Disentangling varieties of French nationalism, why does it matter?

Abstract

National identity claims have taken a growing importance in the French political landscape these last decades. While representations of French national identity have long been scrutinised from an elite perspective, much less is known about “What is it to be French?” from a citizen’s perspective. This article aims at filling this gap. Using the European Values Study data, from 1981 to 2018, it first offers a general measure of change in French people national claims during that period. Building on a classification, it then proposes to disentangle five different types of French nationalism. Finally, the article tests the explanatory power of these types of nationalism on support for attitudes and a few policy preferences which involve representations of the in-group and the out-group such as immigration and solidarity policies.