France’s Identity Crisis

Abstract

While many other democracies in the world celebrate or simply tolerate public expressions of difference, France has traditionally remained hostile toward them in the name of republican universalism. The rise of identity politics in recent decades, however, has posed a serious challenge to this position. Today, France is torn between republican values that do not reflect the complexity of a multicultural society, and a global culture war that has supercharged local disagreements and polemics.