The outskirts of politics: The struggles of the descendants of postcolonial immigration in France

Abstract

From 1983 on, following the Marche pour l’égalité et contre le racisme, the question of racial advocacy in France occupied centre stage. A new generation of activists had entered the public sphere, for the most part the children of immigrants, and they drew attention to social exclusion and marginalisation. These changes occurred in a political climate that had witnessed not only the first post-war electoral victory for the Socialists but also significant inroads by the Front National. France now struggled to reconcile calls for a ‘droit à la différence’, egalitarian principles, and an inclusive multiculturalist society with increasingly vocal and powerful critics who saw in this discourse evidence of rising factionalist (communitarian) tendencies and threats to Republican ideals and values. These different perspectives served to mobilise an impressive array of often competing advocacy associations, organised according to gender, race, religion and so forth, while the foundations of a security-based discourse that has survived into twenty-first-century France were laid, built around a fear of Islam, lawless banlieues, and a misunderstanding of immigration history that continues to predispose individuals to xenophobia.