Multiculturalism and the politics of recognition: the case of France

Résumé En

The fairly recent opening of Western Europe in the last thirty years to North-South significant migratory fluxes, has clearly shown the deficiencies, or even the absence of, satisfactory immigration policies in the majority of European countries. A major political and social crisis is threatening, not least in France with the rise of the National Front, which gained 21% of the vote in the Presidential election last year, thanks to a campaign based on xenophobia and attacks on immigrants. These facts are well known. I would like to concentrate on conceptual questions and on the shortcomings of our democratic model. When we think about citizenship in this new social and cultural context, are the traditional notions of nationhood, Nation-State, and nationality still applicable? Especially, in the case of France, is the strongly assimilatory and universalistic Republican model justified? Don't we need to think differently in order to properly welcome and integrate populations who cannot or do not want to assimilate in the way previous waves of immigrants were able to? I will claim that immigration and its twin problem, integration, need different conceptual resources. We are confronted with a structural problem that questions our way of thinking, our social structures and our political values. This is no passing crisis due to a particular conjuncture. Immigrants are there to stay.