Religion and religious discrimination in the French workplace

Abstract

The visibility of religious identities in workplaces has become a recurrent topic of certain public debates and tensions in France. It is generally the visibility of Muslim identities and practices of Islam that are at the centre of these tensions. This article shows in the context of French republican laïcité that religious issues are considered as private issues that should not play out openly in the workplace, which is considered to have a more public character. With a focus on the French labour law framework and religious discrimination issues, interviews with elected politicians, religious leaders, unionists, representatives of civil society organisations and legal experts show that religious discrimination in the French workplace is a more complex phenomenon than it seems. Discrimination of religious employees, in a direct or indirect manner, happens more often than is officially reported in France. Many respondents suggested that a great deal of religious discrimination is, at best, reframed as ethnicity-based or gender-based discrimination. The article also discusses some recent examples of businesses that treat the issue of religious diversity in the French workplace in a more pragmatic manner, opening up more possibilities for reasonable accommodation.