November 11, 2005
Lessons on Ethnic Identity and Foreignness in France and US
The NYTimes has an article in today's paper entitled "What Makes Someone French?" It focuses on the case of French citizens of Algerian descent who situate a unique position in France because these individuals were born in Algeria when it was a French territory, migrated to France as infants/children, and became citizens. Yet their stories are like those of the newer immigrants; they share a common theme of feeling like foreigners in their own country. At the same time, there are differences too...
[Mr. Arhab] said earlier generations like himself have had it easier than the frustrated youths in the housing projects today, because his generation had closer ties to their homelands. "When someone says to me, 'you're not French,' I can take refuge in my origins," he said, "but the young can't do that."
In other words, earlier generations could anchor themselves and find pride in their ethnic heritage. This ethnic solidarity provides stability and a sense of worth in times of discrimination and oppression. I think this same attitude/belief holds true for earlier generations of Asian immigrants who came to this country as adults with their identities already formed.
For the more recent generation of immigrants or children of immigrants, the challange is greater because they are more disconnected from their ethnic roots, even though they may seem more connected on the surface.
Most second-generation Muslim immigrants are generally no more observant than young French Catholics. But the legacy of discrimination creates the conditions for young people who feel neither French nor North African to seek an identity in Islam - often anti-Western, political Islam.
We see the same sort of retreat into one's ethnicity in the US, as well. In psychology, this phenomenon is often referred to as rejection-identification. In feeling rejected by the majority, members of a minority group identify more strongly with their ethnicity. However, how is their notion of ethnicity constituted? Is it similar or different than their parents or earlier generations? My sense is that it often is not the same. It is its own entity that is unfortunately less anchored in the collective history of its people. Without this deeper foundation, this ethnic identity is more vulnerable to extremist views.
I am reminded of the life of Malcolm X and his tranformation after visiting Mecca. He realized praying beside muslims of different colors that his original understanding of being Black and Muslim was skewed. By returing to his roots and learning about the collective history of his people, he found a more stable, secure ethnic identity that allowed him to find alternate ways to manage discrimination.
Claire Jean Kim's writings on racial triangulation are very relevant to this discourse as well.
In this model, Kim contrasts the experiences of Asian Americans with those of Whites and Blacks. She argues that Asian Americans are positioned as more foreign than Blacks, yet more valorized (i.e., viewed as more superior) than Blacks. This triangulation creates more tensions among minority groups, pitting them against each other while conveniently keeping Whites out of the conflict.
To some extent, this phenomenon (or at least the foreigner-insider polarization) seems to be happening in France. French government likes to think they are treating everyone as insiders, but the reality suggests many are treated as foreigners in their own country. The more excluded people feel from their own country, the more likely they will then seek refuge in other social groups and identities...for better or worse.
Posted by richlee at November 11, 2005 09:01 AMVery interesting commentary on a provocative article. I was going to email this to you this morning but apparently you get up earlier than I.
One thing that interested me in the NYT article was the idea that France's response to the problem of discrimination is hampered by the very ideals of the French Republic:
"Though many countries aspire to ensure equality among their citizens and fall short, the case is complicated in France by a secular ideal that refuses to recognize ethnic and religious differences in the public domain. All citizens are French, end of story, the government insists, a lofty position that, nonetheless, has allowed discrimination to thrive."
The power of large-scale ordering narratives or "meta-narratives" to influence or constrain the perception of problems--or responses to problems--has been widely written about by French philosophers and cultural historians, including Foucault ("The Order of Things", e.g.), Michel de Certeau, and Jean-Francois Lyotard among others.
The power of meta-narratives such as the French conception of Republican citizenship, growing out of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), can (arguably) be seen at different levels including governmental policy and individual behavior. According to post-modernist critiques, such narratives are deeply enshrined in all cultures, and actively promulgated by the educational and legal systems, and by many other less-visible means.
Based on my brief residence in France, I would argue that the fact that "something is wrong here" is well known, and is not really a taboo subject as the article seems to suggest. However, I think that the article is accurate in asserting that the governmenal structure of France is hampered in its response by ideological constraints imposed by its deeply rooted, potentially conflicting, concepts of Republican citizenship and ethnic nationalism.
Yesterday I attended a presentation by Geography Dept. chair John Adams, in which he made a similar point about the characterization of urban areas in census data: Prior to 1900, the US census was not really equipped to capture what was going on in urbanized areas because it's way of looking at the country was based predominantly on a resource-based economy. (I'm grossly simplifying here...) Tools were soon added to the census to enable demographers to look at the composition and activities of cities in more meaningful ways, but these tools came with their own ideological baggage--specifically their origin in the sociology of the early 20th century, leading to further changes as ideas of urban studies evolved...this process is still ongoing, as seen in the debate over the "accuracy" of each subsequent census.
Well that's too long and it doesn't do justice to the complexity of the issue so I'll stop there.
Posted by: Peter Park Nelson at November 11, 2005 12:27 PM