The Republican Model in Question

Abstract

In previous chapters we have shown how French political and intellectual elites have buttressed their belief that French society is not particularly racist on the abstract rights enshrined in a republican constitution. Often they have argued that the abstract citizenship model recognising only the individual, stripped of any communitarian identifying markers, is more effective in integrating newcomers than the so-called ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model accepting of diverse communities. Remarkably, our scepticism about these claims is now less controversial than it used to be, for in the last five years of the twentieth century the model was either increasingly ignored in practice, or more and more consciously called into question as a diverse range of actors discovered the category of ‘race’ as a major structuring factor affecting the life chances of immigrants and immigrant-origin youth. Both policy-makers and anti-racist associations were increasingly drawn towards formerly decried Anglo-Saxon methods in their attempts to combat racism. We begin this chapter by taking stock of anti-racism in the 1980s and early nineties, when the influence of Pierre-Andre Taguieff, the most prolific prophet of the republican model, was at its height. Next we examine what happened when the 1997–2002 plural left government tried to supplement colour-blind territorially organised integration policies with an explicit campaign against ‘racial’ discrimination.