Hyphenated French: Reporting Ethnic and Racial Identities in a Colorblind Society

The French colorblind approach – the credo of indifference to differences – has led to removing any reference to ethnic or racial origin from policies or laws -- in compliance with the Constitution -- as well as from statistics and more broadly from collective representations. Until recently, this context has shaped the public expression of ethnic or racial identities, which remain settled. But this official colorblindness does not mean that race and ethnicity are not perceived and used as cognitive categories, neither that they do not serve for the purpose of identification and affiliation of a growing number of racial minority members who claim recognition. How successful is the French model of integration in preventing the rise of racial and ethnic self-identification and expressions? We will analyze to which extent immigrants and second generations from different ethnic and racial background tend to define themselves by combining various identity markers. The choice to refer to a specific ethnicity will be discussed in relation with their family background, social class, education, neighborhood and their experience of discrimination.

The paper will use data from the survey Trajectories and Origins: a survey on population diversity in France, conducted in 2008-2009 with 22 000 respondents from 5 specific sub-samples: Immigrants (8300), descendents of Immigrants (8200), Overseas French (700), descendents of Overseas French (700) and “mainstream population” (3900). The questionnaire covers wide-ranging areas of social experience (education, employment, housing, family formation, language, religion, transnational ties, political participation and citizenship…) and focuses on experiences of discrimination and identity.