Global IssuesRIGHTS: Tick the Right Box If You Feel French
The stereotypical image of a French person is of someone wearing a beret and carrying a baguette under his arm. But can one wear a burqa and also be French? Can one prefer pitta bread to baguettes and still be French?
Can a person be of African, Middle Eastern or Caribbean descent, like several players on the national football team, and be truly French?
Most importantly, can one criticise France’s record on liberty, equality and fraternity, given the country’s social reality, and still feel French to the core?
These are just a few of the questions that French people will have to grapple with over the next three months in a debate on national identity that the government launched recently.
The project, overseen by the Ministry of Immigration, Integration and National Identity, includes town-hall meetings as well as a website where the population can post comments on what it means to be French.
But critics say the whole 'grand débat' is a ploy to appeal to the right-wing segment of the population ahead of regional elections next March.
President Nicolas Sarkozy won the previous elections in 2007 on an immigration-reform and free-market platform and, as Minister of the Interior in 2005, he famously referred to young protesters in the Paris 'banlieues' (suburbs) as 'rabble' and 'hoodlums'. He has also said that the burqa is not welcome in France.
'There is definitely an element of political opportunism in the debate,' said David Le Breton, a professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Strasbourg. 'But it’s also quite interesting to have this discussion because the problems in France are the same elsewhere in Europe, where things have changed enormously over the past 20 years.'
As many observers expected, the debate has elicited an outpouring of anti-immigrant rhetoric, among other sentiments. One participant on the government website criticised officials, saying: 'You who have allowed millions of foreigners to enter France, you are worse than the worst Vichy collaborators,' referring to those who collaborated with the Germans during World War II.
Another, who described himself as the grandson of Italian immigrants, wrote that to be French meant to 'live freely as equals and as brothers, respecting French laws, and respecting all that is respectable: people, property, laïcité, the flag, the national anthem.'
He added that he did not understand why the children of immigrants 'born on French soil were not obliged to choose a definitive nationality when they turned 18 years old' as was the case in the past.
A contributor who called herself Lili said that to be French meant 'speaking our language without an accent from who knows where'.
Le Breton told IPS that while he considered himself French because of the language he spoke, he and many others felt they were more 'citizens of the world' in today’s globalised environment.
'A lot of anthropologists don’t like debates that seek to restrict identity, to put it between walls as it were,' he said. 'The culture in most French cities is dynamic, cosmopolitan and open, but everyone still has questions about their identity, and that’s what makes this discussion ambiguous.'
Launching the identity debate earlier this month, Sarkozy’s immigration minister Eric Besson said the aim was to fulfill the president’s election-campaign promise to bring French people closer to the country’s core values.' We must reaffirm the values of national identity and pride in being French,' he said.
Besson, a former Socialist Party member who joined Sarkozy’s government in 2007, is associated with tough action against illegal immigration, including the closing of a migrants’ camp at Calais in September and the subsequent expulsion of three Aghans to Kabul.
He invited immigrants as well as 'friends of France' to give their views in the current discussion, and a video of his invitation has even made it to You Tube. But while the rest of the world might not be quite ready to get involved in what it means to be French, the debate is already heating up in unexpected ways here.
Marie NDiaye, the recent winner of the main French literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, told a magazine that she had left France to live in Berlin, Germany, because of Sarkozy’s election. She said that she found the 'police state, the vulgar atmosphere hateful' and Besson (as well as Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux) 'monstrous'.
NDiaye, the first Frenchwoman of African descent to win the Goncourt, was criticised for her comments by a member of parliament, Eric Raoult, who asked in a written question to the minister of culture whether 'the duty of a person who defends the literary colours of France should not be to show a certain respect towards its institutions.'
That triggered another round of arguments on freedom of expression, with many in the artistic community coming to NDiaye’s defense.
The writer is not the only one who feels angry about Besson or about the government’s policies, however. Roger Isabet, a contributor to the online debate, wrote: 'I am ashamed of being French when I see the behaviour at the border or the fashion in which the ‘jungle’ camp at Calais was destroyed — a big publicity stunt that was completely ineffective.
'I am ashamed to be French in a country that is a place of welcome for those with money but not for the people who live in countries where there is war and where they are constantly threatened by arms.'
Some participants in the debate have also pointed out that both Sarkozy and Besson are of 'mixed' ethnic heritage, despite their political stance.
Sarkozy’s father was born in Hungary, and Besson’s mother came from Lebanon. Besson himself was born in Morocco, of a French father. He told participants at an immigration conference in September that the North African country was still 'close to his heart'.
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service