don’t owe anyone anything, it’s better to be like that . . . You shouldn’t become a dependant, because people in life are too dependent. I’m not going to become a dependant.40

However, this sense of responsibility can be seen to be a double-edged sword because it means that Mansour does not articulate any demands for recognition. He also expresses his subjectivity in terms of a personalised approach to Islam, through a sense of religious practice which departs from that of his family. However, his subjectivity becomes fragmented when he becomes despondent about his unfulfilled childhood aspirations and his sense of ascribed ethnicity. Indeed, his experience of school, which he left before obtaining a BEP or baccalaureate, and his resulting employment situation, may make it difficult for Mansour to engage in a process of subjectivity. He also seems to have internalised a very negative and chaotic image of the banlieue as an environment which necessarily hinders the achievements of its young inhabitants: ‘They’ve created, what they’ve created are . . . they’re ghettos, the housing estates are ghettos.’41

Thwarted subjectivity Mahmoud Mahmoud (see p. 120) is studying for his bac pro mécanique-auto the Lycée Van Gogh. He was born in France, as were both his parents, who are of Algerian origin (his mother is half-French, half-Algerian). Thus Mahmoud is one of a minority of interviewees who can be described as part of the ‘third generation’. He holds dual French–Algerian nationality. Mahmoud’s father, who is now dead, formerly worked as a municipal gardener. His mother works as an elderly persons’ assistant for the town council. Mahmoud is the eldest of three siblings.

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Mahmoud does not engage in a process of subjectivation. The three ‘axes’ of the ideal-type version or model of subjectivity serve once more as an analytical tool. In terms of the first of these ‘axes’ (i.e. circulation around the different poles of the ‘triangle of identity’), Mahmoud tends to hover incessantly over the communautaire pole and this despite his apparent attempts to position himself on the individual–universalist pole at varying points during the interview. For example, at the start of the interview Mahmoud wants to emphasise his ‘third-generation’ status and he therefore highlights his family’s long-standing relationship with France. Later, he argues that it is important to participate in electoral politics so as to be able to combat racism, despite the fact that he does not himself vote although he is on the electoral register: ‘We should vote. Why? To reduce racism. If all Arabs voted, that would be good.’ When Fayçal points out that he would much rather vote in Tunisia (despite also being from a ‘third-generation’ background), Mahmoud attempts to convince Fayçal why he should vote in France instead: You’re going to vote over there but you live here. There’s no point . . . for the moment, your future is here. Well why do you want to elect there? A mayor, I don’t know, a president, he won’t do anything for you . . . you should always vote here. It’s here that you vote. It’s here that you have to get rid of Le Pen votes. . . . Wait – you’re going to vote in Tunisia, but in Tunisia, you’re never there. You live in France . . . You’re in Tunisia for one month in the year.42

However, although he seems at both these points of the interview to be subscribing to the individual–universalist pole of the triangle as well as to a dynamic of social action, since he argues that he would want to make his revendications as a ‘jeune’ and as ‘arabe’, the overall picture that one obtains of Mahmoud is that of a young man who feels stigmatised by dominant group discourse. Although he does assert his ‘third-generation’ status at the start of the interview, it does seem that Mahmoud’s sense of self is, to a certain extent, ascribed to him by ‘white’ French society. For example, as briefly touched upon in Chapter 5, when asked how he sees himself, Mahmoud’s response reveals a rather passive and despondent stance: ‘I see myself according to how I’m judged – as an Arab. I see myself as an Arab. If I was considered as French, I’d see myself as French.’43 Furthermore, despite his initial insistence on the importance of participating in electoral politics, he is subsequently ‘beaten into submission’ by his peer and fellow interviewee, Fayçal and changes his position: ‘The day I vote, when will that be? When I need housing. I’ve been told that when you vote, it’s good for housing, looking for housing. You have to vote and everything. In that case, I’d vote maybe,

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but otherwise, no, I’m not interested and here’s not my country.’44 This statement is entirely contradictory with his earlier criticisms of Fayçal’s refusal to vote in France and would appear to be the result of peer pressure exerted by Fayçal. Since Mahmoud oscillates between the individual–universalist and the collective–community poles, this has an effect on his ability to be creative in terms of his own identity. For example, although he was born in Paris and has lived in the Seine-Saint-Denis département all his life, he unquestioningly reproduces his parents’ (or, rather, his grand-parents’) residential pattern and argues that he would like to retire to Algeria since as he puts it ‘that’s the immigrants’ dream’45 (see Chapter 5). When I question this casual reference to his desire to ‘return’ to Algeria and build a house there as his permanent retirement residence, his answer reveals a certain despondency: ‘France isn’t our country . . . when you see how people look at you on the underground.’46 Furthermore, although Mahmoud argues for the advantages of political participation in elections to reduce racism and envisages ‘les Arabes’ as a positive collective actor, this is quashed by peer pressure and his rather pessimistic outlook regarding racial discrimination (see Chapter 6, p. 151). Discrimination is a recurrent theme during the interview with Mahmoud and when asked about the political claims he would make, racism is central in the formulation of his demands. However, the articulation of these demands reveals a rather passive stance: ‘If you give things to young people, they won’t hang around in the street. Go and give them a job, they won’t hang around in the street.’47 This passivity is most likely born out of his own disillusionment, which is reflected in his near-certainty that his ‘French-origin’ counterparts find work more easily than someone of his background. However, Mahmoud’s disillusionment, although dominant, is not all-consuming. Indeed, his attitude seems to be rather contradictory because, on the one hand, he claims that it is nearly impossible for him to obtain a work placement or employment yet, on the other hand, he seems fairly confident of his chances of finding a job since he claims that he would prefer to abandon his further education plans and find work immediately: I’m going to try the BTS . . . if I like it, if it’s not too difficult, I’m going to carry on . . . and if it gets on my nerves . . . too much, I’ll stop, find a job . . . in this sector . . . I know I won’t have any problem finding a job.48

In addition to his contradictory statements and rather passive stances, Mahmoud also seems to have internalised the negative stereotypes about young French-North Africans. When we discuss the issue of discrimination, he alludes to tensions between young and elderly

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residents on his housing estate, yet he argues that elderly people are entitled to be suspicious of young men of non-European descent: The racists – you have to understand them too . . . When you see the Arabs – they steal old ladies’ handbags . . . they’re not wrong to be a little bit racist sometimes, actually . . . When the French are just outside their building . . . they see Mohamed and Karim and Mamadou downstairs. They don’t see Jean-Luc and Jean-Claude. They only see Arabs stuffing things up. They’re not wrong either.49

So Mahmoud cannot be described as engaging extensively in a process of subjectivation. He appears to oscillate between individual and community; he situates himself most clearly on the community–collective pole, identifying mostly with a ‘we Arabs/‘us as young people’ paradigm. Although he shows signs of wanting to become a social (or sociocultural) actor with regard to electoral politics he is swiftly ‘put back in his place’ by his fellow interviewee and peer, Fayçal. This ‘thwarted subjectivity’ is most likely the result of a number of factors including his internalisation of certain negative images about his origins and his school (‘it was a high school dumping ground’50) which has led to a certain lack of confidence in himself, in his surrounding environment and in wider French society. In addition, as we have seen, he comes under a significant amount of pressure from Fayçal to project a certain image to the outsider/researcher. Nabila Nabila (see p. 122) was born in France to Moroccan parents and she holds dual French–Moroccan nationality. Her father is an employee at the Charles de Gaulle airport and her mother does not work. Nabila was interviewed with four other young women (her classmates), three of whom are of North African origin and one who is from a Guinean/ French background. Nabila’s ‘thwarted’ subjectivity is expressed mostly in terms of an unquestioning reproduction of certain roles or models of behaviour. This becomes apparent through her interactions with peers who are also of North African origin. When asked whether she understands or speaks Arabic, she is keen to demonstrate her linguistic abilities to the other young women who are more hesitant about the issue of language and their levels of fluency. Nabila interrupts my question about language use: ‘Yeah, fluently. Arabic at home, all the time with my parents and my brothers and sisters.’ Fellow interviewee, Salikha comments on Nabila’s remark: ‘That’s bizarre I find. At my house, it’s mixed’, thus revealing her surprise.51 Nabila’s stance reflects her opinion that speaking

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one’s parents’ language fluently and using it with one’s siblings is an évidence, to be expected. Of course, many North African families do use Arabic or Amazigh at home, especially when the parents’ knowledge of French is limited. However, it is Nabila’s demonstrative approach which suggests that she might be trying to impose some sort of unity on the group (that is, the other interviewees). Her approach to religion and religious observance also reflects her apparent belief that these matters are ‘obvious’. I begin to formulate a question about religious beliefs (‘As far as religion is concerned . . .’) and Nabila pre-empts the nature of the question, thus finishing it off for me: ‘Whether we practice our parents’ religion, is that it?’ Her focus on the notion of practice as opposed to beliefs, as well the centrality of her parents in the equation, reveals a rather inherited approach to Islam, as does her rapid and simple response to the question she herself formulates: ‘Well yeah!’52 Nabila’s stance seems to be further confirmed by her reaction to classmate Bintou’s comments about North African families giving their children North African forenames as contrasted with Asian (Cambodian/ Vietnamese) families who often give their children French forenames. Nabila resists Bintou’s argument that by giving their children French names, Asian parents are giving their children a ‘better start’ in life. Nabila’s reaction is limited to the notion of roles and rules: ‘But for Arabs and Muslims, it’s religion that forbids it.’53 Nabila talks about her experiences in a manner which suggests that she sees herself, and wants to be seen by her fellow interviewees and peers as a practising Muslim, as well as authentically loyal to her ‘origins’. Nabila’s stance and eagerness to reply to my questions might suggest of course, that she is telling me what she thinks I, as the researcher, would like to hear. On the other hand, her reactions do also seem to point to a certain rigidity. The demonstrative nature of Nabila’s statements means that she tends to articulate the collective–community pole above all. It is also interesting to analyse her ‘position’ within the discussion group, for it would seem that her demonstrative approach reflects her position as a ‘leader’ who tries to enforce group unity among her peers. She often replies or attempts to reply on behalf of her classmates and uses the collective pronoun, ‘on’ (‘we’) as though the five young women were somehow a homogeneous group with identical relationships to their family backgrounds. So while Nabila can be described as a group unity ‘enforcer’, Mahmoud is someone who is ultimately subjected to group unity ‘enforcement’. Why does Nabila present her experiences as simply part and parcel of a set of practices and norms? This could be due to her relatively

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young age. She is not at risk of becoming socially excluded since she is on course to obtain her baccalaureate and is confident that she will be accepted to study law at university. So, unlike many of the interviewees whose subjectivity can be described as fragmented or thwarted, in Nabila’s case, social exclusion, or fear of social exclusion, cannot be cited as an explanation. However, the interview dynamic and the group situation may both be factors since it would seem that Nabila tries to present herself as more ‘authentic’ than her peers. Her condemnation of her peers’ bricolé approach to Islam is an example of this: ‘Actually, there are people who say that they’re Muslim but who don’t necessarily respect religion . . . once there’s something which doesn’t suit them, then they forget . . . they take what suits them.’54 So despite the group interview context and the limited number of topics under discussion, it would appear that Nabila does not engage in a process of subjectivity. It would not have been possible in this chapter to discuss in detail all of the forty-six interviewees. Two portraits were drawn of interviewees who can be described as subjects (Myriam, Djamel) and likewise the chapter detailed two interviewees whose subjectivity is more fragmented in nature (Aicha, Mansour). It would have been possible to add more interviewees to each category. Those who did not engage in a process of subjectivation were in a minority (only four individuals out of fortysix) but the young men did outweigh the young women by three to one. Furthermore, although the portraits on pp. 159–173 suggest that gender was not a tangible variable (in both sections, one man and one woman were discussed), the female interviewees who articulated extensive degrees of subjectivity and fragmented subjectivity were in fact more numerous than their male counterparts. All in all, the most common type of subjectivity among the interviewees was fragmented which, of course, confirms the idea that it is not possible to fix people into ‘boxes’ of identity once and for all. Those who articulated very little subjectivity expressed their experiences in terms of a collective– community dynamic – that is, if they were restricted on one pole, it was consistently the community pole as opposed to the individual– universalist pole. As detailed in the Introduction and throughout this chapter, subjectivity can be understood in three ways, or according to three registers: (1) circulation around the triangular model of identity/ethnicity (Wieviorka 1993a); (2) creativity and reinterpretation – le bricolage identitaire (Bastide 1970) and (3) the capacity to see oneself as part of a collective actor (social or cultural), or as part of a collective movement, however unstructured and loose the notion of ‘movement’ might be (Touraine and Khosrokhavar 2000).

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In terms of circulation around the ‘triangle of identity’, most of the interviewees discussed in this chapter clearly articulate more than one aspect of their identity. In relation to the idea of the reinterpretation of a system of values, in many cases, the interviewees’ experiences represent a subjective or creative approach to the notion of roles, whether these are collective–community or individual–universalist/Republican codes. These original and unprecedented choices may govern interviewees’ attitudes to marriage; their (parents’) country of ‘origin’; their immediate family and certain aspects of their family’s life-style; in terms of how they define themselves but, most of all, in relation to Islam. The young women in particular are creative regarding religion since they can be described as articulating an ‘original’ or personalised approach to Islam.55 The men are less likely than their female counterparts to be part of a process of subjectivation where Islam is concerned and they tend rather to focus on the notion of rules and rites to be observed – that is, on ‘religion’ rather than ‘religiosity’, to borrow Simmel’s (1997) analysis once more.56 The third register of subjectivation proves to be more problematic. While they may mobilise a sense of individual agency through a desire to ‘get on’, it is difficult to argue that young people of North African origin living in a socially deprived banlieue context form any sort of social or cultural movement. The challenge of moving from individual subjectivities to a collective subjective identity or imaginaire will be discussed in Chapter 8, the final chapter.

Notes 1 See Introduction to Werbner (1997: 1–26) and Hutnyk (1997: 106–136). 2 See Guénif Souilamas (2000), where she also uses the term le bricolage to refer to the process of reinterpretation of roles. 3 Interview with Myriam, 20/03/01. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Historically the eleventh arrondissement of Paris housed many workers; however, today it is significantly less ‘working-class’ than Aubervilliers and Seine-Saint-Denis. 11 As a leading member of a football association in Aubervilliers, Djamel has close ties with the town.

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12 Interview with Djamel, 15/05/01. SNCF is the Société nationale des chemins de fer, the French national railway company. 13 Interview with Djamel, 15/05/01. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 See Guénif Souilamas (2000: 124–139) in the section entitled, ‘Une figure brisée, le père’, for further discussion of immigrant fathers receding into the background. 18 Interview with Djamel, 15/05/01. 19 Interview with Aicha, 12/12/00, 14/12/00. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. See Guénif Souilamas (2000). 27 Interview with Mansour, 29/03/01. As a mediator, Mansour is employed by the Aubervilliers municipality to patrol the town and resolve potential tensions between residents, neighbours and youths. 28 This association name is a pseudonym. 29 Interview with Mansour, 29/03/01. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 A BEP, a pre-baccalaureate qualification, is equivalent to a certificate of technical education. 33 Interview with Mansour, 29/03/01. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. Gibb (2002: 151–152) writes about the interplay between external categorisation and internal identification in a book review of Wieviorka (2001). 40 Many of the young men who were interviewed as part of the field-study tended to perceive themselves as ‘old’, and the notion of growing up very fast compared to their French or Parisian counterparts is prevalent. Many male interviewees therefore seem to be trapped in a discourse where they claim that they are mature and need to start earning a living yet they are frustrated because they cannot fully assume these responsibilities due to unemployment or the galère situation they find themselves in (short-term contracts, precarious jobs, etc.). Age and maturity in the banlieue context is therefore a central theme, particularly among the young men.

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41 Interview with Mansour, 29/03/01. Since the interview with Mansour, the Potes de Vandrezanne ceased to exist, about a year or so after its establishment. Mansour now works as a security guard, is married and has a young child. 42 Both quotations are drawn from the interview with Fayçal, Mahmoud and Razak, 13/09/01. 43 Interview with Fayçal, Mahmoud and Razak, 13/09/01. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Both quotations are drawn from the interview with Bintou, Karine, Nabila, Nour and Salikha, 19/10/00. 52 Quotations from interview with Bintou, Karine, Nabila, Nour and Salikha, 19/10/00. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 This is the case of those already mentioned in this chapter in addition to Fawzia, Idaya, Malika, Nacira, Salima and Samira. 56 Male interviewees who fall into this category include Abdel, Abdel Majid, Ahmed, Fayçal, Mahmoud, Majdi, Tayeb and Yasser.

8

From individual to collective subjectivities?

Introduction Chapter 7 revealed that a number of interviewees mobilise a sense of individual subjectivity and agency. However, what about the question of mobilising a collective sense of subjectivity or agency? It has already been pointed out that a process of individual subjectivation involves an, albeit difficult, reconciliation of individual and community, of social and cultural specificities. Do young French-North Africans enter into this process of subjectivation on a collective level? In other words, do they imagine themselves as a collective actor which, in the public sphere, may be defined by a dual social and cultural specificity (banlieusard and North African)? One might attempt to answer this question by focusing on the interviewees’ attitudes and experiences regarding two phenomena: electoral politics and alternative modes of political participation, such as in civil society associations.1 While these are two sites for the possible ‘passage’ from individual to collective subjectivities, they are not the only ones. However, both electoral politics and associational participation concerned the interviewees and revealed quite clearly how they imagined themselves in relation to the public sphere. By focusing on the question of the shift from individual to collective subjectivity, we are able to gauge better whether young French-North Africans who live in a stigmatised suburban setting could potentially become a social movement which advocates social and cultural change within the contours of the Republican political process. Both the notions of ‘social movement’ and ‘political process’ are being used here in the broadest sense, where ‘social movement’ reflects the emergence of a collective imaginaire which might struggle to overcome social and cultural discrimination and ‘political process’ refers to classic modes of participation in elections as well as to more diffuse modes of participation in civil society associations.

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Young French-North Africans and the political One of the questions developed in interviews with young people of North African origin related to revendications, or demands. Interviewees were asked if they had any social or political claims and how they positioned themselves socially and culturally in relation to these. For many of the interviewees, and especially for the younger men and women, these demands remained within the realm of the hypothetical since they were not politically active in any sense of the term. As a result, my understanding of the term revendication became much broader and incorporated the notion of how interviewees presented and projected their personal aspirations.2 Some interviewees claimed that in terms of their political and social demands, they saw themselves in universalist, ‘colour-blind’ terms. Ahmed (see p. 250) was born in France and his parents are Tunisian. When Ahmed was four, he moved back to Tunisia with his family, returning to La Courneuve (a town bordering Aubervilliers) when he was fifteen. Ahmed holds Tunisian nationality only. Abdel Majid (see p. 250), who is Ahmed’s classmate, was also born in France; his parents are Algerian and he holds dual French–Algerian nationality. Although the two young men have rather different life trajectories, in that Abdel Majid has grown up entirely in the Seine-Saint-Denis département (Bobigny, a town neighbouring Aubervilliers) and Ahmed has spent most of his adolescent years in Tunisia, both express rather similar views with regard to social and political demands. They both argue that it is preferable to make social and political claims ‘just as a young person . . . just a place for young people, that’s all . . .’ (Ahmed). Abdel Majid echoes this by claiming that his main demand is as follows: ‘Well – to give some room to young people, jobs.’3 Their revendications are of a social nature, in that they apply to a certain socio-economic category of the population and because they are concerned above all with gaining access to employment. However, they do not openly recognise that there may be a divide between those youths of North African origin and those who are not, despite both young men’s repeated references to their experience of racial discrimination. It would seem, then, that these two interviewees adopt certain Republican and universalist norms, namely that political or social demands should be made by the ‘culturally unattached’ citizen, rather than by a citizen who draws attention to his/her difference. Idaya (seventeen; pupil in première ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso) presents a similar attitude to Ahmed and Abdel Majid.4 She was born in Aubervilliers and has lived there all her life. Both her parents are Moroccan and she has dual French–Moroccan nationality. Idaya argues

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that she would make political and social claims ‘just as a young person’ which would indicate that, in terms of revendications, she wants to participate as a universal citizen.5 While some of the interviewees whose individual subjectivities were discussed in Chapter 7 may appear to see themselves as part of a wider subjective imaginaire of young French-North Africans with social and cultural claims, they remain in a minority. When Touran (see p. 255), who otherwise engages in a process of individual subjectivation, is asked about his revendications, and on what basis he would make them, he reacted quite strongly and claimed: Me – just as a young person because young people here – there are French people in my neighbourhood who are working as hard as me . . . it’s obvious so, no, as a young person, neither North African, nor Muslim . . . I’m asking for more resources for young people, more social workers, more support, just as young person. After that, where I’m from, who I am, which God I pray to, that’s everyone’s own business . . . it’s the same thing for everyone, whether it’s Paul, Touran, Mohamed . . . no it’s the individual as a member of society first, that – his/her experience, that’s personal.6

So Touran seems to adopt a very Republican approach. His stance reflects what Wieviorka refers to as the social dimension of the ‘pole of individualism’ in that he is an actor who refuses social exclusion and unequal resources (Wieviorka 1993a: 125). However, although Touran recognises that the standard of living in Aubervilliers is not the same as in the bourgeois sixteenth arrondissement (which he takes as his main Parisian reference), he refuses to openly recognise that although the main clivage (divide) which exists between these two places is socio-economic, it is also ethnic, in the sense that there exists a tacit understanding among interviewees that when they refer to Paris, especially the more bourgeois arrondissements, they are referring to ‘les Français’ and when they talk about the banlieue, they are generally referring to ‘les immigrés’. It is his unwillingness to openly accept this divide which leads him to reject the notion of making social demands on behalf of young people of North African or Sub-Saharan African origin. By claiming that ‘no it’s the individual as a member of society first’, it appears that Touran is subscribing to a universalist or Republican outlook whereby the private and public spheres of identity are kept separate. Mansour (see p. 254), like Touran, reacts rather defensively to the question of whether he would make social or political demands as a young person of North African origin or rather as a young person with no particular community or ethnic affiliation. Thus, for Mansour, desiring to be a universal individual becomes a self-protective mechanism: ‘No,

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no. Me – if I’ve got something to ask for, it’s as a human. Me – I’m a human being like everyone else.’7 Although Myriam clearly engages in a process of individual subjectivity (see Chapter 7), it is not possible to claim that she could potentially be part of a collective imaginaire (social movement) as it is defined by Touraine (1992: 282) since although she does express some annoyance at the stigmatisation of ‘les Arabes’, she generally does not see the need to react against this and demand particular recognition of such a state of affairs: ‘No, something to claim, no, me – I’m Kabyle, I’m Muslim, I’m proud of it and I’ve got my life, I live it at home, I wear what I want so as far as I’m concerned, it’s OK.’8 In a similar manner, even though Aicha is able to recognise the need for social and cultural recognition of immigrant-origin populations in their everyday lives, she does not see any need for formalised measures or revendications which would go in this direction (see Chapter 7, p. 168). Furthermore, although Mahmoud initially claims that it is important for young North Africans to vote in order to stem FN successes, he is later pressurised by his peer to argue rather that the benefits of voting are purely about individual gain in the form of social housing (see Chapter 7, p. 174). Two remarks can be made about the social and political claims that are put forward by the interviewees. First, it is not clear that their attitudes reflect the emergence of a collective imaginaire or subjectivity based on cultural and social specificities because they do not articulate demands for social and cultural recognition. Secondly, it should be noted that a significant number of interviewees seemed rather confused by this issue; they did not seem to have any social or political demands and a fairly common response was: ‘I don’t know, I’ve never had any claims, I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it.’9 or ‘No, personally, I haven’t got any claims to make.’10 So it would seem, then, that the young people in question are unfamiliar with the notion of articulating social or political demands. Indeed, two of the older interviewees confirm this observation. Sara (see p. 249), an animatrice of Moroccan origin who works with a significant proportion of the younger interviewees at a local maison de jeunes comments that: ‘No, there isn’t much, there’s no big claim.’11 Likewise, Djamel (see p. 251), a conseiller principal d’éducation of Algerian origin, reflects on the differences between his generation and the current sixteen to twenty-five age bracket: ‘these young people have become individualist and I think [that] what they want is the ability to be individualist with a certain material comfort, that’s it.’12 This is certainly the case of a number of young male interviewees who have dropped out or are threatening

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to drop out of school education because they feel that earning money should be their main goal in life, rather than obtaining academic and/or vocational qualifications. Let us consider for example, Nasser’s comments about money. Nasser (see p. 254), who was born in Algeria, brought to France at the age of one and lives in Hemet, Aubervilliers, talks about his reasons for leaving his lycée professionnel where he had been studying to obtain a baccalaureate professionnel to become an electrician: ‘I’ve got to work now. I’ve got to make money . . . When asked what sort of job he would like he replies: ‘everything where’s there’s money.’ When asked about his friendships he replies in a similar manner: ‘No, I don’t need friends, me. They don’t give you money . . . Without money, you’re nothing.’13 Mahmoud and Fayçal also talk about their desire to ‘make’ money which they see as more important than finishing their studies: ‘I prefer to have money . . . I think more about straight away’ (Mahmoud). Fayçal then adds: ‘that’s it, I’d prefer to get up every morning and go out and make money, rather than come here and waste my time.’14 Mansour reflects on how young men are under pressure to earn money: ‘here, when you’re sixteen years old, it’s like you were twenty-two years old . . . i.e. people are already thinking about earning money . . . when you’ve got money, you’re respected.’15 The reactions of the interviewees and the comments of Djamel and Sara suggest that the notion of the formal citizen claim is rather distant from the young men and women who were interviewed. Although the vast majority do actually make social or political claims, these are articulated in rather more diffuse terms. That is, they are voiced as general frustrations with the education system in the suburbs, or as disillusionment due to racial discrimination (see Chapter 6). Closely linked to the notion of la revendication is the question of political participation, which can be understood in two ways. First, it can be defined in classic terms where the individual citizen regularly votes in party political elections or may even be a member of a political party or movement. It can also be understood in more broad terms to include various ‘citizen activities’ – such as participation in a demonstration, attending political meetings, or being involved in an association. Interviewees were asked if they were registered to vote and if they voted in elections. Many of the forty-six interviewees were ineligible to vote, either because of their age or because they did not hold French nationality. Out of the sample, fifteen were eligible to vote, seven women and eight men. Only seven of the fifteen eligible interviewees (four men and three women) actually vote in elections. Although it would seem that gender does not influence whether the interviewees vote or not, it does seem to have a bearing on the ways .

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in which they perceive their own participation in electoral politics. In other words, whereas the young men seem to be fairly self-confident about their involvement, the young women tend to present their action as more random in character. In addition, they seem to be more likely than their male counterparts to claim that they are more or less ‘politically illiterate’. Consider for example, the contrast between Larbi’s and Malika’s respective account of their own electoral participation. Larbi (see p. 253) was born in Algiers and arrived in France when he was four. He holds dual French–Algerian nationality. Malika (see p. 246) was born in France and has dual French–Moroccan nationality. Larbi claims that: ‘voting’s important . . . if it can change something, create something.’16 Malika’s response is quite different: ‘I vote mostly for the president, that’s for sure, . . . frankly, sometimes – me – I’m for the workers’ party but frankly, it’s my older sister who helps me. I’m not so into politics, but – I find it difficult.’17 Whereas Larbi thinks that he is capable of ‘creating’ something through his voting, Malika simply focuses on her scant knowledge of the French political landscape. This contrast is also evident if we compare the different ways in which Djamel, Samira and Salima present their political participation. Djamel contrasts his own past to those individuals of high school age today: ‘I don’t really know what young people want today. I know what I wanted in my time . . . because I was politically active, I had ideas, I mean, I had something.’18 Samira and Salima play down their involvement. Samira (see p. 249) was born and brought up in Seine-Saint-Denis and holds dual French–Algerian nationality); like Malika, she refers to how her sister helps her decide who to vote for: I’m registered to vote, I vote in the presidential elections but frankly, I’m not really into politics. I hate politics and well, I don’t have a party, I’m for neither one nor the other, I observe and afterwards, that’s it really . . . I vote because that’s it, you have to vote but . . . generally for the big elections, I go along even if I haven’t got any idea, there’s my sister, I follow my sister.’19

Salima (see p. 248), an aide – éducatrice with dual French–Algerian nationality, also presents herself as a somewhat confused voter: ‘how can I put it? I prefer to vote um . . . so that someone else doesn’t steal my voice. I.e., I vote for the person who seems the fairest . . . it’s so complicated . . . I don’t know, I don’t even know their names.’20 Not all interviewees are able or willing to vote in elections. However, this does not mean that they cannot be described as politically engaged in any way. Both Mahmoud (see p. 253), who was born in Paris and has dual French–Algerian nationality) and Yasser (see p. 256), who

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emigrated from Algeria, lives in Pré-Saint-Gervais and plans to request French nationality, exemplify a certain awareness of the political process. Neither Mahmoud nor Yasser vote. Although Mahmoud thinks that voting could stem FN votes (see Chapter 7), ultimately he does not see the point of it (‘they’re big liars’). Yasser does not vote because he does not hold French nationality. However, they can still be described as participating individuals who demand more social inclusion. They live on socially deprived housing estates and complain of the lack of facilities for young people, and both speak about their efforts to negotiate with their respective mayors for more facilities. Mahmoud’s frustration was transformed into action: ‘we’d like certain things. They don’t want to . . . for years now we’ve been asking them for a football ground . . . we’ve been asking for years. . . . We asked for a little space so we could meet up . . . they never wanted to.’21 In a similar manner, Yasser was able to transform his frustrations about the lack of facilities for young people into a negotiating situation: ‘Yeah, we arranged an appointment with the mayor and all that . . . him, me and a friend of mine, we went there, we said to them, “that’s enough, we’re fed up.” ’ However, it would seem that this initial and potentially positive conflictualisation of the relationship between Yasser and the local municipality (although clearly based on social specificity alone) was not maintained, since his frustrations descended into violence: ‘we started vandalising everything. We did the police station over. Afterwards, well, the mayor got fed up’.22 Despite these frustrated experiences, the creation in April 2005 of a local youth council (Conseil local de jeunes d’Aubervilliers, CLJA) by the Aubervilliers municipality in response to the demands of young people would seem to suggest the development of a forum for active dialogue with young people aged between thirteen and twenty-five.23 The council (which exists in other towns across Seine-Saint-Denis such as Bobigny, La Courneuve and Stains) consists of seventy-two young members and is divided up into four commissions (Youth; Citizenship and Solidarity; Environment and Urbanism; Sport and Leisure). The themes of the different commissions were chosen by the young people themselves and they meet bi-monthly and once every quarter with the Mayor, Pascal Beaudet, in a plenary session.24 The current president of the CLJA, ‘Selma’, points out that the members of the council have embarked on quite a steep learning curve since they started deliberating and debating with the Mayor and other locally elected councillors. They started off discussing ‘small’ issues regarding their immediate living space and have, as time has gone on, gained confidence in order to discuss broader issues, as reflected in the creation of four wide-ranging commissions:

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We feel like the CLJA has developed because at the start, we asked . . . ‘can you do this for our housing estate . . .?’ We were on a small, inferior scale . . . young people ask for a development at the level of their housing estate, their living space and after that we developed . . . it’s now also about commissions . . . we have created several commissions . . . we make ourselves heard and it works.25

So while one of the first minor ‘victories’ for the members of the CLJA was the building of a water fountain on one of the estates, debates have developed around broader socio-economic and political issues such as the Contrat première embauche (CPE) – a national government initiative to introduce a new labour law), the riots of 2005, unemployment and racial discrimination. Both the president of the CLJA and the Mayor of Aubervilliers mention the CPE and the young people’s mobilisation against it as a key defining moment in the youth – municipality dialogue. Indeed, the fact that the CPE law was introduced by a rightwing government and was opposed by the Communist mayor (PCF), Pascal Beaudet, and many young people in Aubervilliers and nationally, allowed for what Beaudet describes as ‘a little rapprochement with the young people . . . young people were highly mobilised . . . we helped them.’26 Another example of growing youth engagement with politics was the organisation of a soirée citoyenne (‘citizen evening’) on 20 December 2006 by a group of university students based in Aubervilliers who have created their own association, Hors Cadre, which focuses on changing the negative media image of young people from the banlieue through the making of documentaries and short films. The association’s president, a twenty-year-old student from Aubervilliers of Algerian origin, studying at Villetaneuse University and planning to apply to the prestigious Institut d’études politiques in Paris, organised an event where young Aubervilliers residents (aged eighteen to twenty-five) were invited to come and debate about the importance of voting in elections. While the 2007 presidential elections were the immediate driving force behind the idea, the evening was more about discussing the general benefits of voting in a range of elections. Local youth coordinator, ‘Saïd’, helped the association organise the evening, which consisted of a panel of experts including a sociologist, a political scientist, a lawyer and a film-maker. The association members had interviewed and filmed a number of young people about the importance of voting and projected their report as well as a short animated film. This was followed by an open debate around two main themes: political representation and accessibility. As Khir-Din, the president and founder of the association explains:

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We said to ourselves that we should organise an event to raise awareness among young people about the vote . . . behind this, there was a big event in France – the riots and the 2002 elections . . . we wanted to organise this evening so that young people understand the importance of going out to vote . . . not who to vote for.27

The evening was successful in attracting between eighty and one hundred young people and was the first time such an event had been organised by the initiative of young people themselves. No partisan line was adopted – indeed, Khir-Din points out that the organisers had wanted the evening’s discussion to remain politically neutral and for that reason no elected politicians were invited. In a similar fashion to the CLJA, political neutrality is the norm. So both these versions of youth citizenship are resolutely non-party political.

Young French-North Africans and associations A high proportion of interviewees (thirty-one – eighteen young women and thirteen young men) are, or have at some point been, involved in associations either as volunteers, employees, or as ‘users’ of the services associations may provide. As mentioned above, associations can be seen as an alternative, more diffuse mode of political participation which may or may not reflect the emergence of a collective actor or movement in the Tourainian sense of the challenging of unequal power relations. So can the involvement of the interviewees in associations point to the emergence of a collective imaginaire? Does their involvement signal a subjective articulation of the cultural and social specificities which characterise the experiences of French-North Africans in the banlieue? In order to answer this question it is, of course, necessary to consider which types of associations the interviewees become involved in, and in what capacity. Before doing so, it is useful to consider briefly the historical development of associations and their political potential. Associations in historical perspective Martine Barthélemy traces the historical development of associations from their ‘pre-history’ in the eighteenth century up until the passing of the famous 1901 law, which legalised the right to associate (Barthélemy 2000). She argues that what we call ‘associations’ today have been intrinsically linked with the workers’ movement, syndicalism and the transformations in political organisation which accompanied the development of socialist ideas. Barthélemy also shows that the recognition of the notion

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of a ‘social’ citizenship, as opposed to the more classic ‘political’ citizenship which historically excluded many groups such as women and still excludes non-EU nationals, can be seen as the background to the legal recognition of the right of individuals to associate. In July 1901, the right to form an association was legalised. Barthélemy cites Jean-Paul Martin, who argues that from the outset, ‘good’ associations were seen to be those that would become ‘schools of democracy’ and work in tandem with the State in the general interest.28 Barthélemy shows that associations are generally viewed in two ways. On the one hand, some would argue that associations are: ‘the extension of institutional powers, notably the Church, the State and the local authorities, which regulate and favour their action, with the objective of ensuring individuals’ adaptation and social integration: associational vitality is therefore part of a strategy of social control’ (Barthélemy 2000: 59). On the other hand, associations can be envisaged as civil society’s constant check or counter-balance to government and the State, thus amounting to ‘an expression of civil society’s autonomy’ (Barthélemy 2000: 59). On 9 October 1981 the newly elected socialist government passed a law which ended the restrictions on foreign nationals wishing to set up their own association in France. This meant that immigrant associations would now be governed by the 1901 legislation as well. This new law, coupled with decentralisation and the general clamouring for ‘new citizenship’ and participative democracy, led to a large increase in the numbers of associations in the 1980s.29 As we saw in Chapter 2, in their study of North African immigrant associations, Catherine Wihtol de Wenden and Rémy Leveau write about three ‘associational generations’. They argue that the first generation of associations and their leaders, which emerged in the 1970s, can be seen as strongly linked to the trade union and migrant worker movement. The second generation is described as being very much a part of the ‘beur’ movement of the 1980s. The third generation emerged during the 1990s, in the wake of the failure of certain individuals, who were part of the marche des beurs movement, to make the transition into the political mainstream. It is described as being more apolitical and focused on the quartier. These immigrant-origin associations are also described as representing ‘partnerships in the integration policies of the 1990s’. Indeed, Wihtol de Wenden and Leveau write about the ‘professionalisation and municipalisation of its leaders’ in a context where government found itself inadequately equipped to deal with the issues that arose in the banlieues and quartiers populaires, thus relying increasingly on associations in these quartiers to provide certain services, such as literacy classes, homework clubs, leisure activities, etc. (Wihtol de Wenden and Leveau 2001: 128).

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Despite the critical observations made by these researchers, it is still tempting to ask whether it is fair to see these associations as simple manipulations by the municipality. Is there no degree of militantisme (activism) involved? In order to attempt to answer this question, it is possible to look at the cases of young people who are, or have been, involved in such bodies. So as to be able to evaluate the nature of the relationship between young people of North African origin and associations, interviewees were asked if they were, or had been, involved in such bodies. It is striking that the vast majority of interviewees are in, or have at some point been involved in, associations, either in their local area or in Paris. About 85% of young women and 80% of young men have either been volunteers or ‘users’ of associations at some point in their lives.30 Young men and associations: leisure and insertion professionnelle The young men who took part in the field research were overwhelmingly involved in associations which provide leisure and sporting activities, as well as professional and careers advice. In fact, all thirteen young men can be described as being linked to a sports, leisure or educational association. The ‘leisure’ category groups together the largest number of interviewees, with most young men revealing that their understanding and experience of associations is often limited to leisure activities. Ten out of the twelve young men concerned are, or have been, involved in the organisation of, and participation in, leisure activities, excursions and subsidised youth holidays in France or abroad. Those who reside in Aubervilliers often refer to their participation in sorties (excursions), soutien scolaire (homework clubs) and séjours (trips) organised by the Office municipal de la jeunesse d’Aubervilliers (OMJA). This type of involvement generally no longer concerns the vast majority of young men who, being aged sixteen and above, claim that they used to take part in these sorts of activity when they were younger. However, some interviewees are still linked to the OMJA, despite being aged sixteen–eighteen, because they re-appropriate the space at their local maison de jeunes (the numerous maisons de jeunes in Aubervilliers are part of the OMJA). As young adults, the young men solicit associations in a different manner. Some young male interviewees claim that they use associations as service providers, particularly where careers advice and professional orientation are involved. Ibrahim, Fayçal and Mahmoud all present their experience of associations as being one whereby the association provides help with the writing of curriculum vitae and job applications,

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in addition to offering careers advice. Nasser, who volunteers at one of the OMJA maison de jeunes, claims that he has become involved so as to be able to help younger youths succeed or, as he puts it, ‘s’en sortir’.31 Only one young man is involved in a culturally oriented association. As discussed in Chapter 4, Waleed took Amazigh lessons in an association,32 however, he insisted that he did this in order to gain extra baccalaureate points, thus resisting any explanation in terms of linguistic or cultural revival. Only two male interviewees (Fayçal and Mahmoud) are involved in a religious association, i.e. they both refer to their attendance at the local mosque.33 However, they do not allude to this involvement when I ask about associations in general, which would suggest that they do not identify mosques with associations. Young women and associations: the predominance of culture The women interviewees are less involved in associations which provide leisure activities and educational support than their male counterparts. Only twelve out of the eighteen young women concerned are, or have been, involved in this category of association (as opposed to thirteen young men). Seven of these women were primarily involved in the organisation of, or participation in, leisure activities. For example, learning support assistants Lamia and Salima were formerly animatrices (youth workers) in two separate associations de quartier (neighbourhood associations). Lamia explains that she became a volunteer within the association when she was unemployed and Salima reveals that she established her own association with friends so as to obtain some practical experience after obtaining her Brevet d’aptitude aux fonctions de centre de vacances et de loisirs (BAFA): I used to work in an association . . . I used to organise activities with the young people, the young people from the neighbourhood . . . we used to organise trips, activities, . . . workshops, things like that . . . we did it with friends. We set up that association . . . we managed everything.34

The remaining young women are all high school pupils and they tend to become involved in associations in a rather sporadic manner, for example when a fête de quartier is organised (Fawzia) or when there are free cultural events (Salikha), or excursions to the coast, for example (Fatima). A fairly common response among the young women is that they used to take part in trips organised by the OMJA, but that they no longer have the time to pursue these activities (Amira). Some of the interviewees have participated in associational activities through homework clubs (soutien scolaire). This is the case of Samira,

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Lamia, Mona and Naima. This type of activity normally takes place in a local neighbourhood association. None of the female interviewees indicated that they took part in any sporting activity within an association framework except for Fatima, who is a member of a local dance association. The young women respondents tended to be more involved in associations with a cultural dimension than their male counterparts. The most common reason for attending a cultural association among the young women was to learn either Arabic or Amazigh, and this is the case of Hala, Malika, Nacira (Arabic) and Khadija and Naima (Amazigh). Amira is a member of an association which, at the time of interview, had recently been set up by her elder sister with the aim of providing Arabic lessons for children living in her cité. Young women who are, or have been, involved with cultural associations for non-linguistic motivations are Aicha (who joined the Association de culture berbère and was a member for a number of years) and both Karine and Mona, who help in their parents’ associations when they organise cultural events, for example. Karine’s family set up their own Latin American-themed association and Mona’s mother is the current president of a North African cultural association. Only two female interviewees are members of a religious association. Malika was a member of a women’s association based in Rennes. Malika now lives in Seine-Saint-Denis so no longer frequents this association where she used to take part in debates about women in Islam, among other issues. Instead, she now attends meetings and conferences organised by the Jeunes musulmans de France ( JMF). Leila volunteers as a youth activities worker (animatrice) in a Muslim association based in Saint-Denis. Many of those interviewees who are involved in associations do this either on a voluntary basis – for instance, during a fairly protracted period of unemployment or as a part-time employee. Their employment as an animateur/-trice can allow them to obtain professional experience and money so as to help finance their studies, for instance. So it could be argued that there is a degree of militantisme or activism among the interviewees. For example, Abdel talks about his motivations for becoming an animateur in his local association de quartier: ‘They were young people from our area . . . young people from the neighbourhood. We had to get them out and about. We used to do interesting activities . . . it was a really great experience.’35 Although Samira points out that her involvement in associations is occasional, she nevertheless discusses her experience as an intermittent volunteer in a local association in a manner which reveals a certain degree of engagement: ‘I did

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homework support here and there . . . it’s a question of helping them you see, . . . I sometimes take some kids and . . . go away . . . homework help, help them a bit to do their homework.’36 This sort of view and the notion of helping others and thus having a certain ‘mission’ also characterises Lamia’s experience as a volunteer in a local women’s association, which provided literacy classes and excursions for ‘firstgeneration’ migrant women living in her area. Like Abdel and Samira, Lamia presents her motivations for donating a large part of her time to the association in terms of charitable work: ‘I was a volunteer in a neighbourhood association. I used to do homework clubs and literacy classes for North African and African women . . . I was unemployed so I had the time. I did that for a little over a year in that association.’ When asked why she decided to become involved she replies: ‘The act of helping others too.’37 It is also possible to observe a similar degree of ‘militantisme’ or activism among some of the interviewees of high school age. For example, Leila reveals a committed attitude with regard to her albeit intermittent involvement in an Islamic association: I’m more in Saint-Denis and there are associations like ‘À votre service’ too, which organise, for example, celebrations for the Aïd, a celebration for the children . . . every Aïd, we try to involve the children, let them know what the celebration’s about . . . and I’d really like to get involved in things like that later on. It’s something that attracts me, working with young people . . . especially in a neighbourhood which isn’t too well-regarded.38

Amira’s eagerness to give Arabic lessons to the children living in her cité on a voluntary basis, and alongside her studies, also reveals a certain degree of activism and engagement in the local community which is defined in both cultural (linguistic) and spatial terms (the importance of providing a service to the quartier/cité). It is possible, then, to argue that, to a certain extent, the young people of North African origin who were interviewed are association activists in the sense that they engage with the some of the issues which arise in their immediate surroundings, such as the need to provide support to children and adolescents in terms of education and leisure. However, in order to obtain a more complete impression of the relationship between the interviewees and associations, it is also necessary to ask how we situate the nature of their associational involvement with regard to local government discourse on associations. The next sub-section will therefore focus on the municipality’s stance and expectations vis-à-vis associations in Aubervilliers.

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As mentioned at the end of Chapter 2, one of Aubervilliers’ specificities is that it is a town which is conscious of its banlieue rouge heritage and its status as a banlieue populaire.39 The PCF mayor, who was voted out of office in March 2008, has played an important role in this sense of municipal identity and has had a visible presence in the town. The specificity of Aubervilliers as a banlieue populaire, but also as a politically integrated town, may be one of the reasons why the notion of la vie associative is very visible in the municipal agenda. This visibility becomes apparent if one reads Aubermensuel, the local monthly municipal magazine. If one peruses a number of editions of this publication, there does seem to be a certain disjuncture between the tone and approach adopted in its articles, and the experiences and ideas expressed by the interviewees regarding associations. For example, the April 2001 Aubermensuel features a special section entitled Vie des Quartiers (Neighbourhood Life), within which appears an article about a new régie de quartier (neighbourhood assembly), created in a bid to improve the quality of life for the residents of two neighbourhoods. This local committee is described by the author of the article as a ‘proximity service’.40 However, as ‘Löic’, a local neighbourhood coordinator suggests, the régie de quartier phenomenon tends to attract the retired and elderly European-origin residents, rather than young adults and those of non-European origin, and this is confirmed by Khir-Din who claims that from the age of eleven or twelve he used to go along to the neighbourhood consultative committee meetings. The enthusiastic take on local democracy continues, as reflected in the January 2007 Aubermensuel, which includes an article about the tenth anniversary celebration of the launch of the Démarche démocratie de proximité (local democracy initiative). It is perhaps telling that the article argues that to describe this initiative in terms of ‘cogestion’ (comanagement) would be going too far. Rather the notion of ‘association’ is more appropriate to describe the initiative.41 In the Municipality’s Guide des associations, there is an editorial by the PCF mayor which reveals something of the celebratory approach the municipality adopts with regard to associations: ‘They [associations] illustrate the desire for and diversity of engagement among our cocitizens. Recreating more of a social bond, listening to one another, debating and facing difficulties together, all the while respecting our differences, are more than ever the order of the day.’ The editorial then goes on to link associations in the town with the ‘Démarche Quartier’ (Neighbourhood Initiative) (launched in 1997, resulting in the creation of twelve comités de quartier) by claiming that this has made it possible

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to create ‘a new space of democracy, where associations and their staff play an important role’ (Ville d’Aubervilliers 1997). The editorial is encouraging and would indicate that there is a sense of local participative democracy within the municipal and comité de quartiers framework. However, it is a discourse which is far removed from that of the interviewees who, on the whole, do not envisage associations as ‘a new space of democracy’ nor as a means of conflictualising their relationship with the local authorities since, as we have seen, their involvement, although widespread, can only be understood as espaces de démocratie in the sense that anyone can become involved in the largely leisure/ socio-educational activities (either as ‘user’ or volunteer). The one place where a ‘democratic space’ is being built for, by and with young people is the CLJA. However, whether this will lead to a positively conflictual dynamic with the elected councillors is still unclear. In any case, the experience of the Rencontres de la jeunesse (Youth Symposia) held in the town hall in June and then in December 2006 have been criticised by some as not doing enough to really engage with those young people who are not part of the CLJA. A senior representative of the OMJA argues that, in fact, the municipality effectively ‘by-passed’ the local youth workers who had been working ‘on the ground’ with young people for a long time in preparation for some sort of dialogue with the local council: We were put to one side a bit . . . we weren’t involved at all in this project . . . from November [2005] to April [2006] I don’t know how it was organised, or by whom . . . I think it’s a shame . . . during the riots we were really on the ground, we had prepared things, questionnaires, we’d filmed them . . . interviews with young people, interesting things but nobody took that into account . . . the Assises [Rencontres], 16 June at the town hall, it was a bit tame . . . because the methodology was poor and they didn’t want to listen to people on the ground . . . it’s a bit of a disaster . . . not all that many young people came.42

This representative of the OMJA argues that if the municipality had reached out to young people and gone to meet them in schools or youth clubs then they would have created a lot more interest among them. It is clear that the OMJA feels threatened in some sense; the same representative predicted that the organisation would not survive the municipal elections in 2008 – i.e. that it would lose its semi-autonomous status and become subsumed into the local municipal infrastructure. The last municipal and cantonal elections were held in France in March 2001,43 and the campaign literature in Aubervilliers provided an insight into the relationship between local political groupings and associations. The question of associations did appear on several of the main candidate lists presented in the municipal elections. However, this was generally

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done in an attempt to promote the notion of local participative democracy within the existing frameworks of the comités de quartier or the Démarche Quartier. For example, the manifesto distributed by the ‘Liste 100% à gauche’, a list associated with the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, claims that associational life has ‘broken down’ and offers the following solution: direct and participative democracy through ‘real [véritable] neighbourhood assemblies which will have the right to elect their own representatives’. While the reference to the ‘véritable’ neighbourhood assemblies is of course well intentioned and aims to be more inclusive than current arrangements, the List – does not appear to take into account the fact that the young people in these quartiers are unlikely to become involved in any formal neighbourhood committee and that this type of elective arrangement requires a minimum of political knowhow. The main rival to the incumbent Gauche Plurielle Liste, the Liste ‘faire mieux à Gauche’, was perhaps the List with the most associational credentials. Indeed, twenty out of the forty-nine people featured on it are described, in addition to their other functions, as being a ‘militant(e) associatif ’. However, the types of association concerned are generally parent–teacher and residents’ associations. Although there are a number of local personalities of North African origin – for instance, the president of a local Tunisian association, it should be pointed out that this association is much more focused on issues which concern the first generation of North African immigrants, as opposed to young or French-born people of North African origin, such as those who took part in the field study. This disjunction between candidates and interviewees’ concerns was also a feature of the partial cantonal elections, held simultaneously in 2001. Despite an element of disjuncture or décalage between the local government stance regarding associations and youth in Aubervilliers there is, paradoxically, also an element of proximity between the two dimensions. This proximity or mirroring may, however, prove to be ‘unhealthy’, especially if one expects associations to be ‘protest organisations’ rather than an extension of government power. Indeed, many of the articles on associations which appear in Aubermensuel do seem to reflect the interviewees’ experiences of associations to a significant extent. For example, it features articles about associations which offer sports activities, especially those which offer martial arts. There is also a focus on the notion of the quartier, the micro-territory, hence the celebratory feature about a fête de quartier which took place in Aubervilliers. Also high on the agenda is the idea that associations are the focus of voluntary work, where the main ethic is, as the paper puts it, ‘to be useful to others’.44 Likewise, there are a

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number of articles about a local sports association, with a focus on how its leaders aim to combine football with more educational activities such as homework clubs. Homework clubs and literacy classes are also promoted as useful activities for associations. The OMJA – i.e. the main local leisure and youth association – is very visible in most editions of the newspaper and when the interviewees are asked about their involvement in associations, the OMJA is generally the first body to be cited. This seems to imply that associations are primarily seen as a means of offering services, whether this is in the form of sport/leisure or in more social and educational terms. This is undeniably a good cause, yet this sort of discourse, in addition to the fact that many of the young interviewees do not seem to conceive of associations in any other manner, seems to be an obstacle to the prospect of associations and youth of North African origin forming any sort of social or cultural movement. Indeed, if we examine the nature of the involvement of our interviewees with a more critical eye, it becomes clear that the vast majority are not engaging in a collective imaginaire or movement, nor in a redefinition of citizenship but that, rather, they are simultaneously subject to and ‘accomplices’ of a professionalisation and instrumentalisation of associations. It is possible to describe the young people who participated in the field research as subject to an instrumentalisation of associations by the Aubervilliers municipality in a number of ways. ‘Georges’, an employee of the local Service Municipal de la Vie Associative (Municipal Association Service), criticises what he sees as the current overfocus on the quartier in associational activities. He challenges the widely accepted notion that young people’s experience of associations will more often than not be limited to their immediate surroundings, their quartier, or cité. He hints that encouraging young people to form neighbourhood associations is a worrying trend: [it’s] always the same formula. With football and homework clubs . . . and I find that to reduce, or to offer as a model for young people, organising a neighbourhood association, is already cutting them off from the world . . . proximity citizenship, the proximity thing, we’re not trees! . . . Their parents – most of them, travelled 2,000, 3,000 kilometres to come here. They didn’t stay in their country, staring at the ground, doing nothing . . . that, it’s important to remind these young people here . . . and with a discourse of social control, of proximity, of cocooning, of protection etc., we’re producing atrophied individuals.45

Georges also criticises what he calls a delegation of responsibilities with regard to the phenomenon of calling on young adults to ‘look after’ the younger adolescents and children in the neighbourhood. The views

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of this municipal employee would seem to suggest a discrepancy between his own personal opinions and certain aspects of the municipality’s institutional stance on associations. For example, Mansour, who was president of the Potes de Vandrezanne association, was encouraged by other municipal employees to organise certain sports and educational activities for young people in the neighbourhood but at the same time, he was advised not to request funding from the municipality: ‘if we ask for funding, they’ll get annoyed . . . we’re not supposed to ask for funding because – we – people have got a certain image of us as young people.’46 Other local observers are also critical of what they call ‘la politique des grands frères’ (‘older brother policy’) in general and the Potes de Vandrezanne experiment in particular.47 Another factor which would seem to suggest that, to a certain extent, young people (i.e. some of the interviewees) are ‘subject to’ an instrumentalisation of the associational landscape is the fact that many of the 1901 associations in Aubervilliers and the surrounding towns where some of the interviewees live provide services which would otherwise be provided by the State – or, more precisely, the municipality. This ‘delegation’ of responsibility in terms of staff rather than in terms of finances is not much cause for concern if it is a trend restricted to sport and leisure. However, some observers argue that it is cause for concern when the 1901 associations are expected to deliver the bulk of social/ educational support services in a town. Indeed, most of the interviewees who have participated in soutien scolaire did so within an association; those who have had experience of literacy classes have done so within a 1901 association and many link careers and training advice with them. In addition, sports associations are now encouraged to partake in more pedagogical and social work. Former senior civil servant, Jean Faber, argues that by financing associations so that they deal with the ‘integration’ of immigrants and post-migrants through literacy classes, homework clubs, etc. the State is often dependent on an underpaid and a voluntary workforce which may not have the appropriate skills required: As such, integration – so widely entrusted to associations, is the work – as is charitable action – of thousands and thousands of volunteers, an anonymous army, which counts neither its time, nor its efforts . . . the employees of associations working towards integration in the neighbourhoods are, in general, immigrants from those neighbourhoods. Everyone in their place and the immigrants will be well integrated – among themselves. (Faber 2000: 134, 140)

Faber’s critique is echoed by association coordinators such as ‘Hamouda Hertelli’, the director of the Association pour la nouvelle génération

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immigrée (ANGI) – a local association which groups together local communities of all backgrounds on educational, cultural and social projects in the La Maladrerie area of the town – a relatively run-down neighbourhood known for its unusual social housing architecture. Hamouda argues that: The service that we give is in fact a public service . . . everyone agrees that we’re a public service except that we’re not the State . . . we haven’t got the resources of the state but why are we here? Because there’s a malfunctioning elsewhere – school . . . the teachers are inexperienced, the buildings are crap . . . so there’s no political will.48

In a similar fashion, ‘Kader’, the founder of Boxing Beats, a boxing association in the Quatre chemins quartier of Aubervilliers, which also provides homework support for its school-age members, explains how he feels that his association is obliged to play a role in terms of education, politics and social control: We spoke with the young people . . . ‘burning cars isn’t a solution, it’s important to have your electoral card . . . to be able to vote’ . . . we have to talk about it because in spite of it all, we’re a little bit of a public service in some ways.49

Catherine Wihtol de Wenden and Rémy Leveau argue that there is an element of ‘faire faire’ (delegation) within the associational landscape. They claim that this can be seen as a ‘colonial’ model, whereby the State diverts a minimum amount of funding through schemes such as la politique de la Ville (urban regeneration) to the volunteers and emplois jeunes in the quartiers, thus leaving them to ‘their own devices’ (Wihtol de Wenden and Leveau 2001: 121–124).50 This translates into the assumption that if one is a young person of North African origin living in a stigmatised banlieue, then one automatically possesses the expertise to deal with the social issues which can arise there. One animatrice who works at the OMJA alludes to this when she complains that she is often expected to provide more than socio-cultural activities, as was the case when she and her colleagues were enlisted by the municipality to help resolve an on-going and violent conflict between young people in two neighbouring housing estates: I don’t really know if we’re recognised for the work that we do or if we’re just here to calm things down and then take some knocks too. Once the job’s well done, um, I don’t know if there’s a real recognition, if above, they’re not saying to themselves ‘oh, we’ve worked well, the little North Africans, they manage well among themselves, we give them a little youth club . . . and then that’s it, they bloody well leave us alone’.51

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So if we take into account these factors which seem to subject young people to an instrumentalisation of associations, it is possible to draw two conclusions: that the municipality is delegating (perhaps abandoning) certain responsibilities and that there can be little room for a ‘conflictualisation’ of relations between the young people living in Aubervilliers or surrounding banlieues and the municipality. Yet, nevertheless, one gets the impression that young people are not just subject to an instrumentalisation of associations. They are ‘accomplices’, as well. That is, they are, to a certain extent, the ‘beneficiaries’ of the instrumentalisation of associations by the State. For example, many young people tend to see associations as an alternative employment market, or at least as a factor which will allow them to gain work experience. Amir explains that he became an animateur in his local association de quartier by accident, but that it served him well since a part-time job allowed him to gain some financial independence while still a student. Salima points out that she set up her own association so as to be able to gain some practical animation experience after obtaining her BAFA and that as soon as she found employment she abandoned her voluntary activities (homework clubs, excursions, etc.). Sara, like Amir, claims to have ‘fallen’ into animation by accident, because it was suggested to her by people she already knew. Her comments reveal something about the way in which young people themselves participate in the transformation of associations into organisations which offer career paths: I used to hang around with some youth workers and I got into youth work completely by accident . . . the association, it’s unusual, it’s that everyone knows everyone and we all grew up together. That means that even my boss, he’s known me since I was seventeen. All the directors, we all grew up together and then those who got into it before, they let everyone benefit. They got their little sisters and older brothers into it so me – I just wanted to go on the trip and they suggested I went along as a youth worker – au-pair . . . that’s how it started.52

This tendency to see associations as an alternative employment market should be seen in the context of the unemployment crisis which has particularly affected young people in France over the last decade. Indeed, as Faber points out, between a third and a half of the posts within associations are what are known as ‘assisted contracts’ (solidarity employment contract, youth employment, consolidated employment contract) –, that is, they are co-financed (between 50% and 80%) by the State.53 So, many young people in the Paris suburbs have seen the new professions of the association sector – i.e. animateurs, médiateurs culturels etc. – as a chance to get on. This is the case, for instance, of Yacine, who was recruited

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to work on an emploi jeune basis at the locally based ‘immigrant-origin’ association, the Association de la nouvelle génération immigrée.54 There are other social and financial incentives for young people to become involved in associations. At the Municipal Association Service, Georges complains about a trend whereby young people contact him for advice about their hastily set-up association. According to Georges, they invariably ask him the following question: ‘What can I get?’55 This reflects a rather widely held belief that if one creates an association, one automatically gains access to subventions (funding) and/or locaux (premises). It does seem that this sort of view of associations exists among some of the interviewees such as Mansour, Fouad and Abdel. Mansour admits that being the president of a local association provides possible ‘pay-offs’: ‘now if I apply for an apartment, they’ll give me one straight away.’56 Although Fouad has taken the initiative to set up two rap music associations for young people in his neighbourhood, this should also be seen as part of his own aspirations to become a producer in the music industry. So he sees the 1901 association structure as a way of obtaining funds: ‘to be able to make it, you have to set yourself up in an association, to be able to try to get the funds and to pay for studio time, to try to produce a little demo to present to the public.’57 Abdel also points out that he and a group of friends who simply wanted to play football in the local indoor gymnasium were strongly advised to declare themselves a 1901 association, so as to be able to benefit from insurance policies against injury etc., which shows that they did not get together and decide to set up a 1901 association, but were encouraged to do so because of the nature of the activity. Only then did they think of organising activities for local adolescents. So, in a similar manner to the issue of political claims and outlooks (see p. 183), it is not really possible to refer to the interviewees’ involvement in associations as a ‘site’ for the emergence of a collective imaginaire or subjectivity, which simultaneously reconciles individual and community. Indeed, it would seem that the associations the interviewees tend to become involved in are of a rather ‘a-political’ nature. Despite often being linked to ‘self-advancement’ (academic support, careers), there seems to be little open acknowledgement among the associatifs – whether leaders or members (the exception being the OMJA animatrice above) – that these ‘service associations’ often exist and receive funding due to a questionable ‘delegation of State responsibilities’ regarding adequate socio-cultural and educational facilities in the banlieue. Furthermore, there does not seem to be a widespread renewal of citizenship or participation through associations. It would seem, then, that where young people are involved in associations, it is either for rather

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instrumental reasons, such as obtaining a local (premises), or some means of enhancing their employment prospects in a context of precarious job opportunities and other obstacles to employment, such as racial discrimination. Although the desire for increased employment opportunities and reduced racial discrimination concerns many of the interviewees, it remains unarticulated as a goal which might be achieved through associational involvement. As such, it does not appear that these young French-North Africans from Seine-Saint-Denis are currently forging a coherent social or socio-cultural movement through associations, since there is no real evidence of a ‘conflictualisation’ of relations with their municipality and/or the State through association membership, and there would appear to be little ideological anchorage among the young people concerned. However, the exception in terms of Aubervilliers’ associational life must be mentioned, and can be found in the example of Hors Cadre. Since July 2006, this association’s attempts to ‘positivise’ images of young people from the banlieue and combat media-fuelled stereotypes through a range of audiovisual projects, illustrates the emergence of a collective subjectivity among the twenty or so individuals who are involved. The collective subjectivity which is articulated here is first and foremost social (it relates to common banlieue ‘origins’ and experiences: ‘we want to represent young people of banlieue origin’), and any reference to ethnicity or cultural difference as motivating factors is absent.58 Yet the association is clearly political in the sense that it is concerned with broader issues of the lack of representation of young people from the banlieue and how this can be rectified through increased political participation. The similarly embryonic CLJA is further evidence of the beginnings of some sort of prise de conscience (political ‘awakening’) or political conflictualisation between young people and the local government and the State beyond. While the Council is not strictly speaking an autonomous association it is nevertheless a key development which will be interesting to follow in the coming years. However, here once again the collective subjectivities or dynamic of the members of the association are articulated above all in socio-economic terms; the issue of culture and cultural discrimination has not, according to the Council’s president, occupied a central role: ‘we shouldn’t restrict things to one origin . . . that wouldn’t contribute very much.’ Similarly, when asked if laïcité and the 2003 ‘headscarf affair’ which ‘started’ in Aubervilliers’ Lycée Henri Wallon has informed the Council debates, the president replied: ‘I don’t think we’ve spoken about that.’59 It would seem, then, that we need to interpret the involvement of young people of North African origin in associations in another manner. Their

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involvement is rarely ideological and it cannot be described in social movement terms. Rather, in the vast majority of cases, it seems to offer a pragmatic way in which to deal with the threat of social exclusion or, as Marie-Hélène Bacqué and Yves Sintomer call it, ‘la désaffiliation’ (disenfranchisement), regarding access to employment, education and leisure (Bacqué and Sintomer 2001).60 In this sense, then, the majority of interviewees who took part in this study can be seen to be part of a generalised context of increased political apathy and as part of a wider ‘a-political’ generation, since associations, as representative ‘units’ of civil society, could potentially be alternative sites of politicised or sociocultural conflict, because they are exterior to the increasingly challenged mainstream party political process. While some of the interviewees are able to engage in an individual process of subjectivity and reconcile individual and community (see Chapter 7), what remains, for the most part, is an individualist desire to ‘get on’, where politicised and collective references to cultural and social origins are fairly irrelevant. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the sense that there has been a certain prise de conscience among young people in recent years, in reaction to a range of events: the 2002 presidential elections, the 2005 riots and the CPE demonstrations in 2006. Indeed, the number of electoral registrations among young people in Aubervilliers and beyond increased both after the 2005 riots and again in 2006, in anticipation of the presidential elections of April 2007. However, it would appear that this ‘political awakening’ is above all based on a banlieue collective identity (social and spatial origins) and although the 2002 brush with Le Pen and Sarkozy’s provocatively ethnicised comments in the autumn of 2005 might have singled out (even ‘hailed’) North African and African (‘non-white’) banlieue residents, there is no sign that this prise de conscience is culturally inflected, let alone religiously inflected. To a certain extent, then, the Republic appears to have succeeded in one of its major tasks: the descendents of North African immigrants (those interviewed, in any case) do not collectively or publicly think of themselves in relation to their cultural origins (Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian) or their religious identities.

Notes 1 Some elements of this chapter feature in an article published by Nadia Kiwan (Kiwan 2005: 465– 481), see www.informaworld.com. 2 The verb se revendiquer thus becomes more important than having une revendication. Se revendiquer literally means to ‘declare oneself’ as something – as Arab, for instance.

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3 Interview with Abdel Majid, Ahmed and Maliha, 22/05/01. 4 Première is equivalent to Year 12 in the English and Welsh school system. ES refers to the economics and social sciences baccalaureate stream. 5 Interview with Idaya and ‘Fatou’, 19/05/01. 6 Interview with Touran, 22/03/01. 7 Interview with Mansour, 29/03/01. 8 Interview with Myriam, 20/03/01. 9 Interview with Idaya and Fatou, 19/05/01. 10 Interview with Mohamed, 30/04/01. 11 Interview with Sara, 06/03/01. Sara was born in Algeria and came, with her parents, to France at the age of six. She has lived in Aubervilliers and La Courneuve ever since. Both her parents are Moroccan and she holds Moroccan nationality only. 12 Interview with Djamel, 15/05/01. 13 Interview with Nasser, 06/03/01. 14 Interview with Fayçal, Mahmoud and Razak, 13/09/01. These three respondents were all pupils at the Lycée Van Gogh and were due to sit their professional baccalaureate specialising in automobile mechanics at the end of the academic year. 15 Interview with Mansour, 29/03/01. 16 Interview with Ibrahim, Larbi and Tayeb, 23/05/01. 17 Interview with Malika and Nacira, 21/11/00. 18 Interview with Djamel, 15/05/01. 19 Interview with Abdel and Samira, 16/11/00. 20 Interview with Lamia and Salima, 14/11/00. 21 Interview with Fayçal, Mahmoud and Razak, 13/09/01. 22 Both of Yasser’s remarks are drawn from the interview with Aziz, ‘Ibtisam’, Majdi and Yasser, 17/09/01. Here, a conflictualisation of social relationships should be understood in positive terms – that is, it is a process by which individuals or groups demand more equality, rather than passively accepting the status quo. See, for example, Wieviorka (1999a: 241–242). 23 The establishment of a Local Youth Council had been decided by the municipality in 2002. It was set up by the municipality in partnership with OMJA and local schools and associations. Three hundred young people were approached in the run-up to the first meeting and approximately eighty signed up to the Council in 2005, with fifty present at the first meeting on 16 April 2005. The initial age range had been thirteen to eighteen, and then in 2006 this was extended to include young adults up to the ages of twentyfive, mainly because people who had become involved at the age of seventeen wanted to continue their membership after their eighteenth birthday. 24 The 2008 municipal elections took place on 9 and 16 March 2008. The incumbent PCF mayor Pascal Beaudet lost to PS candidate Jacques Salvator, who took up his post on 22 March. 25 Interview with Selma, president of the CLJA, 09/01/07. Selma is sixteen, bac pupil, born and brought up in Aubervilliers. She goes to school in Paris’ eighteenth arrondissement and has a Moroccan family background.

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26 Interview with Pascal Beaudet, 08/01/07. The CPE was a labour law which was designed to encourage employers to recruit more young people under the age of twenty-five, by rendering the terms of employment more flexible. This legislation allowed employers to terminate a contract within the first two years of employment, without having to give a reason to the employee in question: it effectively meant that a CPE employment contract would be subject to a trial period of two years. The attempted introduction of this law created an outcry and a wave of strikes among university students, high school pupils, trade unions and employees and brought many universities to a standstill in the spring of 2006. Eventually the CPE was withdrawn and replaced by the CNE – the contrat nouvelle embauche. 27 Interview with Khir-Din, 10/01/07. 28 Barthélemy (2000: 56) cites Martin (1988: 137). 29 Barthélemy (2000: 92) points out that, on 9 July 1981, just some months before the promulgation of the October law, the then Prime Minister, Pierre Mauroy, called for new citizenship before the National Assembly, a call which was repeated some years later in 1988 by Michel Rocard, who declared that it was necessary to ‘reconcile political action and daily life, the State and civil society’. 30 These proportions do not include those interviewees who were contacted through an association. 31 Interview with Nasser, 06/03/01. 32 Waleed is discounted from the calculation of the proportion of youth involvement in associations because he was contacted through the OMJA. However, he is mentioned here because we are discussing his involvement in another association. 33 In France, religious associations (associations cultuelles) are regulated by the 1905 law, relating to the separation of the Church and the State. 34 Salima in interview with Lamia and Salima, 14/11/00. 35 Interview with Abdel and Samira, 16/11/00. 36 Ibid. 37 Interview with Lamia and Salima, 14/11/00. 38 Interview with Leila, 15/05/01. Where appropriate and in order to protect the identities of the interviewees who could otherwise be traced, the names of some of the associations being discussed in this chapter have been changed. This excludes the OMJA, ANGI, Hors Cadre and A votre service. 39 As pointed out earlier, many respondents do not actually live in Aubervilliers, but in nearby suburbs. However, the analysis which follows concentrates solely on the municipal discourse in Aubervilliers. 40 Aubermensuel, 105, April 2001: 5. 41 Frédéric Madeiros, ‘Des bougies pour la démocratie’, Aubermensuel, 168, January 2007: 7. 42 Interview with senior representative of the OMJA, 08/01/07. 43 First round of voting: 11 March; second round: 18 March. The 2008 elections took place on 9 and 16 March. 44 Aubermensuel, 107, June 2001: 11.

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45 Interview with Georges, Service municipal de la vie associative, 14/03/01. 46 Interview with Mansour, 29/03/01. 47 In interviews held in January 2007, it was confirmed that the Potes de Vandrezanne association had ceased activity and disbanded about a year after its creation. Both Saïd, who was a sort of ‘tutor’ for the association, and another OMJA colleague admitted that the project had been very ambitious. 48 Interview with Hamouda Hertelli, director Association de la nouvelle génération immigrée (Association of the New Immigrant Generation), 10/01/07. 49 Interview with Kader, Boxing Beats, 12/01/07. 50 The ‘emplois jeunes’ refers to those young people who have State-funded employment contracts. 51 Interview with OMJA animatrice, 09/03/01. 52 Interview with Sara, 06/03/01. 53 Faber (2000: 136–139). 54 The emploi jeune (youth employment) scheme, introduced by the socialist coalition government under Jospin in 1997, was suspended by the UMP right-wing government under Raffarin in August 2002. Emploi jeune contracts, which had been signed for five years under Jospin, were allowed to continue to their end but have not been renewed. This now poses a financial burden for associations wishing to employ young people under the age of twenty-six, as explained by Hamouda Hertelli at the ANGI, 10/01/07. 55 Interview with Georges, Service municipal de la vie associative, 14/03/01. 56 Interview with Mansour, 29/03/01. 57 Interview with Fouad and Yacine, 05/07/01. 58 Interview with Khir-Din, president of Hors Cadre, 10/01/07. 59 Both extracts from interview with Selma, president of the CLJA, Aubervilliers, 09/01/07. 60 Maire-Hélène Bacqué and Yves Sintomer refer to the term used by Castel (1995).

Conclusions

The idea underpinning this book is the notion that there exists a disjuncture between the public and intellectual discourses surrounding populations of immigrant origin and their actual experiences. Chapter 1 showed that the public debates of the last thirty years have illustrated a cultural anxiety which has tended to conceptualise young people of North African Muslim origin in terms their integration (in)capacities. The rise of the FN, the various debates about the reform of the Nationality Code, the establishment and recent re-convening of the HCI, the passing of the 2004 law on laïcité, can all thus be seen as reflecting a broader view that the French-born descendants of North Africans potentially remained cultural ‘Others’ and socially disruptive. In Chapter 2, it was argued that academic debates about immigrants do not fully reflect the complexities of young people’s experiences. This results from a tendency to focus on either a normative (and rather abstract) approach to cultural difference or on the more social question of ‘la jeunesse des banlieues’, with North African-origin youth often subsequently conceptualised in purely socio-economic terms – i.e. as being ‘in the same boat’ as their ‘French-origin’ counterparts from stigmatised banlieues. Chapter 2 revealed a lack of interchange between the various academic debates, which were divided into three main categories: the normative or philosophical discussions centring on cultural difference; research on associations; and discussions relating to youth in stigmatised urban (or, rather, suburban) settings. Chapters 1 and 2 also demonstrated that the focus on cultural difference in both the political and academic debates has often become the site for ideologically driven polemics relating to ‘Republican universalism’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism’. This, in turn, has led to some reductive conceptualisations of young people of North African origin which often operate along the binary axis of individual integration and communautarisme. The empirical research was therefore undertaken in an attempt to tackle some of the limits of both public and academic debates. There

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were three main objectives. The first was to give greater space to the register of experience. The second was to adopt an approach which would allow for the re-articulation of the cultural and the social – or, in other words, an approach which would conceptualise young people of North African origin in relation to their cultural and socio-economic specificities, rather than focusing on one or the other. Such an approach was also designed to re-establish an empirical link between the cultural difference analyses, the ‘jeunesse des banlieues’ analyses and research carried out on immigrant-origin associations, which were shown to sometimes be in disjunction with one another. Finally, the empirical research was designed to challenge the familiar dichotomies of integration and communautarisme. By using on the notion of subjectivity, this book has approached the question of identity construction among young people of North African origin from a perspective which focuses on the discourses of the actors themselves. The idea of movement around various ‘poles’ of identity (Wieviorka 1993a) has also meant that the interviewees are portrayed neither as a ‘cultural group’ nor as a ‘socio-economic group’. Chapters 4–7 discussed the social and cultural practices of young people of North African origin, focusing on issues such as relationships to the banlieue, employment, relationships to ‘culture(s) of origin’, language use, religious practices, marriage, self-perception, etc. These chapters demonstrated the tensions, contradictions and heterogeneity of the young men’s and women’s experiences. In Chapter 7, which focused more closely on the ‘subjective pole’ of identity, three ‘axes’ of subjectivity were identified: ‘circulation’ around different poles of identity, bricolage identitaire (Bastide 1970) and the capacity for individual and collective social–cultural action (Touraine and Khosrokhavar 2000). The interviewees’ capacity to circulate around the space of identity and thus combine (albeit with greater difficulty for some interviewees than for others) an individualist and more communautaire sense of identity in an original and creative manner, suggests that the discourses discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, which often oppose individual values to differentialist or community values, are not able to fully capture the multi-layered nature of young French-North Africans’ everyday lives. So as regards the first two axes of subjectivity – that is, at the level of the individual – it is possible to observe a process of subjectivation at work. The subjective construction of a sense of identity not only reveals what Dubet calls ‘a certain self-awareness’ but also enables some interviewees to negotiate with their family, peers or, on a wider basis, with French society (Dubet 1995: 119). The circulation around the space of

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identity and the reference to multiple registers of identity and experience (individual and community), depending on the issue, the context and the interlocutors present, also allows some of the interviewees to negotiate a certain position or image within their peer group. As far as the third axis of subjectivity is concerned, although individual subjectivities and agency do emerge among some of the interviewees, the shift from individual to collective agency is more difficult. It is possible, then, to argue that young people of North African origin in the banlieue (if we maintain that the interviewees are at least a qualitatively, if not a quantitatively, representative sample), can be described as actors on a micro- or individual level, because of their capacity to combine and ‘create’ new and multiple registers of identity as well as to resist exclusion and discrimination. On an individual level, the interviewees’ ability to articulate individual and community identity should also be seen in terms of their articulation of the social and cultural registers of experience (drawing on identity repertoires of the banlieue identity and ‘North African origins’). However, on a more collective level the capacity for social or cultural action and an articulation of social and cultural specificities is more limited. Indeed, at the level of the ‘group’, it appears that the subjectivity of the young men and women who participated in the field research is more fragile. As was shown in Chapters 7 and 8, the notion of describing the interviewees as forming a socio-cultural movement in the Tourainian sense would be inaccurate. Although there is a common revendication among the young men and women which expresses a condemnation of discrimination and exclusion, the resigned anticipation of these phenomena suggests that, in some cases, the interviewees are observers of their ‘fate’ and, while others are less resigned, it is still not possible to argue that this condemnation is formulated into any demands or claims. For example, we saw in Chapter 8 how some interviewees are simultaneously subject to and ‘accomplices’ of a process of association instrumentalisation, whereby associations become alternative and sometimes questionable ‘catch-up’ organisations in the domains of education and employment. It is therefore difficult to evoke a North African-origin youth-centred collective imaginaire among the majority of the interviewees based in Seine-Saint-Denis. While demands for recognition are prevalent among interviewees on an individual level, it is possible to argue that the reluctance of the young people to articulate their social demands (greater employment opportunities, for example) with reference to a cultural specificity in the public space means that ultimately the move from individual subjectivity to collective subjectivity is for many a frustrated one.

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The difficult shift from individual to collective subjectivity means that it is possible to refer to a ‘thwarted’ collective subjectivity since, despite a generalised anticipation of exclusion or disenfranchisement (Castel 1995), there is an equally widespread lack of expectation with regard to political parties and associations. The generalised lack of interest in politics in its widest sense also suggests that the interviewees are not collectively taking part in a redefinition of the Republican paradigm of citizenship, through self-awareness and/or demands for recognition as a specific community. However, it would be inaccurate and unfair to describe the young people who were interviewed as observers of their fate simply because the majority of them were not personally involved in any formal conflictualisation of social, political and cultural relations between themselves and the authorities. In addition, the establishment of the CLJA in Aubervilliers (and in neighbouring towns such as Bobigny, Stains, le Blanc-Mesnil and La Courneuve), would suggest that there is a forum in which dialogue between young people and local government is developing. Furthermore, after the 2005 riots and in the run-up to the 2007 presidential elections, there was an increase in the number of young people registering for elections.1 Although the associational milieu has been shown to be flawed in many ways, the widespread involvement of young people of North African origin in various local educational and neighbourhood projects reveals a strong desire to succeed for those who are the beneficiaries, and a sense of collective responsibility among the young volunteers. Although these men and women may view their possibilities of ‘upward mobility’ with varying degrees of optimism, there is a general desire to ‘get on’. Although the prospect of formalised demands for social and cultural recognition is largely absent, the interviewees are subjective actors on an individual level. In this sense, then, the absence of a socio-cultural collective movement among young people of North African origin in France reflects the wider political apathy of youth in general. Of course, locally, there are counter-examples, as the creation of the Hors Cadre association in July 2006 would suggest. This group’s desire to ‘positivise’ the image of young people from the banlieue, combat negative stereotypes in the media and raise awareness among young people about voting in elections illustrates a clear prise de conscience on their behalf. However, like the CLJA, the Hors Cadre association does not draw on cultural ‘origins’ in its collective dynamic. Their language is universalist and although they may mobilise discussion about discrimination and representation, these are articulated in terms of ‘colour’ or socio-economic (banlieue) origins rather than culture.

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I am not suggesting that the articulation of collective identity or desires based on cultural identities is a normative objective which is somehow a nobler pursuit. It is certainly not a question of one or the other. However, in a broader sense, what is evident in terms of the processes of representation, discrimination and marginalisation currently at work in France is that cultural anxiety is central. Indeed, cultural racisms, culturally inflected discrimination and the question of cultural rights characterise some of the main areas of conflict in France, and in many European societies, today. For example, it could be argued that cultural discrimination is a feature (although not the sole feature) of higher unemployment rates of Algerian-origin young people in France. It is possible to refer to cultural discrimination as opposed to racial discrimination here, because statistics show that employment discrimination affects Algerians more than it does Sub-Saharan Africans or those individuals from the DOM-TOM (overseas French départements and territories) (Tribalat et al. 1996). Political issues such as the bitter memories of the Algerian–French war and the ensuing difficult relationship between the two countries, coupled with wariness about Islam and ‘Muslim cultures’, may inform direct and indirect exclusionary processes to a greater extent than where other ‘ethnic minorities’ are concerned. Similarly a prominent area of conflict in France and Europe concerns the question of certain ‘cultural rights’ – where ‘culture’ can be understood in the broadest sense and is not necessarily linked to ethnicity (this debate has focused to a large extent, on the issue of the Islamic headscarf and the desires of some young Muslim women to wear headscarves in schools). The shift from societal struggles over political, then socio-economic and now cultural rights in the French and many European public arenas suggests that culture and cultural ‘battles’ are to a large extent, defining issues for the early twenty-first century, as suggested by Touraine (2005). However, the key question for the future must surely be who has ‘licence’ to present and debate these issues as public issues? In France today, these public debates are currently dominated by politicians, academics and the media and most of the voices within these overlapping constituencies are not ‘minority’ voices. Hence the centrality of the question of emergent collective subjectivities. In terms of the fieldwork which was undertaken for this book, it would appear that the transition from individual to collective subjectivities is an elusive process. This suggests that the French Republican model, whereby cultural revendications are seen as illegitimate in the public sphere, has succeeded. It has modelled a generation of young people who, although they may at various points in their lives be confronted with overlapping socio-economic, racial and cultural discrimination, would not dream of voicing the cultural

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dimension of their experience of discrimination in the public sphere, either because they consider it as irrelevant or because they fear further stigmatisation. When thinking about future trajectories, it seems timely, then, to pose the following question: Do the desires of the young FrenchNorth Africans to be ‘forgotten’, as Hamouda Hertelli, the director of the ANGI association puts it, mean that ultimately a perspective for a socially, ethnically and culturally relevant agency is thwarted in France?2 While it is difficult to locate such a dynamic among the young men and women whom I met in Seine-Saint-Denis, it is perhaps possible to identify something of the sort within a couple of recently created and nationally renowned associations. The example of the group AC-Le-Feu, based in Clichy-sous-bois and set up in reaction to the 2005 riots which started in the town, is a case in point. Following the riots, the association, presided over by Mohamed Mechmache, set out on a ‘Tour de France’, building up a cahier de doléances (notebook of grievances), by visiting 120 towns and quartiers across France from March to June 2006. The association had wished to present its ‘notebook’ personally to Michel Debré, the president of the Assemblée Nationale, in October 2006, but an appointment was not possible due to his busy schedule. The collective was nevertheless invited to depose the list of grievances at the Assemblée Nationale on 25 October 2006, which they did, following a march of approximately 200 people in Paris. The ‘notebook’ includes a huge number of issues and covers some 20,000 grievances (employment; racial discrimination; housing and quality of life; justice and the legal system; police practice; education and culture; religion – Islam and equal treatment; distribution of wealth; citizenship and politics; health; issues for women).3 So AC-Le-Feu, whose founders happen to be of North African origin, and who compare themselves to the sans-culottes of 1789, appear successfully to combine social, ethnic and cultural registers within their public communication (prise de parole). Indeed, AC-Le-Feu were successful in getting four out of the twelve 2007 presidential candidates ‘on-board’ by inviting them to sign their ‘contrat social et citoyen’ (social and civic contract): Marie-Georges Buffet (PCF), Ségolène Royal (PS), Olivier Besancenot (Communist Revolutionary League, LCR) and Dominique Voynet (Greens, Verts). The contract put forward by AC-LeFeu proposes 105 measures, which include better access to employment, housing and education for young people; calling for greater responsibility of the media and education system in the struggle against discrimination; the introduction of the right to vote for immigrants in municipal, cantonal and regional elections and better police ‘practice’.4 As such, AC-Le-Feu can be seen as key instigators for the recent collective and political mobilisation, gathering together young people from the

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banlieues. However, the group’s leaders play down the cultural or postcolonial nature of their predicament. They present a predominantly social and socio-economic perspective on the problems that young people from the banlieue face in France. This is in stark contrast to another association which has emerged in recent years, grouping together young people of North African origin, the Mouvement des Indigènes de la République (‘Natives of the Republic’, or MIR). MIR are constantly underlining the post-colonial nature of their predicament. Even the name of their association is a provocative allusion to the term indigènes, that was used during France’s colonial period to refer to the ‘natives’ of colonised countries. Their Appel (Appeal), ‘Nous sommes les indigènes de la République’ (‘We are the natives of the Republic’), published on 19 January 2005, was met with much criticism from the media and public personalities of the Left who generally accused the MIR of communautarisme, Islamism and hatred of the Republic and laïcité (Gemie 2006).5 The Appeal itself angrily denounced discrimination (defined as affecting people from former or current colonies, and those of post-colonial immigrant origin); called for the dissolution of the CFCM, described as a colonial ‘mechanism’; demanded the abrogation of the 2004 law on laïcité, which was denounced as ‘discriminatory, sexist and racist’; criticised universalist ‘chauvinism’ and integrationist discourses; and, finally, called for the organisation of an Assises [Conference] de l’anticolonialisme and a march on 8 May 2005.6 In one sense, the MIR does clearly articulate social, ethnic and cultural demands through its Appeal: ‘the anti-colonial struggle is in-dissociable from the fight for social equality, justice and citizenship.’ (Cited Robine 2006). However, it remains a problematic movement, for two main reasons. As Robine points out, the MIR is somewhat removed from the ‘base’, i.e. from the banlieue, and the fact that it concentrates together a number of educational elites means that they are open to the ubiquitous charge of turning ‘their back’ on the banlieue (Robine 2006). Secondly, and more seriously, there is the openly accepted notion that the MIR is proposing ‘un discours de rupture’ (discourse of ‘secession’). Robine quotes the president of MIR, Houria Bouteldja: we’re telling ourselves that there’s nothing to be done in the country, i.e. we don’t believe in it anymore, we don’t believe in the possibility of debate even, we don’t believe in the possibility of a political alternative . . . As far as we’re concerned, we, postcolonials, there’s no space and there never was any in reality, no political existence for us . . . so we’ve decided to promote a project of political break-away [rupture], so a project which is not in any circumstances to discuss with the dominants, or debate with them: we’re addressing the populations concerned by our project . . . with

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a message for the dominants . . . obviously. We’re trying to change the frame, we’re not on the same planet and we don’t speak with their words.7

So it would seem that despite the emergence of these two groupings (AC-Le-Feu and MIR) in the last two years, the notion of a ‘collective actor’ which is able to engage with the mainstream political system by articulating social, political ethnic, cultural, religious experiences and expectations still eludes France’s banlieues. It is still too early to tell, but it seems that AC-Le-Feu shy away from an explicit engagement with cultural origins and foreground a more social perspective on the difficulties that young people in the banlieue face. They are a movement of the ‘quartiers’ rather than being aligned with any specific group. The MIR have wholeheartedly embraced a cultural perspective on collective engagement, to the extent where, although they try to argue that they are involved in broader social struggles, they have been criticised for exclusively focusing on Algerian experience (Robine 2006). Furthermore, it would seem that their radical posture of ‘rupture’ prevents them from taking the political system seriously, or from being taken seriously by the political system. In this sense, then, one is tempted to evoke the notion of truncated collective action or subjectivity, which is due, to a large extent, to the political culture of the Republic. In that sense, both AC-Le-Feu or MIR can be seen as effets pervers of the Republic and its continued failure to fully incorporate (socially and politically) its populations of recent immigrant origin. It is the colour-blindness of the Republican principles of universalism, embedded within France’s idea of itself (the Republican myth); it is France’s colonial history of conquest and conflict (Algeria in particular); it is France’s poorly planned policy of urbanisation in the post-Second World War period, which can be seen as some of the main factors which have made the conditions for the emergence of public and collective subjectivities among young people of North African origin so elusive. Clearly, the most important factor restraining the emergence of a collective subjectivity among young French-North Africans is the context of the Republican model, whereby the idea of allying culture or cultural origins with civic engagement in the public sphere is seen as deeply problematic and threatening by both the Left and the Right. In assessing the likelihood of whether this will always be the case in France, it is worth opening up our thinking to other European societies, such as Britain which, like France, has had a long history of post-colonial migration. As discussed in the Introduction to this book, Britain can be seen as representing a very different model in the political ‘management’ of postcolonial minorities. The emergence from the early 1980s onwards of a

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political consensus that Britain was a multicultural society and that mechanisms for dealing with different culturally defined communities were desirable, has meant that, unlike in France, the notion of culture, cultural communities and cultural difference has been positively accepted and endorsed in the public sphere (Favell 2001). It is possible therefore to evoke the notion of a ‘culturalist paradigm’ in Britain. As demonstrated by Favell (2001), British political traditions such as suspicion towards the State have historically encouraged political organisation within civil society associations. Added to this are the traditions of tolerance and laissez faire which have been easily extended to ‘ethnic minorities’, since governments have considered such developments as being in the wider societal interests of pluralism. A key consequence of such consensus, where post-colonial working-class minorities are concerned, is that social tensions have often found expression within culturally defined dynamics or organisations. Culturally defined dynamics and culturally defined organisations are not the same thing. For example, there is a long history of local councillors of Asian origin being elected to local councils across the country.8 Often these councillors are Labour Party candidates and so are acting within a mainstream political party which has no external community label. However, as detailed by many others, there are often community or culturally inflected dynamics at play, which means that the councillor is often elected as a representative of the local ‘Pakistani community’, or the local ‘Bangladeshi community’ (see Garbaye 2005, for example). Culturally (or nationally) defined organisations refer to specific civil society groupings which define themselves as such – for example, the Bangladeshi Youth Movement in Tower Hamlets or Newham Bengali Community Trust (both in London). It is this historically well-established culturalist paradigm in local politics which can be seen as creating the conditions for the emergence of a new collective conscience among some British post-colonial minorities – one which is defined increasingly in reference to Muslim identity. This would seem to be the case if we consider the example of the recently created political coalition, Respect. While Respect can be described as a numerically minor party (it only has one MP, George Galloway), it is interesting for our purposes to briefly consider the movement since at the local level (and particularly in the London borough of Tower Hamlets) it has attracted the support of a significant number of young people. Furthermore, like AC-Le-Feu and MIR, Respect can be seen as a reactive movement. Indeed, the Respect coalition (which stands for Respect, equality, socialism, peace, environment, community, trade unionism) was founded in February 2004 in reaction to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The coalition grew out of

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the Stop the War movement which had begun to gather pace from 2001 onwards and even more so after Britain went to war in Iraq in March 2003. What is significant about the youth support that Respect has attracted is that it has been particularly coveted by young Muslims. Furthermore these young Muslims are not simply the voters; they are also the campaigners and elected representatives as well. This is the case in Tower Hamlets and Newham (both East London boroughs) and in Birmingham (Sparkbrook), for example. In Tower Hamlets, where fifty-one councillors sit on the council, twelve Respect councillors were elected in the local elections of May 2006. In Newham, where there are sixty councillors, three Respect candidates were successfully elected. More so than in Newham and in Birmingham, Respect have in Tower Hamlets become a sort of opposition party in the borough. What becomes clear when speaking to young Respect councillors is that they were often not terribly interested in politics, but the Afghanistan and Iraq wars galvanised them into political action, first with the Stop the War campaign and then with the Respect coalition. In interviews carried out with young Respect councillors and activists in London during the summer of 2006, these individuals often argued that their main or initial motivation for getting involved in politics was their selfperception as ‘Muslim’ and their identification with Muslims around the world. In this sense, it is the foreign policy of the New Labour government with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan which is cited as the key instigating factor in their decision to engage in the public sphere: I was involved with Respect through the anti-war movement initially and that was initially Afghanistan. I remember my first Stop the War march against Afghanistan and then obviously it prolonged you know, it carried on to the war in Iraq and so on.9 Before Respect was formed I was part of the anti-war movement, because I was very active in the community, . . . Stop the War Tower Hamlets . . . ever since then I was involved . . . for a while I felt that we need another party because the Labour Party was totally different . . . when the war kicked in and George Galloway got expelled from the Labour Party, for him to step forward and be brave . . . , it created hope for everyone . . . we need . . . a political change . . . we don’t need like just protesting and just lobbying which is part and parcel we need a political force . . . we need to give the Left in the UK an alternative voice . . . we saw that Respect can build that future up . . . we saw an opportunity to unite Muslim communities and non-Muslim communities together.10 There’s a reason why I think the largest turn out was down here. You could feel it here in the streets . . . I’ve never seen so many Muslims or Bengalis so interested in politics . . . they were talking about it . . . ‘Oh vote Respect’ . . . you expect that in university, but once you step out of

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university, it was more evident then . . . so you’re right, Iraq definitely got us on our feet and got us talking.11

Although the Respect councillors and activists whom I interviewed insisted that while their initial motivation was linked to their sense that Blair’s government was involved in ‘audacities against Muslims’ around the world (to use one Respect candidate’s term) (i.e. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq), they consistently tried to highlight the fact that, once involved in Respect, they became aware of the importance of forging alliances with other non-Muslim activist groups. Indeed, Respect is an alliance which includes Muslims, the Socialist Worker Party (SWP), environmentalists, trade unionists and some alienated Old Labour supporters: I’d worked for Respect the previous year, I was quite interested in that, taken by George Galloway . . . I’ve become maybe far more politically aware on a wider scale because it was just the war and injustices to Muslims that drew me into this, . . . and then from my other fellow comrades and friends and colleagues, from the other Muslims, from the other socialists, from everybody else . . . I’ve just become far more politically aware on a wider scale on everything else . . . from more domestic issues, to national to international . . . Because that’s what’s interesting about Respect, it is this coalition . . . between Muslims, and people who are coming from a Marxist–socialist background . . . who are very secular . . . a lot of people don’t realise what Muslims and socialists have in common.12 The Muslim community don’t want to be isolated . . . they realise that effective partnership with people of other inclinations will be much much more effective and that’s why there is there is this alliance between the Muslim community and people of the Left.13

The coalition aspect of Respect, which has facilitated the alliance of ‘Muslim concerns’ and Marxist ones is something which is certainly quite striking about the party. Interviewees point out that although they may have been motivated to join or support Respect because it was an antiwar, pro-Muslim party, their initial focus on foreign policy developed into local, more socio-economic (anti-capitalist) issues, such as combating housing overcrowding or challenging privatisation of public services: People know Respect as a political group that is anti-war . . . it took us a long time to build that up . . . we’ve done that. We’ve also worked on housing, we’ve got the biggest housing crisis in Tower Hamlets, overcrowding is phenomenally out the windows, . . . we have eight, nine people living in 2-bedroom flats, we have two economic regenerators for the UK money, Canary Wharf and the City fringe and we have extreme poverty in Tower Hamlets in the way people are living, we’re against council housing being moved to housing associations, . . . we also fought . . . on supporting young people, better facilities.14

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Despite the coalition aspect of Respect and despite the articulation of socio-economic concerns and religious identity politics, this party cannot be described as an example of the emergence of a collective subjectivity which articulates the social and cultural in a manner which is viable in the medium to long term. On the one hand, it is possible to argue that this is not necessarily the ‘fault’ of Respect or its activists. The wider climate of suspicion with regard to multiculturalism and British Muslims since the Oldham riots of 2001, ‘9/11’ and ‘7/7’, added to the new integration agenda of the New Labour government, may in fact have closed the door on the possible emergence of a mature collective actor, capable of articulating socio-economic and cultural/religious identities within the same movement. In other words, the general shift away from the plural ‘consensus’ on the benefits of ethnic, cultural and religious pluralism in Britain on the part of the political establishment would suggest that any overtly political grouping which explicitly identifies itself with ‘Muslim’ causes is likely to be met and treated with suspicion, and in many senses this is the case of Respect. On the other hand, the Respect coalition is deeply problematic for a number of reasons which have already been remarked upon by a range of commentators: the dubious nature of the relationship between Galloway and Saddam Hussein; Galloway’s appearance on Celebrity Big Brother; Respect’s silence on gay rights and abortion; its support for Blair’s Bill on incitement to religious hatred; its links with the distrusted Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). Moreover, the fact that the Respect coalition is just that, a coalition, means that not only is it highly unstable but it has not developed ‘organically’ out of a fusion of experiences and interests. It is therefore unclear to what extent the ‘Muslim’ dimension of the alliance is truly in tune with the socio-economic issues or nonforeign policy (‘non-Muslim’) issues. Even when activists try to highlight their socialist credentials, it invariably is linked to the war in Iraq and the oppression of Muslims – i.e. it would appear that their concern for improving socio-economic conditions for local residents is more the expression of their anti-war stance rather than their socially concerned stance. The example of Respect, is just one limited case-study. However, it is a useful example since it seems to illustrate how the historical predominance of a cultural prism with regard to post-colonial minorities in Britain can and has backfired. The ‘path dependency’ (Favell 2001) on culture and community as the main parameters of political engagement has contributed to the emergence of a collective ‘Muslim voice’, particularly among many young, British-born and university-educated Muslims. Today, the government would like to shift to a more integration-led

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agenda, yet even in its move away from the multicultural consensus it is still bizarrely path dependent on culture, since no alternative or socioeconomic agenda is being put forward in place of multiculturalism. Once again, culture is key to the debate – only now, it is ‘common culture’ and ‘Britishness’ which is being foregrounded. As far as debates on immigrant-origin communities are concerned, the more the British government emphasises common culture and the need for cultural integration, rather than underlining the need to deal with socio-economic inequalities (and thus promote socio-economic integration), the more British Muslims are becoming entrenched in a Muslim ‘view’ of themselves and their place in both politics and society (since in the post-‘9/11’ context, it tends to be towards Muslims that this discourse is directed). So the British context whereby a cultural prism or paradigm has facilitated, even encouraged, the public expression of minority community identities in cultural and religious terms seems to offer a no more favourable experience than the French one. What are the implications of these observations for the French case? Going back to Touraine’s critique of modernity (Touraine 1992), as discussed in Chapter 3, it would seem that his argument that modernity’s ‘decomposition’ into reason and tradition, individual and community, universalism and particularism is, on a meta-level, still pertinent to the continuing dilemmas of immigrant societies such as France and Britain. In other words, given the universalist (a-cultural) bias of the French Republican model and the particularistic (cultural) bias of the British model, both can ultimately be seen as flawed since they have not facilitated the conditions allowing for the emergence of collective subjective identities in the public sphere. It therefore follows that only a public culture which is balanced on a metalevel between universalism and particularism, between community and individual and between the cultural and the social, is likely to favour in the future the emergence of collective and un-truncated subjectivities among recent immigrant populations.

Notes 1 Interview with Service Population, Aubervilliers town hall, 11/01/07. 2 Interview with Hamouda Hertelli, ANGI, 10/01/07. 3 See AC-Le Feu website, http://aclefeu.blogspot.com/; accessed March 2007. AC Le Feu stands for Association, collectif, liberté, égalité, fraternité, ensemble et unis, and is also a play on words meaning ‘Stop the Fire’; ‘La marche citoyenne d’AC le feu s’arrêtera aux portes de l’Assemblée’, Le Monde, www.lemonde.fr and AFP, 16 October 2006.

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4 See ‘Les propositions du “contrat social et citoyen” ’, Nouvel Observateur, http://tempsreel.nouvelob.com, 28 February 2007; accessed 27 March 2007. 5 See Gemie (2006); I am grateful to Sharif Gemie for sharing this unpublished paper on the MIR with me. 6 ‘Nous sommes les indigènes de la République! . . .’ Appel pour les Assises de l’anti-colonialisme colonial. The choice of date for the Assises was deliberate – it marks the end of the Second World War but also the date of a massacre by the French colonial forces of Algerians in Sétif, http:// toutesegaux.free.fr; accessed 27 March 2007. 7 Robine (2006) cites Houria Bouteldja, whom he interviewed on 26 October 2005. 8 Garbaye (2005: 11) points out that this can be seen as historically linked to the fact that, unlike in France, New Commonwealth immigrants were granted voting and electoral rights when they came to Britain until the 1981 Nationality Act was introduced. 9 Interview with R., Respect councillor, Tower Hamlets, 24/08/06. 10 Interview with A., Respect councillor, Tower Hamlets, 29/08/06. 11 Interview with Sh., Respect supporter, Tower Hamlets, 31/08/06. 12 Interview with Z., Respect Newham council election candidate, May 2006, 31/08/06. 13 Interview with A., Respect councillor, Tower Hamlets, 29/08/06. 14 Interview with A., Respect councillor, Tower Hamlets, 29/08/06.

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Official publications and reports Aubermensuel, No. 105, April 2001 Aubermensuel, No. 107, June 2001

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Glossary

animateur/trice arrondissement assimilation

association de quartier bac ES (économiquesociale) bac littéraire bac scientifique BAFA

banlieue ethnique banlieue populaire banlieue stigmatisée banlieusard BEP

beur bricolage bricolage identitaire

youth activities worker municipal district of large city process by which immigrants abandon cultural, religious and social practices associated with their country of origin and fully adopt those which are dominant in their country of settlement neighbourhood association baccalaureate with specialisation in economics and social studies baccalaureate with specialisation in arts/literature baccalaureate with specialisation in science and mathematics Brevet d’aptitude aux fonctions de centre de vacances et de loisirs – youth activities diploma suburb with a high proportion of ethnic minorities working-class suburb stigmatised suburb someone from the banlieue (suburbs) Brevet d’études professionnelles – diploma of vocational education (normally obtained at seventeen) ‘second-generation’ Arab or North African in France (1980s) DIY (do-it-yourself) ‘identity DIY’ – constructing one’s own identity from various sources

Glossary BTS CFCM Chleuh cité HLM [la] classe politique CODAC

Code de la nationalité collège communautaire [les] communautaristes conseiller principal d’éducation [la] construction de soi CSA décalage démocrate département député [la] diversité élites associatives emploi jeune espaces de démocratie ethnie FASILD

fille de banlieue Français de papier

Français de souche [la] galère

239

Brevet de technicien supérieur – specialised further education diploma Conseil français du culte musulman – Muslim Council of France Southern Moroccan Amazigh person or language (informal expression); Tachalhit social housing estate the political class Commission départementale d’accès à la citoyenneté – citizenship commission set up to combat racial discrimination the Nationality Code middle school communitarian, community-based communitarianists (‘segregationist’) chief school supervisor construction of the self Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (Supreme audiovisual authority) disjuncture democrat county or administrative territory in France member of French parliament (Assemblée Nationale) diversity associational elites subsidised youth employment post spaces of democracy ethnic group Le Fonds d’action et de soutien pour l’intégration et la lutte contre les discriminations – Integration and Anti-Discrimination Fund a girl from the suburbs someone who has French papers but who is of non-French origin; often derogatory term of ‘French’ (white) origin [slang] great difficulty

240 HALDE

Haut Conseil à l’intégration (HCI) HLM imaginaire (noun) immigré(s) insertion

intégration

[les] jeunes/[les] jeunes de banlieue [les] jeunes de cités [les] jeunes des quartiers [les] jeunes issus de l’immigration [la] jeunesse des banlieues jus sanguinis/droit du sang jus soli/droit du sol kabyle laïcité

lycée lycée d’enseignement général lycée d’enseignement professionnel Maghrébin maison de jeunes

Glossary Haute autorité de lutte contre les discriminations et pour l’égalité – Equality and Anti-Discrimination Authority High Commission for Integration habitat à loyer modéré; social housing imagination immigrants process by which immigrants become active participants in the social and economic fabric of their adopted country the process by which an immigrant adapts to social, economic, political and cultural life in her country of adoption young people/youth from the suburbs young people from housing estates young people from working-class neighbourhoods immigrant origin youth young people from the suburbs (often deprived housing estates) citizenship by bloodline citizenship by birth in a particular territory Algerian Amazigh (Berber) – from the Kabylie region of Algeria the separation of the Church and the State; separation of religion from public sphere high school general/mainstream academic high school vocational high school North African (Maghrebian) youth club

Glossary malaise marche des beurs

médiateurs culturels [la] minorité visible mise à distance pavillon première

prise de conscience quartier quartier populaire rebeu(x) régie de quartier renoi(x) repli identitaire/ communautaire [les] républicains

Républicanistes [la] revendication seconde sociologie du bricolage [le]soutien scolaire subjectivité subjectivation Sujet terminale

triangle de l’ethnicitié/ l’identité

241

unease a national three-month-long march against racism and for equality, organised by second-generation North Africans in the autumn of 1983 cultural mediators a visible minority, i.e. people who are visibly of minority ethnic origin distancing/exclusion detached house penultimate year of high school in France (equivalent to Year 12 in England and Wales) becoming politically aware of something, e.g. a political awakening neighbourhood/district working-class neighbourhood Arab(s) (backslang term) urban neighbourhood development council Black person (people) (backslang term) closing in on one’s identity/oneself/one’s community those individuals who uphold the political values of the French Republic staunch defenders of the French Republican ideals (political) claim/demand Equivalent to Year 11 in England and Wales sociology of self-construction school support/homework clubs subjectivity subjectivation Subject last year of high school in France (equivalent to Year 13 in England and Wales) the triangle of ethnicity/identity

242 une et indivisible [la] vie associative ZEP

Glossary one and indivisible associational life Zone d’éducation prioritaire – schools located in deprived areas (often banlieues) with extra state allocation of resources

Appendix I: summarised interviewee biographies

•

The ‘biographies’ which follow concern the forty-six interviewees discussed throughout Chapters 4–8. They are purely summaries, and should be treated as such. • Where other interviewees are mentioned in a biography (as ‘Naima’, p. 254), see their own biographies. • The Cité scolaire Pablo Picasso (which includes the Collège Pablo Picasso, and the Lycée Pablo Picasso) and the Lycée Van Gogh are based in Aubervilliers and are pseudonyms. Both the Collège Pablo Picasso and the Lycée Van Gogh are classed as ZEPs. • Unless otherwise stated, the interviewees live with their families.

Young women ‘Aicha’ Aicha is twenty-eight years old. She is a trainee care-auxiliary, training at the Centre de formation Louise Couvé, based in Aubervilliers. She was born in Algeria and brought to France at the age of two. Both her parents are Algerian. She is of Algerian nationality and of kabyle origin. Her father is a retired worker who emigrated to France in 1962 and her mother was formerly a nanny. She is the third-born of six children (she has two older married brothers, two younger sisters and a younger brother). Aicha lives in Le Blanc-Mesnil (Seine-Saint-Denis). ‘Amira’ Amira is sixteen years old. She is a pupil in première littéraire at the Lycée Pablo Picasso in Aubervilliers.1 She was born in France and has French nationality. Both her parents are Tunisian. Her father is an unemployed electrician and her mother does not work. She is one of seven children.

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Appendix I

She has lived in Aubervilliers all her life and had just recently moved to neighbouring La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis) at the time of interview. ‘Arwa’ Arwa is eighteen years old. She is an Accountancy BEP pupil in a lycée d’enseignement professionnel in nearby Drancy. She was born in France (Paris). Both her parents are Moroccan. She holds Moroccan nationality and will imminently acquire French nationality. Her father, who grew up in France, no longer works due to an industrial accident; he had previously worked as a mechanic and held various other jobs. Arwa’s mother is a child-minder. Arwa is one of seven children (she has two older brothers, two younger brothers and two younger sisters – one of her brothers is a half-brother). She has lived with her family in Aubervilliers for six years. Before that, she lived with her family in the Auvergne region. ‘Fatima’ Fatima is eighteen years old. She is a pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in Aubervilliers. Both her parents are Tunisian. (Her parents are divorced and she lives with her mother.) Her mother is a cleaner. Fatima has one younger sister who is at collège. She has always lived in Aubervilliers. ‘Fawzia’ Fawzia is seventeen years old. She is a pupil in première ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in France (Paris, eighteenth arrondissement) and both her parents are of Algerian kabyle origin. (Her father, who died four years ago, was born in Paris.) Fawzia has dual French–Algerian nationality. Her mother joined her father in France at the age of eighteen. Her father was a worker and her mother works as a home help. Fawzia is the eldest of three children (she has two younger sisters; one is thirteen, the other one is ten). Fawzia has lived in the Landy area of Aubervilliers since 1991 and before that had lived in the Quatre chemins quartier of the town. ‘Hala’ Hala is eighteen years old. She is a pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in Aubervilliers and both her parents are Tunisian. Hala holds dual French–Tunisian nationality. Her father

Appendix I

245

emigrated to France in 1974 and her mother joined him in 1979. Hala’s father initially worked as a warehouse operative and then became a company employee. Her mother does not work. Hala has four sisters and one brother. One sister is studying for a Licence in Mathematics and her brother is studying for a Licence in Physics. Both are at the Université de Paris VII.2 Hala lives in the Quatre chemins quartier of the town. ‘Idaya’ Idaya is seventeen years old. She is a pupil in première ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in Aubervilliers. Both her parents are Moroccan and she holds dual French–Moroccan nationality. Idaya believes that her father came to France in the mid-1960s or early 1970s. He no longer works, but was a joiner. Her mother works as a childminder. Idaya is the youngest of four children. Her eldest sister works, although Idaya does not know what she does, and her two brothers are university students: one studies Architecture and the other one studies Economics. Idaya has lived in Aubervilliers all her life. ‘Karine’ Karine is seventeen years old. She is a pupil in première ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in Paris. Her father is Algerian and her mother is South American. Her father is a psychologist and her mother is an assistant radiologist. Karine lives with her mother and has only recently moved to Aubervilliers. Before that, she lived in Paris and Antony (Hauts-de-Seine). ‘Khadija’ Khadija is seventeen years old. She is a pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in Morocco and came to France at the age of three. Both her parents are Moroccan (Amazigh, from Agadir). She holds Moroccan nationality only but at the time of interview was expecting to obtain French nationality imminently. Khadija’s father is not working due to illness but used to work as a cleaner. Her mother does not work. Khadija is the eldest of five children. She lives in the La Maladrerie area of Aubervilliers. ‘Lamia’ Lamia is twenty-five years old. She works as an aide-éducatrice (assistant youth worker) at the Collège Pablo Picasso on an emploi jeune basis.

246

Appendix I

She was born in France and both her parents are Moroccan. Lamia holds dual French–Moroccan nationality. Her father is deceased and her mother lives between France and Morocco. Lamia is the youngest of five children. She has two sisters and two brothers. Her eldest sister is an accountant; the second sister is a secretary; one of her brothers works in IT and one works at the Charles de Gaulle airport. Lamia lives in Villeneuve-La-Garenne (Hauts-de-Seine). ‘Leila’ Leila is seventeen years old. She is a pupil in première littéraire at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in Aubervilliers and both her parents are Algerian. She holds dual French–Algerian nationality. Leila’s father emigrated to France as a single man, when he was eighteen, and then brought his wife and his first three children over to France. He has worked for twenty years as a cleaning inspector at the Gare de l’Est. Leila’s mother does not work. Leila is the fourth-born of seven children (four girls and three boys). Her eldest sister is married and has returned to live in Algeria. The other two older siblings (one brother, one sister) are also married but live in Saint-Denis and Paris. Her married sister is studying for a maîtrise; one brother is studying for a Licence in Mathematics; one brother owns his own transport company and another one has left school and works at the Charles de Gaulle airport. Her youngest brother is at collège. Leila lives in the Sadi Carnot area of Aubervilliers. ‘Malika’ Malika is twenty-five years old. She is a trainee nurse, studying at the Centre de formation Louise Couvé, based in Aubervilliers. She was born in France and both her parents are Moroccan. She holds dual French– Moroccan nationality. Malika’s father came to France in 1966 and in 1969 her mother joined him. Her father is a worker and is about to retire. Malika’s mother used to work in a factory and after bringing up the children returned to work as a cleaner. Malika is the third-born of five children. Her eldest sister works in catering. The second eldest sister, with whom Malika lives, is married and works in a bank. The third sister works in business and her youngest sibling is a sixteenyear-old boy. Malika’s family lives in Rennes but she has moved to live in Fontenay-sous-Bois (Val-de-Marne) so as to pursue her studies in Aubervilliers.

Appendix I

247

‘Mona’ Mona is seventeen years old. She is a pupil in seconde ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in France and both her parents are of Algerian– Amazigh origin (kabyle). She has dual French–Algerian nationality. Mona’s father came to France at the age of seventeen. He is currently not working but has worked as a mechanic and as a computer technician, among other things. Mona’s mother, who was born in France, is a secretary. Mona is one of three children. Her older brother is nineteen and is studying for his baccalaureate and her younger brother is thirteen and in quatrième (Year 9). Mona lives in the La Maladrerie area of Aubervilliers and has always lived in the town. She is friends with Hala. ‘Myriam’ Myriam is twenty-four years old. She is a student nurse, training at the Centre de formation Louise Couvé, based in Aubervilliers. She was born in Paris and is of Algerian (kabyle) origin. She has dual French–Algerian nationality. Myriam’s father, who is now deceased, emigrated to France from Algeria in the 1960s and had worked as a chef de rang in a restaurant. Her mother, also from Algeria, joined her father in 1972 and worked as a nursing auxiliary until recently. Myriam has one older brother (twentyseven years old) who is a computer technician and a younger brother (twenty-one years old) who is studying information technology. Myriam has always lived in Paris’ eleventh arrondissement, until she and her mother moved to the nineteenth arrondissement two years ago. ‘Nabila’ Nabila is seventeen years old. She is a pupil in première ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in France and her parents are both Moroccan. She holds dual French–Moroccan nationality. Nabila’s father is employed at the Charles de Gaulle airport and her mother does not work. She lives in nearby Dugny (Seine-Saint-Denis). ‘Nacira’ Nacira is twenty-six years old. She is a student nurse, training at the Centre de formation Louise Couvé in Aubervilliers. She was born in Algeria, was brought to France at the age of one, and grew up in Nanterre. She holds dual French–Algerian nationality. Nacira’s father came to France in the 1970s as a tourist, before marrying her mother, and found work

248

Appendix I

through family contacts as a painter and decorator. He has always worked as a painter. Her mother does not work. Nacira has two sisters and two brothers. She is the eldest. One of her sisters is a tri-lingual secretary; the other is studying for a Licence in Mathematics. Her brothers are both at collège and lycée. Nacira is married and has been living in neighbouring Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis) for the last two years. ‘Naima’ Naima is eighteen years old. She is a pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in Aubervilliers and both her parents are Moroccan (Amazigh, from Agadir). She holds dual French–Moroccan nationality. Her father emigrated from Agadir in 1975 and worked at the Rungis market depot during the day and at the Citroën factory at night. Naima’s mother joined him in France 1981. Her father was made redundant and thereafter has worked in a restaurant and, most recently, as a maintenance employee in a cleaning company. Naima’s mother works as a child-minder. Naima is one of five children. She is the sister of ‘Waleed’ and ‘Mohamed’ and the second eldest in the family. She lives in the Hemet area of Aubervilliers. She is friends with ‘Khadija’. ‘Selma’ Selma is a sixteen-year-old bac pupil of Moroccan origin. She has been born and brought up in Aubervilliers and goes to school in Paris (eighteenth arrondissement). She is president of the CLJA. ‘Salikha’ Salikha is seventeen years old. She is a pupil in première ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She is of Moroccan origin. She is not sure what her father does for a living except that he ‘works for a company’. Her mother does not work. Salikha lives in the La Maladrerie area of Aubervilliers. ‘Salima’ Salima is twenty-six years old. She is employed as an aide-éducatrice (assistant youth worker) at the Collège Pablo Picasso on an emploi jeune basis. She was born in France and is of Algerian origin; Salima holds dual French–Algerian nationality. Her father works as a stock controller and her mother does not work. Salima has four brothers, one who is older than her and works as a security guard, one who is at university,

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one at high school and one at collège. Salima is married and is a mother of a six-month-old boy. Her husband is of Algerian origin. They live in Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis). She is a colleague of ‘Lamia’. ‘Samira’ Samira is twenty-four years old. She has a Licence in History from the Université de Paris XIII and works past-time as a surveillante (school supervisor) at the Collège Pablo Picasso. She was born in France and both her parents are Algerian (kabyle). She holds dual French–Algerian nationality. Samira’s father came to France with his brother around 1974, and then sent for his family later. He is retired but owns his own shop. Samira is one of ten children. She has five sisters and four brothers; the oldest sibling is forty-four years old. Samira lives in Saint-Denis (SeineSaint-Denis). She works with ‘Lamia’ and ‘Salima’. ‘Sara’ Sara is twenty-six years old. She works as a full-time animatrice (sociocultural youth activities coordinator) at the maison de jeunes in the Vandrezanne cité. She was born in Algeria but both her parents are Moroccan. She came to France at the age of six. She holds Moroccan nationality only. Her father came to Paris with his three brothers at the age of twenty. He found work in a printing factory and has worked there all his life. Her mother has recently started to work as a child-minder. Sara is the third-born of four children. She has two brothers and one sister. Sara lives in La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis), which borders Aubervilliers. ‘Zina’ Zina is eighteen years old. She is a pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. She was born in Paris and both her parents are Algerian (kabyle). Her father owns his own shop and her mother does not work. Zina is one of seven children. She has two brothers and four sisters (one of whom lives in Algeria). Zina lives in Aubervilliers. She is a classmate of ‘Fatima’.

Young men ‘Abdel’ Abdel is twenty-six years old. He is a maîtrise student in Education at the Université de Paris VII and he works as a part-time surveillant (school

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supervisor) at the Collège Pablo Picasso. He was born in France and is of Algerian (kabyle) origin. Abdel’s father came to France shortly after the Algerian War of Independence, when he was sixteen years old. He works in the food processing industry and his mother does not work. Abdel is one of ten children, the eldest of whom is thirty years old. He lives in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (Seine-Saint-Denis). He works with ‘Lamia’, ‘Salima’ and ‘Samira’. ‘Abdel Majid’ Abdel Majid is twenty years old. He is a BTS Accountancy student at the Cité scolaire Pablo Picasso. He is in his first year. He was born in France and both his parents are Algerian. He holds dual French–Algerian nationality. Abdel Majid’s parents came to France together. His father initially worked as a painter and decorator but is now a foreman. His mother used to work as a seamstress but no longer works. Abdel Majid has two brothers and a younger sister. Both his younger brother and sister are doing an Accountancy BTS. Abdel Majid lives in Bobigny (SeineSaint-Denis), which borders on Aubervilliers. ‘Ahmed’ Ahmed is twenty-two years old. He is a BTS Accountancy student at the Cité scolaire Pablo Picasso. He is in his first year. He is a classmate of ‘Abdel Majid’. Ahmed was born in France and both his parents are Tunisian. He holds Tunisian nationality only. At the age of four, Ahmed and his family moved back to Tunisia, where Ahmed stayed until the age of fifteen, when the family returned to France. Ahmed explains that the motivation for moving back to Tunisia was that his father wanted his children to learn Arabic. Ahmed’s father first emigrated to France in 1976 and then brought his family over later. He is a truck driver at the Charles de Gaulle airport. Ahmed’s mother does not work. Ahmed has five sisters, one of whom is married, one who is also a BTS student and the others are at collège. Ahmed lives in La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis), which borders on Aubervilliers. ‘Amir’ Amir is twenty-two years old. He is a care-auxiliary trainee and studies at the Centre de formation Louise Couvé, based in Aubervilliers. He was born in France and is of Algerian origin. Amir’s parents came over from Tlemcen, Algeria, together. His father is retired now but worked as a railway layer and as a labourer. His mother is also retired but, once

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the children began to leave home, had started work as a child-minder. Amir is one of ten children (five brothers, five sisters); the eldest is forty and the youngest is seventeen. Amir lives in Le Blanc-Mesnil. His parents live in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (both in Seine-Saint-Denis). ‘Aziz’ Aziz is nineteen years old. He is currently not in education but is hoping to join the Lycée Van Gogh, so that he can start a baccalaureate in Carrosserie (automobile body-repair work). He was born in France and is of Algerian origin, with dual French–Algerian nationality. His mother came to France in 1978 and works informally as a carer. Aziz has several half-brothers but he does not know any of them. He has never been to Algeria but is planning to visit the country for the first time soon. He lives in le Pré-Saint-Gervais (Seine-Saint-Denis). ‘Djamel’ Djamel is thirty-one years old. He has a maîtrise in History from the Université de Paris III – Sorbonne and works as a conseiller principal d’éducation (chief school supervisor) in a collège in Seine-Saint-Denis. He was born in France (Le Blanc-Mesnil). Both his father and mother are Algerian. Djamel’s father fought for France in the Second World War and then returned to Algeria (near Constantine) after the war. He returned to France in 1954 and worked as a railway layer for the SNCF until his retirement in the 1980s. Djamel’s mother (who is now dead) came to France in 1955 with her sister and brother-in-law and married Djamel’s father in 1965. She had worked as a cleaner. Djamel has no siblings. He grew up in Le Blanc-Mesnil (Seine-Saint-Denis). Djamel is very involved with a football association in Aubervilliers so has strong links with the town. ‘Fayçal’ Fayçal is nineteen years old. He is a pupil in terminale bac pro mécaniqueauto at the Lycée Van Gogh.3 Both his parents are Tunisian. Fayçal was born in France, has dual French–Tunisian nationality and a Tunisian passport but no Tunisian national identity card. Fayçal’s maternal grandfather emigrated to France and his mother was partially educated in France but then returned to Tunisia at the age of sixteen. Fayçal’s father emigrated to France in 1970. His parents are separated. His father is a baker and his mother is a cleaner. Fayçal has a younger sister and

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an older sister (who is studying for a BTS). He lives in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis). ‘Fouad’ Fouad is thirty-one years old. He is an unemployed volunteer at a North African-origin association based in Aubervilliers. He has been a volunteer there for just over a year. He has a BEP qualification in foundry skills. He was born in France. Both his parents are Algerian and came from the Sétif region. He has dual French–Algerian nationality. His father emigrated to France shortly after Algeria became independent and worked as a porter. He is now deceased. Fouad’s mother does not work. Fouad has six brothers and two sisters. He is the youngest but one. He lives in Aubervilliers. ‘Hicham’ Hicham is eighteen years old. He is a pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. He was born in France (Île-de-France). His father in Algerian (kabyle) and his mother is French. He has been to Algeria once. His father works for the Army and his mother is an accountant. Hicham has one younger brother who is seven years old. Hicham and his family have always lived in La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis), which borders on Aubervilliers. ‘Ibrahim’ Ibrahim is nineteen years old. He is a student studying for a BTS in Accountancy at the Cité scolaire Pablo Picasso. (He is in his first year.) He was born in Nanterre. Both his parents are Algerian. Ibrahim has not been back to Algeria for the last four years, as he does not want to be called up to do military service there. Ibrahim is not sure when his parents arrived in France. He thinks that his mother emigrated to France after the Algerian War of Independence. His father is dead and his parents had been divorced. His mother is a cleaner. Ibrahim has one brother who is married and lives in Algeria and seven sisters (five of whom are married, work and no longer live at home). Ibrahim lives in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis) with his mother and two of his sisters. ‘Khir-Din’ Khir-Din is a twenty-year-old student from Aubervilliers of Algerian origin, studying at Villetaneuse University. He is co-founder and president

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of the youth association Hors Cadre, the aim of which is to change negative media representations of suburban youth through audio-visual projects. ‘Larbi’ Larbi is twenty-two years old. He is a student studying for a BTS in Accountancy at the Cité scolaire Pablo Picasso. He is in his first year and is a classmate of ‘Ibrahim’. He was born in Algeria (Algiers) and came to France (Pierrefitte-sur-Seine) at the age of four. Both his parents are Algerian. He has dual French–Algerian nationality and has just acquired French nationality. Larbi’s father emigrated to France shortly after the end of the Algerian War of Independence and then brought his family over later. His father is currently unemployed but formerly owned his own café. Larbi has five brothers and two sisters. One brother and one sister live in Algeria and are married. The rest are either all in further or secondary education in France. He has lived in Aubervilliers for fifteen years and before that lived in Paris (eleventh arrondissement). ‘Mahmoud’ Mahmoud is nineteen years old. He is a pupil in terminale bac pro mécanique-auto at the Lycée Van Gogh. He was born in Paris. His father is Algerian and his mother is described as ‘French–Algerian’. Mahmoud has dual French–Algerian nationality, an Algerian passport but no Algerian national identity card. Mahmoud’s maternal grandfather emigrated from Algeria to France. His father is now deceased but both his parents lived in France all their lives. His father was a municipal gardener. His mother works as an elderly persons’ assistant at the local town hall (mairie). Mahmoud has a younger sister (ten) and a brother (three). Mahmoud lives in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis), which is very close to Aubervilliers. He is a classmate of ‘Fayçal’. ‘Majdi’ Majdi is nineteen years old. He is a pupil in terminale BEP Carrosserie at the Lycée Van Gogh.4 Majdi was born in Tlemcen, Algeria, and was brought to France at the age of six. He holds dual French–Algerian nationality. Majdi lives with his mother, who was, herself, in France from a young age. Majdi’s mother does not work since she is registered as disabled due to severe asthma. Majdi has one older brother who works as a security guard and two younger brothers, one of whom is

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at collège and one who is at primary school. He lives in La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis), which borders on Aubervilliers. ‘Mansour’ Mansour is twenty-two years old. He has worked for the Aubervilliers municipality as a mediator on an emploi jeune basis for the last three years. He is also a leading member of a local association called Les Potes de Vandrezanne.5 He was born in France. He did not finish school nor obtain his baccalaureate. Both his parents are Moroccan. He holds dual French–Moroccan nationality. His father, a retired factory worker and mechanic, emigrated to France from Agadir. His mother formerly worked as a child-minder. Mansour is the youngest but one in a family of ten children. (He has four brothers and five sisters.) He lives with his parents in Aubervilliers, where he grew up. ‘Mohamed’ Mohamed is sixteen years old. He is a pupil in première ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. He was born in France. Both his parents are Moroccan (Amazigh, from Agadir). He holds dual French–Moroccan nationality. He is the younger brother of ‘Naima’ and ‘Waleed’. Mohamed lives in the Hemet area of Aubervilliers. ‘Mouloud’ Mouloud is seventeen years old. He is a pupil in terminale ES at the Lycée Pablo Picasso. He was born in Algeria and brought to Aubervilliers at the age of three. He has never returned. Both his parents are Algerian (kabyle). His father works as a stock controller and his mother does not work. Mouloud has two brothers (one in collège, one in the first year at University) and three sisters (one who is at collège, one who is in her second year at University and one who works and has left the family home). Mouloud lives the Landy area of Aubervilliers. Mouloud is a classmate of ‘Hicham’. ‘Nasser’ Nasser is eighteen years old. He had been following a baccalauréat professionnel programme which would have given him a qualification as an electrician. However, he dropped out of school four months before we met and he volunteers as an animateur at the Vandrezanne cité’s

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maison de jeunes. Nasser was born in Algeria and has been in France since the age of one; he has recently requested French nationality. Both his parents are Algerian and live in Algeria. His father first arrived in France in the 1960s. Nasser has three older sisters who are all married and work (accountant, teacher, nanny). He also has a younger brother (thirteen) and an older brother who does not work. Nasser lives with his brothers in the Hemet area of Aubervilliers. ‘Tayeb’ Tayeb is twenty-two years old. He is a BTS Accountancy student at the Cité scolaire Pablo Picasso. He was born in Algeria and he has been in France since the age of nine. Both his parents are Algerian (kabyle). Tayeb holds Algerian nationality only but has recently requested naturalisation. Tayeb’s father owns a transport company and his mother is a cleaner. He has two brothers (one is unemployed, one works) and two sisters (one is married and lives in Algeria and one is unemployed). Tayeb lives in Aubervilliers. He is a classmate of ‘Larbi’ and ‘Ibrahim’. ‘Touran’ Touran is twenty-one years old. He is a D.E.U.G. sports science student at the Université de Paris XIII (first year). He was born in Algeria (Kabylia) and brought to France at the age of eight. His mother is from Kabylia and his father is from Algiers. He has Algerian nationality only, and is awaiting French nationality. Touran’s father has worked as a foreman at the Clairefontaine paper factory for twenty years. His mother does not work. Touran has five younger sisters and one younger brother. He has always lived in Aubervilliers. ‘Waleed’ Waleed is nineteen years old. He is a first-year D.E.U.G. geography student at the Université de Paris IV – Sorbonne. He was born in France. Both his parents are Moroccan (Amazigh, from Agadir). He holds dual French–Moroccan nationality. He is the older brother of ‘Naima’ and ‘Mohamed’. Waleed lives in the Hemet area of Aubervilliers. ‘Yacine’ Yacine is nineteen years old. He has recently obtained his baccalaureate and for the last six months has been working as an animateur on an emploi

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jeune basis at a North African-origin association based in Aubervilliers. He was born in France. Both his parents are from Algeria but Yacine has visited Algeria only once. He has French nationality. Yacine’s father came to France in the 1960s and returned to Algeria in 1969 to marry Yacine’s mother. He has worked as a painter and decorator, a taxi driver and a barman. Yacine’s mother works as a child-minder. Yacine lives with his French girlfriend in Aubervilliers. Yacine works with ‘Fouad’, who is a volunteer at the association. ‘Yasser’ Yasser is eighteen years old. He is a pupil in terminale BEP Carrosserie at the Lycée Van Gogh. He was born in Algeria and was brought to France at the age of ten. Both his parents are Algerian. He holds Algerian nationality only but is planning to request French nationality. Yasser’s father works as a delivery man and his mother is a cleaner. He has an older brother who works with his father and a younger sister at collège. Yasser lives in neighbouring Pré-Saint-Gervais (Seine-Saint-Denis). He is the classmate of ‘Aziz’ and ‘Majdi’.

Notes 1 Terminale is equivalent to Year 13 in the English and Welsh education system; Première is equivalent to Year 12; Seconde is equivalent to Year 11. Littéraire refers to a baccalaureate programme which places an emphasis on literature, philosophy and languages. ES refers to a baccalaureate programme which is more specialised in economics and social sciences subjects. Scientifique refers to a baccalaureate programme which places an emphasis on mathematics and science subjects. 2 A Licence is the degree which is awarded after successful completion of three years of study at University in France. A Maîtrise is awarded after four years and a D.E.U.G. (Diplôme d’études universitaires générales) is awarded after two years. (This system has since changed into the License–Master–Doctorat cycle.) 3 Bac pro, i.e. baccalauréat professionnel – a baccalaureate programme with a vocational emphasis. 4 BEP – Brevet d’études professionnelles – pre-baccalaureate vocational qualification. 5 This association name is a pseudonym.

Appendix II: photographs

1 Quartier Vallès/La Frette – 1

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2 Quartier Vallès/La Frette – 2

3 La Maladrerie/Émile Dubois – 1

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4 La Maladrerie/ Émile Dubois – 2

5 Offices of the Office municipal de la jeunesse d’Aubervilliers (OMJA)

Index

Amazigh 3, 105–107, 114, 118–120, 126, 137, 139, 160, 166, 177, 193–194 anti-discrimination legislation 38, 45 anti-racism 10, 12, 57 assimilation 22–26, 55–60 passim, 69–71, 90, 99 Assemblée Nationale 30, 42, 44, 214 associations (immigrant) 15, 28, 35, 41, 52–54, 63–80 passim, 97–112 passim, 124–127, 147–148, 154, 159, 166–180 passim, 209–219 passim Berber 3, 105–107, 118, 124, 137 Beur 64– 65, 67, 80–81, 140, 191 Britain 7–13, 16, 40, 55–56, 70, 76, 133, 216–222 passim Brubaker, Rogers 23, 26, 27 Cesari, Jocelyne 53, 66– 69, 81 Chirac, Jacques 30–32, 37– 40, 48, 51, 81 citizenship 8, 13–19 passim, 20–29 passim, 36, 50–69 passim, 188–199 passim, 203–215 passim Code la nationalité française 4, 26, 29, 30 communitarian (-ism) 58, 64–66, 80, 90, 116, 125, 135, 138 Conseil français du culte musulman (CFCM) 40– 41, 49, 215

cultural difference 5–8, 11–13, 26, 46, 53–61, 63–64, 66–69, 74–75, 80, 93, 138, 204, 209–210, 217 cultural discrimination 3, 15, 49, 63, 72, 153, 158, 182, 204, 213 discrimination cultural see cultural discrimination racial 62, 72, 138, 141, 150, 153–154, 159, 168, 170, 175, 183–189 passim, 204, 213–214 diversity 8, 38–39, 45–50, 60–64, 93, 196 droit du sang 29 see also jus sanguinis droit du sol 29–32 see also jus soli Dubet, François 6, 72–75, 87–88, 140, 210 Durkheim, Émile 18, 82, 92, 128, 140 equal opportunities 45–48 ethnicity 10–14, 18–20, 46, 57, 61–69, 74–77, 82–94, 116, 173, 178, 204, 213 exclusion 3–20 passim, 67, 71–78, 82, 87, 90–92, 152–158 passim, 162–168 passim, 178, 184, 205, 211–212

Index Favell, Adrian 8–10, 13, 33, 217, 220 Fonds d’action et de soutien pour l’intégration et la lutte contre les discriminations (FASILD) 47 Fonds d’action sociale (FAS) 80 Front National (FN) 28–38 passim, 43, 45, 55, 185, 188, 209 galère 72, 73, 180 Giscard-d’Estaing, Valéry 27, 45 Guigou (Loi) 35, 36 Hargreaves, Alec 31–34, 51 harkis 48, 52 Haut Conseil à l’Intégration (HCI) 34–35, 38– 40, 47, 51–52, 209 hybridity 11, 91, 93, 156 insertion 33–34, 39, 69, 70 integration 5, 8, 17, 23, 34– 40 passim, 44–60 passim, 64–77 passim, 81, 92, 168–169, 191, 200, 209–210, 220–221 Islam 4, 6, 16, 31–38 passim, 40– 49 passim, 50–59 passim, 71–75 passim, 109–111, 117, 125–140 passim, 161–179 passim, 194, 213–214 Jospin, Lionel 35, 37, 51 jus sanguinis 29–30, 32, 51 jus soli 9, 29–30, 32, 50 Khosrokhavar, Farhad 86–87, 91, 146, 155, 178, 210 Koran 110–111, 127, 130, 132, 133 Labour Party 217–218 see also New Labour laïcité 5, 33, 39– 41, 49, 52, 57, 59–61, 80, 204, 209, 215

261

laissez faire 10, 217 Lapeyronnie, Didier 3, 81, 91–92, 157 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 28, 33, 37, 43, 45, 51, 174, 205 liberals 80 media 9, 11, 31–38 passim, 40–48 passim, 62, 66, 72, 189, 204, 212–215 minority (ethnic; cultural; identity) 9, 13, 46, 55, 67, 76, 89, 92, 159, 168, 213, 221 Mitterrand, François 28, 32–33 modernity 84–86, 89, 91, 109, 169, 221 Modood, Tariq 8, 10–12, 93 multiculturalism 5, 9, 53–62 passim, 66, 75, 77, 80, 209, 220–221 Muslims 7, 10–11, 16, 31, 40–41, 52, 69, 110, 129–130, 133, 138, 177, 218–221 nationalism 9, 17–18, 20, 51 nationality 4, 17–18, 23–32, 35–36, 50–51, 70, 78, 222 Nationality Code 28, 30, 32–33, 209 see also Code de la nationalité française naturalisation 5, 29, 31 new citizenship 65, 91, 207 New Labour 13, 218 Noiriel, Gérard 18–19, 21–26 Parekh, Bikhu 9, 11 Paris 14, 42, 47, 77–78, 98, 100–103, 109, 138, 141–147, 150–154 passim, 184, 192, 202 Parti Communiste Français (PCF) 28, 43, 50, 189, 196, 206 Parti Socialiste (PS) 28, 43, 50, 81, 206, 214

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particularism 25, 35, 42, 84, 221 Pasqua, Charles 32, 36 Pasqua, Lois 32 pluralism 9–10, 57, 217, 220 positive discrimination 58 postcolonial minorities 10, 12, 216 racism 68 Race Relations Act 8, 9 racism 8–12, 20–21, 62, 138, 151–157 passim, 168, 174–175 Ramadan 110–111, 118, 128, 131–134, 137, 140, 161–172 passim Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) 27, 30, 32, 51 Rawls, John 80 recognition 6, 9, 15, 55–61, 63, 66–69, 75, 80, 157, 162, 168, 173, 211–212 Renan, Ernest 24–25, 28, 50 Respect (Coalition) 7, 217–220 Revolution (French) 19, 21–23, 25, 29, 70 riots 4, 9, 13, 42– 44, 56, 60, 62, 72–74, 189–190, 197, 205, 212, 214, 220 Sarkozy, Nicolas 5, 40– 45, 49 Schnapper, Dominique 19–21, 25, 31, 57–58 Silverman, Maxim 19–20, 22–23

Stasi, Bernard (Stasi Commission) 49, 60 Taguieff, Pierre-André 57, 61 Taylor, Charles 58, 80 tolerance 9–10, 55, 57, 168, 217 Touraine, Alain 6, 51, 59–61, 83–87, 89, 157–158, 178, 185, 210, 213, 221 unemployment 27, 36, 43, 54, 59, 69–72, 78, 148, 189, 194, 202, 213 Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF) 28, 30, 32 Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) 40, 42–45 universalism 5, 19–21, 54–56, 58–61, 76–77, 79, 87, 98, 209, 216, 221 USA 57, 61, 70, 76, 83, 92 verlan 62 Walzer, Michael 58, 80 Weber, Max 18, 82 Weil, Patrick 4, 27–30, 36 Wieviorka, Michel 14, 54–56, 58–60, 76–77, 83–84, 89–92, 98, 116, 121, 157, 178, 184, 210 Zone d’éducation prioritaire (ZEP) 47, 52, 58, 98