The Politics of Socio-Cultural Leveraging: Why Gender Became Central to Immigrant Integration Policy in France

Debates over immigrant integration policy in Western Europe have increasingly been dominated by questions of gender relations, sexuality, and the family.  In France, this rhetorical shift has been matched by a more forceful integration policy that aims to rescue minority girls and women from patriarchy and violence.   This paper investigates why integration policy has taken this strongly gendered cast by examining the evolution of these policies, and rhetorical constructions of them, from 1989-2010.  The paper interprets contemporary conflicts over immigration through the concept of sociocultural leveraging – a social and political process whereby status majorities elevate one downtrodden group in a way that subordinates another.   Sociocultural leveraging has occurred as French policy-makers construct the problem of immigrant integration as one of protecting minority women from violent men in their communities.  More broadly, elites use such leveraging strategies to take advantage of the dilemmas that follow from intersectionality – the overlapping, politically salient identities that generate competing claims for recognition and support.  In France, the mobilization of immigrant-origin women around issues of gender-based violence put important issues on the political agenda, yet also created political opportunities for conservatives seeking to stave off the encroachment of the far right onto their political terrain.  Socio-cultural leveraging has thus been a strategy deployed by conservative politicians to recast right-wing values in the politically more acceptable guise of gender equality.