Hargreaves, "Perceptions of Ethnic Difference in Post-War France"

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l0 Immigrant Narratives in Contemporary France manently in France during earlier periods of mass migration, the census of 1982 would show that for the first time Europeans accounted for less than half of France's foreign population. Among the remainder, Maghrebis (North Africans) were by far the largest group, with smaller numbers of sub-Saharan Africans and Asians also present. The decline in the relative importance of Europeans--who until this period had been overwhelmingly dominant among the immigrant population--was also accompanied by a rise in family settlement by immigrants of Third World origin, which gathered speed during the 1970s. By a deep historical irony, this shift towards permanent settlement by non-Europeans became increasingly visible at precisely the moment when the economic boom which had fueled the recruitment of immigrant labor collapsed. The oil crisis of 1973 and subsequent changes in the economic climate prompted araft of policy measures, beginning in I974, designed to halt and if possible reverse migratory flows from Third World countries. The period since then has been marked by a complex web of contradictory trends: the demographic consolidation of post-colonial minorities has been accompanied by their political and economic destabilization and, more recently, by their emergence as significant actors in the transformation of French popular culture. The formal termination of labor migration from Third World countries did not bring an end to population inflows from Africa and Asia. Families continued to join breadwinners already in. France, and the ranks of post-colonial minorities were further augmented by political refugees. The largest influx of this kind came from Southeast Asia following the Communist victory which ended the Vietnam War in 1975. Many opponents of the new regime fled, often as "boat people," and a significant proportion of them found refuge in France, which until 1954 had been the colonial power in Indochina. Compared with the mainly unskilled labor migrants who came to France from the Maghreb and sub- Saharan Africa, those who fled Southeast Asia tended to be more middle-class, carrying with them significant business skills. They were seen less as former colonial "natives" and more as victims of the Cold War suffering at the hands of the West's ideological adversaries. For this reason, they tended to be accepted more readily than other post-colonial minorities. At the same time, this influx of Southeast Asians helped to erode the distinction between economic migrants and political refugees, for it was not always clear whether they were genuinely fleeing persecution or simply seeking better economic opportunities. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the number of asylum-seekers from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia rose rapidly. Suspecting that they were attempting to circumvent the ban on labor migration, the authorities refused residence permits to the vast majority of them. Many unsuccessful asylum-seekers nevertheless remained in France, swelling the ranks of what became generally known during the 1990s as sans-papiers, undocumented or illegal immigrants. Other sans-papiers were victims of the Pasqua laws of 1993 which, in attempting to curb family reunification and other modes of access to French residenc-e p.i-itt, threw tens of thousands into a legal no man's land.3 Residence permits and even French citizenship--which a growing proportion of these new immigrant minorities possess--have been no guarantee of security. The seemingly unstoppable rise in unemployment witnessed between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s hit minority groups particularly hard. Unemployment rates have run far higher among post-colonial minorities than among
Ethnic Difference in Post-War France l l the majority ethnic population and European immigrants. If this discrepancy is partly attributable to the lower levels of certified skills generally found among Third World minorities, there can be no doubt that it is also due in part to racial discrimination on the part of employers. There is now a growing body of evidence to show that young people of Maghrebi, sub-Saharan, and Caribbean descent encounter widespread discrimination in the search for jobs and housing as well as in gaining access to leisure facilities such as nightclubs. The color of their skin, the spelling of their names, or simply a reference to their address is often sufficient to disqualify them in the eyes of an employer.o The addresses which resonate in this way are located in neighborhoods which have come to be known as the banlieues. Until the 1980s. the banlieue was a generic term encompassing all suburban are€N of French cities, but as post-colonial minorities became increasingly concentrated in suburban neighborhoods characteized by low-quality social housing and high levels of unemployment, these districts in particular were singled out in media usage of the banlieue label. In everyday discourse, the banlieue now functions as a synonym for ethnic alterity, social disadvantage, drugs, and crime.5 The main cultural marker of that ethnic alterity is Islam, the religion of almost all Maghrebi immigrants and of a significant proportion of sub-Saharan Africans. Little known in France before the 1970s, Islam is now the country's second largest religious faith, behind Catholicism but well ahead of Protestantism and Judaism. Associated with anti-French nationalism during the Algerian war of independence and with other anti-Western movements such as pro- Palestinian terrorism and the Iranian revolution of 1979, Islam has frequently been seen as a threat to the cultural integrity of France. There is a sharp contrast here with Buddhism, now the country's fifth largest religion. Introduced into France by migrants and refugees from Southeast Asia, Buddhism has a much more peace-loving image than Islam. Majority ethnic converts account for over half the estimated 400,000 Buddhists in France but only about I percent of the country's estimated 4 million Muslims. The media hysteria which surrounded the Islamic headscarf affairs of 1989 and 1994 typified the vilification to which Muslims are often subjected.6 In reality, contrary to popular prejudices, the vast majority of Muslims are entirely respectful of the prevailing social order in France. Moreover, the tiny number of Muslim girls choosing to wear headscarves at school--which they are by law entitled to do--testifies amply to the much weaker hold of Islam on second- and third-generation members of Maghrebi and other post-colonial minorities, compared with their immigrant parents or grandparents. It is abundantly clear that these new generations have been putting the main weight of their cultural energies not into lslam but into popular cultural forms forged primarily in the secular West. One of the most striking features of the second half of the 1990s has been the way in which multi-ethnic rap bands and other musical groups have emerged from the banlieues and entered the mainstream of French popular culture. Performers such as IAM, NTM, and Zebda are now among the top-selling artists in France.i These developments are linked with the wider phenomenon of globalization now traversing France. While political elites have been struggling to resist this process, proclaiming their dedication to the protection of the nationstate, young people in France appear more willing to embrace the horizons
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Hargreaves, "Perceptions of Ethnic Difference in Post-War France"

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