Abstract: France has a mode of national belonging that emphasizes the Universalist values of the French republicanism inscribed by the French revolution. This claim to a universal and secular French citizenship that confounds ethnic and racial particularity has enabled France to maintain a seemingly distinct national tradition and distinguish its model of citizenship from those of other European nation-states. However, political, social, economic and cultural transformations that France has witnessed since World War II expose some key limitations in the Universalist ideology of French republicanism. In this article I will argue that, contrary to the republican claim to universal “citizen” defined primarily in the realm of the legal and political, the provision of French citizenship has operated along strict lines of race and ethnicity. Integration in France is equated with socialization and assimilation while patterns of implementing the secular law favored more “normative” and “mainstream” ethno-religious expressions in the public space.
Keywords: Ethnicity, Laïcité, Race, Nation, Republicanism, Citizenship, Dual Nationality, affair du foulard.
Title: Imagining the Republic: Nation, Citizenship and Belonging in France
Author: Mohammed Agzar, Mohammed V-Agdal
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
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