Immigration, Islam, and the Politics of Belonging in France: A Comparative Framework 9780812204117

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
PART I. Introduction and Theoretical Framework
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Politics of Belonging
Chapter 2. What We Talk About When We Talk About Belonging: A New Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies
PART II. Failed Hopes for a “New Citizenship”: The Political and Intellectual Logic of Changes in Nationality Law
Chapter 3. The Campaign for a Post-National Model of Civic Membership
Chapter 4. Nationality Law Reform: Launching a New Debate
Chapter 5. Reconfiguring the Politics of Membership: The Work of the Nationality Commission
Chapter 6. Nationality Law Reform in Comparative Perspective
PART III. Public Education and Islamic Headscarves
Chapter 7. Contested Conceptions of Citizenship and Integration in France’s Headscarves Affair (1989–1990)
Chapter 8. Paradoxes of Civic Exclusion: Explaining Restrictions on Headscarves
PART IV. Problems of Political Membership in Britain and Beyond
Chapter 9. Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses : From Publication to Public Controversy
Chapter 10. Rereading the Rushdie Affair: The Contested Terms of Being British
Chapter 11. Membership Quandaries Beyond the Nation-State: European and Global Citizenship
Chapter 12. Conclusion
Appendix: English Language Voluntary Exit Verbs and Usual Corresponding Objects
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

Citation preview

Immigration, Islam, and the Politics of Belonging in France

PENNSYLVANIA STUDIES IN HUMAN RIGHTS Bert B. Lockwood, Jr., Series Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher

Immigration, Islam, and the Politics of Belonging in France A Comparative Framework

Elaine R. Thomas

university of pennsylvania press philadelphia

Copyright © 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomas, Elaine R.   Immigration, Islam, and the politics of belonging in France : a comparative framework / Elaine R. Thomas. — 1st. ed.    p.  cm. — (Pennsylvania studies in human rights)   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-0-8122-4332-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)   1. France—Emigration and immigration—Government policy. 2. Citizenship—France. 3. Immigrants—Government policy—France. 4. Minorities—Legat status, laws, etc.— France. 5. Muslims—Government policy—France. 6. Muslims—France—Ethnic identity. I. Title. II. Series: Pennsylvania studies in human rights. JV7933.T56  2011 325.44—dc23

2011024457

Contents

Preface  vii

PART I. INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

1. Introduction: The Politics of Belonging  3 2. What We Talk About When We Talk About Belonging: A New Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies  21

PART II. FAILED HOPES FOR A “NEW CITIZENSHIP”: THE POLITICAL AND INTELLECTUAL LOGIC OF CHANGES IN NATIONALITY LAW

3. The Campaign for a Post-National Model of Civic Membership  53 4. Nationality Law Reform: Launching a New Debate  77 5. Reconfiguring the Politics of Membership: The Work of the Nationality Commission  90 6. Nationality Law Reform in Comparative Perspective  131

PART III. PUBLIC EDUCATION AND ISLAMIC HEADSCARVES

7. Contested Conceptions of Citizenship and Integration in France’s Headscarves Affair (1989–1990)  161

vi  Contents

8. Paradoxes of Civic Exclusion: Explaining Restrictions on Headscarves  182

PART IV. PROBLEMS OF POLITICAL MEMBERSHIP IN BRITAIN AND BEYOND

9. Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses: From Publication to Public Controversy  203 10. Rereading the Rushdie Affair: The Contested Terms of Being British  214 11. Membership Quandaries Beyond the Nation-State: European and Global Citizenship  245 12. Conclusion  261

Appendix: English Language Voluntary Exit Verbs and Usual Corresponding Objects  273 Notes  275 Bibliography  289 Index  303 Acknowledgments 

Preface

This study originally emerged from an interest in what is now generally referred to as “globalization.” I wanted to complement study of its financial and economic dimensions with a new sort of critical investigation of its conceptual and political impact. How international migration, and political responses to it, contributed to reshaping ideas of citizenship and political belonging initially presented itself as a compelling window onto such broader global developments, and this book is addressed in part to all concerned with the changes wrought by them. As the project evolved over time, I confess to having become increasingly drawn to, and politically concerned with, my immediate object of study: immigrant integration policy and politics in contemporary Europe, and particularly in France where I began by spending almost two years living, studying, and conducting research as an SSRC-MacArthur Fellow in the mid-1990s. In the wake of September 11 and its aftermath, the research and writing I had first done on this topic at the University of California, Berkeley, unexpectedly took on a new kind of pertinence and significance as issues of whether European countries’ Muslim populations would be integrated on “western” terms became increasingly salient. My hope is that the original conceptual framework and approach introduced in this book, first developed for the analytic purpose of clarifying comparisons of ideas of political membership across space and over time, may now also prove constructive as a partial counterweight to the understandable but often unfortunately inflammatory tendency for discussion of such issues to take on a far more polemical cast. The tools of ordinary language analysis employed in this book are by nature tools of cultural self-reflection. They thus reveal the part that our own unresolved conceptual confusions play in shaping crises arising from encounters with those experienced as “troubling others.” Most of Parts II and III trace the interaction between policy debate and

viii  Preface

contested concepts in France. It is therefore to be expected that the text will prove of particular interest to scholars and others interested in contemporary French politics. That said, the book introduces a perspective and approach that I believe can be also used to make sense of a variety of other developments. The final chapters illustrating a few such applications are by no means intended to be exhaustive but rather, by design, open-ended. Readers may also, I think and hope, find the theoretical framework relevant to developments in the United States and other areas.

Immigration, Islam, and the Politics of Belonging in France

PART I

Introduction and Theoretical Framework

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Politics of Belonging

Contemporary politics is increasingly marked by controversies concerning the conditions for political membership. The problem of political membership is by no means new. From the time of citizenship’s classical theoretical formulation by Aristotle, political thinkers have grappled with it. But today it is more pressing than ever. The question of who belongs is one of the most difficult, politically charged, and inescapable political quandaries of our time. It has emerged as a problem that policy makers, political thinkers, and citizens themselves all must confront. National and international developments are together contributing to the growing urgency of membership issues. Paradoxically, the various cultural and economic processes together often referred to as “globalization” have by no means consigned questions of political membership to increasing irrelevance. Instead, globalization has in many ways fueled membership politics, often in new forms. Perhaps most dramatically, international migration and its consequences have heightened issues of membership in West European and other economically advanced liberal democracies, to which immigrants—­including many Muslims—­have been heavily drawn in the years since the Second World War. The salience of the politics of membership has recently been reflected in such developments as the massive March 2006 protests against restrictive new immigration laws proposed in the United States; in these protests, immigrants marched to demonstrate their already integral place in American society and their desire for a legal road to citizenship status. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, broad-­ranging public debate over the place of Islam in Europe has become increasingly heated and drawn in leading intellectuals internationally.1 The politics of the last decade or so

4  Chapter 1

has also been marked by a number of other important membership-­related issues, including controversies in California and other U.S. states over bilingual education, “English only” policies, and access of children of illegal immigrants to public education and social services; German and American debates about dual citizenship; political conflicts surrounding Australia’s shift from a “white Australia” to a “multicultural” immigration policy; and conflicts over the construction of mosques, public observance of non-­Christian religious holidays, or the public presence and visibility of Muslim women and girls in “Islamic” attire. From North America to Australia to western Europe, immigration and the challenges following migrants’ settlement have provoked a steady series of passionate political discussions about the nature of political membership and the necessary conditions for belonging in particular political communities. Nowhere have issues of political membership raised by immigration and its aftermath provoked more intense and politically salient public debates than in France. In part, this may be because France has Western Europe’s largest Muslim population and highest estimated percentage of residents of Muslim background.2 It may also be because France has been somewhat ahead of many European countries both in the relatively early arrival of many migrants, and in accepting the idea that immigrants and their descendants in principle could eventually become full members of the nation-­state, an idea that Germany, notoriously, long resisted (Brubaker 1992; Noiriel 1996). Nonetheless, as the widespread riots of autumn 2005 in France’s often ethnically imbalanced suburbs highlighted, France has clearly had great difficulty coming to terms with the long-­term settlement of culturally, religiously, and racially diverse residents of postwar immigrant origin. This study is unique in developing and applying a new theoretical framework for analyzing discussions of political membership and comparing such debates in different countries as well as at the global or international level. As the latter part of this chapter argues, a new theoretical framework of this kind is urgently needed. There is a long-­standing alternative approach to analyzing and comparing models of membership in different countries and historical periods that is still frequently used—­what I call the “dichotomy of civic and ethnic”—­but this approach is both theoretically flawed and ill-­suited to the task of analyzing the membership-­related discussions prevalent in liberal democracies today. One alternative to the prevalent but flawed approach would be simply to take each national version of the politics of membership on its own terms.

The Politics of Belonging  5

This proposal has the apparent advantage of guarding against the danger of reducing the terms of one country’s debates to those of another. Approaching recent controversies through case-­by-­case thick description also appears to offer the advantage of interpreting political positions in ways that are meaningful to the actors involved, so that we can make sense of their logic and reasoning rather than merely imputing explanations for their preferences from an outside perspective. For example, American observers may be tempted to assume that opponents of students’ rights to wear traditional religious clothing are opposing freedom of speech or freedom of religion, but French opponents of headscarves often understand the issue quite differently (Bowen 2008). Unfortunately, the disadvantages of such a case-­by-­case approach ultimately outweigh its attractions. Simply taking debates “on their own terms” may avoid the pitfalls of intercultural reductionism, but it allows for little critical distance and generates no possibility of systematic comparison among different countries or over time. Yet, in a field as politically and morally charged as the contemporary politics of membership—­citizenship and immigration politics in particular—­it is arguably incumbent on political theorists and comparative analysts to offer actors such critical distance, to which systematic comparison can also contribute. Recent work on the politics of belonging has therefore sought to transcend the inherent shortcomings of case-­by-­case national accounts, instead developing broader comparative frameworks. The turn to more comparative work in this area, particularly evident since the 1990s, clearly signals progress in understanding how and why different ideas and policies regarding citizenship and nationality have developed in response to immigration and growing cultural diversity. However, as later chapters show, none of the currently prevailing approaches to theoretically or comparatively understanding these developments are fully satisfactory. Each has encouraged false or overly simplistic expectations concerning the emerging shape of current membership policies and politics. With new conceptual and analytical tools honed for that purpose, this book aims to advance further the emerging theoretical and comparative discussion. Two contrasting perspectives have shaped recent discussion of the relationship between immigration and patterns of citizenship. The first, post-­nationalist perspective foresees increasing convergence in national citizenship policies. According to this view, national citizenship is giving way to a new “post-­nationalist model of membership.” Thanks to the increasing

6  Chapter 1

international influence of human rights norms and respect for “personhood,” advocates of this view have argued, rights are increasingly being equalized irrespective of national status. Over time, national citizenship is therefore supposedly losing much of its traditional significance, especially for migrants. Even where nation-­states still grant and ensure rights, they increasingly do so on the basis of post-­national norms and criteria (Soysal 1994: 136–67; cf. Jacobson 1997). The other major perspective on changes in citizenship and nationality law emphasizes the importance of national political cultures and traditions. According to this view, countries have distinct, deeply rooted conceptions of nationhood that shape their approaches to political membership. Confronted with similar challenges of immigrant settlement, they therefore respond differently, in keeping with their political cultural traditions. The most important and directly relevant work in this vein (Brubaker 1992) argues that France’s and Germany’s different historical sequences of nation-­and state-­building led them to develop different conceptions of nationhood. Once established, these conceptions are normally reflected in citizenship and nationality policies in a fairly stable, continuing fashion. Given their symbolic and emotional significance, they are stubbornly resistant to change.3 According to Brubaker’s thesis, in Germany, where nation-­building preceded state-­building, nationhood is understood in “ethnocultural” terms. In nationality law, this is expressed through reliance on jus sanguinis, the attribution of national citizenship on the basis of descent. In contrast, where state-­building happened first, as in France, nationhood takes on a more civic-­political character and is understood in less primordial terms, leading to nationality laws in which jus soli, the attribution of nationality on the basis of birthplace, figures more prominently.4 More recent work has applied this kind of national traditions approach to other aspects of the politics of belonging and policy decisions associated with it. For instance, different policy responses to demands for accommodation of new, Muslim religious minorities have been explained by reference to different traditions of church-­state relations and their lasting institutional legacies (Soper and Fetzer 2005). Similarly, Hollifield traces states’ different levels of ability to manage immigration-­related conflicts over distribution to immigration’s historical relationship to nation-­building in different countries. The more centrally immigration figures in “the political myths that legitimate and give life to the regime,” Hollifield argues, the more politically manageable the negative side effects of immigration have proved, and the less effective public backlash against immigrants has developed (Hollifield 2004: 183–214).

The Politics of Belonging  7

These contrasting perspectives would lead one to expect different specific sorts of changes in citizenship and nationality laws. According to the post-­nationalist view, there is a growing dissociation of rights from legal nationality as national-­political rights based on membership are increasingly superseded by more universal human rights based on personhood. Certainly, some post-­nationalists recognize that this dissociation does not currently extend fully to political rights (e.g., Soysal 1994). However, insofar as it is an ongoing trend, as the post-­nationalist perspective suggests, one would expect movements for extending the same post-­national logic to political rights to be gaining ground. Furthermore, if national citizenship status is losing importance as a basis for staking claims, one should also expect declining interest in national-­level citizenship policy changes. Finally, as citizenship and rights become increasingly post-­national, belief in the need for a shared national culture as a basis or precondition for legal citizenship should be waning. As a “post-­national model of membership” takes hold, citizenship rights and national culture should become increasingly dissociated, and assimilation should be of declining significance as a condition for claiming citizenship and rights associated with it. By contrast, from the national traditions perspective, one would predict that, even if nationality laws are modified over time, they should remain fundamentally consistent in whether they combine jus sanguinis with jus soli. Following a more subtle reading, one would at least expect that criteria for citizenship putting a positive premium on “ethnocultural” ties should be more significant where nation-­building preceded state-­building than where state-­building came first. A common weakness of both predominant approaches is that they underemphasize the political interpretation of social developments and the political manipulation of ideas. As the analysis of France’s recent politics of membership and key policy developments associated with it in Parts II and III will show, today’s politics of belonging cannot be properly understood without careful attention to these factors. This book seeks to derive a conceptual framework that offers critical analytical distance and facilitates international and historical comparison, yet also makes meaningful, sympathetic sense of actors’ positions.. This study therefore begins theoretically, by presenting a new framework for identifying different ideas of political membership and tracing and comparing their political invocation over time. Chapter 2 taps a radically new source of insight for developing such a framework, one never before applied to this area of study—­namely, “ordi-

8  Chapter 1

nary language philosophy.” This approach is applied to patterns of ordinary language use in discussion of various forms of membership. Drawing on the results of that analysis, the chapter presents a new theoretical framework for analyzing and comparing alternative visions of political membership. Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 7 apply the new theoretical framework to the recent politics of citizenship and immigration in France. Issues of political membership have figured centrally in French politics for three decades. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, France has seen a whole series of debates on these issues—­from early discussions of a “new citizenship” that would separate citizenship from nationality, to repeated discussions of the laws granting French nationality to foreign immigrants and their descendants, to discussions of whether and to what extent religious identities should be recognized and allowed expression in the public sphere. These debates have inspired much sustained intellectual reflection and discussion within France, with sometimes surprising results. In examining these key, interrelated debates, this study looks at how key political actors have answered these questions, and how publicly acceptable answers have shifted over time as a result. The book draws on the rich collection of available primary source materials—­editorials, transcripts of parliamentary debates, newspaper articles, radio and television transcripts, and official reports—­to document each controversy. It analyzes not only the major actors’ positions, but also their arguments and the models of membership on which they draw. That analysis tells us much about contemporary French cultural politics. Moreover, and more directly, it helps explain how and why particular kinds of policy responses to issues raised by the integration of immigrants and their descendants have taken form, and how they have been publicly justified or legitimated. Such legitimation is no mere “window dressing”: it tells us much about why sometimes seemingly odd or unlikely policy responses to changing social conditions have attracted public support. These patterns of support, as the chapters that follow reveal, have often been rather surprising. Contrary to what many have claimed, conventional distinctions between left and right have not been wholly eclipsed by new issues of membership. Left-­right differences in parties’ ways of understanding and responding to the issues of membership raised by immigrants and their integration are discernible, and have played a role in structuring debates on these issues (cf. Hollifield 1997, 2004; Sa’adah 2003: 215–24). But these conventional political categories cannot fully account for the sometimes odd patterns of support for recent policies

The Politics of Belonging  9

that have emerged. Parts of the French left have surprised many observers by adamantly eschewing the multiculturalist approach to inclusion embraced by many self-­styled leftists and progressives in other countries. Understanding the contextually specific terms in which policy options have been legitimated is essential particularly for understanding the the French left’s positions, and divisions. At the same time, this book aims to transcend the specificities of French politics, comparing aspects of French policy and debates about membership to recent developments elsewhere. Chapters 3–5 look at two key episodes in France’s politics of membership during the 1980s: demands for extending local voting rights to foreign residents accompanied by promotion of a “new citizenship” separating citizenship from nationality, and the highly publicized discussions and public hearings of the late 1980s prompted by demands for revision of France’s nationality law (code de la nationalité française). In contrast to other studies that have stressed theoretical commonalities and elements of conceptual consensus at the national level (Brubaker 1992; Favell 1998), my treatment of these early French debates emphasizes the role of competitive political dynamics in shaping the politics of membership. Even the ways recent debates hark back to revered elements of French historical tradition can, in fact, best be understood less as instances of historical overdeterminism than as tactics, or particularly sharp moves, in competitive cultural politics. Just as Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983) widely regarded work on nationalism revealed the active political invention of tradition, this study highlights its active political reproduction. The analytic framework introduced in Chapter 2 helps make sense of the symbolic strategies involved in this reproduction. In actual political debates, the models of membership identified in Chapter 2 do not always simply face off as singular, unified positions. As Chapters 3 and 4 illustrate, they can be strategically combined and recombined in efforts both to construct new alliances and to break up existing alliances by recharacterizing other positions. I call this process, which the theoretical model developed in Chapter 2 helps elucidate, the “politics of misrepresentation.” Chapters 3–5 show how the politics of misrepresentation shaped French responses to demands for a “new citizenship” and nationality law reform. Chapter 6 focuses on the repeated changes in nationality law that resulted from these key moments in France’s politics of membership since the 1980s. This chapter sets developments in French nationality policy in a broader comparative context, examining the extent to which French developments have coincided with immigration-­related changes in the nationality laws of

10  Chapter 1

Europe’s other two most significant immigration-­receiving societies—­Britain and Germany. This comparison of developments in French nationality law with policy changes in Britain and Germany sheds light on whether or to what extent recent developments in this area have been confirming the expectations of post-­nationalists and multiculturalists optimistic about the likelihood of growing policy convergence, on the one hand, or of analysts stressing the continued, lasting effects of national traditions who are accordingly skeptical regarding future policy convergence in this area, on the other. Post-­nationalist, multiculturalist, and national traditions perspectives each capture certain elements of recent developments in nationality policy, but, I show, they need to be combined in order fully to interpret the direction of important immigration-­related policy changes. My framework is also helpful for understanding recent developments in this area, particularly where changing assumptions about culture have been involved. Together, Chapters 3–6 form Part II, concerned with how the recent politics of membership relates to attributions of citizenship and nationality as formal legal statuses, conferring particular sets of rights on different categories of people, particularly residents of foreign birth or origin. Chapters 7–8 focus on a second key face of recent membership politics, one that has become increasingly central since 1989: whether and how expressions of cultural and religious difference are recognized and accommodated in the public sphere. The most important debates raising this issue in France have been those about whether female students should be permitted to wear Islamic headscarves in public schools, and those about veiling in public spaces generally. Chapter 7 looks at the emergence of the first affaire du foulard or “headscarves affair” in 1989–1990, a dramatic and divisive debate of lasting consequence in France. The chapter examines the initial local context of the debate and then its national-­level politicization. Using the framework presented in Chapter 2 to analyze the affaire du foulard of 1989–1990, Chapter 7 characterizes the nature of the political alliances and divisions that formed in the course of the first affaire du foulard much better than could the prevailing dichotomy of civic and ethnic. Like earlier debates about French nationality law, the affaire du foulard was mainly a “civic-­civic” issue, not one that simply pitted “civic” perspectives against more “ethnic” ones. To understand what divided the two sides, the more precise terms suggested by ordinary language analysis are needed.The seemingly reasonable policy compromise that emerged in response to the initial affaire du foulard was relatively short-­lived. In 2004, France passed a law prohibiting students

The Politics of Belonging  11

from wearing Islamic headscarves or other conspicuous religious signs in French public schools. This unusual law shocked and puzzled many observers in other countries. Chapter 8 looks at the reasons for this surprising development. Some observers, especially in France, would prefer to explain the law as a simple reflection of deep traditions of republican thinking about citizenship and its relation to other forms of membership. However, to understand why policy in this area has been changing, one must look beyond long-­standing republican traditions to more recent social, political, and legal developments. Contrary to what post-­nationalists might assume, developments in international human rights law did not prevent French policy from taking this restrictive new direction. French policy makers’ reading of cases in the European Court of Human Rights may even have encouraged a more symbolically charged framing of the issue, and a more rigid resolution. The final chapters conclude the book by showing how the new analytic framework can be used to compare membership-­related debates in different national settings, and to analyze current debates about citizenship at the global and international levels. Chapters 9–10 examine a key British political controversy also deeply concerned with understandings of political membership: the Rushdie affair. Like France’s affaire du foulard, the Rushdie affair in Britain concerned dangers to national integrity and social cohesion perceived as associated with settlement of Muslim immigrants coming mainly from the country’s former colonies. Participants in both debates contested the desirability of a postcolonial multiculturalism as well as its preconditions and necessary limits. While sparked by very different substantive policy issues, both debates also raised questions about what makes particular residents of a country bona fide members of the political community. Chapter 9 looks at the nature and origins of the Satanic Verses controversy, particularly as a discussion of political membership. Analyzing the different perspectives on political membership articulated in the course of the affair in Britain, Chapter 10 shows that recent French and British politics of membership have had more in common theoretically than has often been thought. Approaches contrasting distinct, internally unified national models have highlighted many of the key differences between the two countries’ assumptions and beliefs about membership—­Britain’s multiculturalism versus France’s insistence on republican integration (Favell 1998), French color-­ blindness versus British Anglo-­Saxon anti-­racist race-­consciousness (Bleich 2003), or the often noted more general historical contrast between France’s tradition of transformative statism and Britain’s predilection for gradual so-

12  Chapter 1

cial evolution. By contrast, the approach to analyzing and comparing competing positions in membership-­related controversies developed here reveals a surprisingly rich set of underlying similarities in the two cases. In Britain, as in France, immigration-­related debates about the nature and condition of political membership are today giving rise to heated “civic-­civic” conflicts that conventional anti-­racism strategies are ill-­equipped to engage or resolve, and that the prevailing dichotomy of civic and ethnic is unable even clearly to diagnose. Unlike frameworks designed only to guide comparison at the national level (e.g., Brubaker 1992; Favell 1998), the approach offered in this book is applicable to debates about global, international, and transnational forms of political membership as well, as Chapter 11 shows. Contrary to what post-­ national accounts would suggest, global and international visions of citizenship do not fully transcend existing theoretical understandings of political membership. Rather, the same kinds of ambivalence and disagreement about the nature of political membership are reproduced in the context of emerging discussions of “new” forms of citizenship no longer centered on nation-­states. Like the most heated national-­level debates in today’s liberal democracies about citizenship and immigration, the civic-­ethnic dichotomy does not adequately capture the nature of these debates. As political membership at the international and even global level is increasingly imagined and contested, it is not impossible that the current role of the nation-­state as the most salient locus of political membership in large parts of the world will to some degree wane. However, this turn is not likely to bring the politics of belonging as we now know them to an end. On the contrary, contemporary discussions of the terms of global and international level political memberships to a surprising extent recapitulate the terms of disagreement over political membership at the national level. Discussions of such non-­national levels of political membership thus appear as an area of growing importance in which the theoretical framework introduced in the next chapter may find further application. In drawing on the methods and insights of ordinary language analysis to develop a new, more subtle theoretical framework better adapted to contemporary quandaries, this study seeks to bridge several usually disparate fields of inquiry—­philosophy, political theory, and comparative political analysis. These are fields that should work in tandem but are currently troublingly disconnected. It is my hope that this study may encourage comparativists and political theorists alike to think creatively about how their methods, insights, and findings might work together more productively to enhance the ability of

The Politics of Belonging  13

all of us to think more effectively about the most pressing political problems of our day.

The Quest for “Good Nationalism” and Its Analytical Aftermath This study offers a new solution to a central theoretical and conceptual problem in existing analyses of the politics of membership. Too often, studies concerned with the politics of membership in different countries have approached the task of analysis and comparison armed with binary, overly simplistic theoretical tools. Most commonly, comparative analysts have approached such work using various versions of a basic binary framework that I call the dichotomy of civic and ethnic.

Kohn’s Dichotomy of “Eastern” Versus “Western” Nationalism

Since the late nineteenth century, the nation-­state has figured as one of the most important loci of political membership, particularly in Europe, but also increasingly in other parts of the world. Innumerable typologies and classifications of nationalism have been proposed.5 A few of these have categorized nationalisms on the basis of citizens’ and others’ ideas of the nature and basis of political membership.6 Our current ways of analyzing conceptions of political membership comparatively can be traced to this now neglected branch of the literature on nationalism. The most influential, current dichotomous approach to ideas of political membership can be traced back to the early postwar work of Hans Kohn. Kohn identified “two main concepts of nation and fatherland” that developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, one in the “West,” the other in the “East.” The Western concept of nation—­developed in England, France, the United States, and the Netherlands—­was that of a community of citizens “integrated around a political ideal” and project. The Eastern concept was of a biologically based, “natural” folk community resulting from a “mystical integration around the irrational, precivilized folk concept.” These two forms of nationalism were, in Kohn’s theory, diametrically opposed in every respect. Western nationalism was forward-­looking, whereas Eastern nationalism was backward-­looking. The irrational and nostalgic nationalists of the East were

14  Chapter 1

fixated on monuments and graveyards and preoccupied with preserving their particularistic “ancient lore and myth.” As a political project with a universal message and mission associated with a “rational and universal concept of political liberty and the rights of man,” Western nationalism was rational and universal (Kohn 1967; also Kohn 1946, 1949, 1957b; Snyder 1954: 117–22). As this summary suggests, Kohn’s observation was by no means politically impartial. Western nationalism was clearly good, while the Eastern variant was, as Tom Nairn (1993) writes, “reactive, envious, ethnic, racist and generally bad” (quoted in Xenos 1996: 214). The reason for the dichotomous nature of the Kohnian perspective becomes clear if we look to the political and historical context of his work. Writing just after World War II, Kohn wanted to explain the emergence of fascist nationalism in Eastern Europe, but without delegitimating the patriotism of the war’s Western victors.7 Like other German émigrés of the 1930–50s, he also hoped to salvage a legitimate variety of national community to serve as a basis for a Weimar-­style project of constitutional liberalism (Vincent 1997: 278). In other words, recent historical experience made it impossible for Kohn to deny that nationalism could be linked to violence and intolerance, but the issues and developments of his time also made him sympathetic to national consciousness. The intellectual task he set himself, then, was to separate the good from the bad, salvaging the former and explaining the latter. Kohn’s interest in distinguishing good from bad forms of nationalism undoubtedly contributed to the rigorously dichotomous structure of the theoretical framework he developed. Kohn’s distinction between the form of nationalism that developed in Western countries and that which subsequently emerged in Eastern ones informed the work of a generation of historians. Writing in 1954, Louis Snyder noted simply, “The Kohn formula has served a generation of historians well, and there have been no significant attempts to alter or modify it” (1954: 122). Nonetheless, Kohn’s work subsequently fell into desuetude as interest in nationalism waned and new nation-­states emerging in former colonial areas failed to fit neatly into his typology (Xenos 1996: 217).

Intellectual Revival of Kohn’s Dichotomous Approach

In the context of a new, post-­Cold War constellation of concerns, however, Kohn’s theoretical approach has made a dramatic comeback. In the wake of

The Politics of Belonging  15

the Cold War, intellectuals were anxious, first, to account for the atrocities in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, which were widely seen as linked to irrational “nationalist” sentiments.8 At the same time, scholars were concerned to salvage a positive model of political community, whether for its own sake or as a counter to the ideological appeals of nationalist demagogues (Lind 1994: 87–99). Advancing both arguments, Yael Tamir exhorted liberals not to dismiss nationalism altogether, warning that, “Liberals who give up this term [nationalism] and surrender it to the use of conservative political forces, or note the difference, to chauvinist and racist ideologies, alienate themselves from a whole set of values that are of immense importance to a great many people, including liberals” (Tamir 1993: 5). Or, as Michael Ignatieff, whose work played an important role in in reviving the dichotomy of civic and ethnic in the 1990s , contended, “The only reliable antidote to ethnic nationalism turns out to be civic nationalism” (Ignatieff 1993: 185; quoted in Nairn 1995: 99).9 In extolling the need to stave off bad nationalism with good, intellectuals thus made common cause with politicians, policy makers, and other public figures who called on citizens to participate in similar ideological strategies. French minister of education Jean-­Pierre Chevènement contrasted “xenophobic nationalism” with “republican patriotism,” and accordingly encouraged schoolchildren to learn the French national anthem. Also seeking to counter racist nationalist appeals like those of the far-­Right National Front, France’s leading anti-­racism group, SOS-­Racisme, devised a poster featuring the slogan, “We all love the same country.” Similarly, though in a very different context, on his trip to Croatia in September 1994, Pope John Paul II said: “It is necessary to promote a culture of peace which does not reject a healthy patriotism but keeps far away from the . . . exclusions of nationalism” (Jennings 1992: 499–­500; Levinson 1995: 626). In this context, a new wave of dichotomous theoretical treatments of nationalism indebted to Kohn’s approach emerged. In the most popular revamping of this approach, the notions of “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism have been substituted for Kohn’s “Western” and “Eastern” varieties (Greenfeld 1992: 44–45; Jowitt 1992: 319–26). Recent work has also been marked by other pairs of terms that represent variations on the same theme and often figure as theoretical equivalents of the distinction between “civic” and “ethnic” (Nielsen 1996–1997: 44–45). For example, Smith distinguishes “ethnic” from “territorial” nationalist movements (1983: 218), while Brubaker contrasts the “organic” or “ethnocultural, differentialist” view of Germany with

16  Chapter 1

the “political” or “state-­centered, assimilationist” perspective of France (1992: xi, 1–4, 8–14). Other authors have sought to distinguish “liberal nationalism” from “illiberal nationalism,” “zealous nationalism,” or “nativism” (Lind 1994: 94; 1995: 7–8, 260–62, 298; Tamir 1993: 3–11). Still others have aimed to distinguish “nationalism” theoretically from a more positive idea of “patriotism” (Viroli 1995; cf. Schaar 1981: 285–311). Admittedly, a number of authors begin by laying out a wider range of theoretically possible or historically known options. With remarkable regularity, however, all but two rapidly disappear for all practical purposes, deemed historically obsolete, purely fictive or ideological, or of limited relevance for purposes of contemporary political analysis.10 Like Kohn, some authors have been concerned primarily with characterizing the understandings of nationalism that have developed in different countries, or their consequences in terms of regime type or policy choices, including policies regulating civic incorporation of immigrants and their descendants (Greenfeld 1992; Brubaker 1992).11 Other authors, however, have applied the same categories to controversies within a particular country, or to making sense of current Western European political conflicts concerning immigration (Ignatieff 1993: 8–16; Brubaker 1992: 138–64; Jowitt 1992: 319– 26). Thus, recent comparative and theoretical work on political membership has been characterized by a binary perspective that continues to owe much to Kohn’s dichotomy, even where the intellectual project is no longer a Kohnian comparative historical analysis, but instead the comparative mapping of ideological positions in domestic debates.

The “Civic Versus Ethnic” Perspective in Political Theory Political theorists have also recently begun to examine the idea of “civic” or “liberal” nationalism. They have, however, been interested primarily in determining whether at least some forms of nationalism may be morally defensible, as the terms “civic” and “liberal” suggest, and if so, how commendable forms of nationalism may be distinguished from those to be condemned. Political theorists have therefore primarily examined the internal coherence of “civic” or “liberal” nationalism and the ethical arguments in its defense (e.g., Nielsen 1996–1997; Xenos 1996; Vincent 1997; Tamir 1993; Levinson 1995; Jennings 1992; Resnick 1992: 511–17; Lichtenberg 1996). However, while increasingly engaged in debates about the value of liberal

The Politics of Belonging  17

nationalism, political theorists have generally displayed little interest in gauging the heuristic value of the dichotomy between civic and ethnic, which is how comparativists principally use the dichotomy. Political theorists have devoted little attention to the Kohnian perspective’s usefulness or limitations as a framework for empirical investigation. Recent discussions of nationalism in the political theory literature have thus contributed little toward developing a framework for interpreting and comparing nationalist ideas, political movements, or conceptions of political community within or between countries. Relative to comparatively oriented researchers in sociology, political science, or history, political theorists have had little interest in how to characterize, distinguish, and classify the different ideas of political membership observable internationally. Consequently, despite the seeming convergence of theoretical attention around ideas of nationalism, across both subfields and disciplines, there has been troublingly little real intellectual connection between the work of political theorists and comparativists—­whether political scientists, or sociologists or historians. These closely related areas of study, which should work together, instead mostly continue to talk past one another.

Limitations of the Existing Dichotomy of Civic and Ethnic The contrast between civic and ethnic views of political membership is, unfortunately, unsatisfactory in a number of respects. Precisely by its dichotomous structure, this approach appears to be a clear and simple way of categorizing, and simultaneously evaluating, senses of nationhood and conceptions of political membership. However, superficial agreement in favor of “civic” or “liberal” forms and against the “ethnic” or “illiberal” ones actually conceals various theoretical confusions and apparent inconsistencies. As the chapters that follow will show, the dichotomy of civic and ethnic is ill-­suited for grasping the differences of perspective that structure today’s immigration-­related controversies about political membership in liberal democracies. The dichotomy of civic and ethnic does not provide suitable terms for naming the different sides in these debates or identifying the theoretical differences that divide them. Even before looking to those debates, however, one must note some other important theoretical limitations of the dichotomy of civic and ethnic, which demonstrate the need for an alternative theoretical perspective. Membership in a national cultural community is one of the most widely

18  Chapter 1

held ideas of what nationality is; yet there is a remarkable lack of theoretical consensus as to how this idea is to be classified. Some authors classify culturally defined nationhood as ethnic (e.g., Smith 1983: 215–18; Ignatieff 1993: 6–8; Breuilly 1982: 62, 113, 349). Others suggest, sometimes indirectly, that cultural definitions of the nation are, or can be, civic or liberal (Tamir 1993: 83–86, 166–67; Greenfeld 1992: 11–12; Nairn 1995: 103; Lind 1994: 94–98).12 Given the world-­historical significance of culturally based definitions of nationhood, this is a significant divergence. One might argue that the relevant question in deciding whether a given idea of nationhood is civic or ethnic is not whether membership in the nation is defined by members sharing a culture, but by whether it is assimilationist. On this view, the perspective of those believing in the possibility of assimilation is theoretically inclusionary and thus not “ethnic.” Accordingly, some authors distinguish civic from ethnic forms of cultural nationalism this way (e.g., Greenfeld 1992; Brubaker 1992). However, as Nieguth (1999: 163) notes, the civic/ethnic dichotomy is “commonly, though not necessarily correctly, equated” with Meinecke’s distinction between Staatsnation and Kulturnation. Consequently, culturally defined nationhood is often taken as inherently ethnic. Achieving consistent classification of assimilationist cultural nationalism as either “civic” or “ethnic” has thus proved problematic. As Nieguth (163) notes, the term “ethnic” implicitly conflates two dimensions that should be distinguished: ancestry and culture. The contrast of civic and ethnic has also left scholars confused about membership in non-­national polities. As we have seen, Kohn distinguished two understandings of the nation, and his successors have continued to divide ideas of political belonging into two types: civic and ethnic nationalism. But what of non-­national political collectivities and the visions of belonging associated with them? Whether visions of political membership can be extended to kinds of states other than those in which they originate, and the extent to which non-­national political experiences might be relevant for nation-­states, is another point of confusion associated with the current literature (cf. Xenos 1996; Viroli 1995; Schaar 1981). The confusions, puzzles, and problems to which the contrast between civic and ethnic gives rise are largely conceptual in origin. The Kohnian approach has been widely echoed by politicians, political leaders, journalists, and political commentators. But its apparent contradictions and conceptual confusions indicate a need for better analytical tools. Some thinkers may object to developing a typology of views of “citi-

The Politics of Belonging  19

zenship and nationality” together, on grounds that these are two different concepts. McCrone and Kiely (2000), for instance, argue strongly that “nationality and citizenship actually belong to different spheres of meaning and activity” (25). It is probably somewhat too simple, however, to define “nationality” exclusively as “a cultural concept which binds people on the basis of shared identity” while reserving “citizenship” for the “political concept deriving from people’s relationship to the state” as these authors suggest (25). Such a distinction may be especially problematic if one is seeking a conceptual framework suitable for comparative research. It is important to recognize that the relationship between citizenship and nationality has itself varied, and that some nations have historically been more “political” and less “cultural” than others. The difference between the two terms is consequently much less clear-­cut than McCrone and Kiely suggest. What of Schnapper’s (1994) discussion of the modern “nation” as “community of citizens,” for example? This inclusive vision of the nation should not be too hastily dismissed as a product of mere terminological confusion. Moreover, as Albrow and O’Byrne (2000) point out, globalization is not just weakening the connection between nations and states (76–79). Insofar as it involves “transnational definitions of public goods,” it also serves as a reminder of the potential disjunction that has always existed between the state and citizenship, or between good citizenship and duty to a particular state (71–73). Part of the problem is McCrone and Kiely’s primary focus on Britain, where the concepts of state and nation have remained unusually distinct. The clear-­cut division suggested by the British case is somewhat at odds with the authors’ own discussion of how the two ideas were historically compounded elsewhere as state boundaries came to define national ones, and vice versa (27–29). Discussions of “nationality” are often confused precisely because the term has come to refer to both “nationhood” and formal, legal membership as granted and recognized by the state. We might be tempted to call the latter “legal citizenship” rather than “nationality.” Caution is in order here, however: the French law specifying who qualifies for such a status is, for example, called le code de la nationalité française, and French discussions of nationalité have concerned both “nation-­ness” and what McCrone and Kiely would call “citizenship.” Even in Britain, recent discussions of what it means to be “British,” notably those touched off by the Rushdie affair, have given involved membership both in the nation and in the state. As these examples suggest, citizenship and nationality today cannot be distinguished as neatly as one might wish. McCrone and Kiely may well be

20  Chapter 1

right that “nation-­ness and state-­ness need not be, and increasingly are not, aligned” (2000: 25). However, concepts are forged by long histories of usage, not current conditions alone, and nations and states have in many cases historically redefined one another. Because many debates have been shapted by conceptions of both nationality and citizenship, and because the distinction varies from one country to another and is often itself politically contested, we need a typology covering both conceptions of citizenship and nationality. Fortunately, even if we are not content simply to take individual debates, or those of each particular country, “on their own terms,” there is another classificatory schema at our disposal. Despite the ubiquity in the scholarly literature of the dichotomy of civic and ethnic, it is not the only available way of categorizing conceptions of political membership. As Chapter 2 shows, we actually already know another way of systematically distinguishing different ways of thinking about membership. Using methods originating in ordinary language philosophy to analyze our usual ways of talking about memberships in different kinds of groups suggests a new, more theoretically refined framework.

Chapter 2

What We Talk About When We Talk About Belonging: A New Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies

The Discreet Existence of an Ordinary Language Typology of Memberships As we have seen, the contrast between civic and ethnic is conceptually problematic in a number of ways. However, comparative study of the politics of belonging does require some kind of overarching conceptual framework for identifying and comparing ideas of citizenship and national membership that emerge in different times and places. Moreover, without an external analytical framework through which to interpret the stakes of particular national controversies, there is little chance of political actors gaining critical distance on current events. In the absence of a clear alternative, the continued influence of the contrast between civic and ethnic in comparative politics, whatever its conceptual limitations, is not surprising. Drawing on methods and insights from ordinary language philosophy, this chapter shows that this is actually not the only way we know how to distinguish between different kinds of membership. In reality, we already have another, more subtle and precise way of categorizing memberships, one that informs the way we talk about them in ordinary English. This alternative, “ordinary language” approach to classifying and categorizing memberships is at least as orderly and systematic as the dichotomy of civic and ethnic, and permits a variety of distinctions that simpler, dichotomous approaches have tended to conceal. The way we discuss membership in our ordinary speech is more orderly and systematic than it might first appear. The surprisingly systematic way

22  Chapter 2

in which we unreflectingly classify memberships is apparent in the way we normally choose verbs to discuss voluntary terminations of membership in various groups. As we shall see, the pattern underlying our ordinary choice of verbs in this area is not arbitrary or isolated. It is reflected also in the way we discuss entering and involuntarily exiting from different kinds of groups. In fact, in choosing verbs that sound right when we talk about these aspects of various forms of memberships, we are already semiconsciously classifying all memberships into five basic categories.These five types of belonging in fact correspond to five distinct ways of understanding political membership. Ordinary language analysis thus suggests an alternative theoretical framework for examining and comparing public debates on citizenship and nationality, including those triggered by reactions to immigration and its long-­term effects.

Memberships: Some You Cancel, Some You Quit, Some You Leave, Some You Change, and Some from Which There Is No Escape Voluntary Terminations of Membership

In discussing voluntary termination of a given membership, not just any verb will do. In English, we have what at first appears to be a vast array of verbs from which to choose for this. A closer examination of this long preliminary list, however, shows that what we really have is a much smaller number of relatively common, less specialized verbs, such as “quit,” “leave,” or “cancel,” and a much larger number of relatively more specialized terms, such as “abjure,” “resign,” or “renounce.” Appendix Table 1 provides a full list of English-­language verbs for referring to voluntary terminations of memberships of different kinds. Each of the verbs most commonly used to designate voluntary terminations of memberships can be used to form colloquial, normal, and natural-­sounding sentences about ending some memberships, but not others. Cancel. Take the relatively common membership-­ending verb “to cancel.” One may “cancel” one’s membership in the American Automobile Association (AAA), the Sierra Club, Costco, Elvis’s fan club, the American Political Science Association (APSA), the racquetball club, or the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). By contrast, one does not “cancel” one’s membership in

A Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies  23

one’s bridge club, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the Communist Party, the Republican Party, the gay community, one’s gender, or the squash team. Only some memberships end by being canceled, namely those in which the member’s status as such is essentially contingent on paying fees, whether the member receives services or materials or merely contributes to a cause. Memberships one ends by “canceling” comprise one distinct subset of memberships. Quit. A second subset consists of memberships that one ends by “quitting.” One might “quit” the soccer team, the debate team, PTSA, Little League, or the army. However, members are not ordinarily said to have “quit” AAA, their families, or their countries. Memberships that are voluntarily terminated by quitting are those in groups where the member’s contribution consists primarily of rendering time and services, even if fees are also required. Leave. The third subset of memberships consists of those one ends by “leaving” a group. One may “leave” one’s church, the Communist Party, one’s co-­op, the KKK, the Democratic Party, and any “communities” to which one might belong, whether or not they are geographically defined. Memberships one “leaves” are those in which the member’s role is defined primarily in terms of subjective identification with the group or its aims and characteristics, although members may often also be expected to pay fees (as they would to a Cancel group) or to render time and services (as they would to a Quit group). Consider the way one would view a member of a Leave group who did not actually subjectively identify with the group and yet did not leave. A person who hates reading and, moreover, thinks that the novels she receives from the Book of the Month Club are of inferior literary quality and unworthy of being read, but nonetheless neglects to cancel the membership, perhaps because it was a gift and the books look nice on the shelf, is unremarkable, if a bit lazy. By contrast, a person who is adamantly opposed to racism but is a member of the KKK because her mother already paid the membership dues, she loves the pointy hats that come in the mail, and enjoys horseback riding is shocking. That person’s membership is morally compromising in a way that the first person’s continued membership in the Book of the Month Club is not. The reason is that being a member of the Book of the Month Club is a matter of paying fees. It is a membership you voluntarily end by canceling. As long as the fees are paid, membership in the Book of the Month Club is unproblematic. Conversely, one’s integrity as a member and the very issue of whether one “really” is a member do become problematic if one fails to pay

24  Chapter 2

the bills for several months. The KKK, by contrast, is a membership you voluntarily end by leaving. As such, it is a membership whose defining feature is subjective identification with the group. Being a dues-­paying KKK member who dislikes racism is therefore a contradiction in a way that being a Book of the Month Club member who dislikes reading is not. Change, and No Exit. These last two categories are comprised of those troublesome memberships in groups one might think you would “leave,” except that you cannot. Such groups include your family (of birth), your gender, or your sexual orientation. In these cases, you cannot just cancel or quit. You cannot even leave. You have to “change,” if you can; otherwise, you are stuck. Let us call these last two categories Change memberships and No Exit memberships respectively. One might argue that people do “leave” their families of origin all the time, just as they “leave home.” However, when one talks of someone “leaving” his or her family or “leaving home,” one is usually referring to physical departure, not to the termination of the membership in question.1 If one leaves one’s family of origin to attend a college out of town, one is still a member of the family, like it or not. Conversely, however, one also cannot be expelled. The family to which one belongs by birth differs in this respect from that to which one may belong by marriage, which one may theoretically leave or abandon. In contrast to memberships one can get out of by quitting, canceling, or leaving, memberships one can terminate only by “changing” or cannot terminate at all are not normally acquired by choice and do not depend on subjective identification. Change and “No Exit” memberships are memberships in categories to which one is assigned, by oneself or by others, based on personal attributes, such as mother tongue, sexual orientation, or income bracket. Like memberships in Leave groups, memberships in Change groups often figure prominently in members’ personal self-­definition. But unlike memberships in Leave groups, memberships in Change groups do not depend on such identification. Whether or not one subjectively identifies with the category or defining attribute in question or “chooses” such memberships, one “is” a member of such groups if one meets some given objective criteria. When people deny belonging to particular Leave groups to which they are thought by other people to belong, they may simply be correcting others’ beliefs about how they identify themselves. By contrast, seemingly equivalent denials of Change and No Exit membership are more apt to be regarded as untrue. There are other possibilities, however. Such denials may also be corrections of misperceptions regarding the purported members’ actual pos-

A Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies  25

session of the defining characteristic. For instance, the person who denies being a speaker of Hungarian may simply mean: “You think I speak Hungarian because my parents do, but I actually do not speak Hungarian.” Or, the person who denies being a woman may mean simply: “Because of my delicate features you seem to have mistaken me for a woman, but I am actually a man.” In other cases, denials of such memberships may represent challenges to others’ understanding of the boundaries and definition of the attribute(s) defining the category. For instance, the person who denies being a German speaker may mean that he or she speaks too little German to really qualify as such. Disagreements of this kind also arise concerning race. “Whites” typically consider the skin color, hair, or epicanthic fold of the individual in question and his or her ancestors the defining attribute, but others in some cases regard speech, social circle, and demeanor as decisive, leading to disagreements about what people “really” are. Finally, in some cases, individuals’ denials of Change or No Exit memberships attributed to them signal deeper confusion about whether a given membership is really a Change type that depends on objective characteristics or rather a Leave type depending instead on personal identification. For instance, a person who denies being a “New Yorker” may mean that, though assumed to be a New Yorker based on the fact of living in New York, he still, deep down, feels and considers himself a Minnesotan. The person is asserting that “New Yorker” is correctly understood as a Leave-­type membership depending on personal identification, not a Change-­type membership depending on objective characteristics. Similarly, but at a much more profound and consequential level, someone who denies being a “man” may mean: “I have the anatomical features you think objectively define someone as a man, but I do not feel like a man and thus am truly a woman. You are wrong about what defines being a ‘man.’” The speaker here, again, is asserting that, contrary to what many may think, the membership to which s/he has been assigned depends ultimately on personal identification, that it is not really a Change-­type membership but rather a Leave-­type membership. Such disputes show both that there is not always unanimity about what kind of membership a given instance of belonging represents and that the difference between Leave and Change memberships is consequential, giving rise to potentially significant confusion and disagreement. Although people may, in fact, identify with memberships that can be ended only by changing, as they do with memberships that can be ended simply by leaving, subjective self-­identification is not the defining feature of

26  Chapter 2

Change memberships.2 Subjective self-­definition is the defining feature of memberships only in Leave groups. We implicitly recognize that this difference exists, as is demonstrated by our using the verb “to leave” for ending some kinds of memberships and not others. Accidental Anglophones are bona fide English-­speakers, like it or not—­unless they can change. An accidental Democrat (e.g., someone who accidentally made a stray mark on a voter registration form) is not a bona fide Democrat. In short, memberships can be divided into five types according to the verbs we ordinarily use for the act of voluntarily ending them: Cancel memberships, Quit memberships, Leave memberships, Change memberships, and those we cannot end voluntarily, which I shall call No Exit memberships (see Table 2.1). These subtypes are already implicitly distinguished in ordinary English usage as reflected in the regularities of verb choice. That is, in choosing between voluntary exit verbs, we already unreflectively classify memberships this way all the time. Appendix Table 2 shows how the initial full list of verbs can be regrouped into a few categories, each consisting of one more common and general verb together with a larger number of more specialized verbs of each type. Although the existence of a much larger number of voluntary exit verbs than the four discussed here does complicate the picture somewhat, it does not undermine the idea of a basic fivefold typology implicit in ordinary language. Indeed, the same typology also accounts for patterns of usage revealed by examining our usual ways of referring to involuntarily losing or acquiring one’s membership in different kinds of groups.

Involuntary Terminations of Memberships

In ordinary language, our discussion of involuntary terminations of memberships follows regularities that can be readily grasped in terms of the same fivefold schema presented in Table 2.1. That typology is thus not merely idiosyncratic, or limited only to choice of voluntary exit verbs. It is also reflected in patterns of usage for discussing other actions related to different sorts of memberships. Some memberships can be terminated by groups without the consent of their members. Such involuntary terminations of membership are normally possible in the case of Cancel, Quit, and Leave groups. Memberships in No Exit groups by definition cannot normally be terminated, either voluntarily

Cancel

Quit

Leave

Change

No exit

Nature of Payment of dues Active Subjective membership or fees participation identification

Categorization by personal attributes

Categorization by personal attributes

Examples -professional association (e.g., - soccer team - Communist Party - social class - generation APSA) - PTSA - clergy - sex - AAA - theater club - Italian - sexual -Costco - debate team   community   orientation - race - gym club - Boy Scouts - peace - sides, in a debate - YMCA - orchestra   movement - political - Resistance   orientation - maternal - Supreme   language   Court - army

Voluntary exit verb

Table 2.1. Categorization of Memberships by ordinary Exit Verbs

28  Chapter 2

or involuntarily, and involuntary terminations of memberships in Change groups are extraordinary. Our analysis in this section will therefore focus on Cancel, Quit and Leave group memberships. Cancel groups can normally “revoke” or “refuse to renew” memberships. In such cases, revoking or refusing to continue one’s membership is simply the prerogative of the organization to which one belongs. It could be that the member has done something wrong or broken some rule, but it is not normally a matter or any great embarrassment if this should occur. More often, involuntary termination of such memberships represents more of an annoying bureaucratic inconvenience than anything else. In the case of involuntary loss of Cancel memberships, the organization that revokes or refuses to renew the membership is in the position of a seller, since such memberships are defined by the paying of fees. The implication of revocation or nonrenewal is often simply that it is no longer in the interests of the organization to sell the services to which members are entitled in exchange for the usual fee required. For example, AAA may refuse to renew the membership of someone who has made the mistake of calling for emergency road service twenty-­eight times during the previous year. Or the racquetball club may quit issuing summer memberships to students because they have too much free time and jam up all the courts, causing the club to become concerned that it may lose its older, employed members who do not like to wait and who will pay the same annual fee for less actual playing time. Many Cancel memberships give one unlimited access to some kind of services for a set fee. Since the price is fixed, such organizations may ensure their viability by granting memberships selectively, in effect gambling on the cost of the services a given member is likely to use. Thus, if a membership is revoked or the organization refuses to renew it, the implication may simply be that the member was making so much use of the organization’s services that the organization no longer wanted to keep the person on the rolls. However, since membership in such organizations is a matter of fee-­paying rather than active service, loyalty or identification, having one’s membership revoked for costing the organization too much is not normally stigmatizing. In fact, one is often encouraged to join such organizations precisely on the grounds that the value of the benefits will exceed the fee required. Such memberships work more or less like insurance policies. The organization from which one buys the membership collects the fee, gambling that the services the member uses will cost it less than the fee it collects. The member makes the opposite gamble: that the services used will be worth more than the fee. If

A Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies  29

a member joins the YMCA and goes there to swim only twice, the YMCA is apt to be pleased with the transaction, but the member is apt to feel he should not have joined. If the member swims often enough that the cost per swim is much less than he would have paid at pools where fixed rates are charged, the member is apt to want to rejoin. But the YMCA may start charging more, or it may decide to quit accepting such members if it can find a way to guess what sort of members are likely to be exceptionally frequent swimmers. Cancel memberships are thereby subject to the same sort of mutual strategizing by prospective buyers (members) and sellers (organizations) as other market transactions. Memberships in Quit groups can also be discontinued without one’s consent. In such cases, however, one’s membership is not normally said to have been revoked or its renewal to have been refused. Instead, one is normally “taken off,” “thrown out,” “expelled,” or “removed” from the group. For example, one may be thrown out of the drama club, taken off the basketball team, thrown out of the Parent Teacher Association, removed from or taken off a committee, or thrown out of the army. Even though it is possible that one may have been “taken off,” “thrown out,” or “removed” unfairly or for a trivial reason, there is normally a stigma associated with losing a membership this way, certainly more than in cases where a membership is revoked or its renewal is refused. The implication is that one failed to perform the services expected from members. One could also be “thrown out” of the YMCA or Costco, even though one’s memberships in those organizations are Cancel memberships rather than Quit memberships. Although this might appear to contradict the argument just presented regarding the differences in the language used in the two cases, the contradiction is only apparent. If someone says he was “thrown out of ” or “removed from” the YMCA or “thrown out of ” Costco, he is assumed to mean he was forced to leave the building or to remove himself from the premises, not that his membership was discontinued. Of course, if he were to get himself thrown out of the YMCA repeatedly, it would probably come as no great surprise if the YMCA decided to revoke his membership or not to renew it the following year, but it would be revocation or refusal to renew, not being thrown out per se that would constitute discontinuation of membership in this case. Thus, despite the fact that one can get “thrown out” by an organization in which one has a Cancel membership, the terms used to designate involuntary termination of Cancel memberships are nonetheless not the same as those used for involuntary termination of a Quit member-

30  Chapter 2

ship. “Throwing out” or “removing from” a Cancel membership organization refers to physical removal. In Quit organizations, it designates discontinuation of membership. Sometimes these verbs are used for involuntary discontinuation of a Leave membership as well. Thus, one can be thrown out of a church, a political party, or a union. Like the involuntary losses of membership in Quit groups from which one is “thrown out,” these losses of membership are stigmatizing. “Throwing out” connotes denigration of the former member. People do not normally relish the prospect of being thrown out of groups. Note the violence of the verbs we normally use in such cases. We do not refer to former members as having been “set aside,” “led out,” “relocated,” or even “sent away,” for example. Such expressions would also refer to a process of getting something that was inside onto the outside, just as groups do to members they “throw out,” “remove,” or “expel.” The image of removal that such alternative expressions would call to mind would be kinder and gentler and suggest greater respect of the expelling organization for the expellees. It is interesting that we do not ordinarily use such readily imaginable alternative verb phrases to designate these sorts of involuntary discontinuations of membership. Being “thrown out” not only gets the insider onto the outside, it also conjures up images of denigration. The same is true of other less common, more specialized verbs for involuntarily terminations of memberships in these sorts of groups, verbs like (for former clergy) “defrocked,” or (for former Amish) “shunned.” Interestingly, in the case of Cancel memberships it is one’s membership that is acted upon by the organization that discontinues, revokes, or refuses to renew it. Members are not revoked. By contrast, in the case of Quit and Leave memberships—­where one is thrown out, removed or expelled—­it is the member who is acted upon by the group. The difference in the object of the verbs used in the different cases is in keeping with the fact that suffering involuntary loss of a Quit or Leave membership is taken to reflect on the worth of the member in a way that the involuntary loss of Cancel memberships does not. Interestingly, involuntary terminations of memberships in states do not conform to the regular pattern. The way we normally talk about losing citizenship is more like the way we talk about Cancel memberships than Quit or Leave memberships in this respect. Citizens are not revoked; their citizenship is revoked. And it is “revoked,” not “thrown out.” Being “thrown out” of a state implies the same thing as being “thrown out” of Cancel membership organizations like the YMCA: physical removal from the premises, in this

A Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies  31

case the territory. Citizenship is treated as a Change membership when it comes to voluntary exits, so that one “changes” one’s citizenship rather than leaving, quitting, or canceling it. Yet, when it comes to involuntary termination, words we ordinarily use suggest that we tend to think of citizenship as a Cancel membership. And when it comes to residency in a country, we speak as though it were a Leave membership. People can of course be “expelled” from a state, just as they can be “expelled” from Leave groups. However, normally only illegal immigrants or resident aliens lacking proper documentation or breaking the law are “expelled” from states, not citizens. Like the would-­be member of the Leave membership group who does not really identify with or share the beliefs expected of group members, those expelled from a state are “in” something to which they do not “really” belong. They are properly outsiders who, prior to expulsion, were on the inside. States, like Leave membership groups, are prone to harboring people who are not really members. In Leave organizations, such people come in the form of the church member with heretical beliefs, the accidental Democrat, or the Communist Party member who proves to be secretly reactionary. In the case of states, the potential expellee is typically the illegal immigrant or, in some states, the resident alien who breaks the law.

Acquisitions of Membership

The verbs we ordinarily use for acquisitions of memberships are somewhat less rich and varied than those English provides for voluntary terminations of membership. If we look at which verbs sound right for acquisition of membership in different kinds of groups, however, the underlying pattern maps surprisingly neatly onto the fivefold schema revealed by our examination of how we talk about ending memberships. The most general and common verb for acquiring memberships is, simply, “to join.” It can normally be used without any apparent awkwardness for voluntary acquisitions of membership in the first three types of membership groups we have identified: Cancel, Quit, and Leave groups. One thus joins Cancel groups like the AAA or the racquetball club just as one joins Quit groups like the softball team or Leave groups like the Communist Party or the clergy. The next most common verbs for acquiring memberships—­“to sign up” or “to enroll”—­are almost as general. The two verbs are close synonyms, and they apply to memberships in both Cancel and Quit groups. One can sign up

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for an amateur soccer team or the outdoor club just as one can sign up or enroll in the AAA. Interestingly, however, in contrast to the verb “to join,” these verbs are not at home when it comes to referring to memberships in Leave groups. One does normally “join” but does not normally simply “sign up for” the clergy or the Communist Party. The difference in application of these verbs thus marks the same distinction between these kinds of memberships as do the ways we ordinarily refer to voluntary terminations of memberships. The pattern then also extends to Change and No Exit memberships. For Change groups, the way one enters the group is to “become” something. Interestingly, here the verb refers to a change in quality of the member, not merely acquisition of the membership as something external to the person. In the case of No Exit memberships, since the membership is fixed, one never really enters it by “becoming” something; one simply “is.” Table 2.2 summarizes these patterns of verb usage for acquisitions and involuntary terminations of memberships and shows how they map onto ordinary patterns of usage for verbs referring to voluntary terminations. In the end, we have a whole pattern of regularities in ordinary English, all informed by the same implicit, underlying typology.

Ordering the Typology: Memberships’ Varying Distance from the Subject

As the arrangement of Table 2.2 implicitly suggests, the five understandings of membership can be ordered in the following sequence: No Exit, Change, Leave, Quit, and Cancel. There is an underlying logic to this order. As one moves from right to left, memberships become more and more distant from the subject. At one extreme, No Exit memberships, not only is the person a member of the group or category, but the category-­defining feature is part of the person. In fact, it is normally understood as an “identity.” With memberships of this type, one would normally say simply: “I am an x.” At the other extreme, with Cancel-­type memberships, there is only an arms-­length and typically instrumental relationship between the person and the group of which he or she is a member. The membership may even be referred to as something the member “has” rather than “is.” For instance, one might say, “I am a member of AAA,” but it would be equally natural to say, “I have an AAA membership.” The same does not go for other sorts of memberships; compare “I am a member of the clergy” and “I have a clergy membership.”

Enroll Join Sign up

Entrance verbs

Join Sign up

Become Join

the member

one’s membership

Object of involuntary exit verbs

the member

Throw out Take off Remove Expel Defrock Disbar Release Disown

Leave

Involuntary Revoke Throw out exit verbs Refuse to renew Take off Remove Expel Fire

Quit Also: -abandon -desert -give up on -annul -separate -divorce -secede

Cancel

Also: Also: - end contract or -resign policy with -remove oneself from -withdraw from

Voluntary exit verb

Become

an attribute

Force to change renounce, convert, abjure Lose (religion)

Also: -renounce -convert -abjure -repudiate

Change

(Be)

an attribute

No exit

Table 2.2. Correspondence Between Principal Exit Verbs, Other Exit Verbs (Voluntary and Involuntary), and Entrance Verbs

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Moving from the opposite poles of our continuum toward the center, a Change membership is still apt to be understood as an “identity.” However, as it can be changed, it is also understood as less tightly bound to the subject. The subject could cease to be a member of the group, much as some might counsel against it. Quit memberships are more distant from the subject. A membership of this type is thus not an “identity.” However, it does directly involve the person—­usually the body—­of the member, not merely his or her money. Some people, certainly, may come to define their identities around their activities, as in the case of the athlete who boasts, “I am a member of the football team,” or the professional who says, “I am a member of the faculty.” Even here, though, it is interesting that the phrase “a member of ” is ordinarily apt to be used, whereas it is clearly awkward and misplaced in the case of No Exit memberships. Other aspects of ordinary language also suggest that such memberships are less generally understood as “identities” than are memberships in Change or No Exit groups. Political mobilizations of professors or football players are not called “identity politics,” for example. And the question, “What are you?” is, at least in large portions of the United States, customarily answered with information concerning one’s ancestry. Someone wishing to learn another’s occupation there would instead normally ask, “What do you do?” Finally, in contrast to other forms of memberships, Leave memberships reach beyond both the wallet and the body, to the “heart,” mind, or spirit of the member.

Five Models of Political Membership Descent: Belonging by Virtue of “Blood” or Ancestry

Using the typology of forms of membership that ordinary language analysis uncovers, we can clearly discern five distinct ways of thinking about the nature of belonging in political communities as well. A first model of political membership may be called the “Descent” view. As seen in this model, political membership appears as an instance of No Exit membership. From this perspective, “citizenship” is usually equated with “nationality,”3 and both appear as innate characteristics that cannot be acquired other than by birth. It is seen as a common genetic or biological inheritance rather than a properly “ethnic” one with a significant cultural component.

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This model figures in discussions of citizenship in two ways. First, it underlies representations of the nation as an extended family and members of a given political group as descendants of common (biological) ancestors. Second, such perspectives are commonly invoked in contemporary political debates, though usually attributed to others. Actual European social and political organization has only rarely corresponded to the Descent model. While there are examples of societies organized on the basis of such an idea, they may more readily be found in ancient Rome and Greece than in modern or even medieval Europe. In classical Athens, citizenship was restricted to those both of whose parents were citizens (Walzer 1983: 53–55). The Roman gens, vast clans supposedly united by common ancestry, also corresponded to the Descent vision (Bloch 1961: 137–40). Today, German immigration and citizenship policy might most clearly appear to reflect a Descent perspective on political membership, especially in the unusual ease of entry accorded to foreigners of German ancestry and the difficulty of acquiring German nationality for those who are not. Even in the case of policy regulating acquisition of German nationality, however, recent reforms suggest that the importance attributed to ancestry is declining relative to birthplace and long-­term residency, and presumably thus socialization, in Germany (Götz 1995; Murray 1994). Nonetheless, the Descent idea does figure significantly in current political discussion of citizenship and immigration issues, often as a view that parties to contemporary debates accuse others of holding and are at pains to avoid being perceived as endorsing. Because it attributes membership to a biological foundation, the Descent model might appear to be inherently “racial.” However, whether such a conception is racial in character actually depends on whether the fact of kinship or phenotype is stressed (Nieguth 1999: 164–66). The Descent category may therefore be disaggregated into two subtypes usefully distinguished by Nieguth: ancestry and race.

Culture: Citizenship as Attachment to a Particular Way of Life

If the Descent perspective entails treating citizenship as a No Exit membership, the corollary of treating it as a Change membership is, instead, the Culture or Cultural Attachment model. According to this perspective, poli-

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ties, like other Change groups, are permeable; unlike polities in the Descent model, here polities can gain and lose members (by other means besides birth and death). Nonetheless, from this perspective citizenship and nationality, like other Change memberships, are not generally acquired by choice. Proponents of this conception typically understand the origin of political membership as being neither “blood” nor “choice,” but rather socialization.4 From the Culture as from the Descent perspective, the nation is frequently depicted as a family. However, in the Culture conception, the national family is understood primarily as a vehicle for socialization, not biological transmission of inherited characteristics. From this perspective, the role of parents in raising children takes precedence over procreation as such. Logically, adoption into the nation is therefore possible. While, this may appear as a rather trivial point, it often makes a significant difference in immigration and citizenship debates. History often appears especially important from the Cultural Attachment perspective; learning a particular national history may play a key role in developing a sense of belonging to a particular people. Thus, Argentines, including many descended from twentieth-­century Italian immigrants, will say “San Martin liberated ‘us,’” while generations of French children, from Paris to Guadeloupe, long were taught, by French textbooks, about “Our ancestors the Gauls.” According to the Descent model, membership in a given nation is natural and innate. Here, by contrast, it is cultural and potentially changeable. One cannot change one’s genetic profile, but one may learn a new language or history. Despite the label, not everything that might be referred to as “cultural” is relevant in this conception. Political membership—­like other meaningful affiliations—­involves the sense of “deep-­rooted” attachment normally associated with things toward which one develops deep attachments through primary socialization. This perspective is readily apparent in, though by no means limited to, the work of contemporary communitarian thinkers. Invoking a Cultural view of membership—­with corresponding understandings of justice and obligation—­Sandel (1984) defends the communitarian view that the deep-­ seated attachments to particular groups commonly instilled by primary socialization are necessary in order to understand people: as members of this family or community or nation or people, as bearers of that history, as citizens of this republic. Allegiances such as these are more than values I happen to have, and to hold, at a certain

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distance. They go beyond the obligations I voluntarily incur and the “natural duties” I owe to human beings as such. They allow that to some I owe more than justice requires or even permits, not only by reason of agreements I have made but instead in virtue of those more or less enduring attachments and commitments that, taken together, partly define the person I am. (90) Although the cultural attachments involved in this sort of belonging can in fact be broken, and the memberships associated with them can thus be changed, their intensity is such that, Sandel warns, breaking them may threaten one’s sense of identity. The Culture view of citizenship also figures centrally in the thinking of certain noncommunitarians. Slavoj Žižek, for example, argues that membership in “a given community” is not a matter of “symbolic identification,” but results from “that elusive entity called ‘our way of life’.” Žižek understands that as “the unique way a community organizes its enjoyment,” the “social practices” involved, and the “national myths” that sustain them (1992: 194–96).5 While the communitarian sense of membership Sandel describes may appear most characteristic of local and family ties, Gellner argues that cultural attachment is also theoretically definitive of the modern nation-­state. He notes: nations can indeed be defined in terms both of will and culture, and indeed in terms of the convergence of them both with political units. In these conditions, men will be politically united with all those, and only those, who share their culture. Polities then will to extend their boundaries to the limits of their cultures, and to protect and impose their culture within the boundaries of their power. (Gellner 1983: 55, my emphasis) Gellner maintains that one of the distinctive features of national political units is that “the individual belongs to them directly, in virtue of his cultural style” (138). The fact that he says “will and culture,” and “impose their culture” suggests that forms of political membership not defined by culture are also possible: without “will” and imposition, political and cultural membership might diverge. However, nationalism as understood by Gellner challenges the legitimacy of such disjunctures. Thus, while recognizing a de facto plurality of forms of political membership, Gellner argues that the advent of nationalism marks the ascendancy of the Culture model over others.6 Contrary to

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what this account would lead one to expect, however, there are actually three other, distinctly different, conceptions of the nature of belonging in given polities that currently actively compete with this perspective.

Belief: Citizenship as Identification with a Polity’s Founding Principles

In contrast to “communitarian” and other advocates of the Culture view, American liberal thinkers often stress political culture and belief in certain common and fundamental liberal political values or principles as the basis of citizenship and national identity, at least in liberal democracies. For instance, the ideas of “constitutional patriotism” (Levinson 1988) or “constitutional faith” are often presented as central and defining elements of American national identity. Jacobsohn (1996: 23) argues, “being an American consists largely of sharing in those constitutive ideas that define membership in the political community. Assimilation in this context relates exclusively to principles” (cf. Huntington 1981: 24). While many authors present this “Belief ” conception of nationality as quintessentially American (Kohn 1957a; Mead 1975; Huntington 1981; Jacobsohn 1996; Walzer 1992), similar arguments also figure centrally in current European political and social theory. Defending the value of understanding political membership this way, Habermas argues that a “liberal political culture has a constitutional patriotism as its only common denominator” and concludes that “democratic citizenship does not necessarily have to be rooted in the national identity of a people” (1992: 28–29). The cultural integration of groups must therefore be distinguished from the “political integration of citizens,” the latter based on shared principles (1994: 132). Similarly, Mouffe (1992) argues, “What we share and what makes us members in a liberal democratic regime is not a substantive idea of the good but a set of political principles specific to such a tradition: the principles of freedom and equality for all.” Such a perspective implies that citizenship is properly understood not as “a legal status,” but as “a form of identification” (231). In other words, from this perspective, citizenship appears as a Leave membership. While increasingly common among European as well as American defenders of the Belief model, the expression “constitutional patriotism” can actually be somewhat misleading. Examples of a political community united

A Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies  39

by belief in common values or principles can be found in the absence of constitutions as well, as this idea’s Christian antecedents suggest (Levinson 1988; Mead 1975). Nor need the Belief conception of political membership be limited to nation-­states. At points in his writing, St. Augustine advanced what would qualify as a “Belief ” vision of citizenship, in the City of God (Augustine 1958: 469–71, 63). And Habermas (1992) sees the Belief vision of political membership as the one most auspicious for development of a supranational European citizenship. Because of the sense of identification and commitment involved, the Belief conception of citizenship resembles the Culture view. However, in the Belief model, there is also an important element of choice. Citizenship, by this view, is supposed to be a form of membership whose acceptance involves asserting one’s autonomy and individuality. One shortcoming of the literature praising the Belief model as the basis of U.S. national identity is its partial and selective reading of U.S. history (Smith 1988).The way this literature typically presents the alternatives where understandings of citizenship are concerned is also flawed logically and conceptually. Advocates of the Belief model often misleadingly depict it as the only alternative to an illiberal, exclusionary, or ethnocultural approach to membership in the nation. In reality, however, “the” illiberal or ethnocultural view of nationality is often an amalgam of the Culture and Descent views. There are also other alternatives to those views: the Contract and Monetized Contract models.

Contract: Citizenship as Equal Rights for Equal Duties, or a Rights-­bearing Status Acquired by Virtue of Living Together Cooperatively

A different, equally significant, alternative to Culture or Descent conceptions of political membership is the idea of citizenship as a “contract” between the citizen and the state consisting of a set of duties toward or participation in the state or community balanced by a set of rights the citizen enjoys, guaranteed by the state. Citizenship in this case is conceived of as a Quit-­type membership, based not on blood, culture, or convictions, but rather on active performance, whether participation in key activities or fulfillment of required tasks. This perspective can be readily illustrated by reference to contemporary British liberal thinking. According to Albert Weale, for example, “the

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concept of citizenship makes the question of identity the ground of rights and duties” (1991: 158). In other words, what rights and duties one has depends on whether one “is” British, Italian, Brazilian, or something else. Similarly, Hall and Held draw on the Contract perspective in characterizing citizenship as “a matter of right and entitlement” that “is two-­sided: rights in, but also responsibilities towards, the community” (1989: 175). Reading Hall and Held as proponents of what I call the “Contract” view might appear to be unfair, since their view is not narrowly “contractarian,” but rather emphasizes civic participation. Such an emphasis is by no means at odds with the “Contract” perspective as defined here, however. Of the five conceptions of citizenship identified here, it is in fact the “Contract” view that places the greatest emphasis on active participation. In this understanding, insofar as it emphasizes reciprocal rights and duties, citizenship is, surprisingly, not altogether different from a traditional feudal relationship, particularly as it linked lords and vassals within the more elite sociopolitical strata. Bloch notes that “reciprocity of unequal obligations” was the hallmark of “European vassalage” (1961: 158). In exchange for a fief, protection of person and property, and rendering of justice, the feudal vassal was normally obliged to perform military service, as well as participate in courts of law and consultative councils (219–24, 228). Where democratic citizenship is envisioned according to this model, the reciprocity of obligations involved has increasingly been generalized to incorporate the masses of the population into what were originally aristocratic, or at least gentlemanly, roles. Alfred Marshall depicted the extension of the duties associated with citizenship as a progressive process that promised eventually to make “every man” into “a gentleman” (Marshall 1950: 4, 7–9). The same idea was reiterated by British Home Secretary Douglas Hurd in the following terms: “Public service may once have been the duty of an elite, but today it is the responsibility of all who have time and money to spare” (quoted in Heater 1990: 140). As it was extended from the elite to commoners, the feudal “contract” increasingly became the same for all. From this perspective, citizenship generally appears a matter not simply of rights and duties, but of equal rights and equal duties. Hence T. H. Marshall’s famous definition of citizenship as “a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community,” who thereafter “are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed” (1950: 28–29). There are actually two distinct variants of the Contract view: state-­

A Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies  41

centered and society-­centered, both of which figure significantly in current controversies about political membership. Besides obeying the law, the duties most often included in the state-­centered version of the “rights for duties” contract are military service and voting. The place of voting in the state-­ centered Contract model sometimes figures as a duty of citizens, but is also often mentioned as one of the rights they receive. In the society-­centered version, the duties of the citizen, such as voluntary community service and charity work, are closer to those of members of the traditional upper class toward those below them. The medieval local lord, for instance, often was responsible for the commons and had such charitable duties as caring for babies abandoned on “his” lands, while later the local gentry in England were responsible for administering the Poor Laws. The ideal of citizenship thus came to be associated with the national and local roles of the English gentry during the Elizabethan period (Heater 1990: 27, 30). In the modern society-­centered Contract vision, the worthy “citizen” may fight fires, keep up the parks, work with the homeless, and care for aging neighbors. This vision of citizenship was asserted with particular clarity by British Conservative proponents of “active citizenship”—­one element of Conservative reaction against the welfare state—­during the late 1980s. Conservatives presented the “active citizen” as “the person who seeks out opportunities to succour the needy, protect the environment, administer schools and defend, through neighbourhood watch schemes, the local community against the depredations of the burgeoning criminal class” (Heater 1991: 141). While some criticized this understanding of citizenship as “essentially apolitical” (Oliver 1991: 165), others felt that the idea recaptured an important dimension of what being a “citizen” meant. For example, recalling an elderly neighbor he had known in Polingsford, Suffolk, Andrew Phillips praised the Conservative society-­centered, service-­oriented vision of citizenship for being attuned to traditional social virtues. Underlining the danger that a more political and less localist understanding of citizenship might dishonor such worthy people, Phillips described his neighbor as follows: In 85 years she had only spent one night out of the village. Her sense of belonging to it was innate and complete. According to some notions, she was scarcely a citizen at all, never having played any part in civic affairs, yet, like millions of our countrymen even today, her diurnal partaking of the life of that village, her attachment to the little platoon of its inhabitants, made her an exemplary neighbour and, I

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would say, citizen. In our notions of the active citizen, therefore we must always allow honour to such people. There is a real danger that because the care they give so abundantly cannot be counted, it will not be held to count at all. (Phillips 1991: 545) Phillips’s description of his neighbor reveals both a certain ambivalence about this understanding of citizenship and the potential, because of its localism, for it to shade into the idea of citizenship as a matter of cultural attachment. Thus, even while he defends this elderly woman’s entitlement to be counted as a “citizen,” Phillips admits that calling the sort of belonging she represents “citizenship” is apt to be controversial, and his own tendency is to revert to describing her as a “neighbor” instead. Ultimately, however, he defends her right to the title “citizen” because of the “care” she and people like her contribute to the community, thus suggesting that those who serve the community are thereby entitled to citizenship, an argument clearly in keeping with the society-­centered Contract view. Earlier in that same passage, however, Phillips emphasizes his neighbor’s “innate and complete” “sense of belonging” and her “attachment” to her village’s inhabitants, drawing on the idea of citizenship as a matter of cultural attachment instead. The two conceptions begin to shade into one another here because it is the neighbor’s “attachment” to those around her that presumably motivates her generously to provide “care” and act as “an exemplary neighbor.” It is not entirely clear whether Phillips thinks it is the service or the attachment that entitles the neighbor to recognition as a citizen, but he ultimately says it is the “care” that should be “held to count.” In the end, then, like other defenders of “active citizenship,” Phillips appears to favor a contractual view involving an exchange of duties between the individual and the community; in exchange for “the care they give,” people like this neighbor are entitled to receive the “honor” of being “counted” as exemplary, “active” citizens.

Monetized Contract: Citizens as Material Contributors

Given changes in military organization, the decline in military service as a regular duty of all (or, more often, all male) citizens, and the ambiguity of voting’s status as a “duty” as opposed to a right, the activity-­oriented “rights for duties” Contract, at least in its state-­centered version, seems bound to lose some of its attraction. Perhaps this accounts for the current salience of mon-

A Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies  43

etized versions wherein full membership in the polity is earned by paying one’s dues to the state financially or contributing economically to the national community, through tax paying, employment, or financial investment. Here, as in the case of Cancel groups, membership is something one receives in exchange for paying required fees or making expected financial contributions to a group. It is not only the obligations side of the contract that increasingly appears in economic terms. The rights side is also subject to monetization. In place of rights, the advantages accruing to national membership are increasingly characterized in terms of material benefits, such as rights to welfare, access to public housing and education, or other social rights and benefits. While more commonly invoked in the heat of particular political debates, this way of thinking about who belongs to a given polity also appears in the recent literature on citizenship. Parry, for example, proposes an understanding of citizenship whereby society would appear as a social insurance club financed by contributing members (1991: 186–87), while Harrison (1991: 209–13) argues that “privatized forms of social provision” may “amount to an alternative form of ‘modern citizenship.’” However, the fact that Harrison places “modern citizenship” in quotation marks here suggests that he himself recognizes the deviation of his use of the phrase from ordinary usage. There is actually less of an existing legal basis for such an understanding of citizenship than one might imagine. In reality—­with a few socially and economically significant exceptions such as access to public service jobs in some countries—­most social rights and economic benefits in the United States and Western Europe do not legally depend on citizenship. In Western Europe, citizenship is rarely an important factor in determining access to social service programs; legal residents qualify for most of the same social benefits as citizens (Soysal 1994: 123–25). In the United States, prior to the contested reforms of the 1990s, even legal residency was not a legal requirement for such valuable social benefits as public education, emergency hospital care, or social security (Schuck and Smith 1985: 108; Soysal 1994: 124). What is essential here, however, is not the legal relationship between citizenship and social entitlements. Rather, it is the existence, even prevalence, of the belief that only contributing economically to the community qualifies one as a full member, as someone entitled to benefits. This is a belief about moral entitlement and how citizenship or membership in the political community should be understood, not just about what the current rules regulating access to entitlements by those with various juridical statuses in the community

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actually are. As in the case of the Descent model, historical and legal reality are largely at odds with the idealized vision by which they are supposed to be described, but this conception of citizenship has a life of its own and contributes to shaping public discussion. To understand the current politics of citizenship, it is therefore important to recognize this idea. Like the Contract model, the Monetized Contract view has state-­centered and society-­centered variants. The dues paying involved in the state-­centered version consists in paying taxes; recognition as a full and legitimate member of the national community or “citizen” (taxpayer) entitles one to social benefits. In the society-­centered variant, it is those who contribute to the economy through engagement in productive employment who have a legitimate claim on citizenship. While many scholars see the American understanding of citizenship and national identity as quintessentially expressive of the Belief model, others have argued that, as Shklar puts it, “earning” was historically “implicit in equal American citizenship” (1991: 100) in the sense that it was essential to being seen as someone worthy of citizenship (63–100). Shklar argues that by the late nineteenth century the economy “was where citizenship and its rewards and duties  .  .  . rested” (87). It was actually the link between wage earning (as opposed to slave labor) and the personal autonomy it supposedly permitted that was most significant in American thinking about the connection between citizenship and productive employment (63–67, 95–96). However, the idea of earning as an exercise of a civic duty to contribute to national prosperity also played a role in American thinking about who should be counted as a “citizen” (67–68, 87), by which Shklar means someone with full and equal standing in the community (3, 63). Claims for rights based on a society-­centered version of the Monetized Contract view are ultimately difficult to defend, however. The argument is seldom taken to its logical conclusion; if it were, it would give rise to a host of problematic political and theoretical questions. Moreover, grounding political claims in this line of argument is politically risky because public opinion on what contributing to the economy actually means is often changeable and even contradictory. It is often less than entirely clear just what kind of work immigrants economically contribute to the nation by performing, or whether being gainfully employed counts as an economic contribution to the nation at all. Some use the Monetized Contract view to argue that immigrant workers should be recognized as legitimate members of the polity because they contribute to the

A Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies  45

national economy; others appeal to the same perspective to argue that they should be excluded because they take jobs from native workers. If unemployment rises and jobs become scarce, popular opinion may switch from one position to the other. And if immigrants can fulfill their economic duty of contributing to the national economy and thus earn entitlement to recognition as citizens by working, what sort of work is the worthy immigrant supposed to perform? Public opinion on this point is also often contradictory. As Honig notes, successful migrants’ accumulation of great wealth and ascension to very desirable positions are often lauded in the American press as evidence of their industriousness and eagerness to contribute to American society (1996: 187– 88). Yet, in other cases, immigrants are said to be contributing economically to the nation (not taking scarce jobs from native workers) because they are willing to work for low wages (saving the community money) or to take jobs native workers regard as undesirable. This very willingness is also sometimes blamed for lowering wages and standards for native workers. Another difficulty with the Monetized Contract model is that it logically points to a much broader extension of citizenship than almost anyone seems ready or willing to accept. If contributing to the national economy entitles those immigrating to perform necessary labor for national companies to political rights, what if the same companies set up export platforms and hire the same workers to perform the same tasks outside the national territory? According to the society-­centered Monetized Contract view, their membership status and the rights associated with it should be the same in both cases. Yet one would be hard pressed to find advocates of such a position, even among those relying most heavily on the work-­centered view of entitlement to citizenship as a basis for legitimating extension of new rights to immigrant workers. Moreover, if one were logically to extend the society-­centered Monetized Contract argument to employees of national firms who work outside the country, a new series of questions would then need to be answered. What of the peasants who grow the grain to feed the workers who work for the national company abroad? What if a worker changes jobs, leaving an American plant to work for a Japanese one? Should his citizenship change accordingly? What if the company is an international joint venture, or is bought out by a foreign competitor? Some of the same problems may arise regardless where the worker lives, since there need be no correlation between the nationality of a corporation and the territory where it operates, let alone the nationality of its owners.

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In an increasingly internationally integrated economy, the society-­ centered Monetized Contract approach to membership is thus apt to be exceedingly difficult to apply. It is too difficult to determine just which political community is the ultimate beneficiary of any given worker’s labor for it to be at all practical to determine who should count as a member of what nation-­ state on that basis. Moreover, defining citizenship that way would make changes in national status highly unpredictable for individuals, and for some possibly quite frequent as well. Defining citizenship on such an unstable basis would greatly reduce its value in providing people with a secure legal status on the basis of which to plan and organize their lives. Nonetheless, implicit references to this model of citizenship in political discussion are quite common; it is often seemingly taken for granted that the model itself makes sense. It is important to note the distinction between the state-­centered and the society-­centered versions of the Contract and Monetized Contract models because, when used in arguments about contemporary issues, they often have ultimately different implications. For instance, Walzer (1983) uses the state-­ centered variant to defend guest workers’ entitlement to citizenship, arguing: “Men and women are either subject to the state’s authority, or they are not; and if they are subject, they must be given a say, and ultimately an equal say, in what the authority does” (61). While working “in the local economy” is one of the conditions Walzer mentions as giving rise to a right to citizenship in the sense of enjoying equal political rights, his argument is not, as one might expect, that guest workers are entitled to rights because they contribute to the national economy. Instead, he emphasizes that guest workers are subject to national law. That explains why, in his view, working in the local economy gives rise to rights to citizenship only where the workers concerned also live on a given (democratic) state’s territory, so that they are “subject to local law” (60). If Walzer had based his argument for guest workers receiving citizenship on the society-­centered version of the Monetized Contract model instead, an argument that also readily suggests itself in this case, his claims would then have become much less tenable, as the above discussion of the limitations of the society-­centered version of the Monetized Contract model suggests.

Distinguishing Between the Culture and Belief Models One may wonder whether the values and principles stressed by the Belief model are really distinct from culture and thus whether the Belief and Cul-

A Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies  47

ture models truly differ. Are shared values and principles not cultural products? And are they not in most, if not all, cases culturally specific? Answering these profound ethical and philosophical question is unfortunately beyond the scope of this study. However, whether or not values and political principles are culturally based, or can even be shown to be entirely culturally specific, the Culture and Belief conceptions of political membership are still analytically distinct ideas. As defined in this study, the Culture conception of citizenship grounds commonality in the kinds of shared language, manners, customs, and habits typically associated with primary socialization. The Belief model focuses more narrowly on political culture, values, and identification. Where one might logically expect the Belief and Culture models to come into the most direct conflict would thus be in the case of migrants raised in a non-­European cultural milieu who nonetheless come to identify politically with a European state or the values for which it claims to stand. The case of native non-­European soldiers who fought on the French side during the Algerian War (the harkis) is an excellent example in this regard. The Belief and Culture conceptions of being French had notably different implications for harkis’ treatment after the war; in practical policy terms, the two models were clearly opposed. The harkis had Belief as well as state-­centered Contract claims to French political membership that were stressed throughout the war, but eclipsed in practice by more Culture and Descent-­based understandings of political membership in the war’s immediate aftermath. During the conflict in Algeria, not only the harkis’ military service but also their love of and political identification with France were frequently emphasized. Indeed, their numbers were taken to demonstrate the justice of the French cause, showing that not only European settlers in Algeria but also significant numbers of native Muslims had become “French” and wished to remain so. Those who demonstrated their love and loyalty by fighting on France’s side were promised faithful French support; their Contract-­and Belief-­based claims to political membership were thus validated and encouraged. When the military conflict ended, however, far more refugees than anticipated sought immediate departure to France, overwhelming French authorities and officials. Perhaps seeking to thin the numbers, the director of France’s Military Cabinet ordered the military to try to prevent resettlement of “French Muslims” in the metropole (Perville 1991: 121), even though the former harkis were in imminent danger in Algeria (Hamoumou 1990: 25–45, 1991: 112–14; Meliani 1993; Roux 1991).

48  Chapter 2

The idea that those who fought for the French military, and supposedly demonstrated their love of and identification with France by doing so, showed themselves to have become as indelibly “French” as the settlers of European origin in Algeria would logically have entailed putting the harkis on the same boats “back” to France as the European refugees. Both the state-­ centered Contract and the Belief models of political membership favored that conclusion and pointed to such a commitment, above and beyond more general human rights claims. However, the policy implications of the Contract and Belief models were directly at odds with those of the Culture and Descent models. Ideas of political membership based on cultural affinity or ancestral ties, albeit with a larger European family, unfortunately came more decisively to the fore once Algeria’s independence was conceded. An immediate practical consequence was that French military personnel were ordered to discriminate ethnically between Muslim and other “French” refugees seeking passage to France.7 For years Contract and Belief ideas of political membership had contributed to legitimizing France’s political and territorial claims in Algeria and in colonies elsewhere. But after Algeria’s independence was granted and the longer process of what came to be understood as “decolonization” was thereby all but concluded, such broader Belief and Contract visions of political membership quickly lost much of their political cachet.8 The harkis’ treatment after the Algerian War illustrates how the Culture and Belief models can in practice have starkly contrasting entailments for policy, regardless whether the values and principles grounding Belief-­based claims to political membership are truly universal or culturally relative. In this regard, the Culture and Belief conceptions of political membership are distinct from one another, just as they are analytically distinct from each of the other models of political membership.

Conclusion Citizenship is a political form of membership, and we think about it in the same ways that we think about other memberships with which we are familiar. But there are several different kinds of memberships, and what we tend to talk about when we talk about belonging depends largely on what kind of membership we have in mind. With respect to most sorts of groups, this is not particularly problematic. We ordinarily have little occasion to contem-

A Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies  49

plate the fact that our memberships in different sorts of groups are different in kind. In the case of political membership, however, it is possible to think of belonging as modeled on each of the types of membership with which we are familiar in other spheres. Political membership may be understood and discussed as an unchangeable characteristic determined by descent, and thus as a particular case of No Exit membership. As with other memberships of that type, it figures as something one simply “is.” Or it may be discussed as something one “becomes,” a matter of acquiring and becoming defined in terms of a particular culture, and thus as a type of Change membership. At other times, it is discussed as if it were a Leave membership, a political membership defined in terms of subjective identification with a particular group and a project associated with it. It can also, however, be imagined as a form of Quit membership, a status conferring rights achieved on the basis of participation in or fulfillment of certain duties. In that case, the necessary condition for membership is then not what one is but what one does. Finally, citizenship may be discussed as if it were a form of Cancel membership, in which membership rights are granted to those who “pay their dues” through taxes, work, or economic investment. Citizenship, in that view, is defined neither by what one is nor by what one does but by what one contributes. One of the reasons discussions of political membership are often confused is that we are rarely altogether consistent in this regard. When we talk about belonging to a polity or political community, we wind up talking about disparate things: descent, cultural attachments, beliefs, civic duties and participation, and taxes and benefits. Table 2.3 summarizes the key features of our five main conceptions of political membership, and their relationship to our ways of understanding membership more generally. One of the reasons for the intractability and confusion that surround current debates about the meaning, appropriate criteria, and implications of political forms of membership is that we do not even realize that these five very different models are in play. Our inconsistencies may well be an almost inevitable reflection of the multifaceted ways in which we understand and experience citizenship, but the fact that the existence and nature of these inconsistencies are seldom, if ever, consciously recognized makes for a good deal of confusion in public discussions of citizenship-­related issues. The nature of some of these conflicts and the part they play in particular citizenship-­related controversies is explored in the chapters that follow.

Categorization by personal attributes

No exit

Nature of membership

Volunatry exit verbs

Belief

Contract

Change

Leave

Quit

Categorization Subjective Active by personal identification participation attributes

Culture

-automobile club (AAA) -gym membership

Cancel

Payment of dues or fees/material contribution

Monetized contract

State-centered: State-Centered: Key features -ancestry -customs -political culture -voting -tax paying -consanguinity -primary -values -respecting the law   socialization -principles -military service Society-centered: Society-centered: -contributing -community   to the national   service or   economy   involvement  

Examples -race -social class -Communist Party -orchestra -age group -language -Resistance -soccer team -clergy -theater club

Descent

Conception of political membership

Table 2.3. Competing Conceptions of Political Membership

PART II

Failed Hopes for a “New Citizenship”: The Political and Intellectual Logic of Changes in Nationality Law

Chapter 3

The Campaign for a Post-­National Model of Civic Membership

By the beginning of the 1980s in France, politicians and intellectuals were increasingly realizing that immigrants were permanently changing the face of French society. In response to this recognition, groups on the French left began championing what was often called a “new citizenship” or nouvelle citoyenneté. As understood by its proponents, nouvelle citoyenneté was to be a more inclusive citizenship disjoined from nationality. In practical terms, the main political demand associated with it was relatively simple: to extend local voting rights to foreign residents of areas where immigrants had settled. In symbolic and historical terms, however, many advocates saw the initiative as promising much more: nothing short of a conceptual revolution in established ideas of political membership. In marked contrast to more conservative observers who saw immigrants’ settlement as a source of potential national crisis, those championing such a “new citizenship” greeted the changing character of French society with enthusiasm. They saw it as heralding a new, more progressive and inclusive social order, and as promising nothing short of a radical displacement of the traditional nation-­state with all its dysfunctions. The “new citizenship” envisaged was “new” largely because it broke the traditional link between nationality, on the one hand, and citizenship as active political participation requiring possession of political rights, on the other.1 From the conventional perspective centered on the nation-­state, only French nationals could be citizens. From the “new citizenship” perspective, public recognition of foreign citizens was possible. In fact, having foreign citizens was even a sign of historical progress. Their enfranchisement seemed

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to herald the imminent eclipse of an increasingly outdated and outmoded political paradigm in which the nation-­state held pride of place. The new citizenship campaign both participated in larger international trends and was in key respects uniquely French. The particular national flavor and character of this campaign in France owed much to the particular history of French syndicalism and, above all, to the unrivaled depth of political conflict concerning state-­society relations in France. The radical and romantically pro-­social, anti-­statist character of France’s new citizenship movement contributed both to its initial appeal and later, as Chapter 5 will show, to its public delegitimation and political marginalization. The hopes of new citizenship’s French advocates were also strikingly close to those of many Anglo-­American post-­nationalists and multiculturalists. Given these close underlying affinities, the story of the new citizenship campaign’s rise and fall in 1980s France promises also to tell us something about the appeal, and the limitations, of post-­nationalist thinking as well. That story begins in this chapter and ends in Chapter 5.

The Perceived Crisis of Assimilation Optimistic Gainsayers

As recognition of postwar immigration’s lasting character slowly dawned on immigrants and French thinkers and politicians alike in the 1980s, French society came to appear considerably more culturally and religiously diverse than had previously been imagined. By the 1980s, many French observers were persuaded that the country was witnessing a crisis of assimilation, though others remained relatively sanguine about assimilation, and encouraged greater patience. Meanwhile, where it was believed that assimilation was failing, this change elicited radically different responses from thinkers on the right (including those of the so-­called “new right,” a strain then on the rise) and those on the left. Not everyone in mid–1980s France was ready to concede that a crisis of assimilation actually existed. Some members of the political and intellectual elite—­particularly leading Gaullists—­remained sanguine in their belief that even relatively recent non-­European immigrants to France in fact were on the road to assimilation. Expressing confidence in France’s capacity to assimilate its most recent immigrants, Philippe Séguin—­a leading critic of European

A Post-National Model of Civic Membership  55

integration within the RPR who was then minister of social affairs in charge of resources and rights of foreign residents—­boasted that “the assimilative capacity of France is powerful, much more powerful than xenophobia.” Indeed, he claimed, the French melting pot was every bit as effective as the American one (Declaration in Tunis, 23 March 1987, Documentation Française transcript). Similarly, in 1986 Michel Hannoun, Gaullist RPR party secretary in charge of social questions, sought to reassure the public that despite the “cultural ambivalence” of second-­generation immigrants, “one cultural element, one model of reference, dominates where the young are concerned, and it is the model of our French culture” (Hannoun 1986: 109–10). Nor was the perception that France was assimilating residents of foreign origin restricted to Gaullists like Hannoun and Séguin. Others on the left shared this perception. Notably, however, they often saw the continued strength of assimilation less as a reason for hope than as cause for concern.2

Defenses of National Identity

While some remained confident (or despondent) that assimilation was still working, in the early to mid–1980s it was widely argued that it was unrealistic to expect the large numbers of postwar immigrants from outside Europe, many of them non-­Christian, to assimilate as earlier immigrants from European countries supposedly had. Because cultural unity and the very existence of the nation were frequently equated, the perceived crisis of assimilation was often seen as a crisis of the nation as well. This perceived crisis together with enthusiasm about it on the French left (see below), convinced many observers that non-­European immigrants posed grave dangers to France. These reactions were clearly evidenced by contributions to two large colloquia on national identity organized in Paris by the new right intellectual circles GRECE and Club de l’Horloge in 1985. Paul Soriano, a contributor to the Club’s colloquium, maintained that European and non-­European cultures were incompatible, too different to be combined into a single, internally integrated national ensemble. Soriano warned: “the clearest expression of the dangers weighing on our national identity undoubtedly resides in this ‘social project’: ‘multi-­communitarian France.’” This project, he explained, was misleadingly called “multiracial and pluricultural France” by its intellectual defenders on the left. In reality, France was already “pluricultural,” but

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the multiple cultures comprising it all had a common European foundation that made them compatible. The danger of the left multicultural project, he implied, was that, in attempting to take in non-­European cultural groups, France would become “multicommunitarian,” thus winding up ethnically segregated (Soriano 1985: 55).3 The direct solution to this situation proposed on the right was, quite simply, to get unassimilating immigrants out of France. Interestingly, this approach was to an extent compatible with the agendas of certain first-­ generation immigrant associations organized along national lines. Republican Party (PR) deputy Alain Mayoud argued in 1983: One fraction of the current foreign population living in France has the vocation to assimilate. It is still necessary to define appropriate measures to facilitate and encourage the transition. For another fraction—­the majority, according to us—­of this population, return to the country [of origin] must be envisaged. (Minute, 24 September 1983; quoted in Delorme n.d.: 3) At the time, Mayoud was also a member of French-­Arab and French-­ Palestinian organizations (Delorme n.d.: 3). This coincidence underlines an unlikely convergence of political perspectives. Foreign worker organizations were also originally interested in encouraging workers’ eventual return to their countries of origin, and their position initially corresponded to skepticism on the political right regarding the likelihood of many immigrants assimilating. Mayoud’s perspective was ultimately reflected in the official position of the Parti Républicain as a whole. In its 1978 program, the party asked: “Collectively, how can anyone accept that communities that develop a way of life, habits, [and] practices that offend the sensibilities of our fellow citizens, that aggressively maintain these differences, that deliberately accept the risk of forming veritable foreign corps, that impose on themselves—­sometimes in the name of a misuse of the ‘right to be different’—­a veritable apartheid, might settle in France?” Anxious to deny that it was a “nationalist party,” the PR at the same time defended the belief that all people, regardless of origin, could assimilate (Parti Républicain 1978). The problem, according to the PR, was merely that some refused. This “assimilate or leave” position was by no means universally criticized by French intellectuals at the time. Spelling out the reasoning behind his own

A Post-National Model of Civic Membership  57

defense of assimilation as an essential prerequisite for foreigners’ acceptance in France, intellectual historian Raymond Polin argued that, “Felt, lived, recognized nationality” was “inseparable from a national culture.” A “multicultural” nation, he maintained, was as unviable as a person with multiple spirits or a body with multiple souls. Immigration and naturalization of foreigners were therefore beneficial only where assimilation occurred. In that case (but only then), Polin argued, “the new citizen becomes, better than a Frenchman like others, a Frenchman among others. He is able to participate harmoniously in the unfolding of a culture that is thenceforth his, and in the destiny of [his] new country” (Polin 1987: 634–35, 639). For Henri de la Bastide, another participant in the 1985 Club de l’Horloge conference, a society not bound by such a common culture was in danger of becoming driven by money and fraught with crime. The seemingly more assimilated new generation of French-­raised children of Maghrebin immigrants, he warned, knew nothing of Western civilization beyond its consumerism, for which they needed money. If they could not get it, then, being communally oriented, they formed gangs and robbed people in the métro (de la Bastide 1985: 222). For de la Bastide, the displacement of cultural ties by economic ones thus spelled the breakdown of moral limits and social order.

Good-­Bye, Nation, Good-­Bye!

The “new citizenship” campaign grew also from responses on the left to the apparent waning of assimilation. Many on the left agreed at the time with new right critics that immigrants were not assimilating. In contrast to conservatives who saw assimilation’s breakdown as a harbinger of national crisis, however, they saw foreigners’ “failure” to become culturally French as all for the best. François Mitterand, former head of the Socialist Party and France’s president from 1981 to 1995, maintained that “ethnic groups of immigrants” who came to work in France nonetheless understandably preferred their home countries and did not want to assimilate (Interview, “Le monde en face,” TF1, 17 September 1987). Many intellectuals on the left seemingly agreed, as evidenced by the anti-­assimilationist bent of the papers and commentary at a key conference on French identity organized in Paris by the left intellectual group Espaces 89 in 1985. No mere gathering of a few specialists, the conference drew some 2,000 participants. The Espaces 89 meeting and the edited volume resulting from it stood as the clearest left political and intellectual

58  Chapter 3

counterpoint to the two sizable conferences on French identity organized by new right intellectual groups that year. The respective titles of the edited volumes resulting from the three conferences attested to their organizers’ recognition of the competition among them. The first, resulting from the conference sponsored by the new right intellectual circle Groupement de Recherche et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne (GRECE) (GRECE 1985), was titled Une certaine idée de la France (A Certain Idea of France), suggestively alluding to the ambitious and restorative national vision of Charles de Gaulle; the second, following from the other new right conference sponsored by the rival new right circle Club de l’Horloge, was called, simply, L’identité de la France (The Identity of France) (Club de l’Horloge 1985). The left counterpoint to these two collections, from the Espaces 89 conference, was in turn titled L’identité française (French Identity). The collection offers a telling look into the terms in which issues of national identity, and the stalling of assimilation, were then being discussed on the left by those hopeful about the social developments they believed were occurring. Socialists were enthusiastic in the early 1980s about cultural diversity and had been campaigning for “the right to be different” (le droit à la différence), a movement with some impact on policy under the first Socialist-­ led government beginning in 1981. Like demands for the right to be different, the Espaces 89 conference drew together French regionalists and defenders of the rights of immigrants qua cultural minority groups (Espaces 89 1985: 115–57). One active participant in the Espaces 89 meeting, for example, called for the “recognition of citizenship for millions of people who live in this country, who profoundly hope to integrate themselves here but without thereby cutting themselves off from their identities, their cultures, their beliefs, their traditions” (124–25). Another participant, political thinker Sami Nair, called on people to reject assimilation as a prerequisite to social acceptance, arguing that just as assimilation had not helped the Jews very much during World War II, it would not help other minorities subject to prejudice today (129). The position of another contributor to the conference—­a supporter of decentralization, self-­management, and enhancing the economic viability of the periphery—­was also illustrative in this regard. He contended that beause the more recent immigrant populations were not assimilating, a “pluricultural” France was taking form. This produced a need “to identify the cultural communities, to recognize them institutionally,” and to grant them collective

A Post-National Model of Civic Membership  59

rights. “The right to be different,” he stressed enthusiastically, was to be “a new right of the citizen” as well as “a new human right” (115–57). Here, as in the new citizenship campaign, the upgrading of citizenship for a new era was seen as closely associated both with expanding rights and with severing the longstanding link between citizenship and cultural unity. Pascal Ory argued at the meeting that the French left needed to find a new alternative to the two positions it had typically favored regarding cultural minorities: (1) cultural homogenization through the treatment of areas dominated by cultural minority populations as departments like any others, and (2) defense of the right of “peoples” to self-­determination. As a way out of this political dilemma of assimilation (political integration qua departments) versus segregation (independence), Ory advocated extending democratic citizenship to cultural minorities while offering weaker cultural groups active protection, thus making France a multinational state. Such a state, he argued, would realize the once utopian project undertaken by the Austro-­ Hungarian Empire and would “liberate the debate regarding the nation from all association with territory and language.” In many respects, including his interest in a form of political membership that was territorially rather than culturally based, his fears about the potential creation of a stateless population, and his enthusiasm for the historical example of the Austro-­Hungarian Empire, Ory’s position closely followed the well-­known thinking of Hannah Arendt (1979: 158–302). Ory’s invocation of the pieds noirs correctly pointed to the last serious—­and failed—­French attempt to transcend the fundamental dilemma of assimilation versus segregation. When efforts to develop a “third way” out of that dilemma failed and it proved impossible to integrate Algeria into the French Republic as departments like any others, Algeria’s secession, and the traumatic migration of uprooted pieds noirs European settlers to France, resulted. The nation-­territory link, he reasoned, threatened to leave some people with nowhere to go, creating problems even worse than those faced by the pieds noirs, who fled Algeria en masse following independence (Ory 1985: 149–51). Like the leaders of human rights organizations who supported the “new citizenship” idea, Ory thus suggested a certain parallel between the historical problems of French colonialism, particularly those surrounding France’s failed project in Algeria, and current problems regarding cultural minorities within France. In the mid–1950s, some had advocated a third alternative: a federalist alternative to French republicanism that seemingly offered a way out of the long-­standing dilemma of assimilatory integration or secession. The prob-

60  Chapter 3

lem in the Algerian case, however, had less to do with Algerian demands for recognition as a distinct nation within the French state than Ory’s rhetoric suggested. Indeed, such recognition would have made little sense given the striking presence of several socially and culturally distinct potential national groups within Algeria. The true crux of the Algerian crisis arguably lay less in assimilation’s inadequacies than in the inadequacies and inconsistencies of France’s supposed commitment to assimilation. Because of resistance from the metropole to the possibility of seeing the French legislature swamped by Algerian representatives, and because of resistance to reform on the part of a “French” Algerian minority fearful of losing its prerogatives, French leaders were never politically willing and able truly to extend the equal treatment entailed by the “assimilation” option to the non-­European population of the Algerian departments. As these varied contributions to the Espaces 89 conference revealed, many observers on the left agreed that assimilation was in crisis in 1980s France. Unlike critics on the right, however, they saw this crisis not as a danger to France, but instead as an opportunity for new kinds of progressive reform that were long overdue.

In France as in Europe: France’s “New Citizenship” in International Context Demands for a “new citizenship” marked one logical response to that perceived crisis of assimilation: retreat from nationality as a basis for citizenship and extending increasingly equal rights, particularly local ones, to all residents of given areas.. The thinking and expectations of new citizenship’s supporters in 1980s France were closely akin to those of observers who have since announced a progressive or triumphal international or European turn to post-­nationalism. The French campaign for a new citizenship was, in fact, part of a broader European movement at the time. A report to the European Parliament, written by an Italian Communist representative, for example, recommended that migrants be granted the right to vote in the country in which they resided, and resulted in an official recommendation passed by the European Parliament in the spring of 1985. The currency of the local voting rights idea on the left in Europe at the time thus apparently reached well beyond the smaller, northern countries where extensions of local voting rights had already been passed (Wihtol de Wenden 1986:

A Post-National Model of Civic Membership  61

29). The demands of the new citizenship campaign in France in some ways simply reflected these larger European trends (cf., Hammar 1990: 169–200; Bauböck 1994: 199–232).

In France as in France: The Specifically French Character of the New Citizenship Campaign The arguments advanced in favor of the “new citizenship” idea in France and French understandings of its significance were, however, at the same time distinctive in key respects. To understand how the idea was later discursively delegitimized, it is essential first to understand its distinctively French referents and perceived significance, particularly the role of French labor history as a referent and the decidedly “anti-­statist” cast of French defenses of new citizenship. When the new citizenship campaign was delegitimized, however, what was defeated was not just a policy idea but also a particular coalition of actors who had developed, supported, and promoted it. Before turning to the symbolic and discursive particularities of the local voting rights campaign in France, it may be helpful first to look at who supported it, and why and how they sought to promote it.

The Social and Political Bases of France’s New Citizenship Campaign

The idea of extending more equal civic and political rights to immigrants was an initiative that emerged primarily out of groups on the French left with a localist or collectivist orientation. The campaign for a “new citizenship” was launched largely by French left organizations outside the party system, and won only limited support from Socialist Party leaders (Dinant 1985: 11–12). Calls for greater participation of immigrants in local political life began to be heard in France as early as the late 1970s. The Federation of Associations of Solidarity with Immigrant Workers (Fédération des Associations de Solidari­té avec les Travailleurs Immigrés FASTI) supported the right of immigrants to vote and to stand for office beginning in 1975. At first, FASTI was isolated in its position, and made only low-­key efforts to attract support for its ideas. Other groups were also starting to consider issues of migrant representation, but none yet went so far as FASTI on this score. From 1977 to 1981, the Chris-

62  Chapter 3

tian refugee assistance group CIMADE (Comité Inter-­mouvements auprès des Évacués) and parts of the Socialist Party expressed their support for the creation of institutions to represent “migrants” as a group at the local level, but initially not for the direct, individual participation of migrants in the election of regular local council representatives (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 26–27; Serres 1985: 4–5).4 Beginning in 1980, however, the voting rights demands initially made by FASTI started to find other supporters. The Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT)—­France’s largest trade union confederation—­called for local voting rights for immigrants who met a minimal residency requirement (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 27). Notably, the Human Rights League (Ligue des Droits Humaines, LDH) also adopted a resolution in favor of municipal voting rights for immigrants at its 61st Congress in November 1980. Subsequently, the local voting rights idea in France would, like the turn to “post-­nationalism” later proclaimed in the academic literature, be closely linked to support for the cause of human rights. LDH’s resolution received open support from France’s small socialist PSU party, religious organizations, and of course FASTI. During the mid–1980s, associations grouping first-­generation immigrant workers according to their country of origin also campaigned actively in favor of the “immigrant voting rights” idea. The Amicale des Travailleurs Africains en France (ATAF), a humanitarian organization committed to promoting social action and mutual aid among African workers in France, was among those declaring their support for immigrants’ right both to vote and to run for office (Dinant 1985: 13). Accounts of the events organized by associations of and for immigrant workers are suggestive of the flavor of the campaign for local voting rights during those years, particularly as the idea was presented locally to other foreigners. In March 1986, the Union of Tunisian Workers (UTIT) and the Democratic Union of Kurdish Workers in France (UDTKF) were active in organizing a local festival for the promotion of immigrant voting rights in Chalon sur Saône. The symbolism on which the festival drew was leftist, collectivist, and hostile to the French state. The mock-­vote that crowned the day’s activities was preceded by performances of Kurdish and Maghrebin musicians who sang about Tunisia and the struggles of the Moroccan and Palestinian peoples. The festivities thus symbolically associated the immigrant voting rights issue with both anti-­imperialism and the promotion of cultural diversity in France. This festival also thereby framed local voting rights in terms of a more general celebration of locally rooted collective struggles for autonomy from state authorities.5

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This event marked a clear change from the initial hostility of such first-­ generation foreign worker organizations to immigrant voting rights. Originally, many had viewed such initiatives as assimilationist and feared their potential to undermine immigrants’ political engagement in their countries of origin (Serres 1985: 4). There was never unanimity on this point, however. As early as 1982, the Association of Workers from Turkey (ATT) expressed support for the right of immigrants to vote in France as “a step toward the equality of French-­immigrant rights that goes further than the simple right to vote in the country of origin” (Dinant 1985: 13). By the mid–1980s, foreign workers in France were increasingly arguing that extending voting rights to immigrants would better enable them to resist assimilation, by allowing them to obtain more equal political rights without becoming French nationals. Those who were attached to their nationality of origin as an anchor of cultural identity, it was argued, would be able to vote without sacrificing it (Lefranc 1985: 7). One reason for the eventual waning of this argument may have been its inaccuracy, at least in legal terms. France in fact allows double nationality. Acquiring French nationality therefore entails the loss of one’s nationality of origin only where required by the laws of the other country. Neither Portugal nor Algeria, whose emigrants together accounted for more than a third (36.5 percent) of legal foreign residents in France in 1986 have such restrictions. Portugal, meanwhile, amended its nationality code to permit dual nationality in 1982 (Long 1988a: 664).6 Available survey data suggest that immigrant associations’ change in position on this issue paralleled an underlying shift in opinion among Maghrebin residents in France. Public opinion polling of the foreign population in France in those years was, unfortunately, infrequent and relied on much smaller and less representative samples than those standard for surveys of the French general population. Still, what imperfect evidence we have from those years suggests that immigrants’ support for local voting rights was rising. A 1978 survey of 214 Algerian nationals aged sixteen to twenty-­four living in France asked, “In France there are political parties and associations that say that foreigners should vote in municipal elections. Yourself, do you think it is normal or not normal that you might vote when there are municipal elections in France?” Already in 1978, a clear majority of respondents (57 percent) said they found it “normal,” with only 18 percent selecting “not normal.” Responses were similar, but a bit less favorable (53 percent “normal” versus 26 percent “not normal”), among a second subsample of 208 young Portuguese

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living in France questioned in 1978 (“Le sondage” 1978: 26). However, in 1989, when asked, “Do you think it is desirable or not desirable that foreigners living in France for a certain time might have the right to vote in local elections?” an overwhelming 80 percent of French-­speaking Muslims over 15 interviewed in the Paris, Marseilles, and Lyon areas deemed it “desirable” (Le Nouvel Observateur, 23–29 March 1989: 99). Unfortunately, the sampling criteria for this survey evidently differed from those used in 1978. Not all Algerians in France are Muslim, and not all Muslims in France are Algerian; many are from Morocco, Tunisia, or sub-­Saharan Africa.7 Nonetheless, the difference in the results of the two surveys is striking, and there is no obvious reason to think that the differences in sampling criteria would account for it. While less dramatic, a 1990 survey of “immigrants” also found a somewhat higher level of support for local voting rights for foreign residents than the 1978 survey of young Portuguese and Algerians: 66 percent expressed an interest in having the right, without having French nationality, to vote in municipal elections (versus 26 percent “non”). One reason for the lower level of interest expressed in this survey may have been that, in contrast to the other two surveys, this one asked respondents about their own desire to have the right to vote, not about their desire that foreign residents in general might have it or about their assessment of whether it was “normal” for them to have it (L’Express, 23 March 1990: 70–71). The reversal in position on the part of immigrant associations and shift in opinion among foreigners residing in France from the 1970s to 1990 paralleled a rise in perceptions among foreigners in France that they were unlikely to return soon to their countries of origin. In 1978, when asked how long they wanted to remain in France, only 24 percent of Algerians and 25 percent of Portuguese respondents said they planned to stay “permanently”; 30 percent of Algerian and 40 percent of Portuguese respondents indicated that they planned to stay “several years,” while many (30 percent of the Algerians and 22 percent of the Portuguese) did not know how long they planned to stay (“Le sondage” 1978: 23). By contrast, a 1983 Gallup poll of male foreigners from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Italy, and Portugal that asked whether they would return to their country if they had work there, found that 43 percent—­48 percent of Portuguese and Italians and 36 percent of Maghrebins—­indicated that they would choose to “stay in France.” By 1990, the percentage answering that they would stay had risen to 61, an increase of 18 percentage points in only seven years (“Les immigrés” 1990: 72). As their expectations of return declined, the interest of foreigners in voting locally in France increased.

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The demand for voting rights for “immigrants” also attracted some limited support from associations of second-­generation Maghrebin youth, beurs, notably from the Collective for Civic Rights. However, the idea of voting rights for “immigrants” in France was itself inherently ambiguous. The term immigrés was commonly applied not only to those who had actually immigrated to France (generally nationals of other countries, and not of France), but also to their French-­born descendants (many of whom were French nationals). Beur organizations’ support for the extension of political rights to immigrés paralleled simultaneous, and more important, efforts by such organizations to encourage the exercise of political rights by immigrés who were legally French (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 28).8 Thus, the championing of voting rights by the new wave of beur and anti-­racist youth associations did not necessarily indicate rejection of the more traditional road to voting rights through the acquisition of French nationality. Harlem Désir, a French national from the Caribbean presiding over the recently organized, high profile, anti-­racist youth movement SOS-­Racisme, took a carefully measured midway stance on the issue. Désir supported local voting rights for non-­nationals, but opposed actual legal reforms to grant them until (and unless) French public opinion became broadly favorable (interview, L’heure de verité, Antenne 2, 19 August 1987). As Désir could not but have realized by reading the newspapers, French public opinion was then clearly and overwhelmingly opposed to the idea. As we shall see, Désir’s position in this respect thus closely conformed to that of François Mitterand, France’s Socialist President. At the same time, however, Désir was resisting pressure to admit to identifying with the Socialist Party. When television interviewer Alain Duhamel sought to make him do so during a guest appearance on Duhamel’s show, Désir responded, “my own movement, it would be humanism, it is the philosophy of human rights and then it is above all to try concretely on specific points in daily life to change things.” Of course, one could argue that Désir was simply anxious to avoid appearing overly partisan. But the human rights movement in France is certainly not seen as politically neutral; it is led by left social movements, strongly supported by many activist left-­identified lawyers and jurists, and vehemently opposed by the far right. Désir’s position could therefore be better interpreted as one of support for part of the French left, but not always the part best represented by the Socialist Party (PS). Like other supporters of local voting rights for immigrants, Désir was sharply critical of central state control. He favored decentralization and defended greater autonomy from

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the administration in Paris for Martinique and Guadeloupe (“L’heure de verité,” 19 August 1987). Like those of other groups favoring local voting rights and unlike much of the PS, Désir’s position had a clearly anti-­statist cast. One might have expected Désir to take a stronger stand in favor of non-­ national voting rights. However, this demand was not as natural a cause for beur groups or the growing anti-­racist youth movement of the 1980s as it was for the more traditional immigrant workers’ associations and human rights organizations. Though they may have wanted to see voting rights extended to their older, non-­French relatives, many beurs—­like Désir himself—­were already legally French, and therefore already had the right to vote. And, while the often nationality-­based organization of the immigrant workers’ associations testified to a certain attachment to their countries of origin, the new generation was increasingly identifying itself in terms of membership in a particular age cohort (“youth”) or commitment to particular principles, such as equality and fraternity across racial lines. As foreign nationality became a less salient basis of identification and social organization among these youth, the problem of reconciling political participation with attachment to a foreign nationality also became a less pressing source of identity conflict. Nonetheless, supporters of the “new citizenship” campaign hoped that cause would draw new second-­generation organizations back into active cooperation with older immigrant workers’ associations and French left immigrant worker solidarity associations like FASTI. Thus, the campaign was also partly driven by efforts to respond to the growing diversity, and apparent scattering, of the immigrant association movement. More specifically, it marked an effort by older French progressive organizations to reclaim a position of leadership vis-­à-­vis the disruptively autonomous, upstart, second-­ generation associations that became increasingly important during the mid–1980s (Serres 1985: 5). By 1985, demands for local voting rights for non-­nationals had also received cautious public support from François Mitterand and later from the French Communist Party, moving the issue into the national political limelight. The right of immigrants residing in France for at least five years to vote in municipal elections was included in Mitterand’s 1981 electoral platform. In 1985, it was also embraced by the French Communist Party following a new round of efforts to increase support for it in the mid-1980s, most notably by FASTI, the leading French anti-­racist group Movement Against Racism and for Amity Between Peoples (MRAP), and the Council of Immigrant Associations in France (CAIF) (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 28–29, 29 n1; Serres 1985: 4–5).9

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In April 1985, Mitterand, then president, again spoke in favor of immigrants’ participation in local government, calling it “a fundamental claim” that “would inevitably be inscribed in the laws.” He made this statement at the 65th Congress of the Human Rights League (LDH), thus clearly expressing his enthusiasm for that organizations’s efforts (Le Monde, 23 April 1985). He did not go so far as to promise to extend new rights to foreign residents in the immediate future, however, hedging his support with statements that public opinion would have to be won over first, a process sure to be slow at best. Critics of Mitterand’s position speculated that he was actually trying to fan a xenophobic backlash that would increase votes for the far-­right National Front (FN) party of Jean-­Marie Le Pen, thus weakening the mainstream right (RPR-­UDF) opposition. Others accused Mitterand of taking a spectacular stand in favor of left humanitarian causes to compensate for his 1983 turn toward a more liberal socioeconomic policy (Times, London, 23 April 1985). Mitterand’s stance was thus always controversial, contributing to conflicts over citizenship and integration policy within the French left that would flare up still more dramatically by the end of the decade. From this brief account of the new citizenship campaign, some of the particular flavor and significance taken on by the campaign for local voting rights as it developed in France should already be apparent. Two aspects of its typical framing in France proved particularly significant. First, its association with the history of French syndicalism inflected the way that new citizenship was understood. Second, and most importantly for understanding its later eclipse, the new citizenship movement in France had a decidedly anti-­statist orientation, one that drew on deep resentments against both central state control and imperialism.

Back to the Labor Movement

As many recognized, the “new citizenship” agenda in a sense grew logically out of the same kind of reasoning and strategy that had informed the promotion of immigrants’ interests in France through syndicalism. The strategy and reasoning of the “new citizenship” campaign for immigrant voting rights unmistakably resembled those of the workers’ movement in several respects. Unlike British postwar immigrants from the New Commonwealth, first-­ generation postwar immigrants from France’s former sub-­Saharan African and North African colonies arrived in Europe as foreigners and without the

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right to vote. Nor did foreigners have the legal right freely to form voluntary or political organizations in France before 1981. French trade unions therefore played a particularly privileged role as a legally available vehicle for organizing and advancing the collective interests of the country’s overwhelmingly working-­class first generation of postwar post-­colonial immigrants. The clear continuity between the logic of the workers’ movement and that of French associations close to immigrant workers is therefore not altogether surprising. Foreign workers were accepted as union members by virtue of working in the same places as other workers and participating in the same daily round of productive activity. That is, foreign workers were entitled to union membership by virtue of their physical location and social roles, not their national legal status or legal relationship to the state. Not surprisingly, French unions aimed not at enabling foreign workers to obtain French nationality, but rather at preventing their exploitation and avoiding downward pressure on wages by ensuring that they enjoyed equal social and economic rights. Even while their status as foreigners barred them from participating in local or national elections, laws passed in 1972 and 1975 gave them “the right to vote in ‘social’ elections for shop stewards, union representatives and plant committees.” In 1975, those who spoke French and had worked in France for five years or more also gained the right to run for office within trade unions (Schain 2008: 51). This precedent was stressed by LDH’s vice-­president and professor of history at Paris VIII Madeleine Rebérioux, who clearly noted that it was within companies, as workers, that nationals and non-­nationals had first obtained the equality of rights that she hoped to see extended to other arenas (1986: 7). In defending workers’ rights, trade unions relied heavily on direct organization and mobilization. Finally, unions appealed to workers’ economic contribution to society, in exchange for which workers were to be granted rights. While regretting that it had so far left foreign workers largely deprived of political and civil rights, one advocate of new citizenship pointed to the workplace as the privileged site where a new form of “economic citizenship” had already developed (Leclerc 1986: 30). Relying on a very similar logic, “new citizenship” advocates pointed out that immigrants lived in the same places and participated in the same round of collective daily life as other members of their local communities. The fact that those residents who were not French nationals did not have the same legal status vis-­à-­vis the state as other long-­term residents was deemed irrelevant to their right to participate and be represented in local politics. As one article defending the “new citizenship” project argued, “What counts, in

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order to be a citizen, is to live, to work, [and] to love on a given territory. Nationality is a wholly different affair” (Guattari and Donnard 1988: 15). Another supporter of the “new citizenship” agenda advocated the extension of political rights to immigrants as a way of “permitting those who live in a territory to participate in the daily life of that territory” (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 29). Or, as FASTI in 1985 explained its own support for immigrants’ right to vote, “It [FASTI] sees the acquisition of this right as the recognition of a part of the population living in this country as citizens.”10 Thus, the appeal of the new citizenship campaign was, in part, to a Contract perspective emphasizing active participation in collective activity. Following the unions’ example, the new citizenship campaign did not strive to make foreigners French; it sought to improve their rights as foreigners. The campaign simply transferred this logic from the field of social and economic rights, and voting rights within firms, to civil and political rights beyond firms. While the workers’ movement sought to ensure that foreign workers had the rights necessary to defend themselves from economic exploitation, the new citizenship movement sought to ensure that they had the right to vote and could defend themselves against racist, demagogic appeals. If permitted to participate in local elections “as actors,” it was argued, immigrants would be less likely to figure in them as an issue (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 27). Here again, giving foreigners the rights they needed to avoid exploitation was to protect the larger community from harm as well, in this case from the rise of racism in French politics and society. LDH Immigration Commission president Henri Leclerc reasoned in defense of local political rights, “It is in not permitting immigrants to participate fully in daily life that one reinforces [social] separation, exclusion, racism” (Leclerc 1986: 31). Or, as FASTI announced following the killing of several foreigners by French police officers, in response to which other groups had engaged in demonstrations, “the analysis that it [FASTI] makes of the situation leads it to put all of its strength into a long-­term struggle for equal rights between French and Immigrants and for the acquisition of a new citizenship for the latter. This is . . . the best form of struggle against racism.”11 Though the “new citizenship” cause aimed precisely to enable long-­term foreign legal residents to vote and thus to participate in conventional electoral politics, its defenders often presented local voting rights as a step toward empowerment within civil society rather than national political participation, depicting local voting as more closely akin to participation in a cooperative

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or firm than national party politics. For instance, one article appealing for citizenship for non-­nationals decried the existence of “[immigrant] masses . . . without civic attachment who haunt our walls like the slaves of ancient cities, dependent on their boss, on their landlord, on the policemen in their neighborhood, without there being granted to them in exchange a taking of citizenship (une prise de citoyenneté) in relation to the social spaces that concern them” (Guattari and Donnard 1988: 15–16). Meanwhile, the president of the Immigrants Commission of LDH explained League support for extending local voting rights to immigrants by drawing this parallel: One must admit that there exists, as there does at the factory, as in the working world, as in the university, a community of interests, a tie based on mutual political management (gestion politique) where democracy must be expressed as fully as possible, that is to say, through the expression of all those without exception who are part of it [the community of interests] regardless of their birth. Only residency [not nationality] should therefore be taken into consideration [in determining voting rights]. (Leclerc 1986: 31) This human rights organization official thus likened participation of foreign residents in their communities to participation of workers in their factories, and to empowerment within civil society more generally. Again framing moral claims in terms familiar from labor politics, intellectual advocates of “new citizenship” also regularly highlighted the economic contribution of foreign participants to French society, through both working and paying taxes (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 29; Weil 1993: 2). The campaign thus appealed not only to Contract but also to Monetized Contract models of membership. As Rebérioux complained in an address to the Collective for Civil Rights (Collectif des Droits Civiques), an organization of second-­generation Franco-­Maghrebin youth whose positions in 1985 included support for local immigrant voting rights: “Civic rights are always refused to foreigners. They have the right to work, barely [have the right] to be unemployed since [then] they are threatened by exclusion, [and they have the right] to pay their taxes.” Rightfully, she argued, they should therefore have the right “to participate in the choice of those who tax.”12 Implicitly pointing to their economic contribution to the community as a basis for a legitimate entitlement to citizenship, LDH president Yves Jouffa also believed that the fact that only some taxpayers were citizens contributed to racism, thus suggesting that, to discourage rac-

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ism, all taxpayers should enjoy the benefit of citizenship (Jouffa 1986: 3). The president of LDH’s Immigrants Commission also criticized the exclusion of the non-­national resident from political rights, despite the fact that he “pays taxes and is . . . counted as a contributor in the determination of the rate of local taxation,” and despite the fact that public taxing and spending already implicitly required recognizing him as a member of the community because the nature and amount of “local facilities is calculated as a function of his presence (Leclerc 1986: 30).” In defending the idea of local voting rights, SOS-­Racisme president Désir argued not only that they would encourage greater attachment and responsibility toward the local community and that non-­national residents were concerned with the same local matters—­such as municipal day-­care centers and swimming pools—­as everyone else. He also argued that foreign residents paid taxes like everyone else (Désir 1987). Like the workers’ movement, the “new citizenship” campaign thus actually drew on two different ideas about the moral basis for equal rights, appealing to both Contract and Monetized Contract understandings of political membership. First, foreigners and French nationals were seen as members of a single community by virtue of their presence in the same place and participation in the same activities. Second, their economic contribution to the community was highlighted to justify more equal rights. Whereas for conservative critics like de la Bastide the displacement of cultural ties by economic ones spelled the breakdown of moral limits and social order, for parts of the French left it instead presaged a new form of more inclusive and democratic society. Because voting rights were seen as making one a “citizen,” and thus a full and equal member of the community, not only rights but also membership itself came to be defended by reference to migrants’ economic contributions.

The Pro-­Social Storm Against the State, Eager But Inaccurate Forecasts

The new citizenship campaign in France had a peculiarly “anti-­statist” quality, one that owed much to the singular intensity of political conflict centered on state-­society relations in France since the Revolution, a conflict more recently replayed in conflicting attitudes regarding French colonialism and imperialism. The underlying claim regularly advanced in favor of a “new,” post-­national citizenship was that it was necessary given the inexorable evolution of an increasingly transnational society. The drive toward greater European integration

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seemed to confirm this trend, and to presage an inevitable dwindling of nationality’s importance (Stora 1988: 57–58). New citizenship advocates argued that the existing equation between nationality and citizenship—­that is, between membership in the nation and the fact of having equal civic rights—­was increasingly passé (Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 27; Jouffa 1986: 3). Given that immigrants were in France to stay, new citizenship’s supporters maintained, they needed to be incorporated politically as citizens. Equating citizenship with nationality perpetuated their exclusion from the polity. According to Rebérioux, the very “grandeur of the national tradition” led “many French, including people on the left, to ask themselves how these foreigners could valuably exercise the rights of citizens.” The very idea of France as “la grande nation” (“the great nation”), she maintained, was in turn inextricably linked to memories of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and colonialism, and thus also to anti-­foreign sentiment (1986: 7).13 Following a slightly different line of argument, history professor and Algeria expert René Gallisot argued that “racist criteria” of religion and origin often factored in evaluations of immigrants’ ability to become French nationals, so that the equation of citizenship with nationality barred some immigrants from citizenship. Yet, he argued, immigrants thus excluded from legal recognition as nationals were nonetheless really French “by [virtue of] their stay in France (par le séjour) and of economic, social, and cultural participation.” Responding to this problem, Gallisot sought to separate the concept of citizenship from that of nationality, pointing out their distinct historical origins (Gallisot 1986: 8). The question, he argued, was not whether immigrants would become French nationals, and thereby become citizens. Instead, the real issue was “the exercise of civic rights for the generations and communities taking part in economic, social, and cultural life who have become elements of civil society in France.” Gallisot emphasized participation through autonomous social movements and voluntary organizations (rather than voting in national elections). He argued that the way to gain access to “the full range of civic rights,” including the right to vote, was to be found in “the dissociation of nationality and citizenship” (15). Like Rebérioux, Gallisot saw the connection between citizenship and nationality as part of the legacy of French colonialism, particularly the pro-­ imperialist patriotism widespread in France during the 1930s. As an effort to dissociate citizenship from nationality (and nationalism), Gallisot therefore situated the “new citizenship” campaign within a longer history of political conflict within the French left, one largely centered on conflicting attitudes

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toward nationalist, imperialist projects. From Gallisot’s perspective, the tension between “new citizenship’s” defenders and its detractors within the left during the 1980s was the latest chapter in a conflict which had historically pitted (anti-­imperialist) revolutionary-­syndicalists against (pro-­imperialist) socialists during the 1950s or (anti-­imperialist) French Communists against (pro-­imperialist) French Socialists in the wake of the 1920 Congress of the French Section of the Workers` International (SFIO) at Tours (10). Though he did not, Gallisot could very well have extended the same argument to the SFIO schism over the Algerian War at the end of the 1950s and the resulting formation of the competing, “Unified” Socialist Party (PSU). Indeed, the PSU was earlier and more strongly supportive of new citizenship demands than was the PS.14 Ironically, as Rebérioux explained, the peculiar French historical split between socialism and syndicalism developed precisely because of the nineteenth-­century French valorization of citizenship, which made French socialists far more interested in political democracy, and more distant from syndicalists, than were socialists in other nineteenth-­century European countries (Rebérioux 1986: 5–6; also see Portelli 1980). In a sense, these organizational schisms can be seen as symptomatic of a long-­standing division within the French left between a statist and an anti-­ statist tradition and sensibility. Attitudes toward emancipatory imperialist projects have always been one of the clearest litmus tests of this difference, as this issue has repeatedly split the French left along statist versus anti-­statist lines. Immigration, and the question of the terms on which members of immigrant populations should have access to rights as full members of the community, continues today to divide the French left along this same fault line. Other “new citizenship” defenders, like the president of the French national student association (UNEF), also pointed to a progressive logic of historical social evolution, arguing that granting immigrants the right to vote was the next step in the development of increasingly universal citizenship rights. Historically, various excluded groups had obtained voting rights and recognition as citizens. The use of guest workers, and thus the nation’s use of non-­nationals, represented a new, late twentieth-­century form of inequality, to which a new round of progressive reinterpretation of citizenship and civic incorporation (a “new citizenship”) would respond (Darriulat 1988: 54). Invoking a similar progressive logic, Algerian historian and expert on the Algerian War Benjamin Stora argued that granting immigrants the right to vote was part of the movement toward more equal rights for all social groups (1988: 57–58). The “new citizenship” campaign was critical not only of the authority of

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the state, but also of the constraint and artifice associated with it. Stora argued that abolishing “the frontier between social and political rights” would be a way of “allowing the true conception of French nationality to emerge (surgisse) through citizenship” (1988: 57–58). His rhetoric suggested that the “new citizenship” could deliver not just equality but also authenticity. Eliminating the artificial constraint and unnatural distinctions drawn by states thus promised to release the “true conception of French nationality.” This authenticity would be achieved by aligning the political with the social, aligning political rights (currently limited to French nationals) with social rights (already extended to foreign residents). Realigning the political with the social was, for Stora, to go hand in hand with decentralizing authority. He contended, “granting the right to vote to immigrants, at all levels, means that an ultra-­centralized conception of authority will also have to be done away with” (58). The new citizenship campaign was not only progressive but also clearly anti-­statist in its appeals, and this attack on the state was—­in classic Rousseauian fashion—­ understood as promising freedom from artifice and inauthenticity as well as central state power and authority. Seeking extension of new, political rights to non-­nationals, “new citizenship” supporters called for legal reform at the national as well as the local level. Nonetheless, supporters saw the source of progressive change as located outside of the state, in a process of increasingly transnational social evolution with its own inexorable logic. As historian Fernand Braudel underlined at a 1985 conference where new citizenship supporters’ vision of France’s future was elaborated, politicians could not arbitrarily choose the lines along which society might be reshaped; they could not go “against the current” of long-­ term historical development. Instead, they needed to recognize and work with the flow of history. Even while applauding Paris as the source of France’s international appeal, Braudel also depicted the French state in critical terms as the product of active “conquest” of the provinces by the richer, more industrial region around the capital. Furthermore, he blamed this constant unifying effort by the center, sometimes against the will of the periphery, for depleting the wealth and vital energy of the country, thus undermining its economic dynamism (Braudel 1985: 139–40). Another intellectual supporter of “new citizenship,” Daniel Lindberg, argued that nationalism had retarded the universalization of citizenship and thus its extension to other historically excluded groups, including women and Jews. Again, it was suggested that de-­nationalizing citizenship would finally allow for fulfillment of the universalizing logic evident in French citizenship’s

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naturally progressive historical-­developmental trajectory (1985: 94). The nation thus occupied the position of the (national) state in this discourse, unnaturally blocking the healthy development that would occur were it not for this artificial and unfortunate distortion and restriction. This perspective was not unique to Braudel or to the intellectual elite, but also informed the discourse of organizations at the forefront of the new citizenship movement. A 1985 editorial in FASTI’s monthly magazine argued: aside from its internal justification, the demand for the right [of immigrants] to vote in local or even national elections has the attraction of a decompression valve, of a channeling of the struggles to be led against the hypocrisy of the authorities and for the integration into society of this part of the population which, although less dramatically than in South Africa, is excluded from it. A progressive evolution toward this integration apparently being blocked, obtaining the right to vote would be like a surgical operation to bring about integration. (Lefranc 1985: 6) Here there is a natural “progressive evolution” toward the “integration” of all segments of the population into society. However, this evolution is “apparently blocked,” by the French legal-­political order. The “struggles to be led,” are to be directed against “the hypocrisy of the authorities,” because the state and those exercising legal authority are seen here as standing in opposition to authenticity as well as to natural growth, social evolution, or development. More than civic equality was thus understood to be at stake in demands for local voting rights for foreigners in France; the new citizenship campaign was also seen as a means of removing artificial legal-­political roadblocks to a deeper process of progressive social development.

Social Change, Political Interpretation and French Policy The peculiarly anti-­statist cast of the French new citizenship campaign is particularly important to recognize and bear in mind because it helps explain how the movement was politically marginalized and delegitimized in France, as nationality law reform moved to the center of the political agenda in the 1980s, a process examined in Chapters 4 and 5. Given that the new citizenship campaign was the political movement that in late twentieth-­century

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France perhaps most clearly embodied the hopes and expectations of observers convinced of growing post-­nationalism or multiculturalism internationally, understanding the political sidelining of this initiative helps explain why France’s recent politics of belonging have not confirmed post-­nationalist or multiculturalist expectations. Like many of the new citizenship’s political and intellectual advocates in France, those convinced of post-­nationalism or multiculturalism’s inevitably growing momentum have typically placed too much faith in unilinear, progressive, and supposedly inexorable processes of social development, with insufficient attention to the continued importance of national politics and political interpretation. As will become increasingly clear in the chapters that follow, France’s citizenship politics has been shaped by competing political interpretations of and reactions to new social developments as much as those social developments themselves. Through those interpretations and reactions, both the privileged role of the state and the continued centrality of the nation-­state as a favored form of political community have been strongly and consequentially reasserted. This reassertion may not suffice to stem the social processes that post-­nationalists and multiculturalists have noted, but it has clearly inflected recent French policy regarding the integration of immigrants and their descendents. That inflection is evident in regard to policies concerning public recognition of cultural and religious difference, as we shall see in Part III, and it is also unmistakable in the field of French nationality law, as the remainder of Part II reveals.

Chapter 4

Nationality Law Reform: Launching a New Debate

As the 1980s continued, France’s politics of belonging took a new twist as political struggles over changing French nationality law came to the fore. The issue of nationality law reform had previously been raised by immigrant advocates on the left, but was in the 1980s originally associated with the political right, with positions on the issue framed primarily in conventional left-­right terms. Public education and its integrative role, later greatly emphasized, was not a major theme in the early, radical campaign for nationality law reform. As late as 1986, a conceptual gulf separated influential nationality law reform advocates’ understandings of political membership from those of leading advocates of “new citizenship.” Demands for reform of French nationality law originally proved politically polarizing and led to a decidedly unproductive political impasse. In the end, however, the conflicts of the 1980s over nationality law reform had surprisingly enduring consequences. These struggles, and the political stalemate to which they originally led, set the stage for the French government’s appointment of an influential expert commission on nationality law. There is a natural but anachronistic tendency for analysts and observers to see only the obvious historical continuities between the Nationality Commission’s work and France’s long-­term political and intellectual history. In reality, however, the apparently consensual and historically continuous “republican” parameters of France’s politics of belonging that crystallized around the work of the Nationality Commission were markedly different from the prevailing terms of French membership politics just a few years earlier, when nationality law reform first emerged as a major national issue.

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The Nationality Commission’s widely publicized work played a key role in promoting the political rise of an influential neo-­republican position bridging the former conceptual divide between the nationality law reformers’ understandings of political membership and those of their opponents. This work thus contributed significantly to toning down the crisis over nationality law change, and constructed an amalgamated theoretical basis for new patterns of more centrist political cooperation, albeit still fragile ones. At the same time, the decisive and consequential conceptual reorientation encouraged by the Nationality Commission also placed an increasingly heavy symbolic load on the integrative role of public schools, thus setting the stage for more recent, school-­centered controversies.

The Retreat from Forced Return of Immigrants and Emergence of Demands for Restrictive Nationality Law Reform As we have seen, the late 1970s and above all the 1980s were a time of growing realization that culturally diverse immigrants were in France to stay, and thus a moment of rising anxiety about cultural assimilation. Certainly, it would be an oversimplification to see all this anxiety as symptomatic of underlying racism. Not everyone anxious about how immigrants’ long-­term settlement might change the face of France understood culture as directly linked to race. For some, including intellectual historian Raymond Polin, culture was instead regarded as the product either of education or of choice and loyalty (Polin 1987: 624–25, 636, 639). The years 1978–1980, however, saw a surprising French governmental initiative from President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Lionel Stoléru, minister of manual workers and immigrants. Faced with stubbornly high unemployment and public anxiety, they sought a nationally and ethnically discriminatory approach to immigration: an attempt to force return of substantial numbers of unwanted foreigners who had been legally resident in France, above all Algerians, to their countries of origin. These efforts met with substantial legal, political, and administrative resistance and were therefore ultimately unsuccessful. The new immigration bill of 1984 marked a clear defeat of this nationally and ethnically discriminatory approach to immigration policy. Nonetheless, ideas that legitimate belonging in France depended on cultural assimilation, and that assimilation in turn depended on ancestry would

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remain politically influential in the 1980s. Having failed to force discriminatory return of substantial numbers of foreign residents of selected national origins, Giscard d’Estaing and other supporters of that approach turned to the law regulating access to French nationality (Weil 1991: 162–204, 1993: 27–34; Schain 2008: 51–53). This interest in reforming French nationality law along more restrictive lines was not altogether new. Indeed, concerns regarding the liberal nature of French nationality law, including its attribution of French citizenship to second-­generation Algerians, had previously been raised both within the state and by immigrant and left-­wing activists concerned that France was imposing its national identity on resident Algerians against their will (Feldblum 1999: 59, 64). In June 1983, Radical Party (PR) deputy Alain Mayoud had even introduced a bill eliminating automatic acquisition of French nationality by children born in France to foreign-­born parents. The bill required them to make an explicit declaration when they turned eighteen in order to then become French national citizens.1 Explaining the reasons for this initiative, Mayoud appealed to foreigners’ “right to be different,” echoing a slogan previously associated with multiculturalist demands from the French left while reinterpreting the slogan’s meaning. Unexpectedly turning the left’s enthusiasm for diversity against its inclusionary goals, Mayoud argued that “the failure to take into account the right to be different of a young population that is culturally fragile (fragilisée) because of the overlapping of two ways of life is taking a worrisome turn today, at the moment when this ‘second generation’ population is progressively gaining access to French nationality” (quoted in Delorme, n.d.: 3). While the “right to be different,” as the expression was originally used by the left, was a demand to reimagine membership in the French polity in terms that were not culturally exclusive, here it turned into a right of the individual to opt out of membership in the country in which he was born and raised. This new way of thinking about the “right to be different” grew in importance as the issue of nationality law became increasingly salient.

Nationality Law in France: The Status Quo Ante As France’s initial debates about immigration and nationality law warmed up, an integrated Nationality Code, adopted in 1945, regulated the attribution and acquisition of French nationality. The Nationality Code had, in reality, already been reformed once before, in 1973. However, the 1973 reform was directed

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mainly at equalizing the legal status of men and women and of legitimate and illegitimate children, and did not raise the issues central to France’s recurring debates over nationality law reform since the 1980s (Courbe 1994: 25). Before turning to the criticisms leveled against the Nationality Code and critics’ proposals for reforming it, one needs to understand its main provisions. French law allowed for the transmission of national citizenship not only by descent (jus sanguinis) but also on the basis of birth on French territory (jus soli). Unlike jus soli in the United States, however, the French version granted citizenship at birth only to children born in France to at least one French-­born parent (Article 23). Article 23 was the basis for approximately 20,000 acquisitions of French nationality per year. Those born in France to noncitizen parents who were not French-­born also had a right to French citizenship, but acquired it “automatically” only at the age of majority, provided they were then still residing in France and did not officially decline it (Article 44).2 The legal effect of birthplace was thus in both cases tempered by emphasis on long-­term residency, whether of the individual or the family concerned. Statistically, Article 44 never played an overly significant role in constituting France’s citizenry; it actually accounted for only around 24,000 acquisitions of French nationality per year (Courbe 1994: 60). However, because it was seen, for the most part incorrectly, as responsible for incorporating Maghrebian youth loath to assimilate into the body politic, this article of French nationality law was to become a main focal point of demands for reform.

Reformers’ Newfound Success in Shaping France’s National Political Agenda The 1986 program of the influential new right political group Club 89, the Gaullist RPR’s self-­styled “ideas laboratory,” called for the elimination of all automatic attribution of French nationality. Very radically, Club 89 proposed that “only persons born in France to a French parent will be French” (Lochak 1986: 18, 23). In other words, both forms of jus soli in French law (Articles 23 and 44) would be eliminated, and even jus sanguinis would apply only to those actually born in France. The 1986 common platform of the RPR-­UDF opposition called for sorting out those immigrants who wished to integrate from those who did not, both through a new legal approach to nationality for the former and through facilitating the departure of the latter. Henceforth, nationality would be “de-

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manded and accepted,” not assigned automatically (RPR-­UDF 1986: 14). That is, French residents of non-­French parentage would not be definitively excluded from the national community; they might still acquire French nationality through naturalization. However, such acquisitions would no longer be “automatic” for those born and raised in France. Acquiring French nationality would be a privilege that had to be specifically requested, not a right that was automatically conferred. In practical terms, this was understood to mean that Article 44 should be eliminated. Tellingly, this proposition figured as part of a chapter on immigration control, reflecting the fact that one of the reasons for such restrictive reform was that it was originally seen as a previously unexplored way to restrict immigration, a vision of the function of nationality policy that later came to be understood as illegitimate and that Gaullist leader Jacques Chirac would deny during his second, 1986–1988 term as prime minister.3 Somewhat ironically, although demands to change Article 44 were often understood as directed against Maghrebian youth, the status of young Algerians actually seldom hinged on Article 44. It was actually as a result of Article 23, not Article 44, that many second-­generation Algerians in France had become French nationals. Normally, Article 23 was designed to apply to third-­generation immigrants. However, because birth in Algeria prior to independence in 1962 legally constituted birth in France, Article 23 applied to many second-­generation Algerian immigrants. This fact was seldom clearly recognized, however, in the passionate public debate that developed about nationality law reform in the mid–1980s. Following his selection as prime minister in April 1986, Chirac promised legislation making acquisition of French nationality contingent on individual choice. In his June 1986 speech on general policy to the French legislature, Chirac confirmed his intention to reform France’s Nationality Code to promote a more voluntaristic approach to nationality. Under the new law, Chirac explained, nationality would be “requested and accepted. Its acquisition would no longer result from purely automatic mechanisms” (Figaro, 7 September 1987). Nationality law reform, in turn, figured as part of a larger plan to “reinforce the security of people and property, fight against terrorism, and preserve the identity of our national community” (Delorme n.d.: 6). Elsewhere, Chirac defended the reform as a way to “avoid integrating persons who do not really want to be [integrated]” (quoted in Wayland 1993: 95), thus echoing views voiced shortly before at the 1985 conference of Club de l’Horloge by Henri de la Bastide (1985: 222).

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Evidently, plans to reform nationality law were driven by perceptions of immigration as a threat. Granting French citizenship to immigrants who might not identify with and could even be hostile to France was seen in the mid–1980s as a danger not only to national identity but also to French domestic security. Fueling such fears, from early December 1985 to mid-­September 1986, eleven terrorist bombings occurred in Paris, killing thirteen people and injuring 255. Signaling rising awareness of terrorism as a significant security threat, NATO issued its first report on international terrorism in 1987. Unlike the series of bombings that killed seven and injured dozens of others in Paris in 1995, which police linked to radical Islamic fundamentalists fighting the French-­supported Algerian government, responsibility for the 1986 Paris bombings was claimed by a Lebanese-­based group of Marxist Maronite Christians demanding release of Arab and Middle Eastern political prisoners. A translator employed by the Iranian embassy was later arrested in the case. New security measures announced by Chirac in the wake the most disturbing and deadly attack in September included a drastic tightening of visa requirements, again underscoring the links among improving security, preventing terrorism, and tightening immigration policy4 (Rignault and Deligny 1989: 368; Smolowe, Bofante, and Phillips 1986).

From Radical Reform Demands to a Tamer, Legal Approach Chirac then turned the problem of nationality law reform over to the Ministry of Justice, which drafted a measure called the Chalandon bill. Even at this early stage, the Ministry found it difficult to formulate a politically viable proposal; the governing majority itself was divided between hard-­liners and moderates. Leading the hard-­liners’ campaign, legislative representative Pierre Mazeaud urged that not only Article 44, but also Article 23 be eliminated (Quotidien de Paris, 7 September 1987). Some hard-­liners even proposed that French nationality be revoked from anyone convicted of a crime within five years of acquiring it (Le Monde, 2 July 1986). In a statement on Nationality Code reform published by Club 89, hard-­liners Mazeaud and Michel Aurillac specified that French nationality will be granted by naturalization to all foreigners, including those born in France, who are able to satisfy a certain num-

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ber of requirements: mastery of the French language, civil or military service, Frenchifying of last names, absence of a criminal record, sponsorship by French nationals. Second-­generation immigrants will have to opt either for this naturalization or for return [to their parents’ country of origin]. (Évenèment du Jeudi, 23 September 1987) The Chalandon bill was less drastic than what these hard-­liners proposed, but still considerably more restrictive than existing legislation. The bill’s main aim was, nominally, to eliminate “automatic” acquisition of French nationality by requiring individuals to request it voluntarily. Under the terms of the proposed law, those who had been covered under Article 44 would still be eligible to acquire French nationality between ages sixteen and twenty-­one, but only if they first swore an oath in front of a judge (Quotidien de Paris, 19 June 1987; cited in Le Matin, 7 September 1987). Unlike more hard-­line proposals, the Chalandon bill did not eliminate the “double jus soli” provision of Article 23. Nonetheless, France’s Council of State ruled the bill unconstitutional, forcing the government to amend it. In the new, amended version of the bill, the oath was eliminated, and the period during which nationality could be acquired by children of foreign-­ born parents explicitly requesting it was extended to age 23 (Quotidien de Paris, 19 June 1987, 14 January 1988). The Ministry of Justice’s amended proposal was submitted to the Council of Ministers at the end of 1986. The Council accepted the bill, and it was scheduled for consideration by the French legislature.

Behind the Theme of Individual Choice: State Discretion and Reformers’ Mixing of Descent, Culture, and Belief Appeals The bill was defended before the legislature in voluntarist and individualist terms, as “making the acquisition of French nationality a meeting of acts of will. It will no longer be, as is too often the case today, the effect of chance or of inertia” (Lettre de la Nation, 4 July 1986). In reality, however, proposed changes to French nationality policy went well beyond making it necessary for those becoming French to show their desire to do so. Not only was the individual to choose his country; the French state was also to choose its members, an idea captured by the phrase “a meeting of acts of will.” Increasing

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state discretion this way opened the door to substantial restrictions on the attribution of French nationality to those of non-­French descent, and would actually have left the individual far less able freely to decide whether or not to become French than did existing law. While decried for making the acquisition of nationality at the age of majority “automatic,” the existing system actually permitted those covered under Article 44 to decline it, as some 1,700 people per year did. Although the existing Nationality Code also technically allowed the administration to oppose acquisition of French nationality on grounds of “unworthiness” or lack of assimilation, there were in practice almost no such refusals (Courbe 1994: 59–60). By contrast, where the state enjoyed discretion to accept or reject applications, as in the case of naturalization, the process often became extremely difficult for applicants. Applications for naturalization were frequently rejected, and the process was notoriously inscrutable, partly because the administration was not obliged to offer those rejected any explanation of the reasons for its adverse decisions. The idea of making acquisition of French nationality subject to a “meeting of wills” would have extended such state discretion, making acquisition of French nationality more difficult for those receiving it by virtue of jus soli as well. The rhetorical emphasis on individual will or choice (volonté) could lead one to think that reformers were simply treating national citizenship as a case of Leave membership, thus embracing the corresponding Belief model. In reality, however, these radical reform advocates actually tied together Belief, Culture, and Descent views of political membership. Support for the reform ultimately drew on a cultural understanding of the nation because the “will” (volonté) involved was understood as a will to assimilate. Assimilation was presented as a matter or choice, and requiring those becoming French to apply or take an oath was seen as a way of ensuring that they chose French culture. As Marseilles UDF representative Jean-­Claude Gaudin defended the reform project, The Italians and the Portuguese who came to France before the war assimilated because they were anxious to become entirely French as fast as possible. There is a problem when second generation immigrants make themselves into the champions of non-­integration. It would be abnormal that they become French by surprise, and normal that those who want to become French show it clearly. (Minute, 23 April 1987)

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Prominent conservative advocates of nationality law reform sometimes also presented the propensity to assimilate as, in turn, conditioned by ancestry, thus adding a Descent perspective on membership to the mix as well. FN general secretary Jean-­Yves Le Gallou was a leading early advocate of restrictive reform, which he defended in a widely publicized book co-­authored with Jean-­François Jalkh, Être français, cela se mérite (Being French Is Something Earned). Le Gallou described the nation as “an historical heritage, a cultural heritage, a spiritual heritage.” For Le Gallou, however, this implied that it was critical for national citizens to have the proper ancestors since, he claimed, “It is families, lineages, that constitute nations” by transmitting “the culture, the customs, the history, [and] the spiritual traditions of the French nation.”5 Like earlier arguments in favor of immigration quotas, Le Gallou’s defense of a cultural view of the nation would logically have implied giving greater weight to descent, to the national origin of families as opposed to merely where individuals were socialized. In saying both that immigrants had to assimilate to be welcome in France, and that some immigrants of extra-­European origin could or would not assimilate, the National Front and a fraction of the mainstream right oriented French political discussion in an implicitly racist direction (Taguieff 1985: 108–11). Of course, those in favor of restrictive Nationality Code reform fully accepted the traditional connection between nationality, citizenship, and rights to political participation. Their proposals therefore sought to block foreigners’ access to rights to civic influence and participation as well as French nationality. Their thinking was thus diametrically opposed to that of the leading advocates of “new citizenship,” who instead sought to extend political rights to foreigners without requiring them first to become French. Restrictive nationality law reform advocates advanced their position through a novel and unlikely combination of appeals to Descent, Culture, and Belief models of membership. By turning birth to foreign-­born parents into a serious obstacle to becoming French, the proposed reform marked a new form of explicit discrimination on the basis of ancestry. Rhetorically, this reform was defended in the name of choice, as an attack on foreigners “automatically” (involuntarily or without making an explicit choice) becoming French. However, the defenders of restrictive reform challenged only the “automatic” attribution of French nationality to those of non-­French parents, not all “automatic” acquisitions of French nationality. It was of course accepted that children of French parents would continue to be considered French nationals from birth without being required to make any explicit de-

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cision about it. Some critics therefore argued that the declaration requirement was discriminatory (Le Matin, 13 October 1986) or that the right to decline French nationality already adequately allowed for choice (Rossinot 1987; Désir 1987).6 However, reformers’ emphasis on ensuring that nationality was deserved and desired by those acquiring it nonetheless gave their proposals a certain liberal, individualistic appeal.

“Freeze Frame”: A Snapshot of France’s Radically Polarized Politics of Membership in the Mid–1980s Left-­Right Differences in Favored Models of Political Membership

By 1986, actors involved in public discussions of immigration and the meaning of citizenship were thus enthusiastically engaged in two different and competing debates: one on a “new citizenship” and “immigrant” rights, the other on nationality law. The leading positions in these debates, taken together, drew on the full range of recognizable conceptions of membership. Political and intellectual proponents of the “new citizenship” reform campaign on the left appealed to a combination of presence-­ and activity-­centered Contract and financial contribution-­centered Monetized Contract perspectives. Meanwhile, their counterparts on the right sought public support for their own preferred issue, that of nationality law change, by appealing to an amalgam of Descent, Culture, and Belief conceptions of political membership. While divided between two different fronts, the overall pattern of French citizenship debate was thus clearly defined along conventional left-­right lines. In fact, the left-­right cleavage even to some extent influenced in which of the two debates particular political actors were most involved.

The Beginning of the End of New Citizenship: The Victory of the Nationality Law Reformers’ Framing of the Issue of Political Membership

Because the aim of the new citizenship campaign was to separate political rights from nationality, the very issue of nationality law reform conflicted with the way the “new citizenship” campaign framed the problem of changing

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the terms of political membership in response to demographic change and the apparent decline of national cultural unity. Nonetheless, “new citizenship” supporters were unable to remain aloof from the issue of nationality law reform for long. While the FN was dissatisfied with the moderation of the reform bill sent to the legislature, the PS mobilized against it along with anti-­racist associations (Quotidien de Paris, 19 June 1987). As president, Mitterand expressed concern that “tens of thousands of youth, already torn between two cultures, not be marginalized.” The proposed reform bill, from the beginning, was opposed by religious authorities, trade unions, and immigrant associations, which began protesting against it in October 1986. In December 1986, the student movement, then already mounting mass demonstrations against proposed reforms of the university system, took a stand against the reform bill as directed against youth (Quotidien de Paris, 7 September 1987). By the end of 1986, a broadly based protest movement had developed against the reform. Those apparently most convinced that nationality was increasingly passé were soon in the streets defending the rights of immigrants to acquire it, and even to see it automatically assigned to them as a default. This ironic outcome did not stem from any sudden change in these actors’ reasoning, nor was it symptomatic of underlying incoherence in their ideas regarding nationality. Rather, startling as their sudden defense of the right to be automatically and nationally French may seem, it marked an understandable response to a change in the domestic political agenda taking place despite them. Symbolically, some perceived the proposed changes to the nationality laws as racist. Moreover, the restrictions of immigrants’ political rights that would have ensued compelled many who had until then sought to promote a “new,” non-­national citizenship to mobilize instead against the proposed changes to the Nationality Code. As things stood in 1986, nationality was still the precondition for equal political rights. Restrictions on nationality amounted to restrictions on access to citizenship as well. The anticipated era of “new citizenship” never yet having dawned, maintaining immigrants’ access to citizenship entailed defending their access to French nationality. The changing position of FASTI, historically at the forefront of the “new citizenship” campaign, was telling in this regard. Responding to demands for restrictive nationality law reform, in 1987 the organization announced: For those who have chosen to settle in France, who have worked there, who, often at the request of French economic agents, have contributed

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to building the economy of this country, FASTI has demanded and still demands decent conditions of life  .  .  . But it also demands for them, if they want it, full insertion in the national community which, currently, is only assured by the acquisition of nationality. (“Campagne nationale” 1987: 13; Lefranc 1985: 7; Mrini 1985: 8) Chirac’s appointing of the Nationality Commission marked a turn away from the kind of hard-­line restrictive reform originally demanded by the FN, RPR, and UDF. At the same time, however, establishing the Commission made focusing France’s politics of membership on the issue of nationality law reform appear more legitimate. Appointing a body of experts representative of both sides of the political spectrum to investigate and discuss nationality law cast it as an issue which should interest and intellectually engage everyone, regardless of political orientation. By actively involving “independent” intellectuals whose political orientations varied widely on the left-­right axis, the appointment of the Nationality Commission marked a retreat from earlier demands for more partisan and extreme changes to existing policy. Yet, as leading advocates of a “new citizenship” themselves noted, this reorientation of French public discussion of political membership was not truly unbiased; it directly undermined their own attempts to define the issues. Actors on the left originally critical of and uninterested in nationality law reform, or simply mobilized against it, were henceforth called on to engage constructively in debating it, under threat of seeing the code changed unilaterally by right-­wing reformers. As Yves Jouffa, president of France’s leading human rights organization and one of the clearest opponents of this change of agenda underlined during the Commission’s hearings, the reform bill was never formally withdrawn before the investigatory body was appointed. Consequently, though it was expected that the reform would be put off until after the Commission completed its investigation, it remained legally possible for the legislature to move into debate of the existing bill at any time (Long 1988a: 442). Left-­wing opponents of nationality law reform, already mobilized by protests against the bill, were now drawn into participating in an extensive, formal, rational intellectual exchange of views on the issue. The Commission’s work gave them a chance to be heard, provided they took part in a conversation clearly not of their own choosing.

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Conclusion: Beyond the Fray, Points of Tacit Agreement Despite the fact that their positions were thus starkly opposed, advocates of restrictive nationality law reform and their “new citizenship” opponents nonetheless had something in common, which the Nationality Commission would later turn its advantage in promoting an alternative, neo-­republican approach to political membership. Neither radical camp openly proposed more than a passive or responsive role for the state in social change or orderly social reproduction. Social organization and social evolution were instead presented by the “new citizenship” left as emerging from society, and by advocates of restrictive nationality law reform as resulting from nature, the family, or individual will. Certainly, there was a strong insistence from the right on the importance of citizens meeting their military obligations. However, such enthusiasm for the institutions responsible for ensuring the nation’s international strength should not be confused with support for a “strong state” in the sense of a state with the capacity to reform society on the state’s own terms. In fact, their arguments for nationality law reform gave the very idea of national self-­determination a new, liberal-­individualist twist. National self-­ determination become the individual’s right to determine his or her own nationality, a twist that alienated the usual collectivist type of anti-­statist critics of imperialism on the left even while it echoed their skepticism about state-­ determined loyalties, identities, and obligations. While the changes to the Nationality Code proposed by the reform’s defenders would have increased the power of the state administration to select among potential French nationals, reform advocates themselves did not highlight that foreseeable consequence. This snapshot of the competing camps together shaping France’s politics of membership in 1986 is worth remembering. Natural though it once seemed, this configuration would soon change dramatically. By the time this first round of conflict over immigration-­related reforms of nationality law died down, France’s politics of membership would be configured very differently. In order to understand the nature of that shift and how it was effected, it is necessary to look closely at the work of the Nationality Commission. This Commission, whose aims and strategy are examined in detail in Chapter 5, played a crucial part in reorienting France’s politics of belonging and conceptually restructuring French national debate on issues of immigration and political membership.

Chapter 5

Reconfiguring the Politics of Membership: The Work of the Nationality Commission

The work of the Nationality Commission appointed in 1987 encouraged the reorientation of earlier struggles over reform of France’s nationality laws and thereby helped reconfigure France’s politics of membership within new parameters. The Commission laid out a broad new “republican” compromise. Picking up on “republican” themes, arguments, and appeals introduced into debate over nationality law by reform proponents and opponents alike (Feldblum 1999: 89–93), the Commission set out to study, discover, and explicitly define a consensual, “republican” model of political membership. This increasingly influential orientation was grounded in the Commission’s politically creative recombination of several different conceptions of political membership—­one stressing presence and participation (Contract), one stressing conscious identification with France and acceptance of core political values (Belief), and one centered on acculturation (Culture). The result of this conceptual recombination exemplified and promoted by the Commission was a politically formidable neo-­republican amalgam. Its combination of varied conceptual elements no doubt contributed positively to its broad appeal. At the same time, however, it was marked by internal tensions that later would call for great sophistic efforts to smooth over. The new citizenship campaign was one of the main casualties of the Nationality Commission’s efforts; the commission’s rise and the neo-­republican position it promoted to public prominence effectively eclipsed the new citizenship campaign. This story shows why immigration, globalization, and growing cultural diversity do not necessarily lead to the sorts of policies anticipated or hoped for by many post-­nationalist and multiculturalist thinkers and observers.

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Certainly, France’s successive reforms of nationality law since the early 1990s have marked the triumph neither of a post-­national model of membership nor of multiculturalism. In order to understand the sometimes unpredictable policy responses to immigration and growing cultural and religious diversity today, it is essential to look at the ways politics and political debate have shaped public interpretations of social change, affecting the nature and direction of policy reform in the process. The work of France’s Nationality Commission and its effects—­for both policy and the more lasting terms of public debate—­are particularly instructive in that regard. Jacques Chirac appointed the Nationality Commission in 1987, during his period of “cohabitation” as prime minister with Socialist President François Mitterand. The transcripts of the Commission’s public interviews and its final recommendations were published in a seminal, widely publicized, two-­volume report released in January 1988 and tellingly titled Être français aujourd’hui et demain (Being French Today and Tomorrow). The Commission’s work marked an officially coordinated intellectual intervention in the highly conflictual controversies raging in France about how citizenship, nationality, and the terms of “integration” were or should be changing. The Commission’s reframing and reordering of public discussion of political membership simultaneously marginalized two “extreme” perspectives. It stigmatized the Descent model of membership, most clearly championed by political actors on the far right, and also marginalized and discredited the Monetized Contract model, previously most favored by left syndicalist and social movement actors, including those heavily involved in the new citizenship campaign. Had the Commission merely promoted compromise and moderation, its stance might have appeared too weak or indecisive to generate much political enthusiasm. It avoided that pitfall by reinterpreting the debates over political membership in such a way as to present itself not as compromising but as taking a strong, principled stand. The Commission was thus able decisively to shift the terms of France’s politics of membership, largely by taking advantage of the existence of an important, highly charged political cleavage defined by attitudes regarding the role of the state that cross-­cut the left-­right axis.

Statist Versus Anti-­Statist Political Orientations in France The left-­right political axis, along which political controversy concerning the nature of citizenship and nationhood had been largely organized from 1981

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to 1986, is in France cross-­cut by a second kind of political cleavage, opposing supporters and defenders of the French state’s historically strong and proactive role in society. At the pro-­state end of this second axis are those who, in prototypical “jacobin” fashion, champion the state as the source and arbiter of social order, identity, and organization.1 In France, this is the dominant political position, in reaction or opposition to which those at the other, anti-­ statist end of the continuum define themselves. Anti-­statist opponents of the dominant, statist tendency in France are ideologically disparate, particularly in left-­right terms, but nonetheless have certain commonalities. Most notably, they share a clear mistrust of or aversion to conscious, coordinated action directed at “progressive” top-­down organization or transformation of society by central state authorities. The anti-­statist camp is much more critical than its statist counterparts regarding “emancipatory” imperialist projects. From the anti-­statist position, such state action appears neither as progressive nor as a “civilizing mission,” as many defenders of French colonialism historically claimed, but as a form of repression of social variety, initiative, authenticity, spontaneity, or capacity for self-­regulation.2 Beyond this general similarity, three clearly distinct kinds of anti-­statist orientations can be observed in French politics. First, there are those who see civil society, or locally based participatory organization, as the alternative to top-­down bureaucratic organization imposed by the central state. This camp has been particularly hopeful concerning the progressive potential of decentralization and supportive of the idea of auto-­gestion (self-­management by members of organizations), and has drawn political support particularly from new left social movements and the historically Christian democratic CFDT trade union federation, with some support from the Socialist party (PS), and especially from elements of the PS with ties to the smaller socialist PSU party. Actors in this first anti-­statist camp have historically combined localism and Europeanism; roots in syndicalism, and particularly in the Catholic CFTC (later encompassed in the CFDT); emphasis, in theory if not in organizational practice, on grass-­roots influence within the party; and enthusiasm for European integration. To be properly appreciated, the localism of this camp must be seen for what it is: a reaction against the power of the central national state. Rather than consistently favoring smaller units over larger ones, it is simultaneously localist and internationalist, and thus particularly favorable to cosmopolitanism and European integration and enthusiastic about local control.

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A second, more liberal variety of anti-­statism in France is more familiar from American politics. From that perspective, the individual and individual choice figure as the proper basis of a freer, more dynamic, more effective form of non-­state-­directed collective organization. This perspective was most clearly championed in the 1980s by the new right, also supportive of liberal economic reform. Third and finally, there is a reactionary anti-­statist orientation closer to a traditional Catholic perspective. From this perspective nature, or a “natural order,” is the proper basis of social organization and legitimate social and political authority. Those in this camp are not necessarily opposed to a so-­called “strong” state. Indeed, they are often diehard defenders of the national army. However, they are not favorable to “progressive,” politically willed, socially transformative “jacobin” state action. They support a “strong,” or at least well armed, state for protecting society. But they do not regard the state as the proper source of social order and authority. Instead, the state should serve as the guarantor and enforcer of natural order. During the 1980s, this orientation was most consistently purveyed by the far right, the National Front (FN). A similar logic has also arguably informed the political discourse of the smaller far-­right group led by Philippe de Villiers. Meanwhile, those at the statist end of the continuum see the central state and the “center” (whether Paris vis-­à-­vis the provinces, metropolitan France vis-­à-­vis its overseas territories, or “developed” countries vis-­à-­vis the third world) as the source of civilization, modernity, and progress. By contrast, society, the “periphery,” the market, and nature itself are all suspect sources of potential barbarism, savagery, authoritarian-­obscurantist traditionalism, and backwardness.3 Such forces outside the center, from the statist perspective, appear in need of being “tamed,” civilized, enlightened, or rationally reformed by the central state and the institutions and actors representing it (the public school, the colonial administrator, the préfecture, the Plan). Those at the anti-­statist end of the spectrum see the state not as a progressive, civilizing force but as a source of sterility and even death. Civil society, the market, and/or nature, by contrast, appear as the source of vitality and thus of dynamism, growth, and healthy equilibrium. These vital forces, from the anti-­state view, are seen as endangered by misguided, over-­reaching central state action, which threatens to block, crush, kill, stymie, or “uniformize” these vital forces, or drive them into decadence, decay, or decline. Historically, the “jacobin” vision of a central state with a transformative, progressive mission took on its meaning and appeal as a reaction to the third,

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reactionary anti-­statist position favoring nature as the source of social order. Over time, however, the other two anti-­statist orientations—­one liberalizing and the other left and collectivist—­have become increasingly powerful and significant sources of political challenge to the traditional role and legitimacy of the central state. Part of the work accomplished by the Nationality Commission consisted in reinterpreting the “problem” facing France, to which nationality law reform was to respond in such a way as largely to co-­opt supporters of the second, more liberal anti-­statist perspective while drawing “logical” political and intellectual connections between supporters of the other two anti-­statist orientations. Both those social movement actors who were the strongest advocates of a Monetized Contract perspective and right-­wing defenders of the Descent model were located closer to the anti-­statist pole than those who maintained that being French was a matter of acquiring French culture, consciously identifying with France, or actively participating in French society. The Commission was therefore able to delegitimize and politically marginalize both the Monetized Contract and the Descent models of membership, and at the same time to generate the basis for an alliance between those favorable to the three remaining models by reframing what from 1981 to early 1987 had been a clear left-­right debate as a statist versus anti-­statist debate instead. While privileging the third, reactionary camp—­against which the identity of the statist camp historically emerged—­as the true enemy, this reframing of France’s politics of membership promoted a revised theoretical perspective according to which resisting far-­right, anti-­statist, reactionary movements required resisting anti-­statist collectivism or internationalism as well. Somewhat inconsistently, even as the Commission reinterpreted the conflict surrounding reform of the Nationality Code in these terms, it also made significant concessions to the idea of social regulation based on the free play of individual choice (but not nature or decentralized, collective self-­management). Though such inconsistency could be considered a logical weakness of the Commission’s work, it made it all the more politically effective by helping co-­opt some of the right’s more rhetorically powerful appeals while turning them in a more moderate direction. The peculiar configuration of French political conflict—­in which a dominant left-­right framing of issues coexists with a second deeply rooted conflict over state-­society relations—­made it possible for the Nationality Commission to damp down the left-­right membership conflicts of the early 1980s by reinterpreting them along state-­anti-­state lines. The Commission thereby divided

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both the center left and the center right from their outer wings, facilitating a “centrist” left-­right compromise. Where the Commission also attempted to mediate or make compromises between statist and anti-­statist orientations, concessions were made exclusively to one kind of anti-­statism: that centered on individual choice. Thus, paradoxically enough, both the Commission’s championing of statism over anti-­statism and its seemingly more evenhanded moves to balance statist and anti-­statist orientations had the effect of shutting out the civil society-­oriented, anti-­statist left as well as the far right.

The Commission’s Investigatory Process, Political Objectives, and Effectiveness

Following its creation on 22 June 1987, the Commission’s work lasted six months and was divided into three phases. The scope of the investigation undertaken by the panel in just six months and its openness to public input and scrutiny were impressive. During the first phase, from late June until early September, the commissioners studied French nationality law, interviewing bureaucrats, administrators, governmental ministers, judges, and foreign consuls behind closed doors in a series of twenty-­six sessions and ordering statistical studies on various aspects of the existing system. Next, from 16 September to 21 October, the Commission organized an unprecedented series of public interviews, all but two of which were broadcast by television as well as radio. According to an announcement made at the opening of the second session, the first attracted several hundred thousand viewers, a considerable number given the nature of the programming and the fact that the hearings were broadcast during the day. Televising its interviews, something no previous body of its kind had done before in France, allowed the Nationality Commission to claim unprecedented transparency for its proceedings. During fifty interviews of thirty to forty minutes each held over eleven sessions, the Commission interviewed almost one hundred people selected for intellectual knowledge, personal experience, or contact with immigrant populations. The list included historians, researchers, legal experts, local mayors, national officials, representatives of the military, religious officials, social workers, judges, and school administrators. The Commission also heard from representatives of politically wide-­ranging groups including anti-­ racism associations, representatives of Maghrebin youth associations, leaders

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active in the “new citizenship” campaign, and a representative of the Club de l’Horloge. Having completed its public interviews, the Commission turned to follow-­up research, filling in gaps the hearings had uncovered, commissioning additional studies, and interviewing officials in private sessions. Members then visited several regional prefectures to observe the administrative application of the existing system. Finally, with the help of officials from the Conseil d’État, the Commission prepared its final report and proposals for reform.4 These products of the Commission’s reflection were presented to Chirac in January 1988 and subsequently published and distributed as a paperback, two-­volume study. The first, longer volume contained transcripts of the public testimony; the second presented the Commission’s conclusions and proposals together with results of the statistical studies it commissioned. The first volume thus served mainly as tangible proof of the Commission’s lengthy investigation preceding, and in principle informing, the conclusions and recommendations contained in the second volume. The Commission’s intervention in France’s politics of membership clearly guided the next actual reform of the nationality laws, which occurred in 1993 with passage of the Méhaignerie law. Evidently believing that it would bolster support for the 1993 reform, the Balladur government described the Méhaignerie bill as “nothing but Marceau Long, but all of Marceau Long,” referring to the Commission’s well-­known chair. In other words, the Balladur government claimed that the 1993 reform was everything, and nothing but, what the widely respected Commission of Sages had recommended. Indeed, divisions regarding the new bill arose only where there were amendments to the proposals initially inspired by the Commission report (Wayland 1993: 99–107).5 As finally passed, the Méhaignerie law very closely resembled the Commission’s recommendations. The Commission’s intervention also marked the end of the most conflictual, politicized phase of nationality law reform. Certainly, the Commission did not put the issue to rest once and for all; it continued to emerge throughout the 1990s, and when the Jospin government in 1997 next reformed nationality policy, legislative debate about it was certainly at times still quite acrimonious. Nonetheless, the kind of radically polarized mass mobilization against nationality law change that occurred in 1986 and the radical conceptual gulf then separating opposed actors’ positions were largely put to rest by the Nationality Commission of 1987–88. While subsequent debates over nationality law reform often remained

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acrimonious in tone, there was more shared ground between the competing camps than had been the case in 1986, with all actors debating the issues from within parameters lastingly established by the pivotal work of the 1987–88 Commission. By 1993, the unions, Socialist Party, and French Communist Party all still opposed the Méhaignerie law modeled on the Commission’s recommendations. However, in marked contrast to their militant activism against reforms proposed in 1986, they did little to fight the new law in 1993. Meanwhile, other organizations previously mobilized against reform, most notably the immigrant rights group France Plus, actually supported the 1993 bill. The center-­right, deeply divided over the issue of nationality law reform in 1986–87, strongly supported the Commission’s recommendations. After the work of the 1987 Nationality Commission, the terms of nationality law reform, and of France’s politics of membership more generally, changed. With the rise of the neo-­republican combination of perspectives on belonging promoted by the Commission, France’s politics of membership became much less radically polarized than previously, and a discernable center—­albeit a conceptually problematic one in many ways—­took hold. Despite initially mixed reviews of the Commission’s report, it thus had lasting influence on the prevailing terms of France’s politics of membership as much as or more than on the terms of French nationality policy.

The Internal Logic of the Nationality Commission’s Report Revisiting Republican Thinking and Rejecting the Descent Perspective

The Nationality Commission used its investigation and widely publicized conclusions to promote a reconfiguration of France’s politics of membership. The Commission promoted a self-­styled “republican” perspective on political membership. Though apparently unitary and singular, this republican position actually drew on a sometimes internally inconsistent mixture of Culture, Belief, and Contract conceptions of political membership, which the Commission artfully combined into a seemingly integrated whole. Appealing to this new combination of perpectives gave the Commission’s report and recommendations broader political appeal, and helped it recast the far right and radical, anti-­statist left positions it sought to discredit in more extreme, less appealing terms. Conceptually,

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the Commission sought simultaneously to discredit both Descent and Monetized Contract visions of membership, and to draw together supporters of the remaining three understandings of membership by invoking the positive role of public education in a symbolically appealing, and politically uniting, way. Of course, the Nationality Commission by no means invented the French republican tradition. Nor did it break with past precedent in highlighting public education as emblematic of a self-­styled republican vision of political membership and its appeal. The French republican tradition dates back to the French Revolution, and faith in the virtues of the public school system has long been associated with it. These were important, widely recognized, long-­standing resources in France’s political cultural repertoire. In contrast to a work of intellectual history, however, this chapter does not seek to identify and retrace the historical origins of these themes.6 It aims instead to identify the immediate political factors and circumstances of the 1980s permitting and encouraging a political and intellectual revival of republicanism, and a corresponding discursive rise of such classic republican tropes as public education (more precisely, l’école de la République) at a specific time in the recent past. Understanding the circumstances leading to the Nationality Commission’s appointment and the logic and political strategy of its work is essential to explaining how this crucial turn in France’s politics of membership came about. The Commission’s first and most obvious aim was to discredit the Descent perspective, the notion that being French was fundamentally a matter of ancestry. The experts’ aim in this respect was manifest from the outset of its report. The first volume is prefaced with a quotation from Jean-Étienne Marie Portalis’s 1802 speech presenting the Code civil: We recognize with all the moralists and philosophers that the human race forms just one big family; but the overly great scope of this family has obliged it to separate itself into different societies, which have taken the name of peoples, of nations, [or] of states, and the members of which are brought together by particular ties independent of those that unite them to the general system. The natural liberty that men have to pursue happiness wherever they think they may find it has made us determined to fix the conditions on which a foreigner can become French and a French [person] can become [a] foreigner. We do not have to fear that men who are born on the fortunate soil of France will want to abandon such a sweet country. But why should we refuse

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those whom so many motives may attract to the happiest of climates and who, strangers to France by birth, cease to be so by their choice? (Long 1988a, n.p.) In claiming that humanity forms a single family, so that everyone shares common ancestors if one descends far enough in the family tree, Portalis in effect rejects the Descent model, a position the Commission implicitly endorses as deeply rooted in France’s revolutionary birth as a republic. At the same time, the Commission highlighted its anti-­racist, intellectual, and republican credentials. As beginning the report this way made clear, the Commission would pre­sent its conclusions as rooted in and legitimated by France’s republican tradition. It thereby encouraged a neo-­republican framing of France’s politics of membership, while offering an authoritative interpretation of the republican tradition’s policy implications for contemporary France. The Commission’s citation of Portalis also set up an ascending sequence of appeals to higher intellectual authority. Political leaders for whom the report was prepared were enabled to reject the Descent model by citing the conclusions of the respected panel of “sages.” The inclusion of this quotation conveyed that, in seeking to get to the bottom of France’s quandaries concerning nationality, the Commission was revisiting France’s Revolutionary republican origins. The Portalis citation showed the commissioners to be not only intellectual experts, but also expert intellectual republicans. That implicit claim was essential to the panel’s project: delineating a model of integration and citizenship that explained in republican terms what it meant to be French. In the first line of the quotation, however, Portalis himself appeals to “all the moralists and philosophers,” who, he claims, share the view he himself puts forth. The Commission’s report did not aim to interrogate, question, or contradict Portalis; instead, it began by speaking through Portalis and, through him, appealed to the idea that the position and recommendations it would subsequently present were already universally accepted, at least among morally reflective and thoughtful persons worthy of intellectual respect. The end of the quotation also rejected the Descent model, but on somewhat different grounds from those suggested by the first sentence. After all, one might argue that even if humanity is ultimately one big family, the ancestors who matter may be not at the very base of the tree but somewhere in the middle, in any case, above the point where European and non-­European peoples had parted ways. Portalis, however, also offered a different reason for rejecting criteria for membership based on birth. In the last sentence cited, he accepts the idea of being a national, or a foreigner, of a given country “by birth,” apparently conceding that the parting of ways

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caused by the excessive size of the human family now has a certain legitimate significance in terms of defining who is meaningfully connected to whom. After all, by Portalis’s own account, given that subdivision of the great human family did prove necessary, “members are brought together by particular ties.” Nonetheless, Portalis appeals to the idea that, while one way of becoming a member of a group is by birth, one ought also to be able to become a member by choice. In a sense, one might argue that Portalis’s argument is actually like Le Gallou’s in combining Descent and Belief appeals. From the passage in the Commission report, one cannot tell whether Portalis understood being French “by birth” as a question of birth to French parents or of birth on French soil. Nor can one tell whether he would argue that birth was a legitimate way of assigning nationality because it was indicative of ancestry or because it was predictive of French socialization. Nonetheless, Portalis’s argument about the relationship between descent and choice was actually quite different from Le Gallou’s, and had radically different policy implications. According to Le Gallou, the choice necessary for becoming French was a choice to assimilate, one those of non-­European stock were unable, or unwilling, to make. Thus, for nationality reform advocates on the right, the preconditions for membership in the nation grounded in the Descent, Culture, and Belief models were added together. The criteria for citizenship suggested by each model were insufficient unless those suggested by the other two models were also met. In Portalis’s formulation, by contrast, membership criteria grounded in the Belief model (individual choice) instead served as an alternative to criteria based on Culture or Descent (birth). The last sentence of this initial passage thereby foreshadowed the intellectual strategy the commissioners themselves would pursue in the second volume of their report: contrasting the Belief model to an “ethnic” (Culture and/or Descent) one. In so doing, the Commission intellectually dissociated different elements of support for the right’s restrictive reform demands, co-­ opting enthusiasm for the Belief model while marginalizing support for Descent appeals. It also foreshadowed the sages’ attempt to link a policy rooted in the Belief perspective with a reassertion of France’s international appeal, and thus to the glory (one could say, le rayonnement) of France.

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From Rejecting Descent to Rejecting Monetized Contract: The Commission’s Use of France’s Longstanding Conflict over State-­Society Relations

Ultimately, however, the Commission aimed to discredit not only the Descent model and its advocates on the right, but also the Monetized Contract appeals often favored by supporters of “new citizenship” on the left. The Commission was aided in this second objective by France’s longstanding cleavage between statists and anti-­statists. This cleavage, which cross-­cut the usual political cleavage between left and right, allowed the Commission to turn the anti-­racist credentials enhanced through its assault on the Descent model against the new left. In contrast to its treatment of the narrower question of how or whether to amend Article 23 of the Nationality Code, in its discussion of the overarching issue of “integration,” the Commission cast its own position as no mere centrist compromise. The Commission maintained that the real debate in France was not between those in favor of integration and those opposed to it, but between two conflicting views of integration and its relationship to national cultural identity. As the Commission cast the terms of this debate, one side understood “integration” as resulting from “the play of spontaneous forces of social life,” including neighborhoods and the media. According to those in this camp, integration was favored by the decline of French national culture relative to “local particularisms,” on the one hand, and “a transnational economic and media culture” to which today’s youth was supposedly better able to relate, on the other. Here, one can clearly recognize the perspective of the pluralistic “new citizenship” left, with its enthusiasm for cultural variety and civil society, as well as the kind of attempted alliance between young second-­generation immigrants and French regionalists that was apparent at the Espaces 89 conference in 1985. The Nationality Commission denounced this perspective as suffering from “an excessive confidence in automatic social and cultural processes,” and maintained that such a non-­state-­led view of social order as the spontaneous creation of an increasingly local and/or transnational civil society, economy, and culture was dangerous for two reasons. First, traditional social institutions—­school, church, military, and labor unions—­no longer worked well enough to incorporate immigrants into the social order, or, for that matter, to reproduce an orderly and cohesive society at all without help. Second, disadvantaged sectors of the native French population were especially attached to their national identity,

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and a laissez faire social and cultural policy therefore threatened to antagonize them. Worse, the anti-­statist left’s position threatened to confirm popular fears that immigrants’ integration was linked to the decline of national identity and threatened the “integrity” of the nation (Long 1988a: 85). Survey data suggest that such fears were apparently quite widespread at the time. In a 1985 survey commissioned by Paris Match, fully 68 percent of respondents agreed that France’s national identity would be endangered if the number of foreigners in France were not restricted! (“Immigration” 1985). The Commission therefore deemed the anti-­statist position dangerous, even in its progressive form, for encouraging parts of the French population to associate immigrants’ integration with greater cultural diversity. Paradoxically, however, the causal logic assumed in these popular fears was actually the opposite of what supporters of a “new citizenship” anticipated. For the latter, it was the inexorable decline of national identity that facilitated immigrants’ integration; for the skittish native popular sectors, by contrast, it was the social incorporation of increasing numbers of immigrants that threatened national identity.7 According to the Commission, in placing the origins of culture and social order beyond the control of the national state, the position of left anti-­statists intellectually resembled and politically encouraged popular xenophobia, even fueling support for Le Pen’s far-­right National Front! In response, the Commission encouraged a more statist perspective affirming that the state should, and would, take responsibility for perpetuating a French identity. It therefore went on to contrast the anti-­statists’ position to a belief that “the transition from one national identity to another must be organized in a conscious manner,” preserving a strong sense of French-­ness. The Commission thus favored the idea that, though immigration and growing cultural diversity might change what it meant to be French, the state could be counted on continue to ensure that a recognizably French national identity would be perpetuated. The commissioners argued that this more statist view responded better to immigrants’ own expectations and promised to improve the prevailing tenor of French political debate. Neither of these arguments truly responded to those that left anti-­statists might have made in their own defense. First, they might well have argued that they were not, after all, opposed to integration. Rather, they had a different understanding of what integration was, what generated it, and what an “integrated society” would look like. Second, while groups on the anti-­state left were apparently less concerned than the Nationality Commission with the

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tenor of public debate, they were certainly engaged in efforts to shift public opinion.

Commissioners’ Implicit Strategy for Combating Racism

The difference between the Commission and left anti-­statists was actually one of strategy. The Commission focused on taking the passion out of public debate, making it more rational, and informing the public by arranging for impartial transmission of a wide range of viewpoints. Anti-­racism and other organizations on the anti-­statist left, by contrast, sought to use popular mobilization and often impassioned moral appeals to make racism and discrimination socially and morally unacceptable. Rather than encouraging the public to engage in more intricate reflection on French national identity, they asserted that France was the land of liberty, equality, solidarity, and the Rights of Man and did their best to encourage public symbolic affirmations of these ideals. Certain commissioners were clearly uncomfortable with that approach. While cautiously accepting that new vehicles for integration, including voluntary associations and mobilizations in favor of moral causes like liberty and equality, could favor “a certain form of integration,” the Commission concluded that it was mainly traditional national institutions that needed bolstering. It therefore recommended encouraging residents with dual citizenship to perform their military service in France, so that they would pass through the army. First and foremost, however, integration was to be promoted through the national primary and secondary educational system. The value of special courses for immigrants in their parents’ languages, introduced in the late 1970s, was rejected by the Commission (Long 1988a: 88). Meanwhile, the commissioners’ rejection of the anti-­statist position they sketched suggested skepticism regarding the role of the increasingly transnational media and economy in promoting integration. The Nationality Commission thereby reinterpreted France’s existing left-­ right conflict over integration as one between statist and anti-­statist positions. According to the statist view decisively championed by the Commission in this first part of its report, politically intentional state action was the proper source of social order. Interpreting the problem in terms of a conflict between statist and anti-­statist views allowed the Commission to present its position as a decisive choice between radically opposed alternatives rather than just a

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reasonable political compromise. Appealing to France’s second political axis in interpreting France’s politics of membership thus allowed the Commission to stake out a position that, in left-­right terms, was centrist without thereby looking wavering or unprincipled. Reframing the debate this way gave the Commission’s recommendations greater intellectual authority. Closer examination of the full report, however, shows that the actual recommendations were in fact not strictly based on consistent adherence to the statist position. The Commission also called throughout its recommendations for reforms to make the Nationality Code better reflective of an “elective conception of the nation.” Yet, unlike its emphasis on the role of the national educational system, in which national institutions were called on to generate social order by shaping the culture and consciousness of the French citizenry, according to the “elective conception,” the nation resulted directly from citizens’ conscious, voluntary, freely willed membership in it. This elective or contractualist view of the nation was an inherently liberal one; it located the origin of social order not in a state project, but in the free choice of individuals. In this respect as in others, the Commission ultimately favored diversifying its appeals to broaden the likely political bases of support for its conclusions over rigorous theoretical consistency. Nonetheless, initially championing the statist view in seemingly resolute terms allowed the Commission to present itself as defending one side of a logical dichotomy, not just a “halfway” position. As important, it also allowed the Commission to distance itself from left critics of nationality law reform by underlining parallels and drawing causal connections between the (similarly anti-­statist) perspectives of supporters of the far-­right and critics of nationality law reform on the French left.

The Primacy of Political over Philosophical Aims

In positive terms, the Commission’s reform proposals have often been understood as an effort to give legal expression to a particular French conception of the nation. There is some truth to this view, but it does not get to the bottom of what the Commission was up to, even by its own account. One of the basic ideas advanced in its report was that greater coherence was needed between the political idea of “nation” and “the law of nationality.” (Long 1988a: 82). Nationality law, the Commission began by arguing, “translates . . . a certain conception of the nation” (83). One might therefore be tempted to assume that the Com-

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mission’s conclusions were guided primarily by historical and philosophical reflection on the nature of nationhood; indeed, the very appointment of this kind of an expert Commission implicitly seemed to call for that sort of process. Surprisingly, however, just a few pages later the Commission conceded that its examination of legal history showed that, in reality, there was a certain inherent disjuncture between ideas of the nation and nationality law.8 Moreover, it warned against the idea that, by correctly manipulating the legal criteria for nationality, one could somehow, “favor an awakening and a taking in hand of the national collectivity” which would “finally become itself again, thanks to a technical solution” (Long 1988b: 101–2). Surprisingly enough, the Commission thus renounced as impossible the very job it had been assigned! However wise or expertly informed, it cautioned, no mere readjustment of the articles of the Nationality Code could resolve the formidable cultural, social, and political problems of national identity and integration to which reforming nationality law was misleadingly presented as holding the key. The Commission thus admitted that the Nationality Code did not always fully, or inherently, translate the French idea of the nation. However, the report argued, it needed to be made to do so as well as possible; “the greatest possible coherence” in that regard was required in the wake of the debates of the 1980s and a “widespread sense of a weakening of national identity” (1988b: 89, 109). Ultimately, as often noted, the Commission did propose legislation more clearly expressive of what it called an “elective theory of the nation,” an idea that the nation was a product of will, choice, and free consent of individuals. The commissioners traced this idea back to the Enlightenment and the late nineteenth-­century thinking of Ernest Renan, and contrasted it with an “organic” view according to which the individual was constituted by and thus indissolubly attached to the nation of which he or she was the product. The sages traced this competing, organic view back to Joseph de Maistre, implicitly recognizing that it could not simply be dismissed as a “foreign” idea of the nation, but was also rooted in French political thought. One might have expected that the Commission’s report would then have defended the theoretical superiority of the “elective” perspective over the “organic” one. However, having contrasted these two understandings of the nation, the panel instead continued: The Commission has not gotten to the bottom [n’a pas à trancher le fondement], philosophically, of the debate concerning the essence of the nation. Nationality may appear, in certain respects, as a given imposed on individuals. But the characteristic of France is, to repeat

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the words of Alain Finkielkraut, to be “a country whose highest ethical or spiritual values are proposed to the conscious acceptance of its members.” Several interviews have also shown that the attraction still exercised by France as a nation results from its place in the history of rights and liberties . . . to the permanent existence of a common political project of universal relevance. (Long 1988b: 90) Faithful to this perspective, the Commission has, for its part, clearly situated its work in the framework of the elective, and in certain respects contractual, conception of the nation. The elective conception of the nation that the Commission’s proposed reforms were supposed to reflect was thus ultimately defended instrumentally, for contributing to France’s international appeal, rather than philosophically or even sociologically. Promoting France’s appeal was important, commissioners reasoned, because France’s declining international standing was fueling the rise of defensive nationalism (Long 1988b: 109).9 Because disadvantaged sectors of the population were apt to attribute the apparent decline of national identity to immigration, the Commission reasoned, France’s weakening sense of national identity encouraged defensive and xenophobic backlash (85). The task ultimately embraced by the Commission, by its own account, therefore was proposing a reform of the nationality law that would make it “a reference point for national identity,” reassuring the most materially and psychologically insecure sectors of the population that French national identity was alive and well and thus discouraging racism and discrimination. The Commission reasoned that doing so would help to remove an important obstacle to France’s successful integration of its most recent wave of immigrants (Long 1988b: 84). Oddly enough, the Commission’s rationale for its proposed reforms therefore ultimately related to considerations of popular political psychology and political strategy, considerations outside the domain of theoretical, sociological, and historical expertise for which the sages were selected and appointed. Nor was the Commission’s assessment of the most promising and appropriate strategy for reducing racism and discrimination simply self-­evident. The basic strategy of anti-­racism organizations, for instance, was to highlight the issue of racism rather than quietly attempting to reduce it by quelling popular fears about the decline of national identity. While their very organizational self-­definition made anti-­racism organizations’ pursuit of the strat-

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egy of fighting racism by taking a moral public stand against it particularly visible, the same approach was followed at the time by religious leaders and other organizations as well. Thus, for example, religious officials, the Freemasons, and humanitarian organizations had in November 1985 launched a common public call against racism and intolerance (“Pas de problèmes” 1985: 20). Members of the Commission regularly criticized that strategy during their interviews. In response to testimony involving complaints of racism and discrimination, or by anti-­racism organizations, Chaunu repeatedly argued that calling the French racists would merely insult them and make them more racist in reaction. He also complained to SOS-­Racisme’s president Harlem Désir that he felt attacked by Désir’s application of critical terms such as “ghetto” and “suspicion” to French society (Long 1988a: 107, 504, 562). However, the underlying difference of assumptions about how best to combat racism that divided commissioners from leaders of SOS-­Racisme and other groups was never itself investigated; the Commission’s ideas about how to combat racism figured as a premise, not a conclusion, of its work.

Public Reception of the Commission’s Work: The Importance of Calm and Cordiality in Legitimating a Republican “Consensus” Release of the Commission’s final report in January 1988 occasioned a flurry of press coverage, and sometimes mixed reviews. France’s leading center-­ right paper Le Figaro was initially skeptical of the possibility of any consensus developing around the proposed reforms. The newspaper also regretted that the Commission’s proposals did not include establishing an American-­style swearing in ceremony for those becoming new citizens (10 January 1988). While regarding it as a modest improvement over the Chalandon bill, SOS-­Racisme and the Human Rights League (LDH) nonetheless criticized the Commission’s recommendation that immigrants covered under Article 44 should not continue to receive French nationality automatically at age eighteen but be required actively to request it (Le Monde, 12 January 1988). SOS-­Racisme argued that this new requirement was discriminatory: French-­ born children of foreign-­born parents would be required to make a special request not required of immigrants covered under Article 23 and other French nationals.10 SOS-­Racisme’s president Harlem Désir was also particu-

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larly concerned about potential difficulties for those who were eligible but failed to make the required request on time, thereby forfeiting their right to become French nationals; if they later decided they wanted French citizenship, they would be required to go through the incomparably more difficult naturalization process (Le Monde, 11 January 1988). Others, too, were dissatisfied with the Commission’s results. Editorials in the Communist newspapers L’Humanité and Rouge accused the Commission of imperialism. The anti-­racist group Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Among Peoples (MRAP) and the Communist press were both also critical of the fact that many otherwise eligible people with criminal rec­ ords would be disqualified from becoming French if the Commission’s recommendations were followed (L’Humanité, 7, 8, 9 January 1988; Libération, 10 January; Rouge, 20 January).11 Meanwhile, the Socialist and Communist opposition to Chirac’s government also continued to oppose reform (Quotidien de Paris, 8 January). Despite these criticisms of the Commission’s report, it nonetheless inspired widespread enthusiastic praise. This praise, moreover, came from quarters other than those responsible for earlier, radical demands for nationality law reform. Enthusiasm was heard from moderates within the RPR, and particularly from many of France’s leading national newspapers. Gaullist deputy Michel Hannoun, a well-­known, relatively moderate voice on immigration issues, greeted the report with enthusiasm. While admitting he had not yet read it, Hannoun declared it, “a decisive evolution in the public debate” and argued that “one of the essential merits of the sages’ report is thus to have clarified and disempassioned the debate.” Hannoun emphasized that the Commission was comprised of “personalities of extremely diverse professional backgrounds and personal convictions” and focused his praise on the “innovative method adopted by the sages” which he characterized as “stamped with good sense and wisdom” (Quotidien de Paris, 10 January 1988). Nor were Gaullists the Commission’s only outspoken fans. From the start, France’s leading center-­left newspaper Le Monde welcomed the government’s initiative as promising to tame and enlighten national public debate. Le Monde characterized the Commission as “an organism anxious to understand—­and to make the public understand—­a subject as delicate as it is complex; the three watchwords of these interviews being ‘balance,’ ‘independence,’ and ‘pedagogy’” (11 September 1987).12 The importance of the rational public deliberation encouraged by the Commission’s interviews in Le Monde’s positive evaluation of its work was also reflected in

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the 9 January headline: “Disempassioned Debate and Press Consensus” (9 January 1988). Calling the results of the Nationality Commission’s work a reaffirmation of “the principles of the Republic,” a “perfect settlement,” and an “excellent working tool” for the government’s reform project, Le Quotidien de Paris noted the “impressive work of reflection and interviews that led to the report,” praising the process for having calmed an excessively “passionate” public debate and with having “demonstrated that one can freely express oneself in contemporary France” (8 January 1988). Similar themes were highlighted in other papers. Réforme lauded the Commission for having “brought a bit of ‘Glasnost,’ of serenity, and of elevation to an essential debate” that had earlier been conducted in a climate of “dubious passions” and “general skepticism” (16 January 1988). Le Point stressed the Commission’s ideological diversity and the role of “wise testimony and collegial reflection” in forming its conclusions (17 January 1988). Many of France’s national newspapers were thus particularly enthusiastic about the Commission’s working process, which seemed to prove that rationality was possible in politics and that, even on “hot” topics, democratic deliberation worked. The fact that the Commission was a “diverse” body, reached its conclusions by internal consensus, and had interviewed an impressive range of public figures provided an essential basis for these enthusiastic news reports. To many, the Commission seemed to have produced a consensus, or something close to one. Another Le Monde article began, “A lot of yeses, a few, but rare, nos: that, in short, has been the reception of the report of the Commission of wise persons (sages) on the part of the political, socio-­professional, and associational milieus” (11 January 1988). Nor was Le Monde alone in exaggerating the consensus surrounding the report. A few days later, L’Express ran an article under the heading: “The report of the sages would satisfy everyone, except Désir and Le Pen” (21 January 1988). This heading thus implied both that only a few marginal extremists on either end of the left-­right political spectrum were opposed to the Commission’s recommendations, and that SOS-­Racisme’s leader, in opposing them, was as much an extremist as the FN leader. As this example suggests, whereas before the Commission was appointed in 1987 citizenship and national identity debate in France was clearly a left-­right debate, in the wake of the Commission’s influential work, it was widely reinterpreted as a conflict between center and margins, with the center standing for reason.

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The Commission shaped this reinterpretation of the political field as effectively as it did subsequent reforms of the Nationality Code. It thereby successfully changed the prevailing terms of public discussion, delineating a newly respected republican position widely hailed as consensual and nonpartisan. It accomplished this feat largely by using its working process to generate procedural, intellectual legitimacy that in turn enhanced the legitimacy of its recommendations. This result was not wholly unintended. The points regularly highlighted by the press in positive reporting about the Commission’s work—­its rationality (its “calm,” “serene,” and “disempassioned” character), its transparency (“Glasnost”), and its consensus-­building or settlement-­producing effects—­ were precisely those highlighted by members themselves. Commissioner Pierre-­Patrick Kaltenbach, for instance, described the body’s work as: “the procedure of the Greek agora reinvented: the debate in the public square,” and emphasized that “it is the way in which this commission was constituted that is original, and largely responsible for the nature of the final result. . . . The commission, it is sixteen independent persons. . . . [T]hese are diverse and politically courteous people. Nothing like the brawlers, the rag-­pickers of partisan ideology” (Témoinage Chrétien, 18–24 January 1988). Somewhat ironically, the very attributes of the Commission’s proceedings that inspired such widespread positive acclaim for its work and increased the perceived public legitimacy of its conclusions also set implicit limits to both the tone and content of testimony to which commissioners were receptive.

Confident Statism and Dispassionate Rationality as Obstacles to Commissioners’ Reception of Critical Testimony The Commission’s Troubled Interview with “Young Arab” Djida Tazdait

Though praised by the press for its balance and openness, the Commission was actually far less open and receptive to certain contestatory viewpoints than the inclusiveness of its guest list might lead one to believe. Looking beyond who was invited to appear before the Commission to the tone and content of particular interviews, the limits of the public discussion it organized and sanctioned become clearer. While self-­consciously civil, rationalist, and restrained in tenor, the transcripts show that communications between com-

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missioners and some of their guests were nonetheless—­and sometimes as a direct result—­marked by inherent tensions and misunderstandings. Moreover, what the Commission’s public self-­definition as a cordial and dispassionate investigatory panel made it unacceptable for commissioners to hear or accept affected not just commissioners’ relations with particular individuals invited for interviews but also the very content of some of the panel’s most important conclusions and recommendations. The Commission’s interview with Djida Tazdait, president of the Beur association Jeunes Arabes de Lyon et Banlieu (Young Arabs of Lyon and Suburbs, JALB), most clearly exemplified this problem. Communication between Tazdait and the commissioners rapidly deteriorated when she spoke to them. JALB’s president was openly skeptical regarding the Commission and rather bluntly told its members that young French Maghrebians like those in JALB saw the debate over the Nationality Code as inherently aggressive and xenophobic. Extending her skepticism to the Commission itself, Tazdait declared that JALB members “were used to being treated ambiguously by institutions,” to empty words and broken promises, and to “being taken simply as ‘witnesses’ and not as participants in social projects.” Nonetheless, she explained, she had decided to come to the interviews in Paris to voice a perspective shared by Lyon’s other Maghrebian youth. Their perspective, as articulated by Tazdait, centered on the Contract idea of membership and integration through active participation. As Tazdait explained it, “Today, nationality for us, it’s defined around what one has lived, around what one has created, around our participation in social life, in the economic and cultural life of this country.” Later, responding to common charges that youth of immigrant origin were not integrating, Tazdait underlined the participation of JALB in political and social life and ventured that, “we judge that someone is integrated once one participates in the social life of this country, in all ways, in every case and in all ways that one can” (Long 1988a: 400–401). Tazdait thus articulated an understanding of membership in the French community that closely paralleled the society-­centered Contract component of left, anti-­statist defenses of “new citizenship.” Given the centrality of concrete social life and direct, lived experience in this vision, it is not surprising that, as Tazdait went on to admit, reform of the Nationality Code was far from one of JALB members’ top concerns. In her words, “Concerning the reform of the Nationality Code, to tell the truth we haven’t taken even the fact of the reform very seriously” (401–2). Filmmaker Henri Verneuil, the commissioner who responded most directly to Tazdait’s remarks, reacted angrily to her excessively frank skepticism

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regarding state institutions like the Nationality Commission and its national-­ level, legal approach to the problem of integration. Verneuil responded to Tazdait with controlled irritation, retorting: Mademoiselle, if I have understood you well, and you are immediately going to correct me, first you have told us that it was not worth the trouble for you to come here, that you were skeptical, and that in any case it would not be of any use. What astonishes me is to see you here. Secondly, you have accused us of aggression, I have never found as much aggressiveness on your part as in all that I have heard here for several months, where there are people who, with good will, try to listen to everyone, including you. (Long 1988a: 407) What Verneuil objected to was not merely the form but also the content of Tazdait’s statement. It was JALB’s message itself that was rejected as rude and inappropriate. For a young invited guest of the experts (“Mademoiselle”) to express mistrust of the Commission qua state institution or openly to suspect it of harboring a condescending attitude toward minority youth was condemned as unacceptable “aggression.” The rapid degeneration of the tone of exchange between the Verneuil and Tazdait exposed the implicit etiquette circumscribing the kind of testimony commissioners were receptive to hearing. Ironically, the Commission was taken to be inclusive and open to diverse viewpoints precisely because it was cordial, dispassionate, and thus polite. Yet the interview with JALB showed how norms of etiquette and propriety and the very proper, civil, and “disempassioned” qualities for which the Commission’s proceedings were widely praised also set limits to what it was receptive to hearing. Because it conveyed an inherent lack of deference and respect for the Commission and its mission, Tazdait’s anti-­state orientation itself immediately set her at odds with commissioners, clearly interfering with reception of her presentation and thus of the society-­centered, participation-­oriented Contract vision of integration she articulated on behalf of JALB’s young Maghrebian members.

The Overdetermined Ineffectiveness of Post-­Colonial Readings of the Historical Significance of Proposed Nationality Reforms

Precisely because of its conception of its mission, the Commission also filtered out key aspects of the testimony of the few other Maghrebian speak-

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ers invited. In particular, it was unreceptive to their repeated explanations of their understanding of the meaning of the proposed new requirement for French-­born children of foreign-­born parents actively to request French nationality. Two competing readings of the meaning of this change, grounded in very different historical referents, were presented to the Commission, one by Maghrebian participants and the other by well-­known French philosopher and public intellectual Alain Finkielkraut. Maghrebian participants testifying against the proposed change repeatedly referred back to France’s decision in 1962 that Algerians emigrating to France in the wake of the Algerian War needed to apply for “reintegration” if they wished to retain French citizenship. In Maghrebian speakers’ statements, this moment in the history of French-­Algerian relations regularly figured as a crucial referent for understanding the meaning of the key proposed change in nationality law considered by the Commission. The 1962 decision, Maghrebian representatives testified, was received as an affront to the families of Algerians of non-­European descent who had fought for France, whether as harkis during the Algerian War or during World War II. Proposed modification of Article 44 was read as echoing this earlier insult. Brahim Sadouni, a former harki interviewed by the Commission, described how, having fought for France, he was already “French by the blood spilled” when he arrived in metropolitan France after Algeria’s independence. This sacrifice notwithstanding, he nevertheless had to apply for reintegration to be accepted as a French citizen. He described himself as having been “abandoned” by France after the war, and viewed the proposed new nationality request requirement and, worse, the possibility of allowing the French state to refuse such requests at will, as an attempt to subject young, French-­born Maghrebians to the same treatment.13 He therefore complained that he could not stand to see “children who were born in France being abandoned in turn if they hope and want to be French” (Long 1988a: 223–26). Representatives of the Mosque of Paris also interpreted the declaration requirement as echoing the 1962 decision. Both were characterized by the Mosque’s representatives as a denial of ties already established between Algerians and France and demonstrated by the history of Algerian family members’ service in the French military. Former senator and Mosque representative Mohamed Gueroui dramatized the significance of the new proposed declaration requirement as follows, again reading it through the historical lens of colonial policy and decolonization:

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It has been said to me that I was, like many others having lived in Algeria, French collectively since 1865. And since 1865, since my father and my grandfather, we have never ceased to struggle and to cry out before the world that we wanted to be French and stay so definitively. And each time, this hope, this desire, this conviction, this engagement was called into question. And each time, we were required to confirm it by a declaration. . . . We accepted having to make this declaration and this engagement to be French again. But our heart has remained embittered because we considered that this way of proceeding in regard to us was suspicious, that we were people suspected of not being loyal, of not being faithful, and it was necessary each time to begin again by saying, “We are French.” Now, being French, we have already justified it over the course of decades, over the course of centuries . . . since 1870. My grandfather served in 1870, voluntarily, even though he was not obliged to serve in the military. And all that, already for love of France. I will add that, since that date, we have been confirmed in our French quality at various times, and at various times we were asked to determine ourselves. And the last, finally, was that [declaration] we had to make in 1962. . . . We who were French before other French, still have that quality challenged. (Long 1988a: 379–80) Similarly likening the new proposed declaration requirement to that of 1962, Khadija Khali, president of the French Muslim Women Union, criticized it as an unwarranted and humiliating questioning of the national status of people who were, already, obviously French. Those born, raised, and schooled in France, she maintained, could not possibly fail to feel French by the time they reached sixteen. Yet the Frenchness of even the most assimilated children of harkis was treated as suspect and in need of special affirmation (Long 1988a: 725–27). According to this perspective, repeatedly advanced by Maghrebian participants in the hearings, Algerians in France, like those who fought in the French army, were French already. In making that membership conditional on a further official declaration of choice, France was guilty of reneging on its promise to accept those who had loyally served and sacrificed for the (mother) country, thus betraying those with whom ties of political loyalty had already been forged. The repetition of these themes in Maghrebian representatives’ testimony before the Commission of course does not in any way

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prove that all, or even most, French residents of Maghrebian descent saw proposed reforms of Article 44 the same way. However, it does serve as an invaluable reminder that the familiar historical account of the significance of proposed changes to Article 44 that Alain Finkielkraut offered the Commission was not the only possible or relevant way of using French history to interpret the significance of the proposed reform. In fact, it was not even the only historical interpretation of the proposed modifications of the law explicitly offered to the Commission during the interview phase of its investigation. Finkielkraut used a radically different narrative from the one invoked in Maghrebian witnesses’ accounts to historically interpret the significance of proposed changes to Article 44. His more conventional and nationally centered historical narrative figured prominently in the Commission’s conclusions and thereby influenced the 1993 reform of nationality law itself. On a theoretical level, Maghrebian witnesses’ repeated invocation of an alternative, also factually true and apparently relevant, historical narrative to contest the reform favored by Finkielkraut therefore reveals as highly problematic subsequent explanations of the Commission’s conclusions by reference to the very same narrative used by Finkielkraut during the Commission’s interviews. Such accounts have taken as their point of departure one particular, ideologically inflected historical reading of the nature and significance of reforming Article 44, a reading that was originally not the only possible or plausible one, and was in fact actively contested by other participants in the Commission’s proceedings. Analysts’ uncritical reliance on the very defining contrasts and narrative regarding French intellectual history that Finkielkraut and then the Commission itself used to promote and justify a particular, politically partial reform of French nationality law has thus unfortunately amounted to uncritically sanctioning the victors’ all too well-­known prerogatives in writing history.14 Rather than reading the significance of proposed changes to Article 44 through the lens of more recent history of French-­Algerian relations, Finkielkraut turned back to nineteenth-­century European intellectual history, focusing on two opposed theories of the nation. His argument for reform centered on contrasting an organic or ethnic conception of the nation to an elective or contractual one. According to the elective view of the nation, while members were united partly by shared historical memories, the nation was ultimately the product of their conscious belonging to it, and thus of the wills of individuals. Finkielkraut traced this idea back to Ernest Renan’s famous 1882 essay

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“Qu’est-­ce qu’une nation?” (“What Is a Nation?”) (1882) As Finkielkraut’s audience would certainly have been expected to recall, Renan’s essay was a theoretical defense of France’s right to reclaim Alsace and Lorraine based on their inhabitants’ expressed desire to belong to France, despite cultural ties to Germany. Unlike the testimony of Maghrebian representatives, who drew on colonial narratives to make sense of proposals to bestow nationality only by request in some cases, Finkielkraut thereby privileged the history of (metropolitan) French nation-­building. From the perspective he offered, the historical integration of culturally diverse provinces into a single nation was the relevant reference point for thinking about how culturally diverse immigrant populations could be integrated into a single, cohesive national citizenry in the late twentieth century. By contrast, Finkielkraut explained, according to the ethnic conception, the individual was the product of a national collective unconscious, which predetermined his or her will. Citing Sartre, Finkielkraut emphasized the intellectual importance of the ethnic conception in the history of French anti-­Semitism (Long 1988a: 595–97). Understood in this intellectual and historical context, the requirement that children of foreigners actively request French nationality therefore appeared as an expression not of mistrust but of liberalism! The ethnic view of the relationship between individuals and collectivities was, according to Finkielkraut, the essence of racism because it treated individuals as prisoners of their origins. Whether these origins were racial or cultural, genetic or traditional, treating them as decisive denied individuals the possibility of freely and consciously choosing their commitments and identities (Long 1988a: 597–99).15 In calling on individuals to make a positive decision to be French, a new Nationality Code expressive of the elective conception of the nation would thus, Finkielkraut argued, attest to France’s anti-­racism. There were several striking differences between Algerian witnesses’ historical interpretation of the contemporary situation and Finkielkraut’s. First, from his perspective, French colonial history and the history of French-­ Algerian relations were in no way essential to understanding the backlash against Maghrebian immigrants to France that flared in the 1980s. Instead, the key reference points were the Dreyfus Affair and World War II, key moments in the history of French anti-­Semitism. Muslim immigrants, including those from Algeria, Finkielkraut’s narrative suggested, were simply occupying the space in a French racist worldview that had recently been vacated by

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Jewish citizens (Long 1988a: 596–97). When not cast as “new provincials,” the Maghrebian immigrants thus found themselves cast instead as “new Jews.” The first historical analogy was to serve as an inspiration, the second as a warning. Both were in stark contrast to the ways Maghrebian representatives, referring to colonial as well as French metropolitan history, attempted to cast themselves and other Algerians. Second, while the explanation of the historical significance of the declaration requirement offered by Algerian witnesses focused on the history of French-­Algerian international or intercommunal relations, Finkielkraut’s explanation was centered on ways of understanding the relationship between the community and the will of the individual. From this French domestic perspective there was just one nation or community involved in the story: France. From the international or intercommunal relations perspective, by contrast, there were multiple groups, and interactions that seemed to be between collectivities and individuals actually had intercollective entailments. For example, from the perspective favored by Algerian witnesses, France had a moral obligation to recognize as French not only those individuals who fought in the French military but their families and descendants as well. The testimony of Mosque of Paris representative Mohamed Gueroui, for example, focused not so much on the individual rights of soldiers vis-­à-­vis France, but on the proud and pious acceptance of sacrifice by the bereaved mothers of those who died in battle (Long 1988a: 380–81). Third, Finkielkraut’s interpretation focused on the thinking of those he described as racists, the key to their discriminatory practices being their belief in the ethnic theory of the nation, or their failure consistently to think and act in accordance with the elective one. Algerian speakers focused on the experience of the victims of French mistrust—­their love, their loyalty, their sacrifice, and their betrayal. Thus, while Finkielkraut promised to help the French better to understand themselves and their domestic political history, the Algerian witnesses called on the French to understand them. Fourth, Finkielkraut’s testimony was clearly more temperate and less provocative than that of the Algerians. While Finkielkraut’s narrative ultimately offered the French exoneration, as the inventors and, on the whole, most internationally exemplary historical defenders of the elective theory of the nation,16 the Algerians’ account did not. In their stories, France simply kept attracting them, making them swear their love, and then forsaking them. There was also a drastic difference evident in the tone of these alternative narratives; the graphic and emotionally charged appeals of the Mosque of

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Paris representative were matched by Finkielkraut’s incomparably more cool, logical, and systematically organized argumentation. The Commission’s interest in “cooling down” the increasingly heated public debate over French national identity and immigrants’ integration thus also would have encouraged it strongly to favor Finkelkraut’s interpretation. Finally, even while it accounted for racism, Finkielkraut’s historical narrative did offer France expiation, and ultimately gave France reason for pride. It thus fit with commissioners’ stated strategy for combating racism: reducing popular anti-­immigrant backlash by shoring up confidence in French national identity. By Finkielkraut’s account, France was not changing in the wake of new immigration, but rather manifesting, once again, a century-­old intellectual and political tension deeply rooted in French tradition. Finkielkraut thus did not accuse the French of being racists, a move for which organizations like SOS-­Racisme were repeatedly criticized during the hearings by commissioners who thought such accusations likely to make people more racist in response or to undermine France’s international prestige vis-­à-­vis citizens of other developed countries. Finkielkraut instead underlined France’s legitimate claim to international glory as the inventor and promoter of an elective conception of the nation that had made being French especially attractive to him when he had arrived as a Jewish immigrant. The Commission therefore embraced Finkielkraut’s position as its own, echoing his arguments almost in full in its final report (cf. Long 1988b). Algerian witnesses’ interpretation of the history and meaning of the new proposed requirements were never explicitly rejected. They simply figured nowhere in the Commission’s own presentation of the reasoning behind its recommendations. Favoring Finkielkraut’s account of France’s historical approach to diversity entailed accepting his interpretation of the symbolic significance of requiring children of the foreign-­born to ask to become French. It was read by the Commission as an expression of anti-­racist liberalism, not racist mistrust, and therefore given the Commission’s seal of approval. Opting for Finkielkraut’s narrative, as opposed to the alternative, post-­colonial historical interpretation suggested by Algerian witnesses, thus turned the Commission’s recommendations and the 1993 Méhaignerie law based on them in a more Belief-­and less Contract-­oriented direction.

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The Commission’s Neo-­Republican Remixing of Culture, Contract, and Belief At times the Nationality Commission presented its recommendations simply as a left-­right compromise. The Monetized Contract perspective to which “new citizenship” advocates so frequently appealed did not find any echo in the Commission’s conclusions and recommendations, even though arguments based on a Monetized Contract perspective were repeatedly made during Commission interviews.17 This perspective on membership, figuring centrally in the appeals of anti-­statist advocates of “new citizenship,” fared no better than the provocative testimony of Sadouni and other Algerians. The Commission also presented its own position concerning Article 44, which very closely followed Finkielkraut’s arguments, as a middle path between two kinds of extreme reform proposals. Here the Commission drew on a conventional left-­right reading of the issue (Long 1988a: 601–4). The right’s earlier proposals to eliminate jus soli altogether were rejected as informed by “an ethnic conception of the nation.” Left-­wing calls from SOS-­Racisme for an “absolute” jus soli rule like that of the United States—­simple attribution from birth of French nationality to everyone born on French territory—­ were rejected as giving insufficient weight to continued residence (and thus “integration”) in France and as likely to promote undue fears of illegal immigration. The Commission’s own recommendation in favor of preserving the existing rule of “double” jus soli—­whereby French nationality would be attributed at birth only to those born in France to parents who were also French-­born—­was thus explicitly presented as a compromise between two extreme positions on a left-­right spectrum (1988b: 110, 115–17). The Commission’s conclusions thereby marked a rejection of the position of the more radical left as well as the far right. However, the Commission’s own reading of its work as a left-­right compromise was also misleading. The radical left alternative excluded was, in reality, not fully reducible to what the Commission explicitly overruled. The Commission openly attacked the radical left by explicitly rejecting its appeals to the Monetized Contract perspective and its demands for absolute jus soli, but it more fundamentally undermined it by implicitly rejecting the radical, anti-­statist left’s preferred framing of membership issues. The Commission was appointed to address the nationality law issue, not broader debates on the changing nature of citizenship and French identity. Accordingly, it equated the “far left” position with defense of simple jus soli, not local voting rights for foreign residents.

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The new, broadly based position in France’s politics of membership that the Nationality Commission staked out was not just a middle road between a supposedly “ethnic” position on the right18 and demands from the left for “absolute” jus soli. The latter was simply the form of radical left demand expressed on nationality law. Demands for dissociating political rights from nationality fell entirely outside the parameters of the discussion the Commission was charged with orchestrating. Where groups associated with the “new citizenship” campaign were invited to participate, they often nevertheless made at least some passing appeal to their own preferred framing of current membership issues, often explicitly regretting its displacement by the problem of nationality law reform. LDH president Yves Jouffa, for instance, was not only critical of the proposals to reform the nationality law that were being considered but also, as a leading proponent of local voting rights for foreigners, openly skeptical of the very shift of public debate to the nationality law issue. He regretted that the voting rights issue had been eclipsed by that of nationality law reform, even while acknowledging that it would have been inappropriate for him to discuss voting rights at length in the forum established by the Commission (Long 1988a: 445). Passing appeals to the local voting rights cause were also made during the Commission hearings by representatives of the Association of African Workers in France and the president of the Collective for Studies and Dynamicization of the Portugese Emigrant Community (539, 663–64). As already noted, JALB president Djida Tazdait was also critical of the very issue of nationality law reform. In direct contrast to earlier radical demands for a “new citizenship,” the new compromise defined by the Commission implied basic acceptance of nationality as a necessary condition for citizenship and equal political rights. Ultimately, however, the Commission’s strategy was not just to tip its hand in favor of actors on the right by implicitly validating their preferred framing of membership issues. Indeed, it also deftly reinterpreted the position of the far right, which had earlier championed the same “elective” conception of nationality that the Commission ended up supporting, albeit with a key difference. As we have seen, Le Gallou and other radical right-­wing proponents of Nationality Code reform had compounded appeals to the elective conception, and thus to the Belief model, with appeals to the Culture and Descent models. In their view, those of non-­European ancestry could not but fail to lack personal determination to assimilate culturally, thus becoming French. By contrast, the Commission presented “elective” Belief and “organic”

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Descent and Culture understandings of the nation as inherently logically and historically opposed. Deeming the latter an “ethnic conception of the nation,” the Commission rejected it. By redefining—­and arguably mischaracterizing—­ the debate about membership then raging in France as a familiar contest between civic and ethnic understandings of membership, the Commission made its dismissal of the radical right’s perspective appear less controversial and explicitly distanced itself from that view. At the same time, it drew on Le Gallou’s basic appeal to a Belief view of political membership emphasizing individual identification and choice. The Commission thus asserted that the “elective” and “ethnic” conceptions were logically opposed, not inherently linked as advocates of more radical reforms of French nationality law a few years earlier had argued. The Commission’s stance was facilitated by its replacing of contemporary interlocutors on the right—­particularly Jean-­Yves Le Gallou and Pierre Mazeaud—­with Joseph de Maistre. As he had in Finkielkraut’s statement, de Maistre figured in the Commission report as the privileged, historical exemplar of the rejected reactionary “ethnic,” or “organic” perspective. From Finkielkraut’s presentation of the Nationality Code debate as a replay of nineteenth-­century conflicts over nationality, this recasting of Le Gallou as a contemporary Joseph de Maistre made perfect sense. The recasting helped the Commission claim the moral high ground by allowing it to present its own position as opposing, rather than partially co-­opting, ideas of the radical right. Here again, Finkielkraut’s account worked beautifully for the commissioners. Although the new, conceptually mixed, neo-­republican perspective promoted by the sages included appeals to the Culture model as well as the Contract and Belief views, their attitude toward the Culture model was at times inconsistent or ambiguous. At points, the Commission treated the Culture and Descent models as inherently linked, and rejected both as faces of a single “ethnic understanding of the nation.” However, elsewhere in their recommendations, it accepted and embraced the Culture model. The introduction of the Commission report in fact stressed that French “national unity rests on cultural unity” (cited in Feldblum 1999: 110). The Culture perspective also very clearly undergirded the Commission’s conclusions regarding immigrants from other French-­speaking countries. The Commission argued that they should enjoy easier access to French nationality because of “having had a privileged access to our culture,” especially through education in French and daily use of the French language. In fact, implying that it might be appropriate to consider fellow francophones members of some kind

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of common, overarching community, the Commission even introduced the idea of a new legal status: “citizen of the French-­speaking world (citoyen de francophonie)” (Long 1988b: 58–60).19 The idea of Francophone-­area citizenship is most intuitively appealing if one envisions citizenship in terms of the Culture model, privileging language as a criterion for membership.20 In its discussion of the special claims of other francophones to French citizenship, the Commission stressed the schools’ role in transmitting fluency in French. This part of the arguments showed that, despite its apparently stalwart rejection of an “ethnic” conception of membership, it at times nonetheless favored the Culture model, treating it as a relevant and legitimate way of understanding citizenship. The idea of French language ability, as well as active manifestation of a desire to vote, as a clear sign of French nationality was also invoked during the Commission’s hearings by Dominique Schnapper. Schnapper responded to the testimony of Mahjoud Bentebria, representative of the nonpartisan Franco-­Maghrebian association Génération 2001, by saying: “in listening to you, I was struck by the extent to which you are French, when you speak; it is too obvious, you are of French nationality” (Long 1988a: 104–5). At times, commissioners thus drew on the Culture model, despite also elsewhere claiming to agree that integration did not entail “assimilation” and did not entail foreigners’ “renunciation” of their “values and cultural differences” (1988b: 110).21 Such ambiguities in the Commission’s arguments were part and parcel of how it worked, and what made it effective politically. The Commission laid the intellectual foundations of a new republican consensus on citizenship precisely by generating ambiguities and slippages among three different perspectives (Belief, Culture, and Contract), supporters of which had not previously been drawn together around an explicit shared vision of what political membership was or should be about. The Commission’s work was a turning point in France’s recent politics of belonging because of the way it simultaneously championed these three conceptually distinct perspectives on membership while at the same time staking out a supposedly unitary, principled position against a common intellectual enemy personifying the vilified “ethnic” perspective: Joseph de Maistre. The Commission therefore did not simply tip the scales in favor of existing arguments on the right against those favored by much of the left. More fundamentally, the Commission reoriented France’s politics of belonging by reinterpreting what had until then clearly been a left-­right debate

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in terms of France’s deeply rooted statist­versus anti-­statist political cleavage. At times, as we have seen, the Commission presented itself as a stalwart defender of the statist position. As with regard to the Culture perspective, however, it was not entirely consistent. In favoring Finkielkraut’s views and supporting the requirement that nationality be actively requested by those who used to receive it “automatically” at the age of majority, the Commission also implicitly endorsed the liberal, individualist variety of anti-­statism. While somewhat inconsistent, this ambiguity in the Commission’s position on state-­society relations was politically savvy. The Commission’s inconsistency allowed its work to be read in two ways: as a stalwart championing of statism, or as a compromise between statism and anti-­statism. Certainly, however, the Commission clearly eschewed a radically anti-­statist orientation. The fact of reinterpreting the debate as hinging on competing views of state-­society relations was ultimately more significant than the somewhat ambiguous position the Commission itself took on that question. Emphasizing issues of state-­society relations helped the Commission map out an alternative pattern of political alliances by drawing simultaneously on previously dissociated Culture, Belief, and Contract perspectives. These three models of political membership were creatively recombined by the Commission, which thereby staked out a broad new “republican” perspective on citizenship and nationality. The Commission simultaneously opposed this pro-­republican stance to both the Descent perspective associated with the far right and the Monetized Contract views associated with the anti-­statist left. Helping to unite this broad new camp was shared agreement concerning the national public school system’s value and importance for promoting “integration.”

Public Education as an Indispensable Font of Symbolic Unity in France’s Neo-­Republican Revival It was partly thanks to the way it highlighted the role of the schools that the Nationality Commission was able to solder together the new “republican” amalgam of Belief, Culture, and Contract perspectives that it favored. The Commission’s agreement that most second-­generation youth wishing to acquire French national citizenship should have to request it directly appealed to those attracted to the Belief model of political membership. Stressing the importance of the school system allowed the Commission simultaneously to appeal to and capture some support both from groups on the left with clear

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sympathies for the Contract model of membership and those—­then often more on the right in France—­partial to a more traditionalist, Culture model of membership. Like its reinterpretation of France’s politics of membership as a conflict between statist and anti-­statist perspectives, rhetorically privileging the image of the school thus helped the Commission to transcend the left-­ right political stalemate surrounding the issue of nationality law reform. Both aspects of the perspective promoted by the Commission promised to help it damp down both support for the FN and mass mobilization by progressive left groups, toning down the highly charged left-­right conflict that had developed around issues of political membership. Supporters of the Belief, Culture, and Contract positions all concurred in regarding France’s public schools as singularly important for integrating “immigrants’” and turning them into full, bona fide members of France. Highlighting the schools’ role therefore helped to draw those most favorable to the three different visions together and made their cooperation appear more comfortable and natural. Emphasizing the educational theme also helped to give the neo-­republican perspective broad public appeal. Underscoring the role of the school system in integrating immigrants gave the Commission a way to take a stand against the far right that promised to be much more popular than an overtly “pro-­immigrant” position. The French public generally put great faith in public education. Survey data show that, in France, the school was also one of the most widely trusted institutions. Asked whether they generally trusted or distrusted a list of institutions including police, laws, parliament, army, secret services, courts, the school system, businesses, private firms, public firms, unions, multinational firms, banks, and university, French respondents were more trusting than not of most institutions, but the school system and the police were the most widely trusted (by 74 percent and 68 percent respectively). Primary school teachers were among the most widely trusted socioprofessional groups (second only to doctors and firemen). Judged more trustworthy than not by 80 percent of those surveyed, instituteurs thus came in ahead of the President of the Republic (77 percent), mayors (77 percent), police, judges (trusted by only 56 percent of respondents), and secondary school teachers. The latter came in close behind with the trust of 76 percent of those surveyed (Sofres poll cited in Nouvel Observateur, 12–18 February 1988). By contrast, adopting a “pro-­immigrant” stance would have been far riskier politically. Survey data are again telling in this regard. A November 1985 survey asked respondents whether they agreed with the claim that

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“Immigrants are a blessing (une chance) for France.” Fully 66 percent of the overall sample, including 62 percent of Mitterand voters, disagreed with the claim, while only 21 percent agreed. Answers to other such survey questions confirmed the strength of anti-­immigrant sentiment—­or at least the weakness of pro-­immigrant sentiment—­at the time. Respondents who agreed with the statement “Each time a foreigner occupies a job in France, it is a French person who is deprived of it” were slightly outnumbered by those who disagreed, but an alarming 68 percent agreed that “If nothing is done to limit the number of foreigners, France risks losing its national identity,” more than twice the percentage who disagreed (27 percent). 57 percent disagreed that immigrants contributed to economic development; 65 percent agreed that “immigrants are an important factor in delinquency in France”; 75 percent agreed that “Where the immigrants are numerous, one does not feel safe.” Surprisingly, however, these views were tempered by a capacity for self-­criticism as well; 71 percent of respondents agreed that “the French are racist vis-­à-­vis immigrants.” However, an even higher 78 percent thought “the immigrants are racist vis-­à-­vis the French” (“Immigration” 1985).22 Given the state of French public opinion, a “pro-­immigrant” position was unlikely to attract widespread public support or be politically appealing to Chirac, to whom the Commission was reporting. Attempting to attract the support even of progressives behind the “new citizenship” campaign by echoing their enthusiasm for the public schools was fairly safe. The potential appeal of this theme to earlier “new citizenship” supporters was evident from the Commission’s interviews. MRAP president George Pau-­Langevin stressed the schools’ role in generating national integration, as did SOS-­Racisme’s lawyer, the president of the French Union of Muslim Women, and LDH president Yves Jouffa (Long 1988a: 495, 499, 555–56, 725–27, 443). Certainly, championing their enthusiasm for public education was far less likely to bring the Commission into conflict with public opinion than supporting local voting rights for foreigner residents. When BVA asked respondents in November 1985, “Are you favorable or opposed to foreigners who reside and work in France voting in local elections?” 60 percent of those surveyed stated they were “opposed,” while only 35 percent characterized their position as “favorable” (“Immigration” 1985). Despite the concerted campaign mounted in favor of local voting rights during the early 1980s, public opinion had shifted remarkably little. Survey responses on the local voting rights issue in November 1985 were almost identical to those on a poll conducted by Sofres in August 1981. While Mitterand

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voters were more than twice as likely as Giscard voters to be “favorable,” even among the former, those “favorable” were narrowly outnumbered by those “opposed.” Mitterand voters were thus closely divided on the issue, while voters for the center-­right presidential candidate Valéry Giscard d’Estaing were opposed by a margin of more than 3 to 1 (“Immigration” 1985; Le Monde, 20 January 1981). A survey conducted by Sofres in November 1984 found an even higher rate of opposition, 74 percent, versus only 21 percent in favor (Le Nouvel Observateur, 13–19 September 1990).23 The central role of the school in integration was important not only from a public relations standpoint, but also as a point of potential agreement among partisans of the three models of political membership that the Nationality Commission combined in formulating its own neo-­republican position. Championing the school’s role in integration was a politically winning move. Not surprisingly, the Commission therefore repeatedly commended the schools for promoting integration, albeit on shifting grounds. The Commission thus used the school and its integrative virtues to bridge the Belief, Culture, and Contract perspectives symbolically and rhetorically. In rejecting the Descent model, it underlined the importance of institutions for integrating immigrants and, more important, young foreigners into French society (Long 1988b: 39, 43–44). Commission president Marceau Long also emphasized this point in an interview a few weeks after the Commission presented its report to Chirac. Agreeing with Crozier’s assessment that “school, army, [and] church,” that is, key elements of the “French melting pot,” had “lost their efficacy,” he called for the need to “give them back their force and dynamism.” Long made this statement in response to a question regarding the Commission’s attitude toward a “multicultural society.” It was thus the Commission president, not the journalist interviewing him, who introduced the theme of schools’ positive role in social integration (Le Figaro, 17 February 1988).24 Commissioners also stressed that it was education and socialization that made even those with French parents truly French. The Commission thus argued that jus sanguinis made sense only in light of the importance of “parental acculturation during the early years,” whereas “the theory of ‘pure’ jus sanguinis confounds belonging in the nation with belonging in an ethnic group” (1988b: 92–93). At points, the Commission also argued that education was a necessary precondition for successful integration of populations of immigrant origin, because of shifts in the structure of the labor market, lack of low skilled jobs, and rising unemployment (Long 1988b: 43–44). Here, the defense of the

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school spoke most directly to a society-­centered Contract perspective, according to which the key to integration was participation in collective social activity. The Commission’s renunciation of “pluri-­” and “inter-­cultural” educational policies also followed from an understanding of belonging as rooted in social interaction, not from commitment to a cultural model of national community, as one might expect. The Commission rejected such policies, introduced in the late 1970s through bilaterial agreements between France and migrants’ countries of origin, on the grounds that they contributed to discrimination, that is, that they hindered free interaction and division of labor between French citizens and residents of all national backgrounds (88). At other points, however, the Commission’s stated reasons for enthusiasm regarding the schools were instead based on the Belief model. For instance, stressing shared political culture as a core aspect of belonging in France, the Commission’s report explicitly underlined the importance of “institutions that work in favor of integration by transmitting the values on which [the] French agree” (Long 1988b: 45). Commissioner Hélène Carrère d’Encausse also argued along these lines during the panel’s public interviews (1988a: 473). Finally, elsewhere in its conclusions, the Commission’s defense of the schools’ key role in promoting citizenship implicitly relied on the Culture model. For instance, the Commission defended the need for French-­born youth to meet a residency requirement to obtain French nationality on the grounds that, given that education was compulsory, residency was actually a measure of schooling in France. The Commission explained that “a long residency” could therefore be counted on as “an indicator of acquisition of a way of life and of the national identity” and that it “guarantees his [the youth’s] assimilation” (Long 1988b: 93). In the Commission’s discussion of other francophones’ privileged claims to French citizenship, too, the school figured as a favored means of creating Frenchmen abroad, but now apparently by virtue of the school’s role in transmitting neither republican values nor advanced skills necessary for employment, but rather use of the French language. Certainly, fluency in spoken and written French is an important job skill and would tend to make an immigrant more employable. However, its importance in that regard did not factor in this part of the Commission report, nor was fluency in French treated as proof of immigrants’ means of economic self-­sufficiency for purposes of naturalization. As we have seen, the model of political membership undergirding the Commission’s recommendations was never fully unitary in theoretical terms.

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The Commission strategically combined appeals to several different models without explicitly drawing attention to their potentially conflicting entailments. Appealing to the positive role of the school in promoting integration gave the Commission’s position a greater semblance of internal consistency and helped make it appealing to supporters of all three views of membership that the Commission creatively and strategically combined and compounded in formulating its recommendations. Just as the Commission vilified Joseph de Maistre as the shared enemy of the new Culture-­Belief-­Contract amalgam of perspective it drew together, it relied symbolically on widespread support for the French public school system as a common rallying point. The rhetorical and symbolic bridge provided by an idealized image of the French school system was needed precisely because, in practical terms, the aspects of belonging emphasized by the Belief, Culture, and Contract perspectives were all too often dissociated; they did not all naturally or inevitably go together. Such problems were dramatically, if accidentally, highlighted during the interviewing of Sadouni, the former harki. Following Sadouni’s testimony, commissioner Jean-­Jacques de Bresson remarked that, since their parents had actively chosen France, children of harkis must have had less difficulty integrating in France than did children of other immigrants. He asked Sadouni whether that was true. Sadouni began by replying, “our children are 85 percent unemployed. 85 percent!” (Long 1988b: 223–31). This exchange highlighted just how dramatically disconnected belonging in the sense of the identification with France and social integration in the sense of active participation in French society, including through employment, could be. As the harkis’ history showed, one could fully belong in terms of the sort of identification entailed by the Belief model, yet simultaneously be clearly excluded in terms of a society-­centered Contract understanding of membership. The Commission’s repeated invocations of a positive vision of public education symbolically counterbalanced such evidence, highlighting an apparent common denominator shared by the Belief, Culture, and Contract views of political membership. Emphasizing the schools’ role in integration allowed the Commission to appeal to the promise—­often disconfirmed in practice by rampant unemployment among French youth25—­that those who mastered the French language, learned French values, and came to identify with the Republic would get jobs, and therefore become not only legitimate holders of French national identity cards, but also active members of French society in a sociological sense. The schools played a vital role in rhetorically undergirding the centrist, neo-­republican model based on a combination of Culture, Be-

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lief, and Contract perspectives on membership that the Commission upheld. Consequently, the school system was also called on to perform a singularly demanding practical task: generating a real causal link between the kind of integration emphasized by the Culture and Belief models and the kind of integration the society-­centered Contract model called to mind. Despite the unmistakably widespread faith in teachers and public schools at the time, their centrality in discussions of citizenship and integration was by no means inevitable. Indeed, the nation’s public schools had not enjoyed the same pride of place in the discourse of the “new citizenship” campaign, which combined appeals to Contract and Monetized Contract visions of membership. Nor had it figured so centrally in the original, more restrictive Nationality Code reform campaign with its combination of appeals to Descent, Culture, and Belief visions. The Nationality Commission’s efforts to generate a “republican” compromise uniting Belief and Contract model defenders while dissociating the Culture model from the Descent view gave idealized images of France’s public schools and their integrative role much greater prominence in discussions of political membership than they had enjoyed earlier.

School Policy as Neo-­Republicanism’s Achilles Heel Although the Commission most obviously and explicitly validated the Belief model, it ultimately advanced, as we have seen, a neo-­republican amalgam of Culture, Belief, and Contract perspectives. The understanding of political membership articulated and promoted by the Commission was, as Chapter 6 will show, important in shaping subsequent Nationality Code reform, not only in 1993 but again in 1997–1998. The lasting policy influence of the Commission work is one reason it has warranted close scrutiny here, but it is not the only reason. The work of the Nationality Commission and the symbolic logic of its widely publicized arguments also made later debates over the schools’ role in integration particularly problematic politically. Belief, Culture and Contract were, effectively, the perspectives on political membership that remained available and acceptable for the Commission once it had explicitly denounced both Descent and Monetized Contract perspectives in an effort to discredit both earlier more radical right reformers of nationality law and left-­ wing proponents of a new, post-­national citizenship. Appeals to the value and

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importance of public schools then played a key role in lending an appearance of unity to the resulting amalgam of the remaining three models, despite their potentially conflicting entailments. The public school system thus emerged as the symbolic crux of the new, broadly-­based, neo-­republican position the Commission staked out. Unfortunately, as Chapters 7–8 will show, for the same reasons that public education became the favored emblem of the neo-­republican alliance, educational issues were also its Achilles heel. Precisely because the schools were so symbolically crucial for this alliance, the alliance was severely strained and all manner of argumentative contortions were regularly needed to shore it up when practical questions about educational policies promoting immigrants’ integration in France inevitably arose. The new republican alliance promoted by the Commission was thus severely strained by practical questions about how exactly the schools were supposed to promote integration, a problem graphically and recurrently illustrated by the issue of French schools’ policies regarding Islamic headscarves.

Chapter 6

Nationality Law Reform in Comparative Perspective

In response to immigration, European ideas and practices of national citizenship have recently undergone important changes. The politics of belonging have become increasingly important in recent years not only in France but also in other powerful European immigration-­receiving states, including Germany and Britain. Although the years of heaviest immigrant labor recruitment ended in the early 1960s in Britain and in the 1970s in France and Germany, it was only after new recruitment had slowed that ethnically diverse migrant populations began to stabilize and settlement started to be regarded as permanent. Since then, there have been widespread related changes in citizenship and nationality policies. In direct response to immigration-­ related pressures, France, Britain, and Germany have each undergone important citizenship and nationality law reforms since 1980. These changes raise important new questions for comparativists about how the nature and causes of immigration’s impact on models of national citizenship can best be understood. Recent work on this problem has reflected the two dominant perspectives contrasted in Chapter 1: post-­nationalism and a national traditions view. The expectations of each of those views correspond in some respects but differ significantly in others from the actual recent history of citizenship and nationality reform in France, Britain and Germany. Thus, while each of the currently predominant perspectives successfully accounts for some aspects of recent developments in these countries, neither is wholly adequate. Consistent with the post-­nationalist view and contrary to what the national traditions perspective would lead one to expect, the overall pattern of change

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has been one of convergence. Nonetheless, important national differences do remain. Moreover, the post-­nationalist perspective cannot account for the nature of some of the actual similarities that have developed. An alternative synthetic approach that better captures the essence of recent developments, and is better grounded in a careful empirical examination of the substance of recent policy changes, is therefore needed. The shortcomings of both approaches underline the importance of supplementing them with greater attention to the role of shared causal assumptions and political and administrative objectives. These factors have played important roles in shaping recent legal changes in national citizenship policies in Europe, encouraging a partial convergence of historically disparate citizenship policies. Attention to the role of arguments and ideas in key recent controversies is therefore important not only for understanding what people say and mean, but also for understanding recent developments in formal legal models of citizenship.

Competing Views of Immigration’s Effect on Citizenship The national traditions and post-­national views of citizenship and immigration give rise to distinct expectations in regard to nationality law. From the post-­nationalist perspective stressing nationality’s increasing dissociation from citizenship and rights, it would follow that one should expect growing support for dissociating nationality from political as well as other rights. One should also see declining interest in nationality policies, as nationality itself is from this perspective becoming less relevant. Finally, as citizenship becomes less and less nationally rooted, one should see waning support for tying new members’ rights to citizenship to acquisition of a particular national culture. Assimilation should be of decreasing significance as a basis or precondition for citizenship status or the rights historically associated with it. From the national traditions perspective, by contrast, one would expect to see continuity in whether and how each country combines jus soli with jus sanguinis in allocating citizenship. At a minimum, from this perspective one would certainly expect “ethnocultural” criteria to remain most significant in countries where state-­building followed rather than preceded nation-­building. Comparing the case histories of recent citizenship and nationality law changes in Europe’s three most important immigration receiving societies with the expectations following from each of the currently predominant per-

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spectives on immigration and citizenship law suggests the need for a more synthetic approach. It also reveals the need for greater attention to political and ideational factors. Indeed, an important weakness of both the post-­ nationalist and the national traditions view is that neither takes such factors sufficiently into account.

Citizenship and Nationality Law Reform Since 1980 France

Let us begin by briefly summarizing the French story, this time emphasizing its legal dimension and concrete policy results. As we have seen, during the 1980s, questions of immigration and national identity became increasingly politicized in France. At the crux of these issues were concerns about how and whether immigrants and their descendents could be integrated into French politics and society. Perceptions that assimilation was no longer working, rising levels of antipathy toward “immigrants” generally and toward French residents of Maghrebian origin in particular, and increased voting for the far-­right National Front (FN) party in the 1983 local and 1984 European elections all appeared as causes for concern. As issues of immigration, citizenship, and national identity came to the fore politically, discussion of these issues became increasingly centered on France’s nationality laws, a body of legislation contained in the French Nationality Code. French law allowed for the transmission of national citizenship not only by descent (jus sanguinis) but also on the basis of birth on French territory (jus soli). Unlike jus soli in the United States, however, the French version granted citizenship at birth only to children born in France to at least one French-­born parent (Article 23). Those born in France to noncitizen parents who were not French-­born also had a right to French citizenship, but acquired it “automatically” only at the age of majority, provided they were then still residing in France and did not officially decline it (Article 44).1 Beginning in 1984–1985, proposals to change that policy in favor of a more restrictive approach were advanced by New Right intellectuals, the National Front, and France’s center-­right political parties. A series of proposals to reform the law were advanced from the political right between 1984 and 1986.2 Advocates of nationality law reform played on public fears that “automatically” granting French citizenship to immigrants, and especially Maghre-

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bian youth who were not assimilating and did not really consider themselves French, was devaluing French nationality and threatened the long-­term preservation of French national identity.3 Restrictive reform proposals thereby soon gained wide support, and a center-­right coalition government committed to such a reform was elected in March 1986. As the reform advanced, political groups on the left took a more active interest in the issue, successfully recasting it as one of inclusion versus exclusion. Recasting the issue in this way succeeded in mobilizing mass demonstrations against the government’s reform project. With an election approaching, the government soon found itself caught between those still demanding very restrictive revisions of the code and those opposing them. The prime minister, Jacques Chirac, decided to slow the reform process down, delaying consideration of a new bill until after the legislative elections and trying to build a stronger public consensus around it before proceeding. In 1987, Chirac therefore appointed a special commission of experts, from both sides of the political spectrum, to investigate French nationality law and make recommendations. The most important proposal then being considered was making the acquisition of French citizenship by French-­born children of foreign parents conditional upon their actively requesting it, rather than granting it to all but those who actively declined it. This change was already considerably less restrictive than earlier reform proposals, some of which had sought to abolish jus soli altogether. However, the reform had by then become a very highly charged issue. To many, French national identity itself seemed to be at stake. The recommendations of the Nationality Commission were widely applauded in the French press, and closely followed when the nationality law was changed in 1993, with passage of the loi Méhaignerie (Wayland 1993). The Commission defended an understanding of being French as a matter of choice rather than birth (Long 1988b). In that sense, its recommendations marked what Brubaker has characterized as a retreat “from exclusion to inclusion” (1992: 155–59). Ultimately, however, the Nationality Commission aimed to discredit not only the idea that becoming French depended on ancestry, but also appeals of more left-­identified parties and groups, including human rights and immigrant worker solidarity associations. The latter had advocated a new understanding of citizenship breaking the connection between nationality and “citizenship,” in the sense of political rights and participation. Among its supporters, whose campaigns to extend local voting rights to foreigners had been

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gaining ground in the early 1980s, this was referred to as the idea of “new citizenship” (nouvelle citoyenneté). The Commission distanced itself from this view, criticizing excessive confidence in “automatic social and cultural processes.” According to the Commission, promoting visions of social order as the spontaneous creation of an increasingly local and/or transnational civil society, economy, and culture—­as advocates of the new citizenship campaign then were enthusiastically doing—­was dangerous. Promoting such ideas threatened to confirm popular fears that immigration was linked to the decline of national identity, thereby fueling popular support for the far right (Long 1988b: 86).4 The Commission report and the reform it inspired thus marked an effort to bury the ideas of both the far-­right and the “new citizenship” left. In contrast to both, the Commission sought to reassure the French public that immigrants becoming citizens could be expected to identify nationally with France. Nationality was to be understood in civic terms, but the dissociation of citizenship from nationality was rejected. Contrary to what the post-­national view of current developments in citizenship would lead one to expect, the campaign for local voting rights for foreigners progressively lost momentum in 1980s France. Supporters were initially encouraged by international trends. Comparable initiatives had already succeeded in Sweden and the Netherlands. Also fueling hopes of a progressive international trend in this direction, the European Parliament in spring 1985 recommended that migrants be granted voting rights in their countries of residence (Hammar 1990: 171–76; Wihtol de Wenden 1986: 29).5 The Commission, however, openly attacked the movement for extending local voting rights, which also faced constitutional obstacles. Given political opposition to the movement, these obstacles proved insurmountable, and—­as seen in Chapters 3 and 4—­the issue was progressively abandoned. Ultimately, the Nationality Commission recommended retaining jus soli, but changing its mode of application to second-­generation immigrants. Their acquisition of French nationality was made to depend more on demonstrated choice. Instead of receiving French citizenship automatically at age eighteen, the 1993 law required that nationality be actively requested between ages sixteen and twenty-­one. To qualify, those requesting citizenship had to show they had been in France for the previous five consecutive years.6 According to Feldblum (1999), the law’s main provisions thus reflected “the new nationalist consensus over citizenship priorities” established during the late 1980s (151), thus apparently confirming the predictions of the national traditions perspective.

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However, the law’s main changes proved surprisingly short-­lived. When the Socialists returned to power in 1997, the new prime minister, Lionel Jospin, quickly moved to prepare the groundwork for a new reform by again soliciting expert advice, appointing sociologist and historian Patrick Weil to recommend revisions to the nationality and immigration laws. In a report encouraging reform, Weil highlighted the results of the 1993 Mehaignerie law’s implementation. Studies showed that most eligible youth were requesting French citizenship, often as early as possible,7 not boycotting the new procedure as many had predicted (Weil 1997: 26). In fact, acquisitions of French nationality under Article 44 and naturalizations rose 21 percent in 1994 (Feldblum 1999: 151), partly reflecting a new interest in French citizenship on the part of eligible foreigners in the wake of the highly publicized reform efforts. However, studies also discovered a number of problems of information and administration of the new procedures. Not all eligible youth were duly informed of the law, and there were problematic inequalities in the rates at which French nationality was being acquired in different districts. Different standards for proving residency during the five preceding years were also being applied in different areas (Weil 1997: 26–29). In view of these findings, Weil’s report raised concerns about how the law was working in practice, and particularly about the capacity of ill-­ coordinated local administrations to execute it fairly and equitably. Some continuities between the two reforms were nonetheless apparent. The idea behind the 1993 reform that it was desirable to allow individuals to choose their nationality was accepted, and the French tradition of jus soli tempered by residency requirements ensuring that those receiving French citizenship were French-­raised as well as French-­born was strongly affirmed. Weil’s report was also consistent in some ways with the political strategy of the 1987–88 Nationality Commission. Contrary to what one would expect from the post-­nationalist perspective, both sought to reassure the public that immigrants becoming citizens did want to be French and were assimilating. However, in light of the new research Weil cited, an elective mode of acquiring citizenship was no longer considered essential to demonstrating these claims. An extensive new study of assimilation was shown to have found that immigrants of non-­European backgrounds were not assimilating less readily than had those from other European countries. Nor did it confirm widespread assertions that the public school system no longer ensured integration as well as it had for previous generations (Tribalat 1995; Weil 1997: 24). The importance of cultural assimilation was thus reaffirmed, but the public was now reassured that it was already working.

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Like the Nationality Commission, Weil therefore ultimately proposed to retain the basic principle of jus soli but again to modify its mode of application, this time in view of pragmatic administrative concerns regarding equality of access to citizenship. Trying to combine the best of France’s previous approaches, Weil’s report proposed that youth continue to be allowed to claim French citizenship beginning at age sixteen. However, if they failed to do so, then, as prior to 1993, French nationality was simply to be assigned to them at eighteen, unless they declined it.8 These recommendations were incorporated in a new reform of the nationality code, the loi Guigou. Weil’s recommendations soon met with reservations and criticisms from ���������������������������������� the Haut Conseil à l’Intégraall parties (Le Monde, 23 August 1997). Even tion was divided (Le Monde, 6, 16 October 1997). Recalling the strategy used against nouvelle citoyenneté advocates a decade earlier, Dominique Schnapper, a member of the 1987 Commission, warned that reopening the issue risked playing to the far right (Le Monde, 1 August 1997). For its part, the FN still hoped to abolish jus soli altogether, and announced its intention to use the reopening of debate on nationality law to try, using its one representative, to accomplish this through the amendment process (Le Monde, 26 November 1997). Many Gaullist and center-­right Union for French Democracy (UDF) leaders preferred the 1993 law (Le Monde, 19 November 1997). Even on the left, there was widespread disappointment with the proposal. Some wished to restore parents’ rights to claim French citizenship for their children as soon as they were born. Others wanted to see French citizenship simply assigned to all children at birth, or to all whose parents had been in France a combined total of five years (Le Monde, 14 November 1997). At the same time in 1997, a large-­scale regularization of illegal immigrants demanding amnesty (sans papiers) was also taking place.9 Some feared that extending citizenship too readily to newborns would make it too easy for illegal immigrants to become parents of French children, a status many were then using as their main basis for demanding papers and resisting deportation (Politiques, 8 November 1997).10 Concerns about immigration control thus set limits to the liberalization of nationality law. Ultimately, the new reform was passed only after two days and nights of heated debate in an unusually packed legislature, and against opposition leaders’ attempts to derail the reform by demanding a national referendum (Le Monde, 28 November, 1 December 1997). Heated though the 1997–1998 debates over nationality law were, the terms of the debate had actually narrowed considerably since 1985–1988.

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Tellingly, when FN deputy Jean-­Marie Le Chevallier tried to amend the loi Guigou to eliminate jus soli altogether in 1997, he found no support. Granting citizenship through descent or naturalization only was an idea that had attracted significant interest from France’s mainstream right parties and many citizens prior to the work of the Nationality Commission in 1987–1988. Yet in 1997, Le Chevallier was unable to garner any supporting votes for such an amendment (Le Monde, 1 December 1997), which was unanimously rejected by spokespersons for all of the other parties as contrary to French tradition. Their reaction was also approved by France’s leading liberal-­conservative newspaper, Le Figaro (30 November 1997). Between 1987 and 1997, proposals for celebration of a solemn “civic oath” by those acquiring citizenship were also progressively abandoned. The idea of “pure” jus soli was much less discredited, but also fell far short of garnering a majority of supporters, even within the PS, thus leaving PCF and Green deputies too isolated to realistically hope to achieve reform along those lines. By the 1990s, the common premise of French national parliamentary debate had become acceptance of a form of jus soli, but one tempered so as to acknowledge the individual’s wish (volonté)—­in turn seen as inexorably shaped by education and socialization—­as the real basis of “French-­ness.” And really being “French” in that sense was firmly accepted as a legitimate expectation of those becoming citizens. Like rejection of jus soli, the “new citizenship” logic dissociating political rights from national culture had thus been completely marginalized by the time of the 1997–98 reform. The modified version of jus soli was also seen as less apt to leave France open to unwanted immigrants demanding amnesty. While still as heated as ever, the debate was increasingly limited to finding the most suitable legal means for applying the idea of a tempered jus soli. The basic underlying problem appeared, by 1997, as one of how, technically, to reconcile respect for several partly contradictory aims and ideas: the idea of a right to individual national self-­determination; the primacy of education in determining national identity; controlling immigration; and legal equity and inclusion. Gaining acceptance for the causal claim that French education could be counted on reliably to produce active personal identification with France and desire for French nationality played a crucial role in squaring that circle. As long as failures to request French citizenship could be attributed to ignorance of the law or local administrative inadequacies rather than conscious rejection of French nationality, one could unilaterally equalize the legal status of all those born and raised in France without appearing to

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compromise anyone’s volonté. To counter objections against making people French “without their wanting or knowing it,” a line of argument successfully popularized by the far right in the 1980s and widely echoed in public discussions of the loi Guigou, second-­generation immigrants were also allowed to decline French nationality if they wished.

Germany

Germany’s law on citizenship dates back to 1913. By that time, many ethnically non-­German residents of territories conquered by Bismarck in the 1860s were already legally categorized as Germans, and the 1913 law did not change their status. The 1913 law therefore did not define German citizenship on an exclusively ethnic basis. However, in contrast to citizenship law in France, it did not allow for jus soli; German citizenship was transmitted automatically only by jus sanguinis (Sollors 2005; Gosewinkel 2008: 7–8). Consistent with the expectations of the national traditions view, despite repeated revisions, the primacy of descent in determining citizenship remained untouched until the 1990s. Together with long residency requirements and formal rejection of dual nationality, Germany’s descent-­based approach to nationality contributed to very low rates of naturalization. By the end of 1999, there were 7.3 million foreigners, including 2 million Turks, living in Germany. Most Turkish residents had been in Germany for at least eighteen years. Yet a mere 125,000 Turks had naturalized between 1990 and 1996 (Sen 2002: 30; Le Monde, 16 October 1998), and only an estimated 160,000 were German citizens as of the end of 1998 (Financial Times, 28 December 1998). The assumptions and conditions upholding Germany’s traditional approach to national citizenship have changed rapidly since the 1980s, however. It is increasingly recognized that intended “guest” workers have in fact settled permanently in Germany. Following reunification, the old political rationale for upholding the 1913 law as a statement of the FRG’s claim to be the sole legitimate “German” state was also removed (Klusmeyer 2000: 17). With Germany involuntarily divided into two states after World War II, the FRG still claimed to be the state of all Germans, as defined prior to partition. Modifying the 1913 law in favor of a more liberal policy adopted by, and proper to, the FRG alone risked undermining that claim. Freed of the symbolic, political role that had previously ruled out substantial reform, German nationality policy was liberalized with remarkable rapidity after 1990 (Hogwood 2000:

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125–30). This suggests that Brubaker’s (1992) national traditions emphasis on deep-­seated historical understandings of nationhood failed correctly to identify the most politically decisive obstacle to liberalization. As in France and as the post-­national thesis would lead one to expect, initiatives for political incorporation of immigrants in Germany during the 1980s initially focused on efforts to extend local voting rights to foreigners. At first, as post-­nationalists would have expected, these efforts achieved some success. Municipal voting rights were granted to all foreign residents in Hamburg and to those from select countries in Schleswig-­Holstein in 1989. Soon, however, this strategy for extending more equal political rights to non-­Germans ran into constitutional obstacles similar to those that blocked comparable initiatives in France. The Federal Constitutional Court ruled unanimously against the law in Schleswig-­Holstein in October 1991 on grounds that the Constitution reserved political power to the Staatsvolk, which the Court interpreted as excluding residents who were not German citizens. A constitutional change circumventing this obstacle was passed in December 1992. It allowed local voting rights for citizens of other EU member states, thus permitting enactment of provisions of the Maastricht Treaty on European Union. The limited scope of this constitutional change, however, only underlined the political impossibility of extending voting rights to non-­EU nationals, most notably Germany’s two largest foreign resident populations: Turks and former Yugoslavians (Götz 1995: 118–19). As in France, these early, failed efforts to equalize political rights within the resident population by enfranchising foreigners soon gave way to a new emphasis on nationality law. Proposals to make German nationality more inclusive had already been made by Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SDP), Greens, and liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) during the 1980s, but change was effectively blocked until reunification (Green 2000: 110–11; Hogwood 2000: 125–30). Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court’s rejection of local voting rights for foreigners a year later effectively eliminated the main policy alternative for those interested in bringing the state in line with norms of democratic legitimacy by equalizing political rights within the population. Together with new immigration pressures resulting from Germany’s exceptional openness to “ethnic Germans” who began arriving in large numbers from the east, this conjunction made the 1990s a decade of rapid policy change. A new nationality law would not be passed in Germany until 2000, but naturalization policies were eased sooner through changes in the Foreigner

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Law and administrative practices. The general trend in naturalization policy during the 1990s was one of declining state discretion. Previously prohibitive fees for naturalization were also drastically lowered. Most important, administrative exceptions to prohibitions on dual citizenship were introduced (Green 2000: 110–11; Joppke 1999a: 648 n 17). The “Asylum Compromise” of December 1992 further reduced the state’s discretion in granting naturalization requests. At the same time, the assimilation requirement for naturalization was eliminated as such. This was not because assimilation was no longer expected from those becoming German citizens, however. Rather, as Joppke (1999a) explains, assimilation was thereafter “simply deduced from an applicant’s length of residence” rather than “examined, case by case, in terms of . . . economic situation, cultural orientation and crime record” (638). Meanwhile, although dual nationality continued to be formally prohibited, it came to be widely accepted in informal administrative practice, as officials became more generous in granting exceptions. Responding to lobbying by Turks in Germany, Turkish officials also devised new ways of helping their citizens circumvent the prohibition on dual citizenship when they naturalized in Germany, for instance by returning “surrendered” Turkish passports once the German naturalization process was completed. Naturalizations of Turkish residents in Germany subsequently increased almost three-­fold between 1993 and 1995 (Joppke 1999a: 638–39). Soon, there were also signs of retreat from Germany’s previous commitment to admitting all ethnic Germans and accepting them as citizens. This policy dated from the end of World War II, when the FRG wished to demonstrate its commitment to readmitting German refugees. The policy produced unintended consequences following the end of the Cold War, when Germany found itself bound to admit an unprecedented tide of ethnic German immigrants from Eastern Europe. In 1993, legislation was passed to eventually reduce immigration rights for ethnic Germans (Aussiedler); the status is no longer recognized for those born after 30 June 1993 (Green 2000: 110). From the mid–1990s, there were also repeated, failed attempts to change the existing nationality law. Finally, in October 1998 a new SDP-­Green coalition government committed to reform was elected. The new government’s original plan was to introduce jus soli and ease naturalization by permitting dual citizenship and reducing residency requirements. For the first time, the German government also attempted to publicize naturalization opportunities. The initial reform proposal also introduced “double jus soli,” a principle

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already well established in France. It thus extended German nationality automatically to third-­generation immigrants born in the country. Interpreting the notion “third-­generation immigrant” somewhat more liberally than French law while following the same basic principle, the government proposed granting German citizenship to those with a parent who had been in Germany since childhood (Green 2000: 112; Le Monde, 16 October 1998). Popular opinion was hardly overwhelmingly favorable to this proposal. Although Germany’s more respectable newspapers were supportive of reform, the popular daily paper Bild Zeitung ran an article entitled “900,000 Turks Soon to Be German?” with the somewhat ironic message (in Turkish): “Welcome new compatriots!” (Le Monde, 16 October 1998). In the following months, a CSU-­initiated signature campaign against dual nationality also attested to popular opposition, as did a survey released in December 1998 showing 57 percent opposed dual nationality, which the proposed reform permitted. By January 1999, a new survey, conducted for a major German public television network, showed 63 percent were against dual nationality and only 23 percent in favor (Agence France Presse, 22 January 1999). The new government’s leaders, however, were clearly concerned about bringing German policy more into step with the times. Leaders first sought to address internal German problems that were becoming increasingly apparent. Many felt that other forms of integration were not working. Moreover, to many, the existing law’s perpetuation of a lasting minority population of artificial “foreigners” within Germany was intolerable, especially as it became clear that many “guest” workers and their descendents had settled in Germany and that many young “foreigners” knew no other country. Leaders were also, in part, driven by concern for improving Germany’s international image. Some heralded the new SDP-­Green coalition victory as the coming to power of the “generation of 1968,” considered always to have been unusually “sensitive to international opinion” and critical of the state and national identity (Cahn 2000: 120–22). As the new coalition was doubtless aware, images of Germany had played a key role in France’s debates about its nationality law in the 1980s and 1990s. In the often unfair and overly simplistic invidious comparisons frequently drawn in support of French policies, Germany regularly stood for a reactionary, exclusive tradition of citizenship by descent that France proudly congratulated itself on rejecting (Guiraudon 1996; Favell 1998: 61).11 Pursuing the nationality law reforms it favored presented the new government with clearly welcome opportunities to improve Germany’s image

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abroad. Defending the new reform proposal, Interior Minister Otto Schily (SDP) said: “We will bring our laws up to a modern level that corresponds with the rest of Europe. It is a truly historical step and will show Germany is a tolerant society open to the world (Roundup, BC Cycle, 14 January 1999).” Stressing that Germany’s failure to incorporate jus soli in its nationality law was out of step with European norms, Gerhard Schröder also expressed approval of the reform, saying, “A citizenship law based on bloodlines is not sufficient for the European dimension and for a globalised world. We are addressing a modernity deficit” (Roundup, BC Cycle, 14 January 1999). Echoing the French emphasis on republican institutions as the true basis for citizenship, an idea long defended in Germany by political theorist Jürgen Habermas but often presented by French intellectuals as antithetical to the more “ethnic” “German model,” Schröder said all new citizens would have to accept Germany’s democratic constitution. One could argue that stressing the value of one’s preferred policies for bolstering European integration has long been a perennial trope in German politics, one not particular to, and not responsible for motivating, German nationality reform. However, it is strikingly clear that, where nationality law was concerned, proponents of more inclusive reform claimed the pro-­European high ground. The pro-­integration argument therefore was not simply a convenient cover used in favor of any preferred policy; concern about fostering European integration bolstered support for nationality law reform in Germany. In response, the German center-­right argued that dual citizenship was “a dangerous move threatening the social peace” (Cahn 2000: 122). The CSU in 1999 launched a petition campaign against it (Agence France Presse, 22 January 1999). More consequentially, public opposition was also reflected in election results, costing the government its majority in the Bundesrat when the CDU successfully campaigned against the nationality reform in Hesse, normally an SDP stronghold (Agence France Presse, 20 May 1999). Loss of that election made compromise with the CDU/CSU essential to passing the reform, and the bill was therefore amended to gain CDU/CSU support. The final version, successfully passed in May 1999 and effective 1 January 2000, was more restrictive than the original bill regarding dual nationality, but still marked a dramatic liberalization of German policy. Under the new rules, children born in Germany with at least one parent legally resident in Germany for eight years or more and holding a residency permit reflecting their length of stay12 receive German nationality at birth and can hold two passports until age twenty-­three. Between eighteen and twenty-­three, one

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nationality must be chosen; otherwise German citizenship is forfeited. Under the new rules, German nationality could be assigned to as many as 100,000 children of foreign parents per year, though reaching that figure would require more long-­term residents to get the required types of permits (Agence France Presse, 20 December 1999).13 Some 700,000 children under age ten were also expected to be covered retroactively by the new provisions. The new law also reduced the residency requirement for “as of right” (nondiscretionary) naturalizations to eight years, bringing Germany’s residency requirements more in line with those of other European countries. At the same time, however, applicants were required to declare loyalty to the principles of the Basic Law, and to demonstrate command of the German language (Green 2000: 113–14). Thus, as in France, moves to end long-­term inequities of political rights through inclusionary nationality policies were counterbalanced by measures to reassure voters that the new citizens were assimilating, and politically loyal. In Germany, these countermeasures focused more on respect for the constitution than on national identification per se. But, as in France, rejection of directly descent-­based exclusion from nationality in favor of equalizing the rights of all long-­term residents came together with embracing stronger cultural and political criteria for membership. Finally, the new law eliminated the requirement that ethnic Germans formally apply for naturalization, effectively streamlining administrative procedures and freeing up administrative capacity for naturalizing other applicants (Green 2000: 115–18). As the post-­nationalist perspective would lead one to expect, the trend in policy in Germany was thus inclusionary; however, for political reasons, this inclusion was not directly associated with declining regard for national level political loyalty, or even for shared national culture as a basis for claiming political membership and the rights associated with it. While simple, primordialist assumptions of a necessary and direct connection between culture and ethnic descent do seem to have lost some of their former credence in Germany, it is probably still too soon to tell whether this change will also spell of the end of the ideal of a culturally unified nation. Indeed, there may even be a trend in the other direction. Some close to the CDU/CSU have recently promoted the controversial idea of Germany’s need for a Leitkultur, a leading or “guiding culture.” Meanwhile, even Greens have tempered their defense of multiculturalism since the 1980s, calling on immigrants to master the German language. Such calls mark more than simple acceptance of the status quo. Germany has since 1990 admitted many Jewish refugees from the

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former Soviet Union who do not speak German, and it has for many years also admitted non-­German-­speaking Auslandsdeutsche. Demands that immigrants and naturalizing citizens learn German and promotion of Leitkultur mark public calls for bolstering German cultural unity. Contrary to what the post-­nationalist thesis would posit, the importance of national culture as a basis for citizenship does not appear to be on the wane in Germany.

Britain

Britain’s adoption of a new citizenship law in response to immigration came several years earlier than revisions of the laws on national citizenship in France and Germany. It also followed a somewhat different logic. Historically, citizenship and nationality played less of a role in establishing social closure in the UK than on the continent. In fact, the legal status of “British citizen” was only introduced in 1981, and it does not carry the same symbolic weight as the status of French or German citizenship. As Dummett observes: “The first thing to say about British citizenship is that there is really no such thing—­ not, at least, as citizenship is understood in other countries.” Even the right to vote in national elections in Britain does not depend upon British citizenship (1994: 75–80);14 an Irish or Canadian resident of the UK could also register and participate in local, European, and even British national elections. This is not because Britain is more advanced than its continental counterparts and has overcome nationalism in favor of post-­nationalism, as a linear view of progression from one to the other would lead one to expect. Rather, Britain never fully experienced “nation-­building” in the continental sense to begin with. Britain’s system of citizenship and nationality has, instead, been profoundly marked by the experience of empire-­building. The impetus for the most recent change in nationality law in Britain was to correct for the undesired immigration effects of this somewhat archaic system. Historically, British political membership was peculiar in several regards. Under the British nationality law of 1914, “the importance that a specific territory—­the British Isles—­was later to assume in nationality legislation was conspicuously absent” (Rich 1986: 91). As Rich continues, “Until the British Nationality Act of 1948, there was a common set of assumptions regarding nationality throughout the British empire. . . . [A]ll who came under the crown’s power were British subjects” (91). As Dummett (1986: 144) explains: “British Subjecthood served, in practice, as a nationality, since a subject could

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apply for a British passport and seek diplomatic or consular protection from the British Government, but, as a status, it did not have the same rights attached to it as nationality, or citizenship, in many other states.” Another peculiarity of the British model was the idea of political membership as a matter not of membership in a political community but of personal allegiance to a ruler. As Shadow Home Secretary Sir Maxwell Fyfe put it in opposing legal replacement of “subject” by “citizen” status in 1948, “I put this fundamental point to the Right Honourable Gentlemen and I make no apology for its stark and naked character: to a great number of the people in our colonies, especially our African colonies, the allegiance is not to a political system; it is to the King in person” (House of Commons, 7 July 1948, quoted in Foot 1969: 18). Nor was British subjecthood the only form of British nationality so far as other states were concerned. Dummett (1986) notes, “the status of British Protected Person was, in international law, indistinguishable from that of Subject” (144). Immigration rights under this system were intended to emphasize the value of imperial membership (Rich 1986, 93; cf. Dummett 1986: 143).15 The 1948 Nationality Act created two new categories that replaced “British subject”: “Citizen of an Independent Commonwealth Country,” and “Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies,” both Commonwealth citizens. “British subject” was thereafter a secondary status of both categories of citizens, yet it was to the status of “British subject” that all rights were still attached. As British subjects, citizens of Commonwealth countries remained free to immigrate to Britain, despite their foreign passports. Meanwhile, “citizens of the UK and Colonies” continued to hold British passports (Dummett 1986: 144; 1994: 77). This policy facilitated a new wave of non-­white New Commonwealth immigration to Britain in the late 1940s and 1950s; remarkably, until the 1960s, some 600 million residents of the Empire enjoyed unrestricted rights to move to the metropole (Hansen 2001: 76; 2002). In reaction to early signs of a popular backlash against non-­white immigrants and pro-­immigration political leaders, immigration was first restricted by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which restricted immigration from British colonies and the new Commonwealth (Dummett 1994: 78; Rich 1986: 115). It therefore divided those subject to immigration control and those free of it along racial lines rather than along lines of legal status (Joppke 1999a: 100–101). “Citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies,” remember, was then still a single “national” legal status; yet the immigration rights of such citizens differed depending on where their passports were issued (Han-

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sen 2001). The imperial enthusiasm of the 1950s, and related commitments to promoting colonial welfare by accommodating immigrants in Britain, were on the wane (Rich 1986: 9–10), and the acute labor shortage of the immediate postwar years was past. Even the Labour party had officially accepted the social and economic need for immigration restriction by 1965 (110). In 1968, a new immigration control act was rushed through Parliament, this time to prevent immigration to the UK by United Kingdom and Colonies citizens of Asian descent who were being forced out of Kenya; the measure left them effectively stateless (Dummett 1994: 78). Immigration rights to enter the UK were increasingly being dissociated from legal citizenship status; in practice, rights to entry increasingly turned on ancestry and ethnic origin.16 Unable to define clear boundaries in terms of legal citizenship, Britain was increasingly doing so along ethnic lines instead (Joppke 1999a: 101). A new Immigration Control Act in 1971 again restricted immigration to the metropole, this time on the basis of country of origin and “patriality,” or descent from ancestors originating in the British Isles. The law was therefore criticized for instituting a racial definition of British nationality (e.g., Rich 1986: 208). The 1981 British Nationality Act corrected this problem in a surprising way: it translated these differences in immigration rights into newly established differences of national or citizenship status. A new category, “British citizens,” was created and included only those who then enjoyed free rights of entry (Dummett 1986: 145; 1994: 76). The 1981 law therefore effectively created a new legal status that turned differences of immigration rights adopted in response to racist backlash against non-­white immigrants into a national difference. Although national statuses were not assigned directly on a racial basis, some 54 of the total 57 million “British citizens” were white; more than 95 percent of British nationals in the four other legal categories established by the law were non-­white (1986: 146). Whereas other countries have enacted immigration laws to limit the immigration of non-­nationals, Britain used immigration restrictions as the basis for redefining national citizenship (145). This enabled the British government to stop Commonwealth immigration without opening itself to criticisms of racial discrimination. Thereafter, the basis of differences in immigration rights was difference of citizenship status. Limiting immigration along national lines was more acceptable under international law. Layton-­Henry explains: “Discrimination by sovereign states in favour of their own citizens was an internationally accepted principle which would absolve the government from accusations of operating racist immigration laws” (1986: 79). By contrast, according to a legal advisor in the of-

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fice of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Britain’s earlier reliance on “patriality” rules for distinguishing among citizens was more open to criticism as unfairly discriminatory (Goodwyn-­Gill 1986: 3–33). As in Germany, nationality law changes in Britain thus partly helped to improve the country’s international image. Under the 1981 law, spouses of British citizens were also required to apply for naturalization, rather than receiving it automatically. Naturalization required “good character,” three years residence through marriage, and “sufficient knowledge of English.” There was no requirement of knowledge of British culture or the constitution, perhaps because Britain has no formal written constitution and is often understood as encompassing several different national cultures (Messina 1989: 134–35; Dummett 1994: 79–82; Crick 1995).17 Here again, efforts to restrict unwanted immigration helped to reshape British nationality law, much as it contributed to Germany’s retreat from full recognition of “ethnic” Germans after 1990, and to France’s reluctance to adopt simple jus soli in the context of the sans papiers crisis. Nationality law revision, in all three cases, has been partly shaped by concerns about immigration control. In Britain, because of the country’s unusual legal starting point, such considerations have been especially consequential. Britain’s changing definitions of national citizenship were by no means accompanied by declining interest in this status. In fact, the new law provoked a rush on the part of existing foreign residents to naturalize before the new law went into effect. Between 1982 and 1983, some 95,897 applications were received, even despite a significant fee increase in 1975 (Layton-­Henry 1986: 96). This spike in applications shows that foreigners in Britain were actively concerned about being able to become citizens. Contrary to post-­nationalist expectations, national citizenship was not losing its attraction.

Reevaluation of Current Perspectives on Citizenship Change The changes that have taken place in France, Germany, and Britain since 1980 point to problems with each of the two current main views of how citizenship is changing. On the whole, the post-­nationalist view fares somewhat worse than the national traditions perspective. Ultimately, however, neither view has proved fully adequate. Post-­national expectations have generally not been borne out by the evi-

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dence from these three cases. Interest in nationality law reform in these cases has run very high, both among politicians and at the popular level. Moreover, the relationship of legal citizenship to political rights has, in both France and Germany, been reaffirmed and strengthened, not eroded, in recent years. True, the Maastricht Treaty on European Union did create “citizens of the European Union” and extend voting rights in member countries to other member country nationals. But this marked a limited, multilateral agreement of EU member states to extend political rights to one another’s national citizens rather than a displacement of the relevance of national citizenship in favor of “personhood” or mere legal residency as the legitimate basis for political rights. In France, the limited constitutional revisions to allow Maastricht’s implementation marked the political defeat of earlier demands for extending local voting rights to all established foreign residents. In Germany, similarly, efforts to extend voting rights to non-­citizens failed in the early 1990s because of constitutional restrictions. In fact, in both countries, it was in part precisely the failure of efforts to extend political rights to non-­citizens that lent political urgency to issues of nationality law change. The story in France and Germany, in this regard, corresponded to a more general European stalling of an earlier apparent trend ­toward extending voting rights to non-­citizen residents (Hammar 1990: 171–80): the opposite of what the post-­nationalist perspective predicts. The UK might at first appear better to vindicate the post-­nationalist view in this respect. There, national citizenship and voting rights are less closely connected. Not only EU nationals but also citizens of the Commonwealth and Ireland resident in the UK enjoy rights to vote in local, national, and European elections (Dummett 1994). However, this is not a new development, and it is clearly not due to any recent “post-­national” transcendence of traditional national practices. Instead, a full-­blown continental-­style model of “national citizenship” never fully took hold in the UK to begin with (Dummett 1994; Joppke 1999a,b). If anything, the creation of the category of “British citizen” for the first time in 1981 suggests that such a national model may now be not so much declining as starting to emerge. Recent developments at first seem better to confirm post-­nationalist expectations that national culture’s importance for citizenship should be in decline. In support of post-­national predications of national culture’s declining significance for citizenship and rights claims, one could note that cultural assimilation as such was eliminated as a requirement for naturalization as part of the German asylum compromise in 1992. Indeed, Joppke takes this to mean that “membership in Germany is not any more premised on being a

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part of the ethnocultural nation” (1999a: 638). On closer examination, however, changes in citizenship and nationality law since 1980 prove not to be captured very well by the post-­nationalist perspective in that regard either. Other relevant aspects of the German story, for instance, do not so clearly confirm that perspective. As Joppke himself notes, the rationale for eliminating assimilation as a naturalization requirement was not that assimilation was no longer expected as part of becoming German. Rather, policymakers decided that assimilation could simply be inferred from length of residency, eliminating the need for more direct investigation. This change could therefore be seen not so much as marking a relaxation of traditional assimilationist expectations of national culture as a basis or precondition for citizenship as reflecting growing confidence that extended residency in Germany had inexorably assimilationist effects. In that respect, Germany in fact followed much the same course as France. There, the 1997 Weil report, on which the 1998 Guigou nationality law reform was based, argued explicitly that it was “assimilation” that made immigrants French. Following new research findings of Tribalat (1995), however, Weil maintained that, contrary to fears widely repeated in the 1980s, assimilation resulted reliably from socialization in France. Five years of French schooling was therefore recommended as the main criterion for attributing French citizenship to “second-­generation” immigrants (1997). The German naturalization rule change followed much the same logic. In addition to being supported by research and observation, “operationalizing” assimilation as a straightforward function of length of residency also offered the practical advantage of being simpler to apply administratively. The idea of an international trend toward dissociating citizenship rights from shared national culture is also contradicted by other aspects of both the French and German cases. In Germany, implementing the new nationality law has involved adopting increasingly stringent tests of German language ability, including changes from oral to more demanding written language competency requirements in some Länder (Agence France Presse, 6 January 2000). In France, meanwhile, rejection of the far right’s ethnoprimordialist conception of French nationality by the republican left and center-­right has marked the rejection of a descent-­based conception of being French, but certainly not an embrace of multiculturalism (Favell 1998; Feldblum 1999). In assessing whether growing dissociation of legal citizenship from ethnocultural understandings of political membership really fit the facts, it is essential to disaggregate the concept of “ethnocultural” into its respective

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“ethnic” and “cultural” components, and then to look critically at which is actually being rejected. Logically, if cultural conformity is rejected as a criterion for membership, then reliance on ethnicity (or descent) should decline also. After all, primordialists concerned about cultural conformity were only concerned about descent as a proxy for culture. If primordialist understandings of culture continue to prevail, but the necessity of cultural conformity within the citizenry is rejected, then reliance on descent should decline. However, one must also ask whether primordialist assumptions linking culture to descent still prevail. If so, then downplaying descent means downplaying cultural unity. But what if cultural conformity continues to be seen as important, while primordialist assumptions about its causes and origins are rejected? In that case, one would also expect to see a decline of descent criteria for citizenship, but that deline would then not reflect a corresponding rejection of shared culture as a basis for citizenship. Public justifications for eliminating assimilation rules in favor of mere residency criteria suggest that European understandings of the determinants of culture are, in fact, shifting from “nature” to “nurture,” even in Germany. Administrative requirements for nationality are being adjusted accordingly. Such a change in causal assumptions may have real, practical administrative benefits reducing the costs of reviewing applications and making administrative decisions about granting or denying citizenship easier to defend. Though declining reliance on descent as a condition for national citizenship at first appears partly to validate the post-­national perspective, then, that perspective ultimately fails to account for this aspect of recent developments. The national traditions view at first seems to fare somewhat better, but recent developments in nationality policy ultimately reveal its limitations as well. Above all, differences in national traditions help to account for some of the peculiarities in the prevailing terms of debate about national citizenship in each country, such as the ongoing preoccupation in French discussion with assuring individuals’ right and ability to determine their own nationality. Looking beyond terms of debate to actual policies, French and British developments at first appear to confirm the national traditions view. While those two countries have seen changes in the conditions and mode of application of jus soli, it has not been eliminated.18 In fact, support for the far-­right’s continued calls to abolish jus soli in France has declined precipitously since 1987 as the ideas underlying the jus soli role in French law have been more carefully articulated. The national traditions view can also account for some of the striking continued differences between both of these cases and Germany, and particularly for

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Germany’s stronger opposition to dual citizenship. One would expect greater German resistance to dual citizenship given the historical strength of “ethnocultural” understandings of nationhood in Germany.19 The national traditions view cannot account for some of the most important recent developments, particularly in Germany, however. In regard to dual citizenship, Germany’s distinctiveness seems to be softening. Most strikingly, Germany’s new citizenship law directly contradicts the national traditions perspective on citizenship law. In a dramatic rupture with the German tradition of attributing nationality solely on the basis of jus sanguinis, the new law introduced jus soli for the first time, bringing German policy much more in line with that of other Western immigration-­receiving states. The national traditions model cannot account for this major development. In the end, neither the post-­national nor the national traditions view appears wholly satisfactory. Some of their deficiencies might be corrected through a better synthesis of the two. However, ultimately, important new elements also need to be incorporated into comparative explanations of citizenship change.

Toward an Alternative Account of Changing Nationality Policies Although the evidence does reveal some important problems with each of the main existing theoretical perspectives, each contains some elements of truth. The national traditions view, especially, does not do too badly when it comes to explaining some of the continued differences among countries. What it is seemingly unable to account for is the apparent trend toward a reduction of the legal differences among the three countries over time. In that respect, the post-­national perspective, which foresees growing citizenship policy convergence, is partly right. The actual nature of the convergence, however, does not seem to be fully captured by the post-­nationalist perspective; the predictions of the post-­nationalist model either do not match the evidence, or square poorly with the reasoning behind recent reforms. At the same time, there are other areas of increasing convergence observable across the three cases that the post-­national perspective does not predict and cannot explain. Identifying these unrecognized areas of convergence not predicted or accounted for by existing theories of citizenship policy constitutes an important step toward developing a better account of current changes in European models of political membership.

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One of the areas in which convergence of countries’ rules has been most striking has been in their common turn toward modified versions of jus soli. In all three countries, eligibility for citizenship under jus soli rules depends not only on place of birth, but also on evidence of at least one parent already having established an ongoing connection to the country. In France, this has been the practice since 1889, and it has repeatedly been reaffirmed whenever challenged since the 1980s; in Britain and Germany similar approaches were more recently adopted. The other, less theoretically unexpected, aspect of this tendency is, of course, the turn away from exclusive reliance on jus sanguinis in attribution of nationality. While most evident in Germany, the same turn has also set increasingly clear limits to citizenship reform in France. Another unexpected area of convergence is in support for making national status a matter of express individual choice, at least where immigrants and their descendents are concerned. Public demand for laws respecting this principle emerged unmistakably during both the French and the German nationality law reform campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps due to its stronger monarchical and imperial legacy, Britain seems so far to have been unaffected by this tendency. Its existence is confirmed, however, by other European examples, particularly that of the Netherlands. Competing interpretations of what constituted a “choice” of nationality were, for instance, the focal point of Dutch arguments of the 1990s about whether to permit dual citizenship in case of naturalization (Van den Bedem 1994). In order to explain the recent changes in definitions of citizenship examined here, a synthetic perspective is needed combining a more flexible, nondeterministic version of the national traditions view with a revised account of the causes and nature of the partial convergence of citizenship policies taking place. Nationality laws are converging in important ways in response to immigration largely because shared political and administrative objectives increasingly shape nationality policymaking across cases. Shared objectives especially important in this regard have been restricting immigration, simplifying review of applications, upholding states’ domestic and international legitimacy as liberal democracies, and reassuring anxious publics that governments do expect “real ties” between new citizens and national societies. Politically, Western European governments are all increasingly under electoral pressures to limit new immigration, especially immigration of unskilled workers. In France and Germany, this objective has been pursued mainly through immigration law, but immigration control concerns have also fueled French resistance to simple jus soli in nationality law. In Britain,

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for historical reasons linked to its imperial legacy, the two problems were more directly linked and led to the passage of a new Nationality Law in 1981. The shared interest of states in rules improving administrative efficiency in the face of rising numbers of immigration-­related applications also favors convergence in citizenship laws, especially in a European context where policymakers can readily learn from one another’s innovations. Thus, both France and Germany have recently moved toward rules “operationalizing” assimilation or integration purely in terms of duration of residency, thus simplifying decisions. At the same time, different European immigration-­receiving states also face similar public demands for laws that valorize national citizenship by restricting it to those who have “real ties” to the national society. States have sought to meet such public pressures in several increasingly common ways: restricting jus soli to those born to parents who already have “real ties” to the country, calling upon new citizens to choose or “manifest their desire” for a particular nationality (sometimes to the exclusion of others), and, more simply, using length of residency and schooling within the country as proxy measures for assimilation and cultural attachment. The latter approach also makes criteria for accepting or rejecting requests more objective and defensible, thus also helping states meet liberal norms of legitimacy. Shared conceptions of and concerns about political legitimacy, grounded in shared understandings of liberal democracy and its relevance to the legitimacy of modern states, have also contributed significantly to the partial convergence of French, German, and British citizenship laws. It is widely thought that to be considered genuinely democratic a country’s citizenry or body of eligible voters should not differ too markedly from its permanent resident population. Great lasting disparities in this respect violate shared notions of popular sovereignty and consent of the governed. Once many European countries’ expectations of large-­scale return of immigrants to their countries of origin changed, there were only two logical ways of resolving the resulting legitimacy problem—­enfranchising foreign residents or facilitating their access to national citizenship (Bauböck 1994). In both France and Germany, constitutional obstacles blocked the former solution. Passing or maintaining relatively liberal jus soli rules then became a major issue, in which claims to democratic legitimacy were at stake. In Britain, of course, such considerations played less of a role; immigrant workers were overwhelmingly British subjects and thus never constituted a sizable body of disenfranchised aliens within the country (Hansen 2001). Immigration therefore never threatened Britain’s legitimacy as a democratic state.

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However, the “liberal” side of states’ legitimacy claims has also set limits to defensible citizenship and immigration policies, and these limits were particularly relevant to nationality law reform in the UK. The differences in immigration rights accorded to citizens of different origins established by British immigration policies of the 1960s and 1970s were, by liberal standards, an anomaly in need of rectification. The Nationality Act of 1981 corrected the anomaly, equalizing rights among those with the same citizenship by dividing British political membership into new subcategories while legally creating a status of “British citizenship” more like the territorially restricted citizenships existing elsewhere. Shared understandings of liberalism and democracy, and of their significance in modern states’ claims to political legitimacy, have thus contributed significantly to growing similarities in the citizenship policies of major European immigration-­receiving states, despite their very different historical traditions in this area.

Conclusion This chapter has examined one central aspect of immigration’s impact on national citizenship: immigration-­related changes in the citizenship and nationality laws that formally allocate full legal membership in different polities. Comparative examination of recent changes in French, German, and British policy reveals important limitations to each of the currently predominant perspectives on migration’s effects on citizenship: the post-­national view and the national traditions perspective. To account for the actual pattern of policy change since 1980, one must move beyond these models, giving greater attention to what national policymakers have been trying to accomplish. National legal definitions of citizenship have been converging significantly in response to immigration, largely because of shared political and administrative objectives and assumptions that increasingly shape nationality law reforms. Four such objectives have been especially important in the three European cases considered here: controlling immigration; reassuring anxious publics that immigrants acquiring national citizenship are expected to integrate socially as well as politically; facilitating administrative review of applications; and, most notably, upholding states’ domestic and international legitimacy as liberal democracies by preventing major disparities of rights among citizens and working against development of large bodies of disenfranchised long-­term residents. European states’ informal recognition of one another as key members of their

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international “reference group” may also make policymakers more concerned abut internationally shared understandings of liberal democratic legitimacy and thus contribute to convergence of European states’ approaches to national citizenship, even in the absence of effective formal pressures from European international organizations (cf. Checkel 2000). To explain continued differences between cases, attention to these factors is best complemented by the national traditions perspective. However, a more flexible version of that perspective allowing for the possibility of fundamental changes is needed. The partial convergence taking place in historically distinct European approaches to national citizenship also reflects certain similar, underlying shifts in policymakers’ causal assumptions. Such changed causal beliefs may ultimately translate into changed conceptual and legal definitions of national citizenship. Two changes in assumptions have been particularly striking in this regard: first, reversals of earlier expectations that migrants would return to their home countries, and, second, belief in a regular causal connection between duration of residency and acculturation. The first of these changes in underlying assumptions put countries under greater pressure to enfranchise immigrant populations. It removed a major justification for politically excluding immigrants: that they were “guest-­workers” who, like tourists, were only visiting and not really part of the resident population. Changes in that belief turned the existence of sizable disenfranchised foreign resident populations into an anomaly that was then harder to justify in democratic countries deriving legitimacy from their underlying claims, as democracies, to represent the will of the governed. Where countries were unable or unwilling to enfranchise foreign residents, this change in expectations regarding return migration has increased pressures to adopt or maintain relatively liberal nationality policies, and especially jus soli provisions. In Germany, this anomaly was a source of impetus for nationality reform. In France, it limited the kinds of reforms that could garner lasting political support. The second change in causal assumptions that affected citizenship and nationality policies bears more directly on understandings of political membership. In both France and Germany, during the 1990s acculturation was increasingly deemed to be causally related to length of residency, or of schooling, in a given country. Belief in a relatively unchangeable causal relationship between culture and ancestry at the same time declined. This shift of causal beliefs thus marked a growing abandonment, at least among intellectuals and policymakers, of a primordialist understanding of culture. Whether this trend will continue despite new fears about publicly consequential exceptions

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to this assumed correlation that have arisen since the train bombings in Madrid and London remains to be seen. Further research is needed to determine more precisely what the turn away from earlier beliefs linking culture to ancestry and thus breaking up a mixed Descent-­Culture model is likely to mean for the future of cultural nationalism, especially in Germany but also in other societies confronting similar developments, such as Italy or Quebec. Does the abandonment of earlier primordialist understandings of culture, long reflected even in such basic social scientific categories of analysis as “ethnocultural,” presage the abandonment of the ideal of a national citizenry united around shared, inherited cultural traditions and thus of the Culture model of political membership as well? Or will one instead see a political and intellectual revision and revitalization of the Culture model along non-­primordialist lines? Further comparative research investigating these questions is needed and would contribute to better assessing the relative weight of national traditions and pressures towards convergence in mediating the effects of immigration on definitions of citizenship in European and other countries. While opening such further questions and venues of research, our review of comparative French, British and German immigration-­related changes in citizenship and nationality policies meanwhile also underscores the connections between the sorts of conceptual and discursive developments analyzed in Chapters 3–5 and recent policy reforms. The need to examine discursive logics and recent policy changes together as interrelated pieces of a single puzzle proves all the more indispensable in the case of the next major area of recent immigration-­related citizenship debate and policy change to be examined in Part III: that of the so-­called “Islamic headscarves issue” in France. Just as Chapters 3–5 did with regard to the new citizenship campaign and subsequent controversies surrounding changes in French nationality law, Chapter 7 uses our new theoretical framework to analyze the competing views of citizenship that contributed to shaping competing political responses to France’s first “Islamic headscarves affair,” in 1989–90. Chapter 8 then turns to a particularly puzzling, and often criticized, turn in French policy: the 2004 ban on students’ wearing headscarves or other conspicuous religious signs and attire in public primary and secondary schools. This second chapter of Part III picks up where Chapter 7 leaves off, explicating both the underlying, historically-­informed ideas that make the headscarves issue so uniquely explosive in France and how French thinking on the issue has been influenced by recent administrative, social, and legal developments leading up to the 2004 turn to a more restrictive policy.

PART III

Public Education and Islamic Headscarves

Chapter 7

Contested Conceptions of Citizenship and Integration in France’s Headscarves Affair (1989–1990)

The French headscarves affair, or affaire du foulard, began with an apparently trivial local problem. In September 1989, three Muslim girls were sent home from school when they insisted on wearing their headscarves to class. As the local conflict developed into a national issue and the government became increasingly involved, much of the responsibility for handling the affair fell to Lionel Jospin, minister of national education. Rather than simply banning headscarves, Jospin first tried to encourage a local, negotiated solution. When this approach failed, he announced a relatively lenient policy whereby students would be required to attend all required courses and discouraged from wearing headscarves. If they persisted in breaking the recommended dress code, however, they were not to be expelled. Jospin’s approach met with fervent opposition, even from many Socialists, and his moderate policy proved politically difficult to sustain. He therefore soon referred the issue to the Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, asking it to clarify the relevant existing laws. The Council’s 27 November 1989 decision precluded a simple banning of headscarves, but otherwise resolved little. It recognized students’ legal right to wear the controversial scarves, but nonetheless allowed school officials to forbid them if and when they were worn to proselytize, disrupted order in an educational establishment, interfered with the schools’ mission of favoring sexual equality, or caused other problems. In short, the decision was nominally liberal, but replete with loopholes. Jospin then issued new guidelines, based on the decision, to local school administrators. They were charged with significant case-­by-­case discretion, with decisions subject to review by the Council.

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This relatively moderate, circumspect policy approach contrasted starkly with the issue’s dramatic, sensational, and acrimonious politicization. French public debate during the affaire was intense, to the point where it is still of unrivaled importance in public thinking about issues of citizenship, identity, and difference in France. It has continued to resurface periodically, flaring up each time into a major political issue. To understand what the affaire du foulard stood for in French thinking and how its meaning developed, one needs to examine the controversy’s original emergence and how it was framed politically. At the local level, the affair emerged in the context of an ongoing conflict of authority between an unpopular school principal later elected as a national-­level RPR representative and local leaders, a conflict effectively redefined by the principal in state-­society terms, that is, as a conflict between agents of progressive state-­led reform and those of local social reaction. This way of defining the conflict undoubtedly gave the issue greater national resonance and appeal. At the national level, this local conflict was taken up and reinterpreted by politicians and governmental officials as an issue of citizenship and integration, giving rise to a new distribution of positions. As the debate was reframed at the national level, the idea that the state, specifically the public schools, should take the lead in actively creating or preserving an integrated national society was no longer in question. The questions were what the basis of national integration or social cohesion was and how schools were to promote it. Politicians answered these questions by calling on three competing understandings of political membership: the Culture model, occasionally but not always mixed with a Descent view, the Belief model, and the society-­centered Contract model.

The Affaire as a Local Conflict in Creil The Crime and Its Punishment

On 18 September 1989 two thirteen-­and fourteen year-­old sisters, Leila and Fatima Achaboun, were sent home from the Collège Gabriel Havez, a public middle school fifty miles outside Paris, for wearing headscarves (foulards) covering their hair. The school had decided earlier in the year that such scarves were not to be worn to class. Students were free to wear them elsewhere in the school, but they were supposed to drop them to their shoulders when they

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entered the classroom. Three days later, another student, the daughter of a local Islamic activist, was also sent home for violating that policy (L’Express, 27 October 1989). There are at least two possible ways of interpreting the context for this local conflict.

Interpretation 1: Local Social Disorder and the Need for School Rules

From a liberal theoretical perspective, the school’s anti-­headscarves policy might appear simply intolerant (Galeotti 1993: 586–87). But to understand how and why the affaire started when and where it did, one needs to consider the local context and what wearing, and forbidding, headscarves meant to the actors involved. The school’s crackdown on students wearing headscarves to class was part of a larger administrative effort to establish a more orderly educational environment. Gabriel Havez was located in the industrial city of Creil, in a poor neighborhood identified by the national government as an Educational Priority Zone. While three-­quarters of Gabriel Havez’s students were French-­ born, 55 percent of them were foreign nationals. Altogether, the student body included members of some twenty-­six different national groups. On the basis of data collected by the school in 1988 on parents’ countries of origin, it may reasonably be assumed that many of these students were from Muslim, though not necessarily actively Islamic, families. Two-­thirds of the students of non-­French nationality were Maghrebian, most of these Moroccan (Monnet 1990: 14–49).1 It was not the number of different nationalities under one roof per se that seemed to be at the root of the school authorities’ growing frustration with prevailing conditions, however. One of the fundamental problems was the fact that Creil’s school districts were drawn in such a way as to limit the school’s area of recruitment strictly to the area of aging, high-­rise public housing projects known as the Plateau Rouher, Creil’s most disadvantaged area. The high proportion of students from foreign families at Gabriel Havez reflected the heavy concentration of foreign residents in certain areas, even apartment buildings, within Creil. The 1982 census counted 17.7 percent “foreign” households in Creil, but 22.6 percent in the Plateau Rouher area. In the Plateau’s two most degraded buildings, however, the concentration reached as high as 85.9 percent (Centre Georges-­Brassens 1985).2

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Given the widespread social problems typical of neighborhoods like the Plateau, it is not surprising that Gabriel Havez was a notoriously difficult place to teach (Cardoso 1990: 12). To make matters worse, the school was poorly soundproofed and was becoming increasingly overcrowded. Local rec­ords showed a 14 percent increase in the number of students between 1983 and 1989, leading observers in 1989 to warn that the number of students “is reaching a critical threshold which will eventually threaten the establishment’s ability to function.” In addition, as Ernest Chenière, Gabriel Havez’s principal, emphasized in an interview shortly after his decision to send the girls home, the Plateau had recently seen a rise of new associations, or organized community groups. In part, this activity may have followed from legal reforms of the early 1980s granting foreign residents new rights freely to form such associations. While they may have been the hope of Tocqueville in America, such associations were the bane of Chenière in Creil. He complained that the Plateau had become a “maelstrom” where he and other school officials were seen as “the enemy” because, as members of the national educational service, they were seen as representing “the State” (Le Point, 22 October 1989, 92–93), as opposed to “society.” For several years before he sent the three headscarf-­wearing students home, Chenière had increasingly come into conflict with the Georges-­ Brassens Center, a neighborhood cultural center established in the early 1980s that ran an after school tutoring program. Since many students and teachers from Gabriel Havez were involved in the program, the Center had become extensively, if unofficially, involved in the school’s internal meetings and decision-­making. Such informal participation was favored by overlap in direction between the Georges-­Brassens Center and the local Educational Priority Zone as well as the (United Left) local government. From the time he became principal in 1987, Chenière took a strong stand against such “outside interference” in the school (Monnet 1990: 53). During the first years of his appointment in Creil, Chenière also became engaged in a running battle with a local organization called the Association of Children’s Houses of the Château de Laversine, an institution that was originally an orphanage. Located near Creil and run by the Jewish division of the French Boy Scouts,3 it had become a sort of boarding home for poor children (Monnet 1990: 52). Some twenty Gabriel Havez students lived there, eating together at the institution and taking its bus to and from school (Nouvel Observateur, 18 October 1989; Cardoso 1990: 7). As one could imagine,

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these children banded together at school, forming what some regarded as an isolated, Jewish clique. The principal complained that this amounted to “self-­exclusion” and “self-­segregation,” a self-­imposed social isolation at odds with the idea of the “secular [literally “lay”] school” (école laïque) (Nouvel Observateur, 18 October 1989). The idea of l’école laïque to which Chenière referred was that students should not be divided there by clerical influences. While religious officials were thought to be prone to controlling their followers by keeping them segregated from others, the “lay” school called on pupils to reject such restrictive clerical pressures and to interact freely with all, not just co-­ religionists. Unlike traditional Catholic schools, laïque schools were to wipe out religious distinctions among students; their pupils were to be exposed to and required to interact with viewpoints that might conflict with religious teachings and thus develop a more rationalist perspective.4 In France, “secular” education was thus not conceived mainly as a way of ensuring equal protection for all students’ religious liberty; instead, it was a crusade to open students’ minds by counteracting the social and institutional foundations of religious prejudice. The French concept of laïcité included a vision of inclusive conviviality, itself taken as a sociocultural precondition for “free thinking.” To make matters even more difficult in the principal’s view, the Laversine group of Jewish students also regularly failed to attend school not only on the Sabbath (Saturday being a school day in France), but also on Friday afternoons during the winter months when sunset comes and the Sabbath begins earlier in the day. This reportedly caused instructional difficulties for the teachers. Given that the Jewish students were not just members but actual residents of the Association of Children’s Houses, and that the Association itself brought them to school, it proved very difficult to enforce the Collège’s official, uniform, and inflexible rules of attendance. The principal could not simply speak to the students’ parents; instead, he had to negotiate with the Association, and he had been getting nowhere. In light of this situation, Chenière’s efforts to bring order and reform to the school were increasingly frustrated by a particular genre of rule-­breaking behavior: violations of laïcité. Before the summer holiday in 1989, certain students had also been circulating a petition calling for construction of a mosque in Creil (Nouvel Observateur, 18 October 1989). Here again, some thought that established norms of laïcité were being violated; as generally understood, these norms called for the separation of education not only from religion but also from political

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contests. For example, French public school students have traditionally been expected not to wear political buttons or other such insignia. Thus, during the 1980s, when a SOS-­Racisme anti-­racism symbol (a hand with the words “Don’t touch my pal” on it) became popular, students sometimes wore them on necklaces, but went to class with the necklaces inside their shirts. Finally, to the ongoing problem of the missing Jewish Association students and the recent controversy over the petition, a new problem was added. A few Muslim girls in the school, who had, by most accounts, worn foulards in the hallways and the schoolyard for several years but taken them off during class, began insisting on wearing their headscarves everywhere, arguing that the Qur’an required it. The principal may have feared that they seemed to be taking a lesson from the Jewish students: that religious requirements came before school rules. That June, only limited measures were taken. The school’s administrative council issued a policy statement calling for “discretion in regard to external cultural signs,” and regular attendance by the Jewish students. While this statement nominally referred to “cultural” signs, it was actually directed only at signs of religious identification. As the principal later explained, he was not concerned with Pakistani students in traditional dress, for example, though many such students may be seen in Creil. While culturally distinctive, Chenière argued, Pakistani garments did not attest to as profound a kind of difference or set their wearers apart from others to the same extent as “Islamic” headscarves (Le Monde, 7 October 1989; Nouvel Observateur, 18 October 1989). Despite this announcement that absenteeism for religious reasons would no longer be tolerated, the Jewish students were not there when school began again in the fall. They appeared only ten days later. Meanwhile, the father of Leila and Fatima Achaboun was in an unrelated dispute with the school. He wanted the two sisters placed in the same class, but the school argued that, for pedagogical reasons, they should be separated (Évènement du Jeudi, 26 October 1989). When the principal refused to change the decision to place them in different classes, they initially quit coming to school. Then they returned, wearing the forbidden headscarves. Interviewed by the press, the principal argued that the problem was not the headscarves per se, but the way the girls wore them. In his words, there was “a provocation in the comportment of these students.” They were flaunting a challenge to the school’s authority. Worse, Chenière complained, “Our authority is being called into question by young girls” (Évènement du Jeudi, 26 October 1989). But there were also practical and academic problems. As

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one Gabriel Havez teacher asked, without stricter enforcement of a regular attendance policy, how could the school hope to improve the educational performance of its disadvantaged students? (Cardoso 1990: 12). The emergence of the headscarves issue in Creil thus makes sense only in light of local conditions and French school officials’ understanding of laïcité, a concept that linked headscarf wearing to other immediate concerns. Shortly after the three headscarf-­wearing students had been sent home, Chenière explained that the reason he had targeted them was that he could actually do something about them, whereas he could not forcibly bring the twenty absent Jewish students to school (Le Monde, 7 October 1989). He therefore upheld laïcité, and his tottering local authority as a school official, by sending the Muslim girls in headscarves home.

Interpretation 2: Heavy-­Handed Administration and Student Resistance

That is the story put together from the reported statements of the principal and others more or less sympathetic to his decisions, but there are other versions of the local conflict that could also be told. What is left out by the first interpretation of the conflict stressing the “need for school rules,” as by accounts of the conflict as caused by simple intolerance, are Chenière’s reputation as an undiplomatic disciplinarian and his political aspirations. By dubbing his new district la poubelle sociale (“the social garbage can”) when he was first appointed to Creil in 1987, Chenière earned immediate notoriety with local community activists and officials. The latter were eager to improve the Plateau’s image and reduce its social isolation, goals pursued through urban renewal and sponsorship of cultural events to lure Creil’s middle-­class residents to the neighborhood. At the end of Chernière`s first year as director of Gabriel Havez, most of the establishment’s teachers and personnel petitioned for his removal from the district. When this effort failed, a number of the teachers asked to be transferred from the school and left. Local conflict over Chenière’s pursuit of increasingly unilateral authority and strict control over the Plateau’s youth and within the school thus clearly antedated the headscarves affair itself. As often noted during the headscarves affair, Chenière himself was originally from the Caribbean. He was not only an “immigrant” and “black” himself but, unlike Creil’s Moroccans, also a French citizen by birth. Prior

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to joining the national educational service in France, Chenière had lived in Morocco. By his own account, it was there that he had learned how to deal with (often French-­born) “Moroccans” like Leila and Fatima whom he subsequently encountered in Creil. While many such Caribbean immigrants became white-­collar public service employees in France, first-­generation immigrants from the Maghreb have tended—­like Leila and Fatima Achaboun’s father, a factory worker—­to find unskilled private sector employment. The different national statuses of the two groups have thus contributed to an occupational status difference as well. With the coming of age of second-­ generation Franco-­Maghrebins, however, the stage was set for a new narrowing of the long-­standing status and occupational gap between Antilleans and Maghrebians, as certain children of Maghrebian unskilled laborers acquired French citizenship, gaining a more esteemed national status and legal access to public sector employment.5 While conflicts with the Château de Laversine centered on Saturday attendance, those with Georges-­Brassens center staff members increasingly concerned decisions regarding tracking. At the end of their course of studies at the Collège, students could go on either to technical school or to an academic lycée. The question was what to do with relatively weak students who, despite a poor or uneven performance in middle school, nonetheless wished to pursue the academic track. There were a fair number of such students coming out of Gabriel Havez each year. Because only the academic lycée track led to possible university study, and transferring from technical school to the more exclusive lycée was problematic, Georges-­Brassens staff working with these students encouraged them to choose the lycée and transfer later to technical school if they could not keep up. The choice was not the student’s alone, however; entering the lycée also required the principal’s authorization. The former principal of Gabriel Havez had seconded the tracking advice of the local cultural center’s social workers, but Chenière favored enforcing stricter selection criteria. There was thus reportedly a marked increase in administrative refusals to authorize eager but struggling students’ admission, with as many as a third of Gabriel Havez graduates, mainly immigrés, being tracked into technical education. In some cases, these decisions led to conflicts between Chenière and members of the Georges-­Brassens staff, who sought to intervene on the behalf of students seeking their help. Some also saw the umbrage taken by Chenière at violations of laïcité as far-­fetched or hypocritical. Students were circulating the petition for a local mosque outside the school, not on the premises. At the same time, ironically,

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Chenière himself was an actively aspiring politician, later heading a right-­ wing ticket in Creil’s municipal elections and ultimately becoming an RPR representative to the National Assembly. There is therefore a certain ambiguity regarding his opposition to the students’ political activity. Was it objectionable because it violated laïque school norms of political neutrality? Or as a school administrator in a disorderly, chaotic, and difficult institutional environment, did he just want more submissive, less politically mobilized, students? Or was laïcité invoked to oppose political organizing efforts at odds with his own, more conservative political commitments? Still more cynically, some have speculated that, as an RPR activist and candidate in a left-­dominated district, Chenière may have made an issue out of the headscarves precisely in order to capitalize on latent ideological tensions within the local left between progressive feminists and advocates of cultural and ethnic pluralism. Chenière also capitalized on the fact that the local opposition, clearly to his left, could be cast in the position traditionally occupied by the village curé, the “reactionary” enemy of state-­led social reform by progressive, laïque, “republican” educators. As we shall see, this framing of the issue also gave it great resonance with certain French Socialists who championed a “militant secularist” line at the national level.

The National-­Level Controversy: Theoretical Stakes

Tensions between state officials and local social workers and association leaders played a major role in setting the stage for the initial headscarves conflict in Creil. But as the affaire was publicized and developed into a national-­level controversy, it was mainly issues of ethnic diversity, citizenship, and national integration that came to the fore. The affaire du foulard was widely regarded as a key moment in the politicization of ethnic identity in France (Kepel 1994: 275–83; Feldblum 1991: 256–86; Levau 1990: 48–50). While the students involved said relatively little on their own behalf, they were praised by some for demanding public recognition and accommodation of their ethnic-­religious identities (e.g., Bouamama 1989: 7). Unlike many traditional French Catholics, they did not seek the right to private education in separate, religious schools. Instead, they sought to attend the public school, but without dissimulating the Muslim side of their identity; thus they were demanding a more pluralist model of integration. The French saw the headscarves question as one of whether governmental policy should allow open display in the na-

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tion’s public schools of religious symbols that were, at the same time, ethnic and sectarian identity markers. The crux of the national debate was how and whether public expressions of cultural and religious differences—­particularly those of new social groups of recent foreign origin—­could be reconciled with maintaining and reproducing a cohesive French national community. Politicians’ and representatives’ views on that question differed markedly depending on their visions of integration and citizenship. As addressed by political representatives and governmental officials, the headscarves controversy was largely fueled by an unrecognized underlying conflict among three competing views of citizenship and integration: cultural nationalism, the idea of a republican mission, and a social organizational view. These views were rooted respectively in the Culture, Belief, and society-­ centered Contract models of political membership. The affaire du foulard highlighted divisions within the Socialist Party, between those “for” and those “against” toleration. On the other side of the political spectrum, new right intellectuals including Alain de Benoist favored toleration (Le Monde, 27 October 1989), while politicians were vocal in opposing it. Accordingly, the resulting political situation was frequently characterized as one of fragmentation, disorder, and confusion (Feldblum 1991: 275–79; Moruzzi 1994: 665–66; William 1991: 30–38; Willaime 1992: 82; Lacoste-­Dujardin 1990: 14–15). Analysts have therefore tended to conclude that the pattern of conflict in the “affair” must lie elsewhere than in differences of identity and interest among political parties and party factions. Since opinion on the controversy was not divided into “pro” and “con” along simple left-­right lines, analysts often turn their attention to the media and to the patterns of tropes, expressions, and interpretations found there (e.g., Perotti and Thépaut 1990; Siblot 1992). By contrast, the importance of existing, historically established political cleavages and partisan differences in shaping and ordering the new “politics of recognition” in France received surprisingly little attention. Using newspaper reports, transcripts of all 1989 discussion of the voile in the National Assembly,6 and other documentation to reconstruct the views of elected representatives, government officials, and party representatives during the first months of the affair (September–December 1989), this chapter instead analyzes and compares these actors’ viewpoints.7 To minimize possible distortion due to particular publications’ ideological orientations, quoted statements were culled comprehensively from a representative range of national newspapers and periodicals.8 Politicians’ explanations of their positions revealed three distinct under-

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lying visions of citizenship: one prevalent on the right and two recurrent on the left. Left-­right “agreement” about the terms of French citizenship during the affaire du foulard was thus ultimately more superficial than comparisons of actors’ positions in terms of whether they were “for” or “against” the ­headscarf—­or its toleration—­have suggested. On the right, politicians’ opposition to toleration was typically premised on the idea that a common national culture embodied in specific social mores and customs was the necessary basis for national unity, integration, and even social order. On the far right, there was clear skepticism as to whether Muslim immigrants could or would assimilate sufficiently to meet that standard. Socialists vocal during the controversy instead treated integration and social order as the product either of participation in a common national, progressive, and socially reformatory political project—­what I call a “republican mission”—­or of practically oriented, often locally based, social organization. These two Socialist understandings of integration corresponded to distinct understandings of citizenship. One stressed political culture and willingness to defend and promote republican political values and institutions, the other active participation and effective performance in educational and economic undertakings. Thus, while the position of politicians on the right generally reflected what we have elsewhere called the Culture conception of political membership, sometimes in combination with the Descent view, the two leading views competing on the left instead reflected the Belief and society-­centered Contract models.

Competing Visions of Citizenship and Integration Cultural Nationalism—­Appeals to the Culture and Descent Models

The first understanding of integration and citizenship shaping national political reaction to the affair was associated with a cultural view of the nation. This view was most clearly articulated by the far right National Front (FN). However, it also informed the positions of certain politicians associated with the neo-­Gaullist RPR and even the center right UDF, both threatened at the time by the FN’s increasing popularity. FN president Jean-­Marie Le Pen depicted the problem revealed by the affair in dire terms: as nothing less than the “the implantation of foreign colonies” in France, and thus foreign annexation of French territory.

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Explaining this problem, Le Pen argued that “colonization” had “cultural and religious” dimensions and that, “When you go to someone else’s place, you conform to their mores.” In not conforming, the girls in Creil revealed that they did not recognize or respect France as “the place of ” the French. Instead, they implicitly claimed it as their own, thereby taking over, or “colonizing” French territory. Foreigners, Le Pen maintained, should either respect French mores or return to their countries of origin. It was less evident from Le Pen’s statement just what “mores” the Muslim students had violated. Were they disregarding French ways on French territory by proselytizing, thus breaking French law? Violating French social norms by wearing religiously symbolic clothing to school? Failing to respect French customs by dressing in an ethnically unconventional way? Le Pen never clearly specified, nor did his position logically differentiate law from social norms or traditional conventions. Indeed, for Le Pen, incomplete assimilation was tantamount to invasion; only cultural conformity marked respect for the territorial property rights of the host country (Le Monde, 26 October, 10 November 1989; Quotidien de Paris, 27 October 1989). It is somewhat surprising how greatly the positions of representatives from the parties of the center-­right resembled those of representatives of the FN. As inheritors of the Orleanist “liberal conservative” tradition (Remond 1982: 294–304), political figures associated with the parties of the UDF might have been expected to keep a low profile. Indeed, some did favor a quieter, more local approach. UDF representatives Hervé de Charette and Jacques Barrot, for instance, called for less discussion and dramatization of the issue, arguing that it would be better simply to speak directly with the families concerned (Quotidien de Paris, 18 October 1989). However, others were more outspoken, and clearly sought to dramatize the issue. Like Le Pen, the president of the UDF group in the National Assembly, Charles Millon, argued that the affaire du foulard was portentous of potential disaster. He called for an emergency debate on the issue, arguing that “the national community is going to shatter into fragments,” and that France was in danger of “Balkanization” and “tribalization” (Le Monde, 24 October 1989). Outspoken UDF representatives’ positions differed from Le Pen’s in several key respects, however. First, they never openly suggested it might be necessary to expel immigrants already in France. Second, unlike Le Pen, Millon did not argue that the danger posed by the headscarves was France’s Islami-

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cization. Rather, he argued, the danger was that “other religions,” presumably Judaism and Catholicism, would then demand similar concessions, causing an uncontrollable fundamentalism (Le Monde, 24 October 1989). Thus, while seconding Le Pen’s assessment that the integrity and identity of France were in danger, Millon’s reasoning centered on the need for a common standard for religious expression in the public schools, not “invasion” of France by a foreign religion. If Millon had wished to present that as the problem, presumably he would not have raised concerns about potential demands from other religions. Nonetheless, UDF representatives shared one of Le Pen’s underlying assumptions about citizenship and integration: that shared national culture was the necessary basis for social integration. They therefore joined him in urging immigrants to respect French ways. Hervé de Charette thus announced that, “The task of education is to instill recognition of the other, but also to promote the integration of different cultures thanks to a unification of personal conduct” (Quotidien de Paris, 18 October 1989). There was, however, no consistent agreement as to whether this meant that new citizens should learn French ways, or that everyone was supposed (equally) to transcend particular cultural and religious identities by adhering to French norms that were effectively neutral. The FN treated cultural conflict as zero-­sum, irreducible, and untranscendable. People were always on someone’s ground; the question was whose. By contrast, the UDF sometimes held out the hope that cultural differences could be regulated by rules transcending religious particularisms. School prohibitions of religiously symbolic clothing were thus defended by UDF representatives as necessary and legitimate precisely because they applied equally to all religions. Like Millon, Jacques Barrot explained his concern as one of equity. He therefore stressed the need to explain to parents that Islam was not being unfairly singled out for restriction (Quotidien de Paris, 18 October 1989). Similarly, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing argued that headscarves should be forbidden because it had been decided a century before “that the school stood outside religious debate” (Le Monde, 24 October 1989). Nominally, he thereby called on a general, universally applicable rule, treating Islam like any other religion. However, this position was not consistently maintained. At times, it was implicitly, most likely unintentionally and unwittingly, undermined by appeals to a “common sense” guest-­host logic. Thus, in another, slightly later statement, Giscard argued that the girls should take off their headscarves because, after all, he would take his shoes off if he went in a mosque (Quoti-

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dien de Paris, 22 October 1989; Liberation, 23 October 1989). Here his widely reported argument rested on the “proprietary” vision of France, or French public educational institutions, as space belonging to a particular people. Not belonging to this people, Muslim students in French schools were like Giscard in the mosque: guests. It would therefore be a self-­evident mark of disrespect for them to make themselves too much at home. Instead, they were to respect their hosts by following the rules of the house. The analogy was problematic in that, tellingly, it put the mosque and the public school on the same plane. Thus, neither appeared as a “neutral” space after all. Both were spaces with particular rules reflecting the norms, sensibilities, and values (or sense of sacredness) of a particular people. It is therefore difficult to reconcile the logic of Giscard’s second statement with his claim that anti-­headscarf rules were culturally neutral. Like the most vocal representatives of the other parties of the right, those of the RPR opposed toleration of the headscarves. The Gaullist (RPR) statement that came closest to supporting toleration was that of Michel Hannoun, but his position was actually exceedingly cautious. Hannoun said: “If secularity is respect for differences, they [the girls] can have the right to wear a foulard or a veil. If secularity is confessional neutrality in the schools of the Republic, they must not use the veil as an indirect way of proselytizing” (Liberation, 21 October 1989). The import of this statement was rather ambiguous, perhaps intentionally so. The first sentence might mean that “secularity” ought to entail respect, and that the girls ought therefore to be allowed to wear the headscarves. However, it could also mean that the idea of respect for differences associated with the campaigns of antiracist organizations and elements of the left during the early to mid–1980s were misguided and undesirable, precisely because such “respect for differences” would require more than recognition of Muslim girls’ rights to wear simple headscarves of the kind worn by the students in Creil. Instead, his statement implies, tolerance even of full veils covering students from head to toe would be necessary. Yet this was actually an outcome advocated only by supporters of a small fundamentalist group, Voix de l’Islam (Kepel 1994: 278). More commonly, French defenders of students’ rights to wear foulards were at pains to distance themselves from support of full veiling.9 Hannoun himself associated only the second possible interpretation, that of “confessional neutrality” with the idea of “the Republic,” thereby favoring this interpretation over that of secularism as respect for others. However, in concluding that students should not be allowed to “to impose a certain num-

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ber of points of view in the name of the veil,” Hannoun ultimately only explicitly condemned proselytism, leaving open the questions whether wearing foulards to school was the same as wearing a veil, and wearing the garments was equivalent to imposing certain points of view on others. With the exception of Hannoun’s, however, the reported statements of RPR deputies and representatives were consistent in clearly opposing the wearing of the headscarves. In support of their opposition to students’ rights to wear headscarves in the classroom, RPR representatives referred to the historically long-­established rules associated with secularism and the role of the public schools. As Jacques Chirac put it, the school’s role was “integration,” “to bring together children from all horizons” (Libération, 9 November 1989). “Integration,” in turn, was discussed by RPR representatives as a matter of making students look and behave more similarly. In the words of one Val-­ de-­Marne deputy reminiscing about the public school uniforms of the Third Republic, “One must try to uniform-­ize the students. Without returning to that extreme, one must not forget that there was a day when everyone wore a black blouse” (Quotidien de Paris, 18 October 1989). The idea of “integration” as, in de Charette’s words, a “unification of personal conduct” thus undergirded the positions of members of all parties on the right. It implied that citizenship, belonging in the French nation, depended on cultural assimilation. For Muslim children of immigrant families to become bona fide French citizens, they would therefore have to quit wearing headscarves in school.

The Republican Mission—­Appeal to the Belief Model

The French Communist Party (PCF) basically opted out of the affair. In a sense, the PCF’s reaction was the mirror opposite of the UDF’s. Despite its, at times contradictory, history of active involvement in social and immigration issues (Schain 1988: 603–9), the political context in 1989 encouraged the PCF to stay out of the headscarves affair, even while it drew in liberal conservatives of the UDF. Representatives of the PCF said remarkably little about the issue, speaking on it only after the Council of State decision was announced in late November. At that point, André Lajoindrie, president of the Communist group in the National Assembly, commented in a radio interview on the affair just long enough to say that it was “ridiculous” that it had ever become a national issue at all. Lajoindrie blamed Jospin’s initial lack of clarity for al-

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lowing excessive politicization, which he in turn blamed for contributing to fundamentalism as well as FN electoral gains in the 1989 municipal elections (RMC, 28 November 1989). The PCF had nothing to gain and everything to lose by getting involved in the issue. Relying heavily on support from the working class—­both “native French” workers and large numbers of “immigrants”—­and increasingly losing traditional supporters to the FN, the PCF was threatened by the politicization of immigration issues per se. The elevation of immigration to greater prominence as a national issue also worked against the Communist Party in that it was voters most concerned about security and immigration who voted most heavily for the far right. By contrast, unsurprisingly, employment and other socioeconomic issues played more to the advantage of established parties on the left. With the FN gaining growing support from the urban areas and disadvantaged social sectors that were the PCF’s historical strongholds, Communist leaders may well have wanted to try to realign national political conflict along socioeconomic—­rather than immigration, national identity and security—­lines. The Socialist Party (PS) was far more vocal during the affaire du foulard, but also divided. Within the PS, Jean-­Pierre Chevènement, minister of defense and previous minister of national education, emerged as the leading proponent of what might be called the “militant secularist” position. Arguing that headscarves should be prohibited to prevent proselytism (Le Monde, 24 October 1989), he presented the Muslim girls’ demands as a threat to France’s identity. Only by insisting that religious garments not be worn in school, Chevènement maintained, could one ensure “that France remain France, that is, a republican country.” He thus presented French identity as irreducibly “republican.” “The republican passion,” he explained, consisted of “the immoderate love of liberty, and consequently knowledge, and the refusal of prejudices and all a priori dogmas” (Le Monde, 8 November 1989). “Liberty” thus figured centrally in Chevènement’s vision of France: not “liberty” in the sense of actors’ rights to pursue their existing preferences, but the kind of “liberty” involved in “free examination” of ideas, or secular rationalism. The “immoderate love” of this kind of “liberty” was directly at odds with Islamic fundamentalism, much less its public expression in the schools. For Chevènement, the problem was not that Islam was foreign to France, as Le Pen and elements of the Catholic press warned (Aspects de la France, 26 October 1989).10 Nor did he argue that Muslims were foreigners and must therefore follow French rules if social order or equity were to be preserved.

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Instead, he maintained that Islamic fundamentalism was incompatible with French identity because it was an a priori dogma incompatible with liberty of conscience. It was as dedication to such liberty, a “republican passion,” that Chevènement saw French identity. His emphasis on “love” and “passion” as the way to realizing the “republic,” that is, a properly French national political community, also reflected Chevènement’s vision of social order as the product of progressive militancy. He emphasized that the “Republic” was “a combat” and that the public schools had a “mission.” This “mission,” Chevènement explained, was the means for the government “to rally (rassembler) not only the left but well over and above that” (Le Monde, 9 November 1989). This vision of social order and integration clearly distinguished Socialist headscarf opponents from their counterparts on the right. From the perspective advanced by Chevènement, French identity consisted of the ideals, notably love of liberty, toward which militant progressive political aspiration was to be oriented. Love, passion, and idealism thus figured in his reasoning as the necessary prerequisites of a united national community. He did not depict the nation as a particular place inherited and possessed by a particular people, with “the French” as keepers of the (e)state, or masters of the house, commanding the respect of immigrant guests and keeping the place in order. Instead, his statements recalled France’s colonial mission civilisatrice and evoked an image of the nation closer to that of a Jacobin army. The potential for including immigrants as full-­fledged members was therefore greater if they joined the ranks. While he agreed with non-­Socialist opposition to tolerating headscarves in French public schools, Chevènement’s position nonetheless involved a radically different vision of citizenship and French identity. In this sense, left-­right differences contributed to structuring conflict over headscarves as the issue moved to the national level.

The Social Organizational View—­Appeals to the Contract Model

Not all French Socialists shared this view, however. The Socialist militants’ idea that a shared republican mission was what united and integrated France conflicted with the assumptions of other party members about what “integrated” French society and how immigrants could truly become part of it. Key members of the Socialist government, notably those most actively en-

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gaged in setting policy in response to the crisis in Creil, understood integration and citizenship as based neither on assimilation nor adherence to a republican mission; instead, they understood citizenship and integration in social organizational terms. Unlike “militant secularist” Socialists like Chevènement, as minister of national education Jospin supported some limited toleration of headscarves in schools. However, during the affaire he and those supporting him, notably Prime Minister Michel Rocard, showed little enthusiasm for fostering cultural and religious diversity per se. As Rocard underlined during National Assembly discussion of the issue, “A multi-­confessional school is not a secular school. Our school is secular; it will not be multi-­confessional.” He therefore condemned those who “would like to twist the meaning of secularism.” In fact, he emphasized, the government’s position was not even “pro-­foulard”; everyone was against “the wearing of the headscarf,” debate being only about “the means that must lead to its disappearance from our schools” (Journal Officiel, 8 November 1989: 4752). Some thought students should be forced to remove the scarves; others thought that, as long as they were accepted and continued going to school, they would eventually do so of their own accord. The government’s position was ultimately not multiculturalist but pragmatic. Like those against tolerating headscarves, Jospin and his supporters championed not diversity or minority cultural rights but integration and equality. However, Jospin understood integration and equality fundamentally differently, associating them much more closely with concrete socioeconomic factors than did either the right or the “militant secularist” left. Equality, as it figured in his statements, centered on equality of access to education and material goods, rather than equal obligations to follow a singe set of rules, observe common customs, or even adhere to common principles. And he traced the roots of social integration, and thus the preconditions for a cohesive national community, more to education and employment than to shared customs and traditions or common pursuit of such ideals as liberty or secularism. A full theoretical account of integration never figured explicitly in Jospin’s published statements. However, associating social integration with education and employment arguably made sense in that education and employment were means to involve people in collective activity and therefore contributed to social organization. Jospin’s implicit belief in such a “social-­organizational” view of integration and social cohesion explained why his position to some extent conflicted with that of Socialists opposed to toleration. Jospin’s first significant involvement in the case took the form of an an-

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nouncement on 25 October that even students who insisted on wearing headscarves had to be accepted in the schools.11 First, he reaffirmed the secularity of the public schools and stressed that they must not tolerate proselytism. In the name of furthering their children’s social “integration,” he urged parents to accept that religion be treated as “a private affair.” While instructing school officials to discourage students from arriving in headscarves, he ultimately declared that “the school must not exclude children”; the proper role of public schools was, instead, “to welcome.”12 Thus, if administrators failed to convince a girl not to wear her headscarf, she should not be expelled for doing so. This might seem to suggest that, while headscarf toleration opponents were concerned with national integration and social cohesion, Jospin was more committed to upholding the rights of the individual, particularly rights to religious liberty. Alternatively, one might conclude that he was more committed to fostering cultural and religious diversity. However, closer examination of Jospin’s policy statement as a whole belies both interpretations. First, headscarves were to be tolerated only as a last resort, where efforts to dissuade students from wearing them failed. Furthermore, regardless of religious commitments, students would not be granted exemptions from any part of the educational program. For example, a Muslim student could not ask to be excused from physical education, biology, or any other required courses. Students refusing to attend any required classes risked expulsion (Nouvel Observateur, 25 October 1989; Journal Officiel, 25 October 1989: 113–15). Taken as a whole, this policy was thus not consistently supportive of either religious liberty or cultural diversity. The logic underlying Jospin’s overall position was, instead, one of promoting immigrants’ “integration” as full members of the community. Of course, this was also nominally the goal of headscarf opponents. What divided Jospin from the two camps on the other side was the social organizational vision of integration and citizenship he brought to the case. The reason that Muslim girls who persisted in wearing headscarves should not be expelled, Jospin explained, was that doing so would destroy their chances for social mobility. Given that they were from the “popular milieu,” Jospin underlined, access to public education was the only “chance of integration” they had (Nouvel Observateur, 25 October 1989). Jospin thus approached public education as an instrumental means to children’s “integration,” which he linked to their chances for social mobility. The logic of his position thus turned on a social organizational view of integration and

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citizenship as inhering in participation in organized social activity. From that view, to become integrated into the community, what people needed were the education and qualifications that could enable them to find suitable jobs. In keeping with this view of integration, Jospin also stressed the importance of social rights for turning immigrants into French citizens. In a speech to the Law and Democracy Association that fall, he stressed the importance of the 1946 Constitution. Its introduction of social rights, he argued, was a necessary supplement to liberalism because the recognition of certain political rights is a step, but it will not be sufficient to teach the daughters and sons of all those who came to work in our country, in the mines, in the factories, in the fields, shared citizenship, to give them the place to which they aspire in our national community. For that, Jospin argued, anti-­racism and social rights to public education were also necessary (Jospin 1989).

Conclusion Officials’ and representatives’ political positions during the first months of the affaire du foulard thus differed according to their understandings of citizenship and integration, understandings in turn grounded in different models of political membership. Opponents on the right initially grounded their arguments mainly in the Culture model, which a few, from the far right, combined with a Descent view. Opponents of toleration on the left, meanwhile, appealed primarily to the Belief model, stressing shared “republican” political values and thus echoing the sorts of neo-­republican, Belief-­centered appeals emphasized by the Nationality Commission. Unlike in the case of the nationality law reform of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was theoretically grounded in a newly forged Culture-­Belief-­Contract amalgam, however, the affaire du foulard divided those appealing to Belief and Culture—­and sometimes Descent—­from those favoring a society-­centered Contract model. That model, stressing active participation in social life and thus the importance of keeping children of foreign backgrounds in French public schools, was instead central to the appeals of those favoring headscarf toleration. The affaire du foulard thus split the French left, with some invoking the Belief model in

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opposition to toleration and others appealing to the Contract model to defend a more tolerant policy. Underlying this disagreement, however, was considerable common ground. It is striking that the debate was not about whether children of Muslim immigrants should become full members of the community, but rather how such integration could best be accomplished. The differences of position underlying the violent debate the headscarves provoked stemmed not from disagreement about whether integration was desirable, or even over whether the school system should bear major responsibility for promoting it. Faith in the school system as an integrating institution was widely shared across the board. French debate over headscarves was thus not about the integrative role of the school system; rather, it reflected the deeply contested character of the concept of political membership. Different understandings of citizenship and political membership during the headscarves affair went together with different understandings of what “integration” was, and how schools ought to promote it. From being a uniting symbol closely associated with several different conceptions of political membership and shared by their proponents, a role it had played during the debates over nationality law, the school and its integrative role became a key focus of contention during the affaire du foulard in 1989–1990. The school, in the case of the headscarves affair, was thus far less available as a uniting symbolic image minimizing the apparent conceptual differences among erstwhile republican allies. The appearance of consensus on the headscarves issue was, for this and other reasons, long evasive and difficult to achieve. Chapter 8 moves our story forward from the emergence and initial national contours of the headscarves debate to France’s more recent, and to many observers surprisingly restrictive, legal settlement of the question. As we shall see, while France’s history of nation-­and state-­building and the distinctive understandings of citizenship, group membership, and secularism to which it gave rise played an undeniable underlying role in making the issue of headscarves exceptionally sensitive in France, accounting for the restrictive policy turn of 2004 also requires attention to recent practical, social, and legal developments that together influenced French public thinking, paving the way to a notable change in policy.

Chapter 8

Paradoxes of Civic Exclusion: Explaining Restrictions on Headscarves

In February 2004, the French National Assembly approved a law prohibiting “the wearing of signs or dress by which students ostensibly express a religious belonging” in the nation’s public schools. While formally applicable to signs of all religions—­headscarves, yarmulkes, and overly large crosses are all banned—­the law was clearly passed mainly in response to concerns about Muslim students wearing headscarves. The proposed law was in important part legitimated by recommendations drawn selectively from the findings of a special investigatory commission, the Commission de Réflexion sur l’Application du Principe de Laïcité dans la République. This Commission, led by immigration expert Bernard Stasi, was appointed by Jacques Chirac in July 2003 and charged with investigating “the application of the principle of secularism in the Republic.” Its widely publicized conclusions sought to harness the broad public legitimacy of laïcité (secularism or non-­denominationalism) to the project of developing a new shared consensus about how best to integrate France’s sizable, and increasingly visible, Muslim religious minority.1 However, when the new law was proposed, it provoked a national public debate of rare intensity, one that has visibly divided France’s leading pro-­ secularist organizations, political parties, and other major political groupings (Le Monde, 17 January 2004; Le Temps, 24 January 2004). Both the intensity of controversy surrounding the headscarf issue and the new law itself astonished many observers outside France, not only in the United States and Arab countries, but even within the rest of Europe (Vidal 2004: 6–7; Le Monde, 11 December 2003; Le Temps, 18 December 2003; Le Point, 2 January 2004). What accounts for the unusually intense emotions

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surrounding this question in France? And what led to the determination of the French government, supported by a clear majority of French public opinion2 and many French intellectuals from across the political spectrum, to pass such controversial and restrictive new legislation on this issue? Headscarves have, since 1989, repeatedly provoked a seemingly disproportionate reaction in France. Students can readily be found wearing head­scarves to school in the U.S., Canada, Britain, and other many countries where they have generally passed almost without notice, their relative novelty and a non-­Muslim majority population notwithstanding.3 To explain France’s adoption of its striking 2004 law, one must therefore first explain why the headscarves issue has proven so sensitive in France, regularly occasioned such public furor since its first emergence in 1989, and more recently commanded the attention of a prestigious national commission of experts, the president, and the National Assembly. An appreciation of French understandings of citizenship and secularism and the particularities of French history and tradition associated with those concepts is in this regard essential. At the time, however, the 2004 law marked a break in French policy, and thus cannot be accounted for by reference to long-­term continuities of French political tradition alone. In order to understand the departure marked by this law, as opposed to France’s ongoing, exceptionally intense interest in the head­ scarf issue, one must look more closely at the practical difficulties associated with earlier policy responses and at the changing social, political and legal context within which the Stasi Commission was appointed and arrived at its recommendations. Dissatisfaction with earlier policy responses, especially by school officials charged with implementing them at the local level, played a key role in pushing the Commission to recommend reform. The new law also became more attractive and politically acceptable to many as issues of sexist community pressures pushing girls to wear headscarves were increasingly highlighted in respectable public discourse and incorporated into prevailing cultural narratives.4 From 1989 to 2004, headscarves were thus increasingly interpreted as a declaration of women’s inferior status. A Belief model of political membership stressing sexual equality, meanwhile, became more prominent in French discussion of the headscarves issue. These issues and arguments ultimately also helped pave the way for France’s more radical 2010 ban on full facial veiling in all public spaces. Though in 2004 these issues and arguments were not entirely new, mobilization by new feminist groups organizing within disadvantaged neighborhoods and related political actions increasingly drew them to public attention in the months prior to Chirac’s appointment of the Stasi Commission.

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Meanwhile, contrary to commonly held expectations that the international rise of human rights norms and institutions should have a liberalizing influence, developments in international human rights law—­particularly at the European level—­actually facilitated rather than prevented restrictive policy reform of this kind in France. Like increasing public focus on restrictive community pressures on Muslim girls in France, these developments in European law set the stage for surprisingly broad-­ranging political and intellectual support of the new law within and beyond the Stasi Commission itself. Moreover, they also facilitated a key change of position by France’s Conseil d’Etat, the judicial body that had, until then, consistently stood against outright prohibition of headscarves in schools.5

The Intensity of the Headscarf Issue in France France has reacted more strongly than other countries of immigration to“Islamic” headscarves (foulards) in its public schools. According to official French sources, a total of 1,256 foulards were reported in France’s public schools at the start of the 2003–4 school year. School officials themselves judged only twenty of these cases “difficult” and expelled only four students (Le Monde, 10 December 2003). Considering that France’s Muslim population is currently estimated at 5 million and is predominantly young, French public reaction to the problem of students in headscarves appears strikingly disproportionate. France’s intense, and to many outside observers seemingly overblown, reaction to this issue has been significantly shaped by France’s republican tradition of thinking about citizenship, the relationship of citizenship to membership in social and religious groups, and most importantly secularism or laïcité. The terms of public “common sense” on these matters in France form a peculiar political cultural backdrop against which the headscarves issue has repeatedly emerged as a leading national issue.

Citizenship and Group Membership Among French proponents of the law, citizenship is commonly exalted as a realization of individuality. For supporters, this individuality of the citizen is further equated with emancipation of the individual as a rational agent from

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groups seeking to control their members though force or superstition.6 A passage of the Commission’s report tellingly declared: The secular state, guarantor of freedom of conscience, protects not only freedom of religion and of speech but also the individual; it allows all freely to choose, or not, a spiritual or religious option, to change it, or to renounce it. It makes sure that no group, no community can impose on anyone a belonging or a denominational identity, especially because of his or her origin. (Commission de Réflexion 2003: 14)7 Many proponents of the new law point to growing numbers of students in “Islamic” attire as evidence of sexual oppression and rising religious and traditional pressures on Muslim girls in France. Some influential French feminist critics have recently likened these pressures to those forcing women to wear the veil in Iran or other parts of the world (e.g., Djavann 2003). Among the law’s critics, one finds those seeking to articulate an understanding of citizenship more compatible with individuality as expressed in and through membership in particular social and religious groups. Demonstrations against the new law organized by the small, extremist Party of the Muslims of France (Parti des Musulmans de France; PMF) and joined by one of France’s largest Muslim organizations, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (Union des Organisations Islamistes de France; UOIF), appealed to this alternative view of individuality in relation to group membership. Marches in Paris and provincial cities, which assembled between 5,000 and 10,000 participants, featured slogans such as “Neither brother, nor husband, we have chosen the headscarf ” and “the veil is my choice” (Le Télégramme, 18 January 2004; Agence France Presse, 18 January 2004; Le Temps, 19 January 2004). Certainly it could be argued that these demonstrations were unrepresentative of the views of France’s Muslim population. According to surveys in 2003, 81 percent of Muslim women in France never wore headscarves outdoors.8 Of 300 women from Muslim families, 49 percent actually favored a law against visible religious and political symbols in the schools, while only 43 percent opposed it (IFOP 2003). Nonetheless, these protests attest tellingly to the savvy of even relatively “fundamentalist” Muslim groups in France in understanding, and frontally challenging, the underlying theoretical premises about citizenship, individuality and (religious) group membership shaping the positions of their republican adversaries. Interestingly, however, the message of these new social actors actually

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shared significant common ground with that of their opponents. Both camps present the individual as external to, and thus capable of choosing, even his or her closest social, cultural, and religious ties. Neither side has championed the position exemplified by communitarian political theorist Michael Sandel, questioning the very possibility of the individual as an agent of choice fully independent of his or her “constitutive attachments” (1982: 175–83). Still, this shared ground has by no means resolved the debate, given widely differing views of why, whether, and at what age girls may be “freely choosing” to don their headscarves.

Laïcité and Its Explanatory Limits

The French concept of laïcité and the peculiar historical tradition associated with it are also undeniably key to understanding the intensity of the debate. The bearing of secularism, as understood by many French supporters of laïcité, on rights to freedom of public religious expression is particularly important. The liberal tradition of separation of church and state, more familiar to American observers, historically developed largely to protect religion from the state, to ensure the state’s neutrality and protect individuals in their faith from undue state pressure or interference. State neutrality and freedom of religion are thus key to what secularism is understood to be about in the liberal tradition. By contrast, the French republican conception of laïcité developed primarily in reaction to the traditional political power of the Catholic Church. Thus, whereas Americans historically sought to protect religion from the state, France’s combat sought to free the state from undue religious influence. The historical circumstances that contributed to forming the notion of laïcité as it developed in France gave the notion of secularism a much more anti-­ clerical and less “anti-­state” emphasis. That republican emphasis continues to significantly mark the reactions of the French public to issues concerning religion in the public sphere and, above all, in public institutions charged with forming citizens. In its report, the Stasi Commission clearly distinguished the meaning and entailments of laïcité from other (more liberal) notions of separation of church and state, explaining: According to the French conception, laïcité is not a mere “boundary keeper” that should be limited to ensuring that the separation between

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the state and religions, between the political and spiritual or religious spheres, is respected. The state permits consolidation of shared values Commisthat establish the social bond (le lien social) in our country. (������� sion de Réflexion 2003: 15) As presented by the Commission, this understanding of laïcité is in turn closely tied to the republican model of citizenship’s relation to group membership. The Commission thus presented defence of laïcité as grounds for setting limits to citizens’ expression of “difference,” and even to cultural and religious identification itself. The Commission argued: the exacerbation of cultural identity should not become a fanatical defence of difference, bringing with it oppression and exclusion. In a secular society, each person must be able to take some distance with regard to tradition. That does not involve any renunciation of oneself but rather an individual act of liberty that allows one to define oneself in relation to one’s cultural and spiritual references without being subjected to them. (16) In another particularly striking passage, just after remarking that “secularism can allow the full intellectual blossoming of Islamic thought free from the constraints of power,” the report continued: Beyond the status of religions, the requirement of laïcité also calls on everyone to work on him or herself. Through secularism, the citizen gains protection of his freedom of conscience; in return, he must respect the public space that everyone can share. Demanding state neutrality does not seem very compatible with the display of an aggressive proselytism, particularly within the schools. Being willing to adapt the public expression of one’s religious particularities and to set limits to the affirmation of one’s identity allows everyone to meet in the public space. (16) In contrast to this tradition, in Britain, Denmark, and other European countries with established state churches, separation of church and state was never so clearly instituted. Such historical differences have no doubt also contributed to the sometimes-­puzzled reactions of other Europeans to recent French discussions (Vidal 2004: 6–7). As comparatively oriented schol-

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ars have rightly emphasized, these diverse historical traditions continue to play an important role in shaping political choices related to the recognition of religious differences in the public sphere, choices again coming to the fore as Europe’s Muslim population grows and becomes more settled (Soper and Fetzer 2003). The particularities of France’s tradition of laïcité alone cannot explain the decision to legally restrict the wearing of religious signs, however. Were that the case, such legislation should already have been enacted in response to France’s first national controversy over student headscarves, the affaire du foulard of 1989. Instead, that affaire led to a very different, more decentralized, case-­by-­case approach to addressing the issue. Also tellingly, the present law was not supported by several leading French organizations widely known for their long-­standing firm support of laïcité.9 Like French feminists, the teachers’ unions, and France’s major political parties, the laïque camp itself was quite divided internally by the issue (Tevanian 2004: 8; Le Monde, 17 January 2004; Le Temps, 24 January 2004). Jean Bauberot, a leading French expert on laïcité, was in fact the one member of the Stasi Commission who abstained from endorsing its recommendations (Le Monde, 11 December 2003). However important the French republican model of citizenship and secularism was for turning students’ headscarves into a major national issue, these ideas alone do not explain the recent change in French policy.

Why France’s Approach to Headscarves Changed The 2004 law marked a clear departure from France’s previous approaches to the headscarf issue. Such a decided change cannot be explained solely in terms of the French republican tradition of laïcité, a constant since the first affaire du foulard began in 1989. As Bowen (2007) rightly notes, French public figures’ common tendency to frame current social issues in terms of their long-­range history, a tendency reflected in typical French framings of the headscarves issue in terms of the history of laïcité, itself “leads public figures to emphasize (or invent) continuity over rupture” (5–6). Why, then, did the Stasi Commission recommend a departure from standing policy and practice on this issue? Answering this question requires one to look beyond French understandings of citizenship and laïcité and other constant features of the French re-

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publican model to more short-­term contextual factors.. Most significantly, practical problems associated with existing policy, the role of new feminist groups in changing public perceptions of Muslim women’s interests, and perceived openings in European human rights law must be taken into account.

The Alternative, Case-­by-­Case Approach

From 1989 to 2004, French policy regarding headscarves was based on the 1989 opinion of the Council of State. In contrast to the new prohibition on religious signs, the approach associated with the Council of State decision was one of qualified laissez-­faire. The decision underscored students’ rights to freedom of religion and religious expression, including wearing religious signs. These rights could be abrogated only where overridden by other considerations. The decision allowed for school officials to prevent a student from wearing her headscarf only when and if required by the schools’ obligation to prohibit “acts of pressure, provocation, proselytism, or propaganda,” to ensure safety and security, to prevent “any perturbation of the course of teaching activities, [or] of the educational role of teachers and any troubling of order within establishments,” and to ensure that students fully followed their required courses of study (Commission 2003: 29–30; Le Monde, 10 December 2003). This policy clearly left generous room for discretion by local school officials and sometimes permitted expulsion of students who refused to uncover their heads. Notably, however, this approach did not deny students’ rights to wear headscarves on grounds of any a priori conflict with the principle of laïcité.

Dissatisfaction with Existing Policy

In 2004, the 1989 Council of State decision still had supporters. Intellectuals often praised the decision for duly recognizing the inherent multiplicity of symbols’ potential meanings and effects. Some also praised it for delegating authority to the local level, and for promoting constructive negotiation and discussion among local educational authorities, parents, and students (Le Monde, 10, 11 December 2003; Figaro, 19, 23 December 2003; Le Monde, 14 January 2004). Despite its long list of considerations that could, in principle, trump students’ rights to religious expression, the 1989 decision did not grant head­

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scarf opponents very much. In practice, few headscarves could be shown to cause any of the specific problems mentioned. The Council of State decision kept school officials’ reaction to headscarves within bounds, forcing teachers and administrators to show that particular headscarves really did pose irresolvable problems before they could expell students wearing them. Many teachers and school administrators were clearly dissatisfied with this approach, which posed a variety of difficulties for them. Although decision-­ making was delegated to the local level, schools were not allowed to pass stricter local rules, such as simply prohibiting headscarves. French courts repeatedly ruled that such blanket prohibitions, which some schools tried to pass in the interest of clarity and simplicity, were contrary to the Council decision (Commission 2003: 30; Le Monde, 10 December 2003). Punishment of students for wearing a headscarves thus had to be justified on a case-­by-­case basis. Some principals resented the way this requirement forced them to play “bad cop” vis-­ à-­vis particular students and their families. Nor did principals relish having to make the highly contestable case-­by-­case judgment calls that the 1989 Council ruling required (Public Sénat 2003). Indeed, a number of local administrators’ decisions made in that framework were legally challenged, with decisions sometimes overturned in court (Le Monde, 10 December 2003). Not surprisingly, the very school officials to whom the ruling sought to devolve greater authority were largely dissatisfied with that ruling. Appointment of mediators between 1995 and 2004 made some cases more manageable, but legal conflicts continued. While the leading public education unions were divided on the law, those representing school principals and school inspectors voted in its favor (Le Monde, 17 January 2004). A CSA survey of French teachers subsequently found some three-­quarters of them also in support (Le Monde, 5 February 2004). The Stasi Commission was, by its own account, particularly moved by testimony solicited from teachers and administrators (Commission 2003: 40–44). Three-­quarters of the members themselves were or had been teachers, school administrators, or professors. Backing a stricter and clearer approach, the Commission stressed the need to support public teachers and principals, whom they saw as abandoned by the state in local situations often difficult to manage on their own. Prime Minister Jean-­Pierre Raffarin expressed hope that the law would help “to protect state servants who feel vulnerable” (quoted in Le Monde, 16 December 2003). As Commission member Patrick Weil explained after the report was issued, “We felt that it [the school system] had been overtaken, that it was no longer in control of the situation. That incited us to act” (quoted in Libération, 13 December 2003).

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Pro-­Christian Prejudice Thinly Veiled?

It seems unlikely that a majority of the French public rallied behind the new law mainly in the interest of helping school principals avoid legal challenges, so one might well ask whether French public support was not simply guided by religiously traditionalist support for Christianity over other religions. While, it would doubtless be rather naïve to think that concerns about the declining symbolic predominance of Christianity marked by Islam’s increasing public symbolic recognition and acceptance played no role in generating support for the new law, such concerns received little play in public discussion. Not even religious officials or far-­right politicians adopted positions congruent with such an interpretation. Many derided the new law as an attack on Muslims, thinly disguised as an even-­handed prohibition of religious signs in general (e.g., Le Monde, 16 December 2003; Le Temps, 18 December 2003). Large crosses, critics quickly pointed out, are not particularly in vogue, and wearing a cross is not a religious obligation. One might therefore be tempted to argue that the French were just seeking a way to permit only typical symbols of Christian identity (such as crosses of normal size), selectively protecting France’s Christian minority without admitting it. Clever though this reading may seem, it did not square very well with the actual pattern of support and opposition that developed. Christianity has long been more beleaguered in France by secularism than it is today by the rise of Islam, and those most explicitly concerned with Christianity’s place tended to oppose the new law rather than support it. Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox church officials all criticized the proposed law for being anti-­religious and warned Chirac against passing it (Le Temps, 9 December 2003). Nor was the law supported by the far-­right National Front (FN), which preferred to see Christianity’s privileged position in France upheld much more overtly. When the law was proposed, FN leader Jean-­Marie Le Pen denounced it as an effort to delude the public into focusing on the veil while ignoring the “real” problem: “massive immigration” (Libération, 5 December 2003). Similarly, an editorial in the FN weekly National Hebdo argued: The solution to this problem rests in assimilating those who accept being assimilated and returning to their countries of origin those who do not. Legislating about the veil at school is legislating about the accessory. It is taking a measure that risks resolving nothing, but just exacerbating the conflicts and turning itself back against the

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French loyal to the religion of their fathers. (Figaro, 26 December 2003) The fact that the FN itself was so outspokenly opposed to the law also makes interpretations of the law as a move to co-­opt the FN’s supporters more problematic than one might first assume.

The Headscarf as a Symbol of Women’s Submission

To explain the surprisingly wide-­ranging coalition that supported the 2004 law, one must look beyond Le Pen and the far right to the part played by other actors, particularly new feminist groups. To make sense of their role, one needs to understand how French observers have come to “read” the head­ scarf. Unlike political T-­shirts, headscarves do not come inscribed with words specifying the messages they are intended to convey. Messages are imputed to them by those who see or imagine the garment, and patterns of interpretation are culturally variable. This situation generates considerable potential for cross-­cultural misunderstanding. French and non-­French observers, for example, often “read” the scarf as a sign conveying very different messages. Non-­French observers often imagine a student attending class with her hair covered as someone willingly engaged in a freely chosen expression of her religious identity or cultural tradition, or guided by personal modesty. They often imagine the headscarf as a T-­shirt reading, “I believe in Allah,” or “I’m proud to be a Muslim!” Why, they wonder, would the French prohibit such declarations of piety and cultural pride? By contrast, when the French picture such a student, they more often imagine her as an unwilling victim of sexist familial or community pressures. For many French observers, a headscarf looks more like a T-­shirt that says, “I’m just a girl, and I know my place,” or “Don’t hit me! I accept my submission.” Deciphering the message that way, they are more indignant at the idea of girls’ being forced to wear such signs. Who is right? The available evidence fortunately allows us to go beyond such generalizations as the fact that signs have multiple meanings, or that all signs may be subject to discrepancies between the message intended and the one received. From interviews with French headscarf wearers, it is fairly clear that there are both students in France wearing headscarves as a matter of personal religious conviction and those who do not want to wear headscarves but are forced to do so by familial or community pressure (Gaspard

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and Khosrokhavar 1995).10 Others wear them for personal security, in response to peer pressure, or for other complex combinations of reasons. The fact of female students being forced to wear signs read as saying, “I’m just a girl and I know my place” particularly galls many people in France. In contrast to its position in 1989, the Council of State in early 2004 expressed support for a law prohibiting such signs. Explaining this change, Council members characterized sexually inegalitarian community pressures on girls as a factor marking a significant change from the situation in 1989 (Figaro, 28 January 2004). It is difficult to say whether such pressures at the local level really have increased. The phenomenon of parents pressuring their daughters to wear headscarves was also widely noted in 1989. However, there was little or no discussion then of the role of community pressure and intimidation by other students, or local gang leaders, in pushing girls to dress this way. Since 1989, the terms of the French national discussion have clearly changed in this regard. In particular, the prevalence of narratives about unwanted community pressures on girls to wear “signs” allegedly expressing acceptance of a subordinate and submissive social role has grown significantly. As the Commission’s report noted (29), the Council of State’s 1989 decision made no reference to issues of sexual equality. The omission was not surprising. In 1989, arguments centered on concerns about sexual equality were less common; they first appeared in newspapers of the far left and were then picked up mainly by feminists within the Socialist Party.11 The new centrality of those issues in the headscarves debate of 2003–2004 in part reflected the influence of recent actions and publicity by groups representing women from the underprivileged suburban areas (banlieues) where North African immigrants are concentrated. The activities of the organization Ni Putes, Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives; NPNS) and the network of local associations associated with it were illustrative in this respect. In late 2002, Sohane Benziane, an adolescent from the public housing projects of Vitry-­sur-­Seine, was burned alive in a cellar, a victim of local male aggression. Reports of this horrifying incident helped draw public attention to violence against women in France’s poor neighborhoods. Very shortly thereafter, a movement calling itself Ni Putes, Ni Soumises was launched with NPNS leader Samira Bellil’s widely read autobiography, Dans l’enfer des tournantes (In the Hell of the Gang Rapes), a hard-­hitting account of years of abuse at the hands of oppressive male youth from the rough and tumble district where she grew up.12 NPNS soon won considerable attention from the media and French officials. In its first year, the group organized numerous conferences and de-

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bates and undertook a vast consciousness raising campaign (Budry 2004; Mouedden 2004). In February to March 2003, NPNS mobilized from 10,000 to 30,000 participants for a march across France “against the ghettos and for equality,” departing (symbolically) from Vitry-­sur-­Seine (Fadela n.d.). NPNS leaders were invited in March to meet with Prime Minister Jean-­Pierre Raffarin, who embraced NPNS demands congruent with the united right UMP’s own emphasis on security (Le Monde, 10 March 2003). NPNS leaders were then invited to present their testimony to the Stasi Commission. The message NPNS conveyed was highly critical of traditional Islam, machismo, and sexist family and community pressures to which many young women of France’s immigrant suburbs are subject (e.g., see Macité Femmes n.d.). Calling for a “generational struggle,” the movement has decried such pressures as impeding the emancipation of France’s “women from below.” The recent rise of this movement has drawn public attention to divisions within “immigrant” groups in France, particularly tensions between more conservative elements and feminists sharply critical of tradition. Given this context, the French public has become acutely aware that veiling, even limited to the wearing of a headscarf, is far from consensually accepted in France’s Muslim population. Cases of girls forced to adopt more “modest” Islamic dress by community pressure, threats, or intimidation have been widely publicized. Just before the Stasi Commission’s report was released, the popular magazine Elle published an open letter by sixty well-­ known women, Muslim and non-­Muslim, calling on Chirac to ban the “veil”13 (New York Times, 12 December 2003), surely contributing to rising public awareness of sharp divisions among Muslims themselves in France. This pattern of organizational activity, popular mobilization, and media coverage has thus played a key role in shaping French public perceptions of “the veil” (le voile) and the constraints leading some girls to wear it. While France’s response to this perceived situation may be misguided, it is not at all surprising in this context that demands for public intervention to “save” girls from veiling have increasingly been heard. For its part, the Commission heard not only from representatives of NPNS but also from several other French feminists militantly opposed to the veil, including Chahdortt Djavann, the French-­Iranian author of Bas les voiles! (Down with the Veils!). Although they were the main group targeted by the Commission’s recommendations, only two students actually wearing Islamic headscarves were invited to testify. Nor did other feminists opposed to the new prohibition receive the same attention. As one Commission mem-

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ber later stated, an atmosphere developed that made it almost impossible to defend the right to wear headscarves without casting oneself as sexist and reactionary (Bauberot 2004).14

France’s Domestic War on Terrorism?

One could be tempted to regard France’s new law as a delayed response to the destruction of the World Trade Center and related fears about connections between Islamic fundamentalism and international terrorism. As Silverstein notes in an article on the headscarf law, after September 2001, “Many journalists and politicians began to worry that the French suburban housing projects (cités) had become nodes in a global jihad network stretching from Algeria to Chechnya to Afghanistan” (2004, para. 8). In a similar vein, Kramer (2004) argues, rather questionably, that it was after September 2001 that “an increasing number of Muslim schoolgirls started attempting to enter classrooms draped in clothing that had less to do with the places their families came from than with a kind of global ur-­Islam” (66).15 In support of this interpretation, one might also point to France’s expulsion of several foreign-­born fundamentalist imams shortly after the new law was recommended. Do these deportations not suggest that the law emerged largely from new state concerns about terrorist threats associated with fundamentalism’s rise in French suburbs? A dramatic front-­page article in the Wall Street Journal (9 August 2004), in part titled, “Trying to Pre-­Empt Terrorism,”16 clearly invited that interpretation. It presented the deportations of eight imams during the first months of 2004 as a “new” practice driven by a far-­reaching French “campaign against extremism.”17 The headscarf law was characterized as part of the same campaign. Such explanations of the background to the headscarf law undoubtedly resonate with American readers. They conform neatly to prevailing perceptions of “9/11” as a watershed moment in world history and reinforce familiar claims that Al Qaeda’s attacks inaugurated a scared new world joined in a global war on terror, terrorism, and “radical” Islam. Even the French were, after all, “on board.” Fears of terrorism associated with radical, transnational Islamic movements are certainly familiar in France, but they have not followed exactly the same chronology as those in the U.S. Understandably, September 2001 was less of a turning point in France, where such fears date back to the Paris

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1995 bombings by French-­born supporters of the Algerian Front Islamique de Salut (Silverstein 2004, para. 9), and relations with Algeria provide a long background history. Moves toward a new law banning religious signs in schools arose from a somewhat different, if not unrelated, set of concerns. Fears about radical, intentionally provocative and disruptive, expressions of Islam and, above all, fundamentalism (intégrisme) were frequently mentioned during public discussions of the law. By contrast, however, concerns regarding transnational Islamic networks inciting terrorism did not figure in the Stasi Commission’s report, and they played almost no part in the public debates that followed. Arguments for the new law clearly did not center on preventing such developments. In fact, in striking contrast to the terms of American discussion of the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism, there was no mention of “terror,” “terrorism,” or “terrorists” at all in the Stasi Commission’s 78–­page report or Chirac’s key speech on it (Le Monde, 19 December 2003). If preventing terrorism had been a driving motivation behind the quest for a new law, one would expect to have heard that reason clearly invoked, if not by leading public figures, then at least by some important supporters of the policy. After all, pointing to dangers of terrorism is generally thought to be quite effective for rallying public support of potentially repressive and controversial new measures. Yet such appeals were notably absent. Contrary to what some U.S. reports have suggested, the idea that the new headscarves law arose from a concerted French effort to crack down on potential terrorists is unwarranted. Most of all, such reports have reflected the dominance of the America-­centered frame by which the American media interpret current tensions surrounding Islam in other countries.

The European Court of Human Rights One might well ask why the rising influence of international and European human rights law did not prevent France from passing its unusual new restrictions on the right to freedom of religious expression. In reality, the authority of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) did influence the Stasi Commission’s reasoning and conclusions, but not as one might have expected. The Commission was clearly concerned that any new French legislation be able to pass eventual scrutiny by ECHR. The official report therefore discussed relevant precedents and how a national law prohibiting religious

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signs in public schools could be made to satisfy the European court’s standards. The Commission noted that the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms protects religious liberty, but that this right is not absolute. Moreover, the Commission stressed, the approach of ECHR to interpreting this requirement has involved “recognition of the traditions of each country, without seeking to impose a uniform model of the relationship between church and state” (21). One of the precedents identified by the Commission as relevant in this respect was the court’s February 13, 2003 decision on the case Refah Partisi [Prosperity Party] and Others v. Turkey. This case challenged the Turkish government’s banning of the Islamic Prosperity Party, primarily on grounds that the ban was in conflict with freedom of expression and association. ECHR decided in favor of the Turkish government in this case, ruling that the party’s political project posed dangers to the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Turkish constitution, including that of laïcité. In other words, where laïcité is constitutionally guaranteed—­as it also is in France—­ECHR was, this precedent suggested, willing to allow state measures to defend it, even if it restricted other rights included in the Convention (Commission 2003: 21). Is it a coincidence that the Commission’s own recommendation of a new law banning wearing conspicuous religious signs in the public schools was set forth in the context of a report on the tradition of laïcité and the conditions for its continued application in France today? Awareness of ECHR and the need to satisfy its standards help explain why defense of the new law prohibiting headscarves and other religious signs centered to such an extent on reference to the principle of laïcité, despite the fact that France’s tradition actually does not by itself account for the recent change in policy. Paradoxically, despite its institutional role in upholding universal human rights, the European court’s influence did not lead to a more liberal policy. On the contrary, raising objections about wearing headscarves to a level of principle sufficient to satisfy ECHR standards took regulations restricting headscarves off the relatively pragmatic terrain that the Council of State had insisted upon in its 1989 decision. In practice, France’s concern about ECHR standards favored official emphasis on laïcité and the republican tradition, reinforcing tendencies to concentrate precisely on the most symbolically and emotionally charged dimensions of the headscarves issue. In short, French assumptions about the nature of citizenship and its relation to group membership and the peculiar historical tradition of laïcité in France are undoubtedly essential for understanding why wearing head­

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scarves or other religious signs in the nation’s schools has repeatedly emerged as such a hot issue. Nonetheless, one must look beyond the republican model to explain the rupture with previous practice marked by the new law in France. Practical problems with the existing approach, recent actions to mobilize public sympathy by feminist groups representing les filles de banlieues (“the girls of the suburbs”), and recent precedents in international human rights law all were vital factors in bringing about this controversial recent change in French policy.

Conclusion The 2004 French law on headscarves was in many ways more rational than many foreign observers have assumed, but it was nonetheless risky. The law aims to promote integration and bolster social consensus regarding the terms on which France’s ethnic and religious minorities of postwar immigrant origin are to be integrated. However, like France’s later moves to ban garments covering the face in all public spaces, it ran the risk of producing effects directly opposite to those intended. Whether the policy will effectively promote integration or further entrench emerging divisions between “communities” depends in large part on how Muslims in France react. An outspoken minority, predictably, emerged in clear opposition to the 2004 headscarf ban. More surprisingly perhaps, other segments of French Muslim opinion proved much more sympathetic to the government’s strategy. Still in question are many moderate Muslims who are not particularly committed to wearing headscarves themselves but who may see France’s latest “scarf hunt” and more recent attacks on the burqa or niqab as evidence of a certain public, officially sanctioned, “islamophobia.” Publicity regarding the law’s purpose and rationale, beginning with the Stasi Commission report itself, aimed to discourage such a reading. By contrast, some of France’s more radical Islamic organizations, such as the PMF and the UOIF, sought to encourage it. The question is whether relatively secular and moderate French Muslims will be encouraged to pursue a course of continued secularization by the new law adopted in the name of laïcité or whether the latest attacks on Islamic dress may instead alienate such citizens and turn them toward organizations seeking to rally them as outcast victims. Debates over the 2005 law, certainly, fueled struggle between the UOIF and more quiescent elements within the French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM) established by

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the French government to represent the French “Muslim” population as a whole. As time passes, the ability of French mainstream media and French intellectuals to define the terms of national debate around Islam and the behavior of its Muslim citizens is likely to continue to diminish. More self-­conscious organization of France’s Muslim minority is developing and new groups claiming to represent it have recently been gaining more voice. At the same time, other European countries appear to be moving closer to France’s handling of diversity issues, and they have now become much quicker to comment on French decisions in this area than they were during the first headscarves debate, widening the array of perspectives defended by “respectable” sources in Europe. So far, however, neither change has led to liberalization of French policy; instead, it has taken a somewhat more restrictive turn. Even the widely noted influence of the European Court of Human Rights does not for now prevent France from pursuing its distinctive national policy course in this area. If anything, it has pushed the most conflictual, symbolic dimensions of the issue to the fore. Ultimately, these underlying domestic and international changes are bound to make France’s handling of its diversity issues ever more challenging.

PART IV

Problems of Political Membership in Britain and Beyond

Chapter 9

Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses : From Publication to Public Controversy

Beyond the French political scene, similar issues of political membership have recently emerged in other national and international contexts, often in response to apparently very different issues. The conceptual framework presented in Chapter 2 can be used by comparative analysts as a new tool for identifying underlying theoretical commonalities among apparently disparate membership-­related controversies emerging in different national and cultural settings, and in response to very different kinds of immediate policy questions. Using the new ordinary language-­based framework this way shows that the underlying theoretical tension between different “civic” understandings of political membership and the recent development of intense political conflicts along those lines are by no means France-­specific. The same underlying tensions within what is commonly treated as the “civic” position have also fueled debates about political membership in other contexts.

Britain’s Islamic Headscarves Affair? The Rushdie affair, which began just a few months before France’s first head­ scarves controversy, can be used as a lens through which to compare British notions of political membership and their public contestation with the parameters of France’s recent politics of belonging. When one thinks of the Rushdie affair, one might first remember the fiery Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa sentencing Salman Rushdie, author of the satiric postmodern novel The Satanic Verses, to death along with his publishers

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and translators. One might therefore rightly think of the Rushdie affair as a controversy about the limits of free speech or the relation between religious and secular authority. However, the affair also sparked a rich and revealing debate in Britain about the nature of political membership. The affair thus proved a particularly telling moment in Britain’s politics of belonging, one that brought several different models of political membership into play. One might ask why the headscarves affair should be compared to the controversy triggered by Rushdie’s writing at all given the obvious differences between the Satanic Verses conflict and France’s controversies concerning Islamic headscarves. In many ways, the two countries’ debates centered on very different themes and issues. As we have seen, concerns regarding public education, rational autonomy, and inclusive conviviality were at the crux of France’s headscarves affairs. The Rushdie affair, by contrast, turned largely on ideas of free speech and the rule of law. The political constellations within which the two “affairs” unfolded were also different in important regards. French politicians arguably were forced by the existence of a vocal and influential far-­right party to speak to the initial affaire du foulard. In Britain, by contrast, organized political pressure from the far-­right was quite weak. Facing dangers of intra-­party division much like those that the headscarves affair aggravated among French Socialists, British national politicians and party representatives said relatively little about the Rushdie affair. At the same time, there was much greater direct Muslim voice in the 1989 Rushdie affair than there was in the first French headscarves controversy. Nonetheless, the debate over political membership that the Rushdie affair occasioned in many ways paralleled discussions sparked by the headscarves affairs in France. Indeed, some even deemed the initial affaire du foulard France’s Rushdie affair (Modood 1990: 144). While obviously quite different in terms of the immediate issues at stake, both debates centered on Muslim migrants’ and their descendents’ controversial demands for public cultural recognition and influence. More important, both issues raised deeper questions about the place of post-­colonial Muslim immigrants in the former metropoles. They thus became telling litmus tests of existing understandings of political belonging, and its limits. As was true of the headscarves issue in France, the demands of Muslims against Rushdie and their often negative public reception thus occasioned an extended public debate in Britain about the nature of citizenship and of the relationship of the Muslim minority, or Muslim “immigrants,” to British culture, society, and politics.1 Were they full

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“citizens”? Was their citizenship, or their claim to belong in Britain, conditional? What rights and duties did it entail? What did (British) citizenship, or being British, imply about British Muslims’ demands for public recognition and public cultural consideration?

Muslims in Britain There are approximately one million Muslims living in Britain, approximately 80 percent of them of Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi origin. Britain’s immigrants from the Indian subcontinent originated largely from particular areas in South Asia with long-­standing patterns of emigration. These populations form coherent social communities in Britain, and are highly concentrated in urban areas. More than half the total Bangladeshi population live in greater London; almost a quarter of Pakistanis live in Bradford and Birmingham. The latter originally came to Britain to work in mills and factories, many of which have since closed. Recent economic and industrial change in Britain has thus worsened the socioeconomic position of much of the country’s Muslim population. The Muslim community in Bradford is particularly well organized, and played a leading role in campaigning against The Satanic Verses. Following the increasingly strict immigration restrictions introduced beginning in the 1960s, the original immigration of single male workers ended, giving way to family reunification. This has resulted in the recent development of an increasingly British-­born, and firmly settled, Muslim community. By 1991, 47 percent of Britons of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent had been born in the UK (Lewis 1994: 13–22, 76–112; Poulter 1989: 3; Modood 1990: 144–45). Legally, they were British citizens by virtue of jus soli. Under British electoral laws, even first-­generation immigrants from the New Commonwealth were entitled to vote. Nonetheless, these ethnic minorities’ relation to British culture, identity, and political membership remained an open question in many ways. The Rushdie affair brought these issues dramatically to the fore.

The Book in Question

In September 1988, Viking’s Penguin Group (Viking-­Penguin) published Salman Rushdie’s third major novel, The Satanic Verses. The novel soon won widespread critical acclaim. It was short-­listed for the 1988 Booker Prize and

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won the Whitbread Award for fiction. Like Rushdie himself, the novel was widely praised by writers around the world. To many Muslim readers, however, the book was highly objectionable. Through a series of dream sequences, certain chapters retell parts of the early history of Islam in a manner that might be variously characterized as irreverent, innovative, inappropriate, pornographic, comic, or simply crass. The virulent and often simpleminded political controversy that therefore developed around the book was, however, particularly ironic, if not tragic, in view of the central themes Rushdie sought to explore. Commentator Jim Herrick lamented, “One of the many ironies of the book and the affair is that a work which has so offended an immigrant population is written from within the community by a man who is deeply aware of the transformation which immigration threatens to bring” (Herrick 1989: 6). Most immediately, Rushdie’s tale centers on two actors from Bombay who fall to London from an aircraft exploding high above the English Channel. One, the poor son of an all-­loving mother in Bombay, had become a movie star, playing gods in theological films in India before falling to London, where he lands with an unself-­reflective and boundless self-­confidence. Not in the habit of making concessions, and failing to comprehend his new environment, he does not adapt to his new milieu. When he is suddenly rejected by the London woman of his dreams, his already developing madness linked to religious uncertainty turns into a righteous rejection of his new environment as the land of Evil, and he becomes convinced that he is the Angel Gibreel, God’s gift to humanity. The second actor, mirror opposite of the first, is the rich son of a hostile father who makes his acting career in England as the invisible voice of entities from shampoo bottles to boxes of peas in television advertisements, until he gets a better role in a series, as an extraterrestrial alien. Self-­doubting and driven by a need for love and acceptance, particularly from his idols, the English, he follows a path of hyper-­assimilation, changing his name and even brutally ordering that his “birth tree” at home be chopped down and sold. Nonetheless, abused by law enforcement officials and then fired from his job because of anti-­”ethnic” prejudice, and forever sensitive to English opinion, he turns first into a goat and then emerges from newfound poverty and social isolation as a Devil. Ultimately driven toward angry revenge, he is finally rehumanized when he goes to sleep in a dance club where wax figures of racist political figures are vindictively melted down in a giant microwave. As each actor becomes an icon and object of emulation by a host of local

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followers, their transformed selves in turn change the London scene. The Devil unexpectedly emerges as the object of fanatical admiration by once-­ punk youth who take to sporting pairs of plastic horns, while Gibreel inspires a neon halo-­wearing fad. The novel thus portrays two new urban tribes born of Indian immigrants’ influence. Neither of these new urban subcultural identities, however, have much to do with Indian-­ness.

Representing Britain’s Muslim Minority

As a secular Muslim raised in Bombay, educated in Britain, and writing in a playfully “improper” new English laced with Indian expressions and expletives, Rushdie’s own cultural hybridity and literary talent won him the enthusiastic support of many writers and critics for this imaginative project directed at exploring, and producing, cultural disruption through intercultural collision. One well-­known British writer even ventured that Rushdie might be worthy of sainthood, as much for the positive transformatory effect she saw him as working on British society as for his literary ability (Weldon 1989: 1–3, 42). Rushdie himself self-­consciously stressed these themes in interviews. In an interview in The Bookseller in March 1989, Rushdie described his project as not only exploring the nature of revelation from a secular perspective, but also treating the experience of migration and metamorphosis, and trying “to work out some kind of an ethic of impurity.” While underlining that the book was not intended to be “a kind of sociologically based fiction about how terrible it is today for black people in England,” Rushdie explained that he “had wanted to write a novel which at its most fundamental level is about metamorphosis—­the nature of it, the process by which it happens, its effect on the metamorphosed self and on the world around it, and its link with the act of traveling. Not least because the pressures exerted by migration are one of the classic contemporary locations of metamorphosis” (“Between God and Devil” 1989: 1151–56). Rushdie later elaborated further: The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling. . . . It rejoices in mongrelization. . . . Mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and that . . . it is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world, and I have tried to embrace it. The Satanic Verses is for change-­by-­ fusion, change-­by-­conjoining. It is a love song to our mongrel selves. (Rushdie 1991: 394)

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Describing the book as “an attempt to write about migration, its stresses and transformations from the point of view of migrants from the Indian subcontinent to Britain,” Rushdie also presented his project as reflecting the perspective of Britain’s South Asian immigrants themselves (Observer, 22 January 1989). Given his progressive activism in British anti-­racist politics and his widely used anti-­racist videos and writing, Rushdie already stood as a sort of de facto notable spokesman for British minorities’ rights and interests. While unofficial, Rushdie’s role in this regard was apparently appreciated by many members of Britain’s minority communities, including many British Muslims. However, few British Muslims appreciated the way that Muhammed—­ “their” Prophet—­or the Islamic religious tradition were portrayed in The Satanic Verses. In fact, a 20 October 1989 Harris poll conducted by the BBC found that four out of five British Muslims wanted some form of action taken against Rushdie (reported in Ahsan and Kidwai 1991: 17). Most calls for withdrawal of the book centered on the tone and style of the work, which many deemed offensive and inappropriate to its sacred topics. Impact International editor M. H. Faruqi, for example, complained largely of its failure to respect “the difference between the sacred and the profane” (Faruqi 1989: 8). M. M. Ahsan, director general of the Islamic Foundation in Leicester, called The Satanic Verses “the crassest sacrilege of all that is sacred for the Muslims” (Impact International, 14–27 October 1988, reprinted in Anees 1989: 108).2 Similarly, describing the novel as a cheap parody rather than a serious intellectual critique of Islam, Shabbir Akhtar criticized the fact that it was written in an idiom he characterized as “supercilious and dismissive” (1989: 5–6, 23–24, 30–31). Nor were British Muslims alone in this assessment of the book. As one Indian intellectual critic, raised as a Zoroastrian, argued: In The Satanic Verses, even the irreverence is ultimately facile. It is not so much a case of Faustus selling his soul to the Devil; it is more like an adolescent sticking his tongue out at God. Rushdie’s cleverness is simply inappropriate for the transcendental realities he is attempting to debunk. (Bharucha 1990: 68) Sympathizing with Muslim complaints, one contributor to Impact International describing himself as an agnostic Hindu explained, “His [Rushdie’s] transgression is that he has surrounded the Prophet and the revelations with pornography” (Vetta 1990: 7).

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Drawing on this line of argument, Muslims upset about Rushdie’s novel sought to encourage a conservative multi-­faith alliance of the religiously devout against sacrilege, indecency, and public offenses against the religious identities and sensibilities of religious believers. Their implicit understanding of membership in a civilized society was that shared fundamental beliefs hold society together and ensure peaceful social co-­existence. Advocates of this position thus appealed to the Belief model, though they clearly challenged British liberals’ interpretation of its entailments, substituting decency and religious propriety for the fundamental values and political principles—­ particularly free speech—­regularly defended, as we shall see in Chapter 10, by opponents of the Muslim campaign from both ends of the political spectrum. The alleged profanity and indecency of the novel particularly scandalized many Muslim critics where Mohammed and his wives were subjected to indecent or “pornographic” treatment: for instance, where the book depicted a brothel in which the prostitutes pose as Mohammed’s wives, or where it portrayed the recently widowed Prophet going on a promiscuous sex binge (Akhtar 1989: 27–28).3 The Islamic Defense Council complained that the publisher was taking advantage of freedom of speech to “publish . . . dirty work” and asked Penguin to apologize “to all those people of faith or no faith who believe in decency of expression” (Islamic Defense Council 1989: 110– 11). Faruqi explained that the Muslim community in Britain was “shocked and outraged” not only by the “sacrilege” but also by the “extreme profanity” of The Satanic Verses (Faruqi 1988), later mentioning the “filth and insults” it contained as contributing to making it unacceptable (Faruqi 1989: 7). Similarly, Akhtar (1989) called the novel “at times gratuitously obscene and wounding” (25). Given their intimate identification with their faith, and Mohammed’s status as a role model for millions of believers, many Muslims felt that their community, and they themselves, had been attacked (Impact International, 28 October–10 November 1988). Dr. Zaki Badawi, head of the Muslim College in Ealing and one of Britain’s most liberal Muslim leaders told the press: “What he has written is far worse to Muslims than if he had raped one’s own daughter. Muslims see Mohamed as an ideal on whom to fashion our lives and conduct, and the Prophet is internalised into every Muslim heart” (Guardian, 27 February 1989, quoted in Ruthven 1990: 29). Surprisingly given Rushdie’s political reputation, the novel was also criticized as tainted by cultural, religious, and racial prejudice. Rushdie’s use of the medieval Christian crusader name for Mohammed, “Mahound,” a word

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of abuse meaning devil or “a lustful and profligate false prophet and an idolater,” was frequently cited as evidence of Rushdie’s complicity in the West’s worst historical prejudices against Islam (Vetta 1990: 5). Indian academics Rukmini B. Nair and Rimli Battacharya concurred, arguing that, “The Satanic Verses . . . fits neatly into, indeed is a logical culmination of, the well-­known tradition of Orientalism, the scholarly and literary tradition responsible for the Western image of Islam” (1990: 3). Faruqi argued that the book had “self-­ hating racist undertones” and had “incited racial as well as religious passions against the Muslim community” (1989: 7–8).4 Atam Vetta also complained of racial slurs, such as “Sikh kebab,” and of Rushdie’s description of one of Mohammed’s followers as “an enormous black monster” (1990: 5, 7).5 Thus, even while Rushdie was lauded in elite literary circles for his representation of the (post-­) modern migration experience, the mass of British Asian Muslims vehemently rejected Rushdie’s role as a cultural and political representative of the Asian and Muslim “immigrants” ’ perspective and experience. Nair and Battacharya (1990) highlighted the cultural gap separating Rushdie from many immigrants, writing that, “The immigrants . . . may reserve the right to be mortally suspicious of a language they do not share, a ‘troublesome’ form of the novel that they do not appreciate and emotions that they do not feel in quite the tone that Rushdie describes them” (3). While Rushdie presented “doubt” as the privileged experience of the immigrant, they argued that doubt was really more the privileged ethos of nineteenth-­ century (European) Romantics. That is, they implied, Rushdie was fascinated by “doubt” as a modernist writer, not as a member of the immigrant community partaking of the, supposedly, quintessentially contemporary experience of migration. “As a political agent,” they therefore concluded, “Rushdie himself could be seen as encroaching upon the freedom of other people to voice their own opinions, however ‘medieval’ certain of these opinions may sound to a sophisticated intelligence like his own” (1990: 28). As Vetta, Rushdie’s “agnostic Hindu” critic, argued in London’s biweekly radical Islamic paper, “Anyone who writes from the point of view of these immigrants has the responsibility to put their culture, their traditions and their religion in the best possible light” (Vetta 1990: 7). Rushdie was similarly criticized by intellectuals in India. Rushdie himself anticipated Indian criticism, saying “I get the ‘un-­Indian’ tag all the time. . . . I don’t know quite what the problem is with me. It’s to do with the hybridity I think.” Noting that the same attacks were not leveled against all other expatriate Indian writers, he explained his perceived inauthenticity as a product of

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the cosmopolitan pastiche style of his work (“Between God and Devil” 1989: 1156). Indian critics explained their reservations somewhat differently. Writing in Third Text, Geeta Kapur warned of the dangers of accepting post-­ modernism as an accurate, or politically useful, description of actual Third World societies and their problems of self-­definition: “the discourse set up by the expatriots” like Rushdie, she complained was tending “to become too much the privileged voice of the diaspora whose members are themselves positioned in the Western academic world” (1990: 116). Similarly, Rustom Bharucha complained of “these expatriates/immigrants/migrants  .  .  . total separation from ‘our’ reality in India that they presume to deconstruct and occasionally invent. Even those among them who have rejected the politics of nostalgia and resented the ‘Asianness’ thrust on them have used their multicultural credentials to create alternative Orients, as contrived and false as the earlier mythologies” (1990: 66). Like the life of Asian immigrants in London and fictionalized episodes from Islamic history, scenes of India, and particularly modern Bombay, figured among the “exotic,” “multi-­cultural” ingredients spun through Rushdie’s blender. Real people in India, like real religious Muslims and non-­white immigrants, resented being used to spice up English literature at the price of being distorted beyond recognition. And they resented the fact that Rushdie, as a great author, was able to represent them in and to others, while they themselves, lacking equivalent cultural capital, were unable to control or significantly influence the process. Other British Muslim critics angrily accused Rushdie of betrayal, denouncing him as a “traitor” (e.g., Faruqi 1989: 30) or a “Brown Sahib” guilty of selling his own people short in exchange for white “recognition and acceptance” (Sardar 1989: 12). A Pakistan-­born London journalist and intellectual, Ziauddin Sardar complained that the author’s status as “a card carrying member of the establishment of the Left . . . ensures that Rushdie is seen as a natural ally of the Muslim community, a spokesperson of the immigrants and the blacks, a fighter for Asian causes, a friend of the Third World.” But he warned that British Muslims in the 1980s were fed up with their role as docile followers and loyal voters for a left they were coming to suspect of wanting to use the Muslim community as its “shadow” (1989: 12; cf. Akhtar 1989: 34–35, 42, 50; Vetta 1990: 8; Sardar and Wyn 1990: 270). Pointing to the “irony of a media star such as Rushdie assigning himself, and being assigned, the place of the immigrant,” Rukmini B. Nair and Rimli

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Battacharya summarized the situation in these terms: “the very people—­ immigrants in Britain—­to whom Satanic Verses was addressed, bitterly reject his [Rushdie’s] work. . . . Little empathy exists between Rushdie, whose left-­ wing views any intellectual would immediately recognise, and the embattled, linguistically and culturally alienated peoples who will not understand Rushdie’s speech/speeches” (1990: 24, 27). In the wake of the book’s publication, issues of how the British Muslim community was to be represented, who was to speak for it, and how British Muslims were to make themselves, with their tastes and sensibilities (so unlike Rushdie’s!), present in the public sphere therefore emerged as an issue of central importance within the British Muslim community.

From Publication to Public Protest The controversy to which Rushdie’s novel gave rise in Britain quickly evolved from anger at Rushdie, to protest against the publishers, to demands for governmental intervention, to a wide-­ranging discussion of the very nature of “being British.” Beginning in early October 1988, charges that the novel was offensive spread through Britain’s Muslim community. Grass-­roots letter-­ writing, telephone-­calling, and petitioning campaigns directed at the publishers were initiated, and the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs was organized to mobilize public opinion against the novel. Those opposed to the book at this stage believed that the publishers had simply been too ignorant about Islam to appreciate how offensive certain passages of The Satanic Verses were to them. The Action Committee’s aim was therefore to explain why the book was objectionable, and to demonstrate that many Muslims were in fact offended. The campaign centered on three very radical demands, all directed at Viking-­Penguin: first, that the book be withdrawn, remaining copies be pulped, and the book not be reprinted or translated into new languages; second, that a public apology be made to the Muslims of the world; and, third, that damages equal to the returns received from world sales of the book to date be paid to an agreed Muslim charity.6 Viking-­Penguin stood behind its decision to publish, forging ahead in the face of mounting Muslim protest with plans to reprint the novel in several translations. Meanwhile, opponents learned that an Indian editorial consultant had long since warned the company that the novel would deeply offend Muslims and that printing it could lead to social unrest, particularly

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in India (Faruqi 1989: 8). By December, as questions mounted regarding the publisher’s intentions, British Muslim protesters increasingly turned to the government for help. Where they arguably had the strongest case was in their demand for protection through an extension of Britain’s existing blasphemy law, which applied exclusively to Christian faiths. In view of their arguments for extending the blasphemy laws, some observers argued that the Rushdie affair demonstrated British Muslims’ ability “to use the liberal language of equal rights in rational argumentation” for their own ends (Asad 1990: 475). Certainly, it did demonstrate the ability of British Muslims to pursue their aims through well-­established tactics of citizenship and competitive electoral politics. Offended Muslims pressed their demands vis-­à-­vis the government through mass protest rallies in London and other towns and by exerting electoral pressure on Labour MPs.7 Such electoral tactics were more salient in Britain than they were during the first headscarves affair in France partly because Britain’s more liberal citizenship laws more widely enfranchised its Muslim minority population, which was also heavily concentrated in particular districts. Adding other forms of pressure, some British Muslim leaders also expressed sympathy and even support for Khomeini’s call for believers to kill Rushdie. Meanwhile, more temperate Muslim leaders presented their demands to Home Office officials. The responses of those officials at the Home Office later figured centrally in the discussion arising from the affair about the nature of British citizenship. Rushdie’s novel thus occasioned a telling discussion of the nature of political belonging. Some questioned how the political membership and legal commitments of Muslims in Britain should be defined. At a deeper level, others engaged questions of what “being British” or belonging in Britain really meant, and what such “real membership” entailed. Chapter 10 analyzes the conceptual bases of the different and sometimes conflicting answers to those questions that were publicly articulated as these complex discussions of political membership unfolded in Britain.

Chapter 10

Rereading the Rushdie Affair: The Contested Terms of Being British

The discussion of political membership that the Rushdie affair provoked in Britain was complex, and multifaceted. More than one question of membership was in fact at stake. The most obvious membership-­related question posed by the affair, and particularly by Khomeini’s fatwa and its reception by Muslims in Britain, was about the nature of Muslims’ political membership and legal commitments. Were their commitments primarily to the British political community, or to an international Muslim religious community? On what basis was obligation to such a community defined? Was it voluntary, or purely ascriptive? It was in answer to this first question of political membership that the Descent conception of political membership most clearly came into play. On this level, the discussion of political membership that arose from the Rushdie affair looked like a conflict between civic and ethnic understandings of political membership. Perhaps more interesting for our purposes, however, the Rushdie affair also opened up questions about the nature and terms of real political belonging in Britain. While some Muslims in Britain effectively rejected such belonging, or subordinated it to religious identity, others explicitly embraced being British and sought to draw upon this national identification as a basis for legitimately staking political demands. This discussion was much more theoretically complex and brought several different conceptions of political membership into play. For understanding this more influential debate and comparing it to France’s politics of belonging, the binary opposition of civic and ethnic is insufficient, and the more subtle theoretical framework inspired by ordinary language analysis is indispensable.

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Analyzing the Rushdie affair in these new terms reveals surprising similarities, as well as some telling differences, between the theoretical parameters of the politics of belonging in the French and British contexts. In both France and Britain, left-­wing opponents of controversial new Muslim demands similarly invoked the Belief view. Positions on the right differed more between Britain and France. In France, right-­wing opponents of such demands initially grounded their positions in the Culture and, occasionally, even the Descent model. Such appeals to the Culture view were remarkably muted or absent in Britain. The Descent view was actually present in coded form in the mainstream British press, but was seemingly taboo and thus absent from British politicians’ statements. Conservative officials in Britain did, however, appeal to the Contract model, the model favored by those for toleration of headscarves in the French case. Positions in the two countries thus overlapped in important ways, but the overall theoretical constellations involved clearly differed.

Khomeini’s Fatwa and the Descent View of Muslim Political Membership Rushdie’s most radical opponents clearly and openly grounded their claims in a Descent model of membership. With his proclamation of a fatwa against Rushdie on 14 February 1989, Khomeini became the most internationally prominent, and infamous, champion of the the campaign against Rushdie. Invoking Islamic law to condemn and sentence Rushdie to death for apostasy—­the crime of defection from one’s religious faith—­and calling on devout Muslims worldwide to execute that sentence by killing Rushdie, Khomeini clearly called for the adherence of Muslims, even nonpracticing Muslims living in secular states, to a No Exit understanding of membership. Regardless of his or her personal circumstances or national legal status, Khomeini treated everyone born Muslim as accountable to Islamic law, and subject to prosecution under it. Within Britain, responses to the fatwa varied. Khomeini’s intervention was widely denounced by many Muslim groups opposed to Rushdie; the fatwa clearly undermined their own efforts to attract public sympathy and to persuade the government to act on their behalf. While praising Khomeini’s order, even Kalim Siddiqui, founder and director of the radical Islamist Muslim Institute, counseled Muslims in Britain not to commit murder. Nonethe-

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less, Khomeini’s declaration did find some echo. Protesters in the streets used “Kill Rushdie” as a rallying cry, and Siddiqui—­even while advising Muslims in Britain not to commit murder—­supported Khomeini’s order. A former journalist seeking to capitalize on the media attention he thereby attracted, Siddiqui launched a campaign in July 1989 for a separate Muslim Parliament to address issues of general concern to British Muslims (Observer, 2 April 1989). Like Khomeini’s stance, that of Siddiqui could thus be characterized as grounded in an “ethnic” perspective, or at least in one that championed the primacy of ascriptive ties. The Rushdie affair thus did involve elements of conflict between a (British) civic understanding of political membership and a (Muslim) ethnic one. However, this reading of the conflict as between civic and ethnic or ascriptive understandings of membership applied best to the first debate about political membership that the Rushdie affair occasioned: the debate about whether British Muslims should regard themselves and their legal and political commitments as primarily Muslim, or primarily British. The main organizations leading the campaign against Rushdie in Britain clearly sought to place the Muslims they represented on the British side of that divide. Consequently, as they strove to frame the debate, a different question of political membership came to the fore: that of what it meant to be British, or to have a legitimate claim to belonging in Britain. The Rushdie affair thus raised questions similar to those at the crux of French debates, particularly those initially sparked that same year by Islamic headscarves.

”Respectable” Sympathy for Powell’s Prophecy: Legitimation of a “Descent” Perspective? Despite the widespread anti-­Muslim reaction inspired by the Rushdie affair, there was little or no overt and explicit defense of a Descent perspective on citizenship during the controversy. Though such a perspective did enter into the debates, it was introduced underhandedly, largely through sympathetic allusions to the political views of Enoch Powell. A Conservative, anti-­ immigration MP, Powell was removed from Edward Heath’s shadow cabinet in 1968 after making a notorious speech in Birmingham, circulated to the press in advance and popularly known as “Rivers of Blood.” In his speech, Powell warned that Britain’s increasing multiracialism was a recipe for domestic violence. The implication of the argument was not merely that Britain

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needed to assimilate immigrants or develop and preserve a single, common culture. In Powell’s view, culture and behavior, civility and barbarism, were linked to “race,” and thus to biological descent. To avoid the kind of incivility, barbarism, and violent racial conflict then taking place in the United States, Britain needed to remain “white,” if necessary by returning non-­white immigrants to their countries of origin.1 Expressions of belated sympathy for Powell, known for his Descent perspective, came up periodically during the Rushdie affair.2 However, not all sympathetic reference to Powell was as unambiguously favorable to the Descent model as one might assume. An editorial tellingly titled “A Very British Lesson Muslims Must Learn,” for instance, warned that Muslims in Britain could “fulfil Mr Enoch Powell’s horrific prophecies.” However, the result in this case seemed to turn on political will—­that of Muslims to cause trouble rather than compromising like most other religious minorities in Britain, and that of the real British to stand up to them—­rather than resulting directly from racial or ethnic differences per se (Times, 8 July 1989). In another, more subtle sympathetic allusion to Powell’s warnings, the Sunday Times ran a half-­page article entitled “Muslims on the March” (9 July 1989). Above the text, a photo taken at a Muslim protest at Westminster showed a protester carrying a picture of Khomeini, with the face of the clock on Big Ben in the background. The two faces of contemporary Britain—­ Khomeini raised aloft by Muslim protesters, and London’s traditional image towering passively, but still uneclipsed, behind them—­were thus juxtaposed in the image. Directly below this article was another story, provocatively entitled “River of Blood Through the Old Regime.” Nominally unrelated, this was a review of two new books on the French Revolution, one on the Terror, the other on de Tocqueville, both written on the eve of the Bicentennial of the beginning of the Revolution. London readers would be expected to recognize the phrase “rivers of blood” as an allusion to Powell’s notorious 1968 speech.3 In the article, however, the phrase turned out to refer to Robespierre’s description of the Terror’s usefulness in separating France from her enemies. Nonetheless, the association of ideas provoked by this review’s juxtaposition with the article on the Muslim protest against Rushdie directly above it was not overly difficult to discern. Thematically, the book review warned of the dangers of fanaticism, political extremism, and the potentially barbaric results of popular political mobilization. Reinforcing the association between the two articles, a second photo in the article on the protest showed a copy of the Daily Mail, with

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the headline: “The Tragic Sacrifice—­Moslem father murdered daughter who wanted to be a Christian, jury is told.” Thus, protest against The Satanic Verses was linked by the paper’s editors to Terror, intrafamilial murder, French and Iranian foreign influence, and potential fulfillment of Powell’s racist anti-­ immigrant warnings. A Descent model of membership, however, was never openly and explicitly invoked by opponents in the campaign against Rushdie in Britain. In the thick of the Rushdie affair, press coverage fanning racist fears of the threat to British national identity and social order posed by Muslims was thus muted and coded even while it was also dramatically displayed.

Rejections of “Multiculturalism”: Progressive Reaffirmation of a Belief Model of Citizenship Discussions of what being and becoming British meant during the Rushdie affair drew participants into consideration of multiculturalism, particularly multicultural educational policy. Somewhat surprisingly, the Rushdie affair led to vociferous rejections of multiculturalism by both left liberals supportive of Rushdie’s work and Muslims speaking out against it. Counterintuitively enough, however, such rejections of multiculturalism actually did not mark any rejection of the vision of integration favored by multiculturalism’s founders, nor did it lead to affirmation of the Culture model of membership. Left liberal critics of multiculturalism during the Rushdie affair actually called for a return to the very sort of unity through shared political culture for which multiculturalism’s founders had always hoped. They thus appealed to the Belief model of membership, not the Culture model central in French discussions. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the general expectation was that immigrants arriving in Britain from the new Commonwealth should and would assimilate (Poulter 1990: 4). Assimilation was repudiated as governmental policy in 1966, when Roy (now Lord) Jenkins, then Home Secretary of the Labour government, famously explained his understanding of immigrants’ integration in the following terms: Integration is perhaps a rather loose word. I do not regard it as meaning the loss, by immigrants, of their own national characteristics and culture. I do not think we need in this country a melting pot, which will turn everybody out in a common mould, as one of a series of car-

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bon copies of someone’s misplaced vision of the stereotyped Englishman . . . I define integration, therefore, not as a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity, coupled with cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance. (quoted in Poulter 1990: 5) Jenkins’s statement signaled Britain’s turn from assimilationism to a multicultural approach to immigrants’ integration. Multiculturalism later became official British educational policy. In 1985, the Swann Committee Report, outlining the philosophy and objectives of multiculturalist education in Britain, clearly invoked a Belief model of citizenship. Pointing to the need to ensure that British society was “cohesive” as well as “culturally diverse,” the Report called for “the acceptance by all groups of a set of shared values distinctive of the society as a whole.” Such shared values were to serve as a counterweight to public support for “the essential elements of the cultures and lifestyles of all  . . . ethnic groups” (quoted in Poulter 1990: 7). Such common fundamental values were supposed not only to complement diversity, but also to set limits to it, an approach also favored by the English courts in ruling on issues of minority cultural rights (7–17). Ultimately, the Swann Report invoked “rationality,” not British tradition, as the basis for “shared values.” Rational values were those that could “justifiably be presented as universally appropriate.” In response, Muslims argued that the problem of shared values should be approached not through rational deduction but by exploring the values actually shared by all religions (Verma 1990: 54). From the official British standpoint, values were universal if they could be rationally defended in universal terms. From the alternative Muslim viewpoint, they were universal only if actually shared and accepted by all groups. British Muslims’ criticisms of the Swann Report foreshadowed the conflicting interpretations of the Belief model that would reemerge during the Rushdie affair. Some perceived the position of Conservative officials, most clearly articulated in the widely publicized statements of Home Office officials Douglas Hurd and John Patten, as renouncing a multiculturalist approach to integration. However, their statements were far less clear in that regard than many of their critics suggested. Speaking at Central Mosque in Birmingham in February 1989, the Times reported, Hurd had criticized “the tendency of some sections of the Asian community to isolate themselves from the “mainstream of British life.” He called in particular for children of Asian parents to be taught fluent English and have a “clear understanding of the history and Constitution

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of Britain” (Times, 27 February 1989). Interestingly, however, Hurd defended such enculturation not as an end in itself, but as a means for promoting social mobility. At the same time, he also approved parents’ transmission of their faith and native language to their children, and the maintenance of minority customs and beliefs. Finally, he denounced violence and called on Muslims to respect the rule of law (Poulter 1990: 5–6). Hurd’s emphasis was thus ultimately more on social participation, including successful participation in the British economy, than on enculturation as such as a condition for belonging. He thus stressed a society-­centered Contract view and combined it with a state-­centered Contract view emphasizing citizens’ duty to obey the law. When John Patten, minister of state at the Home Office, drafted an open letter to British Muslim leaders in July, and another—­widely known as “On Being British”—­to the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality two weeks later, the letters were formulated along similar lines. The political editor of the Sunday Times, in an editorial titled “Ground Rules for the British Way of Life,” praised Patten’s thinking as “a long overdue reassessment of the nature of British citizenship” (23 July 1989). Patten’s letter to British Muslims called for greater social integration, and encouraged minorities to participate in the “mainstream.” Patten wrote: The single most important priority as we move forward must be the aim of full participation in our society by Muslim and other ethnic minority groups. Modern Britain has plenty of room for diversity and variety. But there cannot be room for separation or segregation. It is to the benefit of all, including the minorities themselves, that they should be part of the mainstream of British life. Even here, however, Patten was careful to insist that “diversity and variety” were acceptable, that integration did not mean complete cultural assimilation or religious conversion, saying, “greater integration in the sense of a fuller participation in British life does not mean forfeiting your faith or forgetting your roots.” As Patten specified: Putting down roots in a new community does not mean severing the old. No-­one would expect or indeed want British Muslims, or any other group, to lay aside their faith, traditions or heritage.  .  .  . It is quite natural and reasonable for the parents of an Asian child, born in Britain, to want to bring that child up able to speak their own mother

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tongue.  .  .  . British Muslim children should be brought up faithful in the religion of Islam and well-­versed in the Holy Koran according to the wishes of their parents. Nobody could or should suggest otherwise. At the same time, however, Patten underlined that it was also necessary to learn about Britain. Finally, like Hurd, Patten called on Muslims to obey the law. In his view, that meant there was no possibility of Muslim demands concerning Rushdie being met (Times, 5 July 1989).4 In the wake of Home Office officials’ statements, others, too, called for minorities to learn English and become more familiar with British culture so that they could better succeed and prosper in Britain. Seconding elements of Hurd’s speech in Birmingham, a Times editorial pointed to the need for second-­ and third-­generation immigrants to learn the language and culture of Britain so as “not to be deprived of the opportunities open to them in the land of their birth” (27 February 1989).5 As in Hurd’s speech, the author’s final emphasis was thus on equality of opportunity, not a need for cultural unity per se, as a basis for successful integration in Britain. Learning English figured only as a means to this end. This perspective thus ultimately most closely resembled that of Lionel Jospin, who also underlined the need for remedial French programs in poor neighborhoods, citing insufficient mastery of French as a leading cause of academic failure, and academic success as a precondition for social mobility and “integration.” Surprisingly enough, the kind of clear-­cut defense of an unambiguously cultural understanding of national citizenship articulated on the French right during the affaire du foulard never emerged during the Rushdie affair, even when multiculturalism was most directly under attack. The clearest attack on British multiculturalism actually came from public intellectuals, most notably self-­proclaimed “familiar left humanist feminist” writer Fay Weldon. Weldon dramatically announced in a widely quoted statement, “Our attempt at multiculturalism has failed. The Rushdie affair demonstrates it” (Weldon 1989: 31; cf. New Statesman & Society, 24 February 1989). In a particularly high-­profile statement, Weldon—­ originally born herself to a family from New Zealand—­advocated a change to what she called an American-­style, “uni-­culturalist” policy. She argued: The uni-­culturalist policy of the United States worked, welding its new peoples, from every race, from every nation, every belief, into a whole: let the child do what it wants at home; here in the school the

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one flag is saluted, the one God worshipped, the one nation acknowledged. (1989: 32) With such a policy guiding public education, Weldon claimed, “Our children would grow up with a sense of common identity—­be they Afro-­Caribbean, Asian or European in origin” (32). Given her own labeling of her position as “uni-­culturalist,” one might be tempted to class Weldon’s understanding of shared political membership as an instance of the Culture model, likening her position to much of the French right’s idea of national citizenship as a product of publicly enforced cultural conformity. In reality, however, the shared “culture” Weldon hoped to see public schools cultivate was actually a public, political culture—­a shared flag and national identity—­plus a shared religious referent. From a French or American perspective, this last element was clearly “private,” falling outside the ambit of political culture. However, in the British context, with its history of an official state church, that characterization of religion as inherently private is less clearly apropos. To properly understand Weldon’s favorable reference to schools in which “one God” would be worshipped, one needs to interpret her statement in the context of broader school policy debates then going on in Britain. As a supposed description of American public educational practice, Weldon’s reference to “the one God worshipped” was certainly puzzling. Religious education, however, is a required part of the British public educational curriculum, with all British public (or “state sector”) schools required to hold daily religious worship assemblies. In recognition of the actual diversity of religious beliefs and affiliations in British society, parents objecting to the character of these assemblies have the right to withdraw their children. In the passage cited above, Weldon was actually staking out a position in the controversy surrounding passage of the 1989 Education Reform Act. That Act mandated that school religious assemblies be “broadly Christian” in character. School heads who found such “broadly Christian” assemblies ill-­suited to the religious backgrounds and sensibilities of many of their students were allowed to seek exemptions from the Act permitting them to hold separate assemblies for non-­Christian students. The main association of school principals, whose position Weldon was endorsing, responded by discouraging principals from seeking such exceptions, arguing that doing so threatened the unity of schools and local communities. Meanwhile, Muslim activists encouraged parents to withdraw their children from the newly re-­Christianized

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assemblies and demand separate accommodation. In practice, before the Reform Act forbade them to do so, some school heads had been trying to adapt their religious assemblies to avoid alienating non-­Christian students, for example, by excusing them from saying “in the name of Jesus” during certain prayers (Observer, 28 February 1989; Poulter 1990: 10–11). In referring to the need for schools to see that “one God is worshipped,” Weldon was thus articulating a relatively hard-­line defense of Britain’s existing state religious identity in state sector educational institutions. This element of official, public (religious) culture was, too, to serve as a foundation for shared belonging in the British polity. As read in the British context, then, Weldon was consistently appealing for schools to reinforce a shared public and political culture. Her position thus actually diverged from the Culture view common in France. Though she herself labeled her position as “uni-­culturalist,” Weldon did not appeal to what we have called the “Culture” perspective. Calling on shared political culture as the appropriate foundation of a common citizenship, Weldon appealed to the Belief perspective. Her position thus most closely resembled not the cultural nationalism of the French right, but the militantly civic republican appeals made during the initial headscarves affair by part of the French left. The anti-­multicultural turn did not go unnoticed by Shabbir Akhtar, a prominent champion of the Muslim campaign against Rushdie’s work. Perhaps thinking of Weldon, Akhtar (1989) saw in the anti-­multiculturalism backlash a new threat to Muslims’ claims to acceptance and legal recognition as bona fide British citizens: Muslim citizens claim to be British as well as being Muslim. Implicit within the legislation formulated since the mid 1960s has been the assumption that the identity of immigrants contains an amalgam of their own distinctive cultural heritage as well as the traditions of their chosen country of citizenship. (113) That assumption, he noted, “has been widely questioned in the wake of the Rushdie affair.” Akhtar’s parrying of charges challenging the basic Britishness of Rushdie’s Muslim’s critics was unusually direct. Akhtar’s personal trajectory was also unusual, and it was precisely in view of his distinctive position vis-­à-­vis British society that he was recruited to a leading role in the anti-­Rushdie campaign. Akhtar studied theology at Cambridge. Returning

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to England after completing his graduate studies in Canada and failing to find an academic position, he went to work in Britain’s race relations bureaucracy, joining Bradford’s community relations department. Once the Rushdie affair began, the Bradford Council of Mosques quickly recognized its need for a representative better able to argue the Muslim case with Britons, and it invited Akhtar to join the organization as an independent member. Akhtar served as a leading proponent of their cause, which he promoted through a series of editorials and television appearances as well as his short book, Be Careful with Muhammad! (Lewis 1994: 158; Ruthven 1990: 120).

Belief Arguments: The Formula of Cultural Diversity + Common Values = Multicultural Integration, and Its Critics While the “cultural nationalism” perspective on political membership prevalent on the French right was not articulated even by critics of multiculturalism during the Rushdie affair in Britain, the perspective of the militant civic republicans on the French left corresponded much more closely to ideas defended across the Channel. The militant and combative metaphors often associated with that position in France were generally absent from British arguments, but the French idea of generating and regenerating national integration and a shared political membership by passionately, or at least resolutely, defending certain fundamental values or principles was regularly advanced not only during the affaire du foulard but also during the Rushdie affair.6 Like the authors of the Swann Report on multicultural education, many observers of the Satanic Verses controversy concluded that shared fundamental values or principles were the indispensable basis for social cohesion and, therefore, should be the sine qua non of British citizenship. Discussion at a seminar on the realization of a “plural society” in Britain organized in response to the Rushdie affair by the Commission for Racial Equality and the Runnymede Trust was telling is this regard. One participant in the seminar, for example, called for dialogue and discourse in pursuit of common values and meanings to which the United Kingdom must commit itself if it is to survive as a multi-­faith democracy—­multi-­cultural, multi-­racial, multi-­lingual and politically pluralist, yet not balkanized. (Lynch 1990: 34, emphasis added).7

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Another author, reasoning along similar lines, concluded that a “’liberal’ society” was “one committed to certain sorts of public rules” (Jones 1990: 609). The fundamental principle or “rule” defended by those arguing in this vein was almost invariably that of free speech. As it happens, this was a principle Muslims were already suspected of not supporting as a result of media coverage of the so-­called “Honeyford affair” in Bradford in 1985. Bradford school principal Ray Honeyford had written an article attacking Britain’s multicultural educational policy. The article triggered a widely publicized local dispute. Reacting to the article, Bradford Muslims accused Honeyford of racism and demanded his resignation. Although one might have expected debate stemming from this affair to have centered mainly on conflicting views of appropriate educational policy, many instead took it as evidence that Muslims did not respect basic civic rights to freedom of expression (Lewis 1994: 152–53). Free speech provided a basic point of fundamental agreement among most British journalists, regardless of political persuasion. The Economist invoked free speech as the “principle upon which democracy is based” (5 January 1991), while New Statesman & Society hailed it as “the most essential freedom of democratic society” (15 February 1991). Journalists on both sides of the political spectrum thus concurred in invoking free speech as an “essential” “principle,” “freedom,” or “rule.” Free speech was stressed as a value or principle at the very foundation of legitimate—­whether “liberal” or “democratic”—­social order in Britain. Though often criticized for advancing an English, culturalist understanding of being British, Patten’s letter to British Muslims also similarly defended Rushdie’s right to publish based on “the fundamental freedom on which our democracy is built” (Ahsan and Kidwai 1991: 324), thus, like British journalists, appealing to a version of the Belief model centered on free speech. Insisting on this kind of fundamental rule seemed to respond well to some British liberals’ insecurity about whether they actually had any such commitments to defend. One writer admitted humorously, “Having been derided for years for being uncommitted to anything, it is a welcome change for liberals to find themselves attacked for believing in something” (Jones 1990: 609). Another editorial warned Muslims in Britain to watch out because “the white tribes of Britain can be every bit as intransigent and stubborn, and no less forceful in defense of their beliefs, as the brown tribes” (Times, 8 July 1989). A later Economist article celebrated the fact that secular liberals had proved able to muster as much fervor for their beliefs—­in this case enforcement of the law

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against murder—­as had religious believers. As the article noted regarding the Rushdie affair, “religion has something to teach the rational secular world; some principles should be defended without recourse to a blurry halfway house” (5 January 1991). Thus, for many, the Rushdie affair led to a discovery they welcomed: the possibility of setting limits to liberal tolerance. In contrast to Rushdie opponents’ appeal to a Belief model centered on decency and propriety as conditions for shared membership in “civilized” society, these critics championed a Belief model of their own, one centered on free speech. Taking a strong stand in favor of free speech also appealed to others concerned with the international balance of power, and with international migration as a threat to British society. Encounter editor Anthony Hartley cautioned regarding Iran, “There must certainly be a temptation to consent to a tactful softening of our principles. But this would be a dangerous error. . . . If [Khomeini’s] values are to be set against ours—­and the cultural aggression came from his side—­then we must stand our ground” (Hartley 1989: 75; cf. 1980). While initially directed against Khomeini, Hartley’s message, as he ultimately made clear, was directed at British Muslims as well. The Rushdie affair, he argued, showed the need to choose between the “principle of toleration, which favours free speech” and “respect for the beliefs and habits of new immigrants to this country” (1989: 76). As the problem was framed, toleration thus entailed setting limits to respect for minority cultures and beliefs. Indeed, it was immigration itself that Hartley ultimately perceived as imperiling British society’s fundamental values. He argued, “Even if we succeed in thwarting the cultural imperialism of Ayatollah Khomeini, Western liberal values will not remain unchanged in the turmoil of wandering peoples and beliefs that the late twentieth century has loosed upon the world” (77). Interestingly, immigration was dangerous by Hartley’s account not simply because of differences, and inevitable conflicts, between British and Islamic values. Because the Belief model grounds membership in shared beliefs rather than ancestry, participation, or mere unreflective cultural habits, it is often accompanied by, and may contribute to inducing, fears of ideological subversion. As a strong defender of a Belief model of membership, Hartley thus perceived the real threat of immigration as its tendency to unsettle the beliefs of the British natives. As he wrote, the Rushdie affair showed: That the modern mixing of cultures and moving of peoples around the globe are rendering self-­confidence and firm judgment more difficult than in the past. That an interpretation of values and a queasy con-

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sciousness of the relativism of habits and traditions can blunt the edge of belief and confuse the acuteness of understanding. That no sooner are we all agreed that Khomeini’s sentence on Mr Rushdie is a monstrous threat to our national sovereignty and a threat to free speech than we discover that we can do little to vindicate that sovereignty and that our own attitudes toward free speech are ambivalent. (76) Interestingly, Hartley’s ultimate concern was not that shared principles unifying British society were necessary to ensure social peace. Instead, more insidiously, immigration threatened national self-­confidence. Much like members of the Nationality Commission eager to restore the luster of French national identity, Hartley associated immigration and reaction to it with a dangerous waning of national pride. Resolutely defending fundamental principles was thus recommended as a way of combating that tendency to national self-­doubt. Intellectual defenses of the campaign against The Satanic Verses doubtless fueled liberal fears that “core values” uniting all British citizens, including Muslims, were under threat, or might not exist. For instance, in Be Careful with Muhammad!, a polemic defending the anti-­Rushdie cause, Shabbir Akhtar explicitly rejected the idea of grounding British political membership in shared fundamental values or principles. Akhtar initially appeared as a critic of the Culture model. Nominally, he criticized Patten’s stance as a strain on “multi-­cultural ideals” (1989: 127). One might therefore have expected him to have followed the authors of the Swann report, favoring a Belief model of citizenship stressing common “core values” as the basis for integration over the Culture model of citizenship. Ultimately, however, Akhtar’s criticisms proved to be directed at the Belief model itself. Like critics of multiculturalism who argue that it implies “cultural relativism,” Akhtar used the word “culture” to refer not to customs and comportment as French cultural nationalists often did, but rather to values and principles. It was precisely the demand for agreement on the “fundamental” value of certain—­secular—­principles that Akhtar considered “anti-­multiculturalist.” Criticizing Patten for pushing British Muslims to choose between being Muslim and being British, Akhtar argued that, normally, British Muslims should only be asked to compromise routinely on matters of taste or fashion—­but not on matters of principle. There is rarely the need for a painful choice between two opposed allegiances both based on fundamental prin-

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ciple. But where circumstances force such a choice, no authentic Muslim can hesitate about which loyalty comes first. (128; also see 114) Surprisingly, as this passage also reveals, Akhtar accepted the idea that immigrants should conform to the ways of the host country in “matters of taste or fashion.” In a complete reversal of what the authors of the Swann report, philosopher Jürgen Habermas, or other advocates of the Belief model as a progressive alternative to old-­fashioned cultural nationalism envisioned, Akhtar here actually defended the Culture model as a counterweight to legitimate political contestation of allegedly “fundamental” values! On “matters of taste of fashion” Akhtar, like many French cultural nationalists, thought that immigrants could legitimately be expected regularly to “compromise.” Like Akhtar, some on both the right and far-­right in France thought that it was legitimate to expect immigrants to conform to these sorts of concrete, everyday French mores. In contrast to the way self-­styled civic republicans typically construed matters in France, morality entered into the French Culture perspective only through guests’ obligation to demonstrate respect for their hosts; it was not the hosts’ way of doing things per se that was held to be moral or a matter of principle. Akhtar, unexpectedly, shows how a historically more nationalist and conservative Culture vision of citizenship could potentially have a certain appeal for immigrants themselves. By grounding claims to shared membership in the less morally charged realm of culture, this way of construing political membership may leave open a greater possibility of political challenge and contestation on questions that really matter. When Muslims called for legal restrictions on the circulation of The Satanic Verses as a filthy book that demeaned people of their religion, liberal defenders of the Belief model raised doubts about their claim to belong in Britain. Akhtar (1989) warned his readers that challenging the claims of Muslims opposing The Satanic Verses to belonging in Britain because of their strongly held values and opinions was a dangerous precedent, not only for other minority religious groups, but also for homosexuals, environmentalists, and animal rights advocates.8 “It is the Muslims,” he claimed, “who have wished to remind liberals that freedom is indeed a contestable concept” (113–14). By contrast, he accused what he called, “the secular clergy” of “trying to canonize freedom of speech as an absolute value” (59–60). After several anti-­Rushdie protesters were killed by police in Pakistan, Atam Vetta (1990) warned, deploring the killings, that “In Britain a battle line separates those who believe that the freedom of speech is

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the only sacred thing in life and those who would grant the status of sacredness to other things including religious faiths and life itself ” (8). Whatever the authors of the Swann Report had reasoned, not all supporters of “multiculturalism” saw the Belief model of citizenship as necessary for or even compatible with multiculturalism. In fact, some opposed the Belief model of being British from a multiculturalist standpoint, arguing that, to develop a multicultural society, it was not enough to abstain from defining national identity in terms of English culture. For instance, Talal Asad argued that much of the debate occasioned by the Rushdie affair was problematic precisely because “the sphere of national politics” was widely understood as the locus “where something called ‘core values’ and ‘what we have in common’” were to be found. Meanwhile, the development and maintenance of various cultural and religious traditions were either taken for granted or explicitly excluded from national politics (1990: 467). In other words, favoring a Belief conception of citizenship in which “core values” were to ensure collective cohesion, as the Swann Report had, was an inadequate basis for multicultural democracy; it unfairly relegated religious and cultural particularities of different social groups, and the political demands with which they were associated, to the private realm. Culture, from Asad’s more radically multiculturalist perspective, required collective production and reproduction, and therefore usually involved some degree of state regulation or support. The public realm thus could not be merely the arena of privileged “core” values, balancing cultural diversity in the private realm; in a truly multicultural society, the public realm needed to have a pluralistic cultural dimension as well. Meanwhile, ironically, Rushdie himself was openly critical of the kind of absolute moral defense of free speech advocated by many British liberals. Coming out of hiding to speak in February 1990, Rushdie criticized claims that freedom, or freedom of speech, is “sacred” to liberals as misguided. By his own account, his purpose in The Satanic Verses was precisely to call into question the opposition between good and evil (“Between God and Devil” 1989: 1156), and thus the very standards that claims regarding sacredness and absolute commitments imply. In light of this difference of views, Rushdie’s eventual apology and reconciliatory embracing of Islam, and the subsequent denunciation of him as “not worth defending” by the international organization formed in his defense (Rushdie 1990: 250–51), is not altogether incomprehensible.9 While many claimed free speech as an essential fundamental principle in Britain, the laws of the UK actually allow for a variety of restrictions on

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speech and publication. Had opponents of The Satanic Verses been Christian, been offended qua members of a minority racial group, or resided in Northern Ireland rather than England, they could have had legal grounds for prosecuting Viking-­Penguin. British law recognizes at least two kinds of precedents for limitations of free speech that were potentially applicable to British Muslims’ concerns. First, there was a law against blasphemy, which originated from a concern that piety be respected. Second, there were laws restricting free speech in order to preserve “good relations” between different social groups. As it happened, for historical reasons the blasphemy law in England applied only to offenses against Christianity, not other religions. As late as 1976, the specifically Christian application of the law was explicitly highlighted in the courts. In a blasphemy trial concerning publication, by Gay News and its editors, of “The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name,” the verdict of Judge King Hamilton clearly stated: “Blasphemous libel is committed if there is published any writing concerning God or Christ, the Christian religion, or some sacred subject using words which are scurrilous, abusive or offensive and which tend to vilify the Christian religion (and therefore have a tendency to lead to a breach of the peace)” (Ruthven 1990: 49). Meanwhile, restrictions justified in terms of promoting more harmonious relations between disparate social groups applied only to racial, not religious insults. Racist speech was prohibited by the 1976 Race Relations Act. By the time of the Rushdie affair, the race relations structure was in decline due to reductions in local governmental authority and cuts in the funding of race relations institutions (Modood 1989: 281).10 In this context, Muslims were not the only social group challenging the existing parameters of the race relations approach to maintaining social harmony. For instance, supporters of prohibitions against pornography, mostly on the left, favored extending similar limitations of free speech from race to gender relations. In the past, pro-­Zionist British Jews had successfully circumvented limitations on the available forms of legal recourse by instead relying on political mobilization. As Akhtar himself recalled, Jewish outcry against the play Perdition for its portrayal of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis had led to its withdrawal from the British stage. Akhtar encouraged British Muslims to emulate that strategy (Ruthven 1990: 128).11 Indeed, that was the strategy that critics first targeting Viking-­Penguin initially pursued. However, over time, existing limitations on forms of available legal recourse were increasingly subject to critical scrutiny. Since the early 1980s, British Muslims had been arguing against efforts to define the

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category “Muslim” in ethnic rather than religious terms so that issues involving Muslims could be treated in Britain’s existing framework of “race relations” (Weller 1990: 39). During the Rushdie affair, the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs, for example, argued “it is very unhelpful to look at human relations in Britain on the basis of race and it is most misleading to see the Muslim community as an ethnic community. Such categorizations . . . serve to make racism endemic,” leading both to “bad laws” and to “difficulties in the provision of essential services.” The Committee expressed hope for a future in which “people in Britain will not be classified according to the colour of their skin or ethnic origin.”12 Theoretically, the same kind of law as the one against incitement to racial hatred could instead also have been applied to religious hatred, as it in fact already was in Northern Ireland (Weller 1990: 41). It is therefore misleading to think that the difficulties Muslims encountered in seeking legal recourse against publication of The Satanic Verses stemmed wholly or primarily from conflict between their demands and fundamentally liberal British principles. Certain liberal critics would doubtless have preferred that to be the case. In reality, however, the legal problem confronting Rushdie’s opponents in Britain stemmed from the continuing Christian bias of British legislation and the disparity between Muslims’ often religiously based social identity, on the one hand, and more racial or ethnic forms of identity assumed and encouraged by Britain’s race relations system, on the other. Complaints about Rushdie’s novel therefore gave rise to a critical reexamination of the existing limits of the law against incitement to racial hatred. Because it applied only to groups defined in racial terms, the law applied neither to The Satanic Verses nor to harassing Muslims by shouting “Salman Rushdie!” as some began doing (Ruthven 1990: 131). Given such limitations, the chair of the Oxfordshire Community Relations Council and of the Asian People’s National Association proposed a broader concept of race and racism, effectively calling for protection of minority groups defining themselves in nonracial terms. Stressing the need for a standard reflecting the complex ways in which people identify themselves, and not merely the ways in which others categorize them, he advocated laws against the socio-­cultural devaluation of people on the basis of their “philosophical differences” or “membership in a cultural minority” (Modood 1990: 156–57; cf. 1989: 283–84). Opposing the extension of laws like those against racist speech to religion were those, mostly on the left, who argued that, unlike race (or gender), reli-

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gion was a matter of choice. As one such opponent put it, “It’s not you” (New Statesman and Society, 2 June 1989). However, as others pointed out, progressive anti-­racists themselves had previously striven to make “black” into a chosen identity, reconstruing blackness as a form of cultural self-­identification rather than an identity imposed by others on the basis of one’s skin color (Ruthven 1990: 126–27). Meanwhile, the campaign of British Muslim organizations hoping to ban The Satanic Verses focused primarily on Britain’s blasphemy law, despite its being nearly defunct in practice. They were encouraged in this strategy by the existence of ready allies among religious leaders favorable to extending or reinvigorating the law. However, precisely because they did seize on the blasphemy law, Rushdie’s British Muslim critics immediately ran afoul of secular supporters of free speech, who saw such legislation as anachronistic and undesirable. While sympathetic to Muslim complaints about the bias and inequity of the law in favoring Christians, secular critics advocated repealing the blasphemy law, not extending it.13

State-­Centered Contract Arguments: Citizens Subject to the Rule of Law State-­centered Contract arguments were central during the Rushdie affair and, as had been the case in France during discussion of the Nationality Code, proved to be a game at which two could play. Conservative officials and opponents of the anti-­Rushdie campaign used arguments appealing to the state-­centered Contract model of political membership to challenge not only actual lawbreaking but also the legitimacy of the anti-­Rushdie demands and popular political protests of many Muslims in Britain. In return, more savvy sympathizers and supporters of their cause tried to turn state-­centered Contract appeals to Rushdie opponents’ advantage. The line of argument they suggested was not unpromising theoretically. However, its power was undoubtedly much diminished by the way the affair itself unfolded. When Khomeini entered the fray surrounding Rushdie’s book, announcing that, as an apostate, Rushdie had earned the death penalty, and calling on Muslims abroad to carry out that sentence, irreparable damage to the public image of British Muslims’ campaign against Rushdie quickly followed. The joint secretary of Bradford’s Council of Mosques, Sayal Abdul Quddas, immediately responded to Khomeini’s fatwa by saying, “Every good Moslem is

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after his [Rushdie’s] life. . . . He deserves hanging. There are any number of people who would willingly carry out what to us would not be a crime but a justified act” (Reuters Library Report, 15 February 1989). Meanwhile, a Bradford Mosque secretary said he would willingly sacrifice his life and that of his family to carry out the fatwa (Hartley 1989: 74). Muslim guests appearing on BBC television’s broadcast of Kilroy! in February also expressed support for death threats against Rushdie (Rationalist Review, 5 May 1989). All these statements were widely broadcast and reported. Participants in the campaign against Rushdie failed consistently to cultivate a law-­abiding public image, despite the efforts of UKACIA, the umbrella organization supposedly leading the campaign. Lack of organizational discipline and unity combined with Bradford Mosque leaders’ initial bungling of their response to Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie cast lingering doubts on British Muslims’ commitment to the rule of law, diminishing the effectiveness of demands that the British state protect its loyal and law-­abiding subjects of all ethnic backgrounds and religious persuasions. Many were outraged, and sought to make it clear that Muslims should either accept British law or get out of Britain. Sunday Sport thus urged “Those who say their deep religious convictions prevent them from obeying the law of this land” to “quit Britain immediately and go live in a country where the conflict does not exist.” One-­upping Khomeini’s own approach, Sunday Sport offered one million pounds sterling to anyone bringing him to trial in Britain for incitement to murder (19 February 1989). If Britons were to be subject to Khomeini’s legal authority, Sunday Sport suggested, Khomeini was to be subject to Britain’s. Others merely urged that Muslims encouraging murder be aggressively prosecuted.14 Unfortunately for Rushdie’s opponents, critics were quick to put their apparent rejection of Britain’s laws against murder and their criticisms of the limits of Britain’s blasphemy law on the same plane, using early statements of sympathy for the fatwa to undermine the legitimacy of the whole anti-­ Rushdie campaign. The reaction of one commentator to the May 1989 demonstration against The Satanic Verses in Hyde Park, and to banners like one reading, “Ayatollah you will never walk alone” exemplifies this tendency. He admitted to feeling a “familiar twist of counter-­hatred in the gut,” as he found himself thinking, “I dislike it all: banning books, murdering authors. We don’t need these people here. . . . How can they claim to be British yet swear allegiance to that murderous patriarch?” (Ruthven 1990: 16). The standard of being British to which this candid quip implicitly appealed was that of

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allegiance to the Crown. That traditional conception of British subjecthood readily lent itself to a state-­centered Contract perspective according to which the essential prerequisite of legitimate belonging in Britain was respecting British law. The fact that a more modern notion of citizenship was unusually late to develop in Britain may thus account for some of the attraction of state-­ centered Contract appeals, as opposed to society-­centered appeals or true Culture arguments about membership.15 Recognizing the damage done to their cause by early reactions to the fatwa, British Muslim leaders quickly scrambled to distance themselves and organizations they represented from Khomeini, calling on their supporters to respect the laws of Britain. Shabbir Akhtar, brought on board by Bradford’s Council of Mosques precisely to help them to manage public relations more astutely, maintained that “death to Rushdie has never been the official policy of any British Muslim authority or organization” (1989: 94). Akhtar sought to distance the Council from Quddas’s statements, stressing that, “The Council of Mosques does not support violence and does not incite Muslims to break the law of the country in which they live” (Ruthven 1990: 120). Shortly after the initial statements from Bradford supporting the fatwa, Muslim leaders in Liverpool also announced that their wish “to dissociate ourselves completely from the Ayatolloh’s statement and call upon every Moslem to respect the law of the land” (Reuters Library Report, 20 February 1989). Despite its close organizational ties to the political-­ideological Jama’at-­i Islami (Islamic Party) through the UK Islamic Mission (UKIM), even the radical Islamic paper Impact International (23 February–8 March 1989) ran an article underlining that, “insofar as the Muslim community in Britain is concerned it has no doubts about its obligations to observe and help maintain the peace and order of the country of its citizenship. It is also aware that the Islamic law of blasphemy is not on Britain’s statute book.” Despite these actors’ best efforts, it was hard to stem the damage to Muslims’ public image. Internal rivalries soon opened another breach. Challenging the UKACIA’s rather unsuccessful leadership of the anti-­Rushdie campaign, the director of the pro-­Iranian Muslim Institute, Kalim Siddiqui, announced in April that the Muslim campaign might need to incorporate “symbolic breaking of the law” into its political strategy. Presumably, such “symbolic” lawbreaking would not have included killing Rushdie; whether it included bombing bookstores and other such actions was unreassuringly unclear. The UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs, meanwhile, rapidly repudiated Siddiqui’s position (Lewis 1994: 161–62; Pipes 1990: 218). Such

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ill-­considered dismissals of British legal norms nonetheless gravely damaged the Muslims’ cause against The Satanic Verses in Britain. Even observers aware that British Muslim organizations did not officially support Khomeini’s death order often remained suspicious of their hidden intentions. As Anthony Hartley tellingly mused, “what is said in the mosques in the decent obscurity of Urdu presumably remains unknown to the authorities” (1989: 74). In the wake of these developments, many expressed concerns not only about particular Islamic leaders or organizations but also about Muslims’ presence within Britain per se. Some argued that Islam was inherently incompatible with the acceptance of British law because it was itself a system of law potentially conflicting with, and even subverting, the laws of democratic nation-­states (Ruthven 1990: 53–154). Others worried that Muslims had not resigned themselves to accepting democratic decision-­making processes and non-­violent political means (Times, 27 February 1989), or that they sought to establish segregated communities living under their own law instead of Britain’s (Times, 8 July 1989). Finally, it was argued that understandings “of the nature of law” were themselves “the products of a particular culture,” making the vision of “many cultures living together under one rule of law” untenable (Hartley 1989: 76). British Conservative leaders quickly tried to stake out the high ground with respect to the state-­centered Contract argument, proposing their own interpretation of this model and its implications. Unlike more radically anti-­Muslim commentators, Conservative officials did not challenge the legitimacy of Muslims’ presence in Britain, but they did use the state-­centered Contract perspective to dismiss Muslims’ demands against Rushdie’s novel as illegitimate. In his letter to Muslim leaders and “On Being British,” Patten rejected Muslim demands for amendment of the blasphemy law. Patten argued that, given the danger of a wave of conflictual interfaith litigation and disagreement about whether the law should be extended or repealed, it was best to attempt neither. He then called on Muslims to respect Rushdie’s right to freedom of expression. In its existing form, the blasphemy law did not apply to Islam. Rushdie therefore was not breaking the law. Within the limits set by the rule of law, Patten argued, the principle of freedom of speech therefore dictated that Muslims respect Rushdie’s right to publish. Patten’s was a very conservative version of the state-­centered Contract perspective. His position thus echoed not only French Socialist pragmatists’ call for education and language acquisition as a practical means to social mobility, but also the idea of a guest-­host, entry-­for-­adaptation contract invoked

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during the headscarves affair by the French right. The difference was that, for Patten, adaptation did not mean adopting English cultural norms of dress and personal conduct, but only conformity to existing British law. In Patten’s letter, the limits of the rule of law were taken as a given rather than as products of ongoing political discussion and decision making. Unlike others’ defenses of free speech as a fundamental democratic principle, his letter offered no principled defense of the existing limits of the law. Muslim newcomers were to be accepted as being “British” only insofar as they accepted the legal status quo, a position difficult to reconcile with acceptance of Muslims as legitimate participants in the ongoing democratic business of making and changing laws. In a sense, Patten’s position was thus a polite version of the Sunday Sport solution (accept our laws or get out of Britain), and was candidly praised as such in the Times (8 July 1989). The same logic figured in statements of other Conservatives, including Douglas Hurd and MP Sir John Stokes. Hurd informed Muslims that the law of the land applied to everyone because all who enjoyed the protection of the law had a responsibility to obey all the laws (Times, 25, 27 February 1989). While seemingly fair and simple, emphasizing duties to obey this way easily lent itself to challenging Muslim citizens’ civil rights to protest. As Anthony Hartley complained regarding Muslims’ encouraging violence after having demanded legal protection from blasphemy and taken advantage of British political rights to protest: “They [Muslims in Britain] had better stay quiet and obey a law to which they now owe a duty” (Hartley 1989: 76). Later, Stokes extended the idea of membership as conditional on legal deference in a more undemocratic direction, after a protest in which eighteen police officers had been injured and many protesters arrested. “I cannot understand why they allow immigrants to parade and riot in large numbers either outside of the House of Commons or anywhere else. . . . [T]hose who settle here must obey our laws and customs” (Reuters Library Report, 28 May 1989). Although it was thus sometimes in tension with acceptance of open public, political contestation of existing laws by British Muslims, this legal-­ political approach to citizenship was not taken in Britain to imply the cultivation of public civic personae unmarked by cultural “difference,” as was widely expected in France. There was no British equivalent of this French image of the true citoyen transcending particular attachments, or keeping his or her group-­based identity at an appropriate distance from the higher, public self. Unlike many French officials, Patten thus did not call for separating the public, political persona from the private person with his or her particular

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memberships and attachments. Instead, he acknowledged, “each group will have its own specific issues” of particular importance. He called simply for the political resolution of such issues within a framework of shared “laws and standards,” including the elimination of racial and sexual—­but for some reason not religious—­discrimination. As should be fairly clear by now, Patten’s letter appealed to more than one conception of political membership and was inconsistent theoretically in its underlying vision of what “being British” was about. Ultimately, this mixing of models made the government’s position more conservative than a simple defense of the Contract model of membership alone would have been. Obeying the rule of law did not factor in Home Office statements as the only condition Muslims were called on to meet if they were to be accepted as “British.” Indeed, Patten drew on a virtual laundry list of “common sense” conditions for membership. As freely admitted in opinion pages of the Times, the very restrictiveness of the deal Patten offered Britain’s Muslim minority accounted for some of its apparent widespread appeal (8 July 1989). Some of those to whom Patten’s letters were addressed accepted the state-­ centered Contract position to which he appealed while actively challenging his conclusions. Political theorist and deputy chair of Britain’s Council for Race Equality Bhikhu Parekh agreed that immigrants had duties toward the state as a legal-­governmental entity. In contrast to Patten, however, Parekh treated this understanding of political membership as an alternative, not an addition, to other possible models. Parekh argued that immigrants had no obligation to accept Britain’s customs and way of life or even its values. He thus broke with Patten in clearly rejecting the Belief as well as the Culture model of membership. Instead, Parekh maintained that Britain had actively and knowingly recruited Muslim immigrant workers, and that British society had thus incurred an obligation to respect their way of life. In demanding that they conform to British ways, Parekh argued, Patten was treating them as second-­class citizens (1990: 701). From Parekh’s standpoint, the official British imperial idea of membership as a contract between subjects and the Crown was the more legitimate and appropriate model for the membership of post-­imperial immigrants to England. They would be British by virtue of their relationship to the state, not English nationals by virtue of cultural assimilation.16 Parekh criticized Patten’s alleged assimilationism as adding additional requirements to the basic, legitimate contract between the government and its citizens. Rather oddly, Parekh thus turned the state-­centered Contract model into a

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basis for rejecting Patten’s view of political membership, but without engaging much of Patten’s argument. As Parekh presented the disagreement, he was for the Contract model, whereas Patten endorsed the Culture view of political membership. In reality, however, even Patten’s calls for immigrants to learn English were defended in instrumental terms, as a means to educational success and employment, not as a direct requirement for membership. And, like Parekh, Patten himself also drew on the state-­centered Contract understanding of citizenship. Just as Fay Weldon and other self-­styled critics of multiculturalism during the Rushdie affair actually reproduced much of the same theory of political membership as had British multiculturalism’s founders, the theoretical contrast between Patten and Parekh was much less stark than Parekh suggested. Both drew on the state-­centered Contract model. They differed in how they interpreted its relevance and combined it with other models. Parekh implied that the Contract model made more sympathetic treatment of Muslims’ claims against Rushdie appropriate, but without fully explaining why. The UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs response to Patten provided a clearer statement of how the state-­centered Contract model could support the anti-­Rushdie campaign. In its reply to Patten, UKACIA objected to his implicit characterization of Muslims, and disagreed with his interpretation of the political implications of both the Culture and state-­centered Contract models of political community. Referring to Britain as “our country” and “our society” and seconding Patten’s call for full Muslim participation in it, the Committee renounced any desire to become “a ghetto community.” The Committee’s Convenor thus denied any interest in the kind of minority rights to self-­segregation defended by the Guardian, and argued that Muslims were in fact assimilating. At the same time, however, he also implied that Muslims were, nonetheless, a separate community within British society, albeit an “open and outward looking” one. In its letter responding to Patten, UKACIA therefore called for public recognition of “the [Muslim] community’s need to preserve its ethos,” and for corresponding legal and material provisions. In contrast to intellectuals who characterized Patten’s assimilationism as imperialist, the Committee’s Joint Convenor told Patten that his mistake was precisely in characterizing the Muslim community as one that was not assimilating, did not understand and accept British legal norms, or lacked firm attachments to British society: There is, I can assure you, no conflict or tension between practising our faith and having a fluent command of English or having a clear

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understanding of British democratic processes, laws, system of Government and the history that lies behind them. There is no question that Muslims, like others in the society, have rights and responsibilities and being British, have indeed put down roots that must grow deeper. However, the mere fact that you felt the need to refer to these self-­evident truths, perhaps calling into question thereby the motives and objectives of the community, reflects on the communication gap between the Government and the Muslim community. (Ahsan and Kidwai 1991: 327) Speaking for Rushdie’s Muslim opponents in Britain, the Committee underlined its respect for the rule of law and demanded that the government protect its members in exchange for their loyalty and obedience Thus, while intellectuals challenged Patten’s conditions for “becoming British,” the Committee argued that the Muslims they represented were British already, even by Patten’s own standards. Regardless of the accuracy of the Committee’s characterization of the cultural knowledge and political identifications of Muslims in Britain, it is interesting that what the UKACIA highlighted as most problematic was not the content of government officials’ specific expectations about how Muslims should adapt in order to be accepted as full members. It was, rather, the fact that British Muslims were presented as newly entering a bargain that UKACIA insisted had already long existed. By contrast, UKACIA’s leader stressed the durable relationship of “the Muslim community” to Britain, and that Muslim immigrants’ standing as citizens was already long-­settled. The Committee also seconded Patten’s call for public order, but argued that Muslims were the victims rather than the perpetrators of violence and abuse, and that the “free rein” given to “insult and abuse” was what generated “public disorder and mischief.” While championing the rule of law, the Committee argued that it was precisely the law that should prohibit sacrilegious publications like Rushdie’s. Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie and examples of apparent support for it among British Muslims inevitably limited the purchase of this line of argument. Respect for the law of the land was central to the state-­centered Contract appeals of both Conservative officials and those more sympathetic to the anti-­Rushdie campaign. Calls for murder based on the self-­proclaimed religious authority of a foreign leader made Muslims look anything but deferential to British legal authority. Leaders of the Bradford Council of Mosques

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initially failed to recognize the political importance for their cause of clearly denouncing the fatwa. The early events of the Rushdie affair thus diminished the power of the state-­centered Contract appeals subsequently formulated in support of Muslims’ demands for censorship. Though most British Muslim opponents of Rushdie’s work may very well have rejected Khomeini’s call to execute his punishment for apostasy, their lack of organizational unity and discipline prevented clear and consistent communication of that message.

Conclusion The most consequential and disturbing issue raised by the Rushdie affair concerned the identity of British Muslims. Whether or not Khomeini’s interpretation of Islamic law’s application to Rushdie and his declaration that Muslims everywhere were religiously duty bound to execute his sentence against Rushdie were sound from an Islamic standpoint is a matter best left to religious scholars. Politically, what was important about the fatwa was the way Khomeini succeeded in internationally broadcasting a message that at least purported to place all Muslims in non-­Islamic nations in a situation of stark legal conflict between support for the laws of Islam and support for the laws of the countries in which they lived, and of which many were longstanding legal citizens. Khomeini’s orders actively called on them to decide whether they regarded themselves primarily as British, or primarily as Muslims. The statements and practices of British Muslims in the wake of the fatwa suggested there was no single, fully consistent answer to the question of political identity within Britain’s Muslim communities. However, those leading British Muslims’ response to The Satanic Verses clearly tried, after initial gaffes, to insist on Muslims’ respect for the British state’s authority and monopoly over the legitimate means of force. Even as represented by the most important organizations leading their campaign against Rushdie, most British Muslims thus purported to belong, above all, to the British political community and not to a global “nation of Islam,” as Osama bin Laden would later express it in his calls for loyal Muslims everywhere dramatically to transgress the laws of secular nation-­states.17 Like their French counterparts, most British Muslims during the Rushdie affair thus sought inclusion and recognition in the polity in which they lived, not exemption from it. French Muslims wearing “Islamic” headscarves to classes in the public schools, and resisting expulsion for doing so, implicitly

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demanded acceptance and integration into national public institutions, albeit as “visible Muslims.” Similarly, actors on both sides of the controversy in Britain nominally agreed that being British should take precedence. It was opponents of British Muslims’ calls for censorship who first introduced the issue of what it meant to be British, and of the nature and limits of the national community’s openness to Muslim “immigrants,” but even strong anti-­Rushdie Muslim groups in Britain themselves also then asserted their loyalty. The Rushdie affair therefore soon took on a second, equally important dimension. It became, in large part, a discussion about the nature and legitimate conditions of true belonging in Britain, about what “being British” entailed. In Britain, as in France, this discussion was marked by appeals to several conceptually distinct understandings of political membership. In Britain, as in France, the debate was shaped in part by tensions among different conceptual perspectives. However, in contrast to the general pattern of argument in France, in Britain the debate also turned to some extent on conflicting interpretations of the entailments of a shared, state-­centered Contract view, and on conflicting versions of the Belief model. As the Rushdie affair unfolded in Britain, there was some implicit and carefully coded appeal to a Descent perspective in the mainstream British press. However, more open appeal to such a view of being British was most notable for its absence. This marked a clear contrast to public discourse at the time in France, where far-­right appeals to a Descent view of membership were clearly reported and contributed to shaping public debate. More surprisingly, though there was much attack on multiculturalism during the Rushdie affair, the Culture view was not clearly invoked by British opponents of Muslims’ controversial demands. Their views in this regard most closely resembled those of more tolerant French Socialists like Lionel Jospin, who saw learning French as necessary for successful participation in society. This marked a significant contrast with the first affaire du foulard in France, in which appeals to the Culture model of political membership figured significantly in the arguments of both far-­right and center-­right head­ scarf opponents. In Britain, as in France, opponents of Muslims’ controversial public cultural claims stressed a Belief model of membership. According to this view, British identity centered on commitment to liberal free speech rights. The demands of many Muslims for censorship were thus deemed incompatible with British life. Multiculturalism was regularly construed as antithetical to this defense of core political commitments to free speech, and was publicly renounced on those

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grounds by liberal opponents of conservative Muslim’s demands. Dramatic public renunciation of “multiculturalism” did not, however, imply embracing of what we have called the Culture model; during the Rushdie affair, multiculturalism was instead construed as the Belief model’s opposite. In setting left-­ wing defenders of a Belief model of political membership against support for multiculturalism or respect for cultural diversity and thus disorienting the left, the Rushdie affair again resembled the French headscarves affair. At the same time, however, claims that being genuinely British entailed an absolute, unwavering commitment to free speech were arguably absurd from a legal-­historical standpoint. Whatever the appeal of a notion of Britishness grounded in staunch commitment to core liberal civil rights and political principles, even by 1989 it was not an established reality. The real, historically established terms of coexistence among diverse racial and religious groups in the UK had long been an imperfect product of piecemeal and pragmatic compromises and accommodations, from provisions against (Christian) blasphemy, to Northern Irish restrictions on religious insult, to Britain’s race relations system. From a legal standpoint, the problem faced by Muslim critics of Rushdie’s work was not that they challenged core British commitments to liberal principles; it was that they were a religious rather than an ethnic or racial group, but not Christian. In England, in contrast to Ulster, that put them outside the ambit of existing legal provisions limiting free speech. The fact that demonstrators were of immigrant origin then led what might otherwise have been viewed simply as a contest between liberals and religious conservatives instead to be construed as a contest about British national identity. There was thus, at best, an imperfect match between stalwart defense of a Belief model centered on principles of free speech and Britain’s more complex legal realities. It is therefore unsurprising that Contract models of political membership also figured quite centrally in the Rushdie affair. As minister of state at the Home Office, John Patten laid out a conservative view of the state-­centered Contract perspective, according to which the limits of the (blasphemy) law were taken as a given, and Muslims were asked to confine their demands accordingly. In marked contrast to the pattern of argument in France, the Contract view of citizenship was thus a central pillar of the British center-­right’s opposition to religiously centered Muslim demands. In France the Contract argument was on the defensive. A society-­centered rather than a state-­centered variant of the argument was most prominent, and it was central to the arguments of those on the left who were more tolerant regarding headscarves.

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Together with the different uses of the Culture model of political membership in Britain and France, the markedly different political uses of the Contract model in the two cases suggest that it would be a mistake to conclude from examining any single case that any given model of political membership was inherently “pro” or “anti-­Muslim.” The very model of political membership initially most central in center-­right opposition to Muslims’ new public cultural demands in France (Culture) was, in Britain, not clearly embraced by opponents of those demands on either side of the political spectrum. In fact, only Shabbir Akhtar, a leading advocate of British Muslims’ campaign against Rushdie, directly embraced the Culture perspective. Meanwhile, the view of political membership most characteristic of the arguments of officials on the left advocating a more tolerant position vis-­à-­vis religiously centered Muslim demands in France (Contract) was, in Britain, also used by center-­right conservative officials unsympathetic to considering religiously centered Muslim claims. These differences in the ways the two debates mapped onto the range of available perspectives on political membership in the two cases testify to the greater strength and appeal of the Culture model in France. In Britain the state-­ centered Contract model figured much more prominently. Finally, whereas opposition to Muslim demands was contested in France during the headscarves affairs mainly through the championing of an alternative, society-­centered Contract conception of membership, Britain during the Rushdie affair witnessed a more active challenging of the state-­centered Contract conception. This may well have been because, with the Belief and Contract positions already “occupied” by opponents of Muslim demands, anti-­Rushdie advocates and their sympathizers were left with nowhere to go except to the Descent or Culture models, both rather unlikely strategic positions for them, albeit one that Akhtar did at least try. When their efforts to contest Conservatives’ restrictive use of the state-­centered Contract model were fatally undermined by lack of internal organizational discipline and resulting gaffes following Khomeini’s announcement, Muslims mobilized against The Satanic Verses in Britain were left in an unenviable position. There was no ready way for them to harness their demands to any convincing defense of claims to legitimate political membership in Britain—­as opposed to mere legal citizenship, which they already held. At the same time, it would be wrong to identify the Culture model as a “French” model of political membership, in contrast to a “British” Contract view. Neither the headscarves affairs nor the Rushdie affair gave rise to any national consensus about what political membership was. Both the Culture view more evident in France and the state-­centered Contract view

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much more prominent in Britain were met by equally strong articulations of a Belief model of national citizenship. In fact, left-­wing opponents of religious Muslims’ demands for public cultural recognition and respect in France and Britain ultimately differed little in the views of political membership they invoked, though this underlying similarity in their positions was far less immediately evident than it might have been, given their often divergent ideological commitments. The French left’s reliance on the Belief model was closely associated with defenses of republicanism and an often rather militant secularism. In Britain it was associated with liberalism, free speech, and, in Fay Weldon’s case, even defense of the need for all citizens to worship “one god” together—­ideally at school! But looking beyond these differences, Muslims’ opponents on the political left relied in both countries on a view of political membership centered on shared political culture, not descent, everyday cultural practices, participation, or monetary contribution. These debates thus show, first, that there is more internal dissensus and cross-­national overlap where preferred models of political membership in France and Britain are concerned than one might initially expect. Second, they show that the area of conceptual overlap was more extensive on the left. By contrast, those of center-­right opponents of Muslim’s making religiously centered public cultural demands, like those of their defenders, differed more markedly in the models of membership they favored. Third, comparison of these debates reveals a basic difference in the argumentative and rhetorical strategies of Muslims staking such claims, and those responsive or sympathetic to them, in the two countries. Whereas in France they sought to advance a view of political membership conceptually distinct from those privileged by their opponents, in Britain they sought to contest the prevailing interpretations of the two predominant models: the state-­centered Contract and Belief views. Finally, despite the conceptual overlap in underlying visions of political membership in the two cases, the prevailing terms of debate differed dramatically. Indeed, the terms of political discourse and the rhetorical codes involved are so different that one could easily fail to see the underlying pattern at the conceptual level. The fivefold “ordinary language” framework for analyzing discussions of political membership here provides an indispensable analytical tool. Coupled with familiarity with both national “codes” and the repertoire of historical and cultural references at play in each case, this new theoretical framework brings to light the underlying similarities, and differences, in conceptual understandings of political membership in France and Britain that we have identified.

C h a p t e r 11

Membership Quandaries Beyond the Nation-­ State: European and Global Citizenship

Issues of political membership are today of rising importance not only in France and other West European countries but around the world. In order systematically to compare the terms of different national discussions and the conceptions of political membership that shape and inform them, we need an analytical framework that can travel. The recent politics of belonging has emerged in the context of a growing perceived crisis of the nation-­state. The conceptual and theoretical dimensions of the quandaries it has raised, however, actually transcend the national level and have the potential to outlast the currently dominant nation-­state paradigm, should it eventually be relativized or eclipsed by globalization or regionalization. The conceptual problems underlying the politics of belonging stem from our understanding of membership itself, not from the sort of entities to which we currently belong. The same kinds of conceptually disparate understandings of political membership that have troubled the politics of belonging at the national level thus show up in recent discussions of citizenship at the European and global levels as well. As those discussions suggest, today’s politics of belonging is fueled not just by political-­historical disagreements about the nation-­state but also by more conceptual uncertainties regarding the very nature of political membership.

European Citizenship In today’s interdependent and “globalizing” world, citizenship is no longer an exclusively national affair. New forms of regional economic integration

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are increasingly developing, from the European Union to NAFTA to ASEAN and Mercusor. Nowhere is such regional integration more advanced than in Europe, where regional economic integration has been accompanied by the development of new regional forms of governance. Though it is often stressed that the European Union is not a state, regional governance has nonetheless called for at least a nominal regional definition of political membership. The idea of a “citizenship of the Union” was formally introduced as a legal category in Article 8 of the Maastricht Treaty, which was ratified in November 1993. This novel legal category was born largely of European leaders’ desire to instill consciousness of European-­level belonging in the people, thereby endowing European-­level governance with greater popular legitimacy (Shore 2000: 66–67). This same preoccupation has been reflected in a wave of recent research on “European identity,” often encouraged by EU instititions (Favell 2005: 1109–10). As clearly shown in earlier chapters, recent West European political developments clearly do not suggest the sort of eclipse of national citizenship by post-­nationalism that some theorists consider imminent. Though there has been some convergence of ideas and policies, as the post-­nationalist view would predict, national controversies and policy developments continue to be strongly marked by countries’ distinctive historical trajectories, particularly their different histories of state-­ and nation-­building, in keeping with the perspective of analysts stressing countries’ particular national traditions. Nonetheless, together with growing discussion of global citizenship, European-­level developments do show that quandaries concerning membership are today arising at global, international, and regional levels. One could argue that the European Union’s encouragement of research on European identity is actually just the flip side of its ultimate rejection of an independent definition of citizenship of the EU. Somewhat disappointingly in the view of many observers, the Maastricht Treaty did not define European citizenship independently of national citizenship, instead stating, “Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union” (Article 8a, para. 1). The Treaty thus legally subordinated this new and theoretically supranational form of citizenship to existing, national-­level definitions. The Treaty of Amsterdam, signed in 1997, subsequently reinforced this approach, which is thought unlikely to change in the near to medium term.1 Initially, some hoped that the Union citizenship cautiously created in the early 1990s might develop into a more robust category, casting off its nationally derivative definition. Koskakopoulou (1998), for instance, wrote of “the

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radical potential of EU citizenship,” arguing that it “laid the foundation for a European civil society” and contained “the promise both of a heterogeneous community which values diversity and of a new form of citizenship which transcends the national model of citizenship” (158). EU membership might then provide a new and potentially more accessible legal route to civic inclusion for non-­European foreign residents of EU member states, or so-­called “third country nationals.” EU citizenship might then promote civic integration for foreign residents not recognized as national citizens by either the states in which they reside or other EU member states (Preuss 1996: 551). With the Treaty of Amsterdam’s solidification of the existing, nationally derivative legal definition of EU citizenship, however, such hopes were soon disappointed. Critical observers have since therefore lamented EU citizenship’s reinforcing of the civic exclusion of third country nationals (Martinello 1997: 37–38; Koskakopoulou 1998: 158–59; Bhabha 1998: 714–16; Føllesdal 1999: 104–7; García 1997: 211). In practice, basing EU citizenship on national citizenship means that access to both kinds of citizenship effectively depends on how member states resolve controversies about political belonging. European Union citizenship is, and is likely to remain for some time, merely the sum of its parts. The categories we have used for analyzing national-­level controversies are therefore apt to remain relevant for the foreseeable future to understanding the legal scope of citizenship of the European Union as well. The nature and corresponding scope of European citizenship has, however, emerged in recent years as not only a legal and diplomatic but a theoretical issue. Whereas the legal definition appears provisionally settled, the theoretical debates about European citizenship’s nature, scope, and conditions are not. Debate concerning different theoretical understandings of European citizenship has generated five different and often explicitly opposed perspectives: an obviously exclusionary “civilizational” view blending Cultural and Descent understandings of membership; a national communitarian or national republican view stressing the Culture model of membership; a Habermasian constitutional patriotism perspective grounded in Belief and ideas akin to the state-­centered Contract model; a sometimes allied but actually conceptually distinct liberal contractualist perspective grounded in a more statutory state-­centered Contract model of political belonging; and, finally, an “ultra-­Habermasian” vision that is clearly not statutory in emphasis but also rests on the Contract model, here more explicitly seeking to make civic activity a free-­standing basis of European citizenship.

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The first of these perspectives, the civilizational view of being European, is properly speaking not truly a view of citizenship. Rather, it is a culturally based definition of European identity. It is nonetheless worthy of mention here, if only for the sake of clarity, because it regularly appears in debates about Europe’s borders, especially in terms of territory but also therefore in terms of population. This perspective, intellectually associated with Samuel Huntington, understands Europe as a “civilization” historically constituted and durably bounded by the religious predominance of Christianity. In this view, Europe therefore ends where non-­Christian, and particularly Islamic, civilization begins (Huntington 1996: 158). Recent objections to Turkey’s accession to the EU have often been rooted in this understanding of being European, though objections also stem from Turkey’s human rights record or other concerns. The constitutional patriotism view of European citizenship most powerfully and influentially articulated by Jürgen Habermas is diametrically opposed to this culturally based civilizational perspective.2 In Habermas’ view—­also more or less closely embraced by Ferry (1992a, b), Lehning (1997), Lacroix (2002), and others—­European citizenship is an expression of membership in a properly political community, commitment to which transcends ethnic and national bonds. In contrast to an understanding of political membership “rooted in the national identity of a people,” Habermas has thus famously advocated a European-­level “political integration of citizens” based on shared legal, political principles “connected with the overlapping consensus of a common, supranationally shared political culture of the European Community” (1994: 134; 1995: 264).3 Arguing along similar lines, Lehning (1997) argues that in order to generate a “ ‘shared citizenship identity,’ ” the Union “requires a democratic process with accountability, rooted in the political culture of the European Union, based on shared principles of democracy and social justice, which serve as the common denominator. This forms the basis for ‘constitutional patriotism’ on a pan-­national scale” (1997: 176). While more agnostic about whether national or supranational citizenship should be privileged, Étienne Balibar, from a recognizably leftist perspective, concurs in emphasizing shared principles uniting democratic citizens, stating that “it is precisely ideals capable of linking generations that are required for democratic politics today,” and that “from now on, the most important task at hand is to rediscover for democracy more collective ideals and closer connections with libertarian and egalitarian movements that protest against the status quo” (1996: 371).

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While determined to distinguish themselves from advocates of the civilizational perspective (cf. Schnapper 1997: 211–13), national communitarians have been keenly dissatisfied with the constitutional patriotism idea of political membership. In this view, most influentially exemplified in the English-­speaking world by David Miller, Habermas’s constitutional patriotism is capable of providing the basis of only a weak and anemic substitute for older and more robust national definitions of political membership. National communitarians are therefore distrustful of European citizenship, seeing it as a poor substitute for national citizenship. The nation, Miller stresses, is a community in a way that Europe is not. In the nation, shared commitment to political principles like democracy and social justice are effectively advanced by citizens’ affective ties to a shared culture, history, and concrete way of life. These affective ties, in contrast to the properly rational bases of shared belonging stressed in constitutional patriotism arguments, are critical from the national communitarian perspective. Miller emphasizes, “A national identity depends upon a pre-­reflective sense that one belongs within a certain historic group” (1994: 143). Indeed, these thinkers have been deemed “communitarian” in part precisely by virtue of their skepticism regarding the capacity of rationality alone to create and perpetuate meaningful community ties (e.g., Bellamy and Castiglione 1998). Whereas the idea of constitutional patriotism centers on a Belief model of political membership, Miller’s national communitarian position thus emphasizes the Culture model. While presenting national citizenship as a means to advance such ideals as democracy and social justice, Miller does not look to those principles themselves to serve as the glue uniting a political community or provide the motive force needed to impel members of a polity to trust and sacrifice for one another. Instead, Miller stresses the irreducible importance of the kind of affective, culturally based sense of attachment nations generate, arguing that the trust needed for a smoothly functioning democracy “is much more likely to exist among people who share a common national identity, speak a common language, and have overlapping cultural values” (1998: 48; cf. Miller 1995: 41–42). He therefore explicitly rejects Habermas’s ideal of political community based on constitutional patriotism, arguing that “the national identities that support common citizenship must be thicker than ‘constitutional patriotism’ implies” (1995: 189). Miller’s position is closely paralleled in this respect by the stance of French “national republican” thinker Dominique Schnapper.4 Like Miller, Schnapper stresses the need for affective, culturally based ties bonding citizens to

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their political community and accordingly is, like Miller, skeptical regarding the political potential of European citizenship. Like Miller, Schnapper takes explicit aim at Habermas and other purveyors of the constitutional patriotism idea (1997: 211), worrying that “the emotional tonality of the identity of ‘we’ weakens considerably as soon as forms of postnational integration come into play” (219). Much as Miller worries that constitutional patriotism alone is insufficient to generate trust, Schnapper argues that to work together peacefully, members of a polity must “share a common language, culture, and values” (211); indeed, she explains, “Participation in a national society is concretely founded on all kinds of elements that can be called ethnic: usage of a common language . . . a common culture and particular historical memory,” in addition to civic principles (214, 219). While not opposing the kind of “intellectual commitment . . . to abstract principles” suggested by Habermas as a basis for European citizenship, Schnapper regards it as an insufficient substitute for “the affective and political mobilization aroused by the internalization of the national political and cultural tradition” (211–12). Miller and Schnapper thus both contend that the nation’s character as a historically constituted cultural community generative of deep affective attachment decisively distinguishes citizenship in it from European citizenship, and makes it superior. Still another line of thinking in theoretical debate about European citizenship is what can be called the liberal contractualist perspective. Examples include work by Geraint Parry, Ulrich Preuss, and Andreas Føllesdal. According to this way of thinking about political membership, developing a European legal system would promote European citizenship as well. Parry, for instance, writes of expanding citizenship to the European level “by constructing new international institutions with a structure of law to which it makes sense to talk of persons subscribing as citizens” (1991: 193). Parry’s proposition logically makes sense given an implicit state-­centered Contract model of European citizenship defining membership in terms of a formal exchange of rights for duties, including respecting or obeying a state’s laws. Similarly, stressing rights as a basis for European citizenship, Preuss argues that if the number of European-­level rights gradually increases, this could “eventually create a bond of commonness among individuals who enjoy the same rights and who are protected by the same law, and this common bond of mutual loyalty may finally constitute the status of Community citizenship” (1996: 549). Conversely, Føllesdal stresses citizens’ rights and commitments vis-­à-­vis political institutions, albeit ethically informed ones. Stressing an exchange

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of political rights for duties as the root of citizenship, Føllesdal writes that “ ‘Union Citizenship’ implies that . . . those subject to laws should also influence law with an equal say” (2001: 313). He goes on to explain, “The content of the Contractualist commitment is not to abstract principles, but also the institutions properly enacted, specified in a constitution, and their results, namely concrete laws and political practices” (331). Theoretical discussions of European citizenship are sometimes confusing because there are areas of agreement between the liberal contractualist position on citizenship and Habermas’s thinking. Indeed, liberal contractualist thinkers often cite Habermas sympathetically in support of their own position (e.g., Føllesdal 2001: 331; 2000: 504). This apparent agreement is explained by the fact that Habermas sometimes links his defense of constitutional patriotism to a state-­centered Contract conception. Blending his appeals to the Belief model of political membership with a more state-­centered Contract perspective emphasizing an exchange of duties—­including voluntary compliance with the rule of law—­for rights, Habermas argues that “multicultural societies can be held together by a political culture, however much it has proven itself, only if democratic citizenship pays off not only in terms of individual rights and rights of political participation but also in the enjoyment of social and cultural rights” (1998: 409). Something akin to a state-­centered Contract model of political membership is also implicit in Habermas’s belief in the importance of developing a European public sphere. Unlike the arguments of liberal contractualists, Habermas’s thinking here does not privilege the notion of an exchange, normally central to what we have called the Contract model. What his ideas relating European citizenship to the construction of such a public sphere do have in common with the usual Contract view is a central emphasis on civic participation. Habermas therefore stresses the need for a European “network that gives citizens of all member states an equal opportunity to take part in an encompassing process of focused political communication” and creates “an inclusive process of informal mass communication.” In Habermas’s thinking, development of such a “network” is necessary to create the space for public deliberation and other forms of civic participation constituting the activity of citizenship at the European level. Habermas thus stresses the need to foster “emergence of a European civil society; the construction of a European-­wide public sphere” (2001: 16–17, also 18–19) as well as—­again emphasizing the need for constitutional patriotism—­“the shaping of a political culture that can be shared by all European citizens” (16).

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Habermas’s interest is not in a statutory definition of European citizenship and the appropriate conditions for its formal, legal recognition or extension, but rather in the conditions for generating an actual, lived “European citizenship.”5 Consequently perhaps, civic participation here does not factor as a right formally extended to individuals (as in cases of extension of the franchise). Nor is political participation a condition for legal recognition as a citizen. Instead, such participation figures in Habermas’s thinking as the shared activity directly constitutive of citizenship. Following Aristotle, he sees a citizen as a person engaged in a particular form of activity—­the activity of participating in collective decision-­making, or, in Aristotle’s terms, “ruling and being ruled.” Central to such activity, in Habermas’s thinking, is participation in the process of public deliberation normally preceding and informing collective decisions. Citizens, in this reading, are thus co-­deliberators, and creating the space for such European co-­deliberation—­a European public sphere—­is key to the actual bringing into being of European citizens. Even while Habermas advocates constitutional patriotism as a substitute for nationalism capable of attaching citizens to the European polity, the creation of a European public sphere is also stressed by Habermas as essential to European citizenship’s creation. Participation in such a public sphere figures as the indispensable precondition for creating a de facto community of fellow European citizens. Constitutional patriotism, in turn, provides individuals acting as “citizens” at the European level the shared basis for adhesion to a European polity, a basis and motive for a European sense of political belonging. While a Belief model of political membership, in the form of constitutional patriotism, is thus central to Habermas’s thinking on European citizenship, a Contract-­like model of membership—­in which it is the activity of civic participation that makes one a citizen—­is also an integral part of his thinking on the issue. The emphasis on the key role of a European public sphere thus creates an important point of conceptual convergence between his perspective on European citizenship and the state-­centered Contract view of liberal contractualists. Other thinkers have further radicalized this dimension of Habermas’s theorizing on European citizenship. Étienne Tassin, for instance, builds on Habermas’s ideas about a European public sphere, but without Habermas’s recourse to constitutional patriotism. The citizenship enacted through the democratic process is here, even more truly than in Habermas’s own thinking, invited “to stand on its own feet” (Habermas 1998: 408). Tassin thus argues that a “European community” should be understood as a direct result of “a public space”; it figures as “a community resting not upon an amalgama-

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tion of interests, feelings and wills, but on the contrary upon a politically constituted public space in which the plurality of political initiatives stand face to face.” Dispensing with the need even for a shared constitutional patriotism, Tassin clarifies that this “political space . . . does not have to express a supposedly common identity or will” (1992: 188). Instead, “A European political community will be born not so much from an idea of Europe as from the idea of a public space of fellow-­citizenship which is alone capable of giving meaning to a non-­national political community . . . a common citizenship of European peoples can emerge from the political institution of this space.” Thus, he concludes, “the political future of Europe lies in the establishment of a transnational public space and the creation of a joint citizenship” (189). Even more than Habermas’s own position on European citizenship, the “ultra-­Habermasian” position of Tassin is susceptible to the sort of skeptical interrogation pursued by Wendy Brown. She suggests that democracy may be “without a principle of its own” and therefore unable “to bind a political society without reaching outside of itself.” In other words, it may be that, as she disturbingly asserts, democracy “does not have feet of its own on which to stand” (Brown 1998: 427–28). By this account, the constitutional political culture on which Habermas relies—­his recourse to the Belief model of political membership—­cannot be dispensed with in the “ultra-­Habermasian” way that Tassin—­advancing a free-­standing, democratic, participatory Contract type of lived European citizenship—­proposes. While the legal question of to whom the status of European Union citizen should be granted seems for now to be settled, albeit not to the satisfaction of many observers, theoretical questions regarding the nature, conditions, and potential value of European citizenship are not. Theoretical discussion of these related issues at the European level has brought into play many of the different conceptions of political membership that we have identified as traced in French and British controversies. Theoretical discussions of European citizenship have given rise to five recognizable perspectives, often differentiated by their preference for different theoretical models, or combinations of models, of political membership. Habermasian thinkers have stressed the need for constitutional patriotism, thus drawing heavily on the Belief model even as their emphasis on the need for a European public sphere brings into play an understanding of political membership that is like the state-­centered Contract model in stressing political participation, but differs from other articulations of that model in its lack of statutory emphasis or stress on exchange between citizens and the state. National communitarians and national

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republican thinkers like Miller and Schnapper, by contrast, have explicitly questioned Habermas’s heavy theoretical reliance on the Belief model, insisting that culturally based historical attachments are also essential to bind citizens to a given polity and thus generate the trust and loyalty that democratic politics requires. They therefore appeal heavily to the Culture model of membership. Liberal contractualists, by contrast, have welcomed Habermas’s minimizing of culturally based political attachments. Conceiving of European citizenship as a byproduct of European level rights and duties, these thinkers have instead favored the state-­centered Contract view of political membership. Finally, the radical democratic position of Tassin seeks, much like Habermas on the role of a European public sphere, to build a European fellow citizenship directly on the basis of co-­participation in democratic rule. Like the Contract conception of membership and the more general experience of “quit memberships” on which this conception of membership is modeled, this perspective follows Aristotle’s classic conception grounding political membership in shared activity, the activity of collective decision-­making and “rule.” As even this very brief review of competing ideas of European political community suggests, many of the same kinds of quandaries about the nature, conditions, and terms of political membership that have recently marked national-­level politics in France and other countries are susceptible to theoretical reproduction at the international level as well.

Global Citizenship This conclusion is even more clearly supported by consideration of today’s growing discussion of global citizenship. As Schattle (2005) notes, “The expansion in public discourse related to ‘global citizenship,’ alongside the burgeoning academic debate regarding the feasibility of cosmopolitan citizenship, is now clear” (120). Although this debate is more distant from policy making at present than are discussions of a regional-­level EU citizenship, the topic is of increasing interest, as demonstrated by discussions of global and cosmopolitan citizenship, most notably among intellectuals, activists, journalists, and advocacy groups, international businesspeople, and secondary school principals (Schattle 2005: 119–33). Unsurprisingly, such cosmopolitan visions of citizenship seem to hold particular interest for internationally mobile elites, but with growing international mobility and sociocultural exchange, such visions are likely to be of widening interest.

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It might seem that ideas of supranational or global citizenship would not be susceptible to the typology of conceptions of membership we have presented. The models of political membership we have identified are distinguished by their modes of closure, or bases of inclusion and exclusion. In contrast to national citizenship, however, global citizenship is supposed to be universal in scope, so the meaning of “closure” becomes problematic. In the end, however, it seems that the ordinary-­language-­based framework for analyzing conceptions of political membership is nonetheless likely to continue to be applicable. In fact, global citizenship may prove to be an interesting new field of application for the typology. Its application at the global level may also call into question some common presumptions about the theoretical and political implications of certain models of political membership. By contrast to national citizenship, visions of global citizenship are supposed to be universal. As Falk (1994) argues, one of the salient features of the current discourse, practices, and identity of “global citizenship” is precisely an insistence on “the ultimate unity of human experience” and the correspondence of citizenship with the human species rather than any particular polity or nation-­state (131, 133). At the same time, articulations of global citizenship have remained true to modern, egalitarian views of national citizenship in continuing to reject elitist, or class-­based restrictions on civic inclusion (Albrow and O’Byrne 2000: 74; cf. Marshall 1950). It might therefore seem that global citizenship would simply erase all boundaries between members and nonmembers; there would be no non-­members. However, it is not so clear that even identification with ideas of global citizenship would lay the politics of belonging to rest. For now, the “other” targeted by those identifying themselves as “global citizens” remains, first and foremost, “traditional citizenship,” that is, identities associated with existing nation-­states. In part, this is doubtless because global citizenship is still largely “aspirational” (Falk 1994: 131), an as yet unrealized hopeful vision. Full-­blown membership debates like those about national citizenship therefore have not yet developed over global citizenship. However, current reflections on global citizenship already hint at possible new issues of membership. If current theoretical discussions of global citizenship are any guide, it appears that, rather than challenging or undermining the framework for analyzing competing conceptions of membership applied to national-­level debates in this book, emerging discussions of global citizenship may, instead, open up a new, exciting field of application for that framework.

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Theoretically speaking, one could certainly seek ways of distinguishing “true global citizens” from others. Certainly, if we accept Falk’s characterization of the aspirations of global citizenship’s advocates, the premises of such a debate might well be somewhat different than those of national-­level membership controversies; unlike traditional forms of national citizenship, global citizenship would be defined as a citizenship exercised inclusively for all human beings (1994: 132–33). However, it need not therefore necessarily be a form of citizenship that would or could be claimed and exercised by all human beings. Saying that one must act on behalf of the interests of humanity is not the same as saying that all members of humanity can, or do, act in that fashion. Even if the claims made and actions undertaken on everyone’s behalf were to lead to the extension to all people of a growing panoply of human rights, that would not then make all those entitled to those rights ‘global citizens’ in quite the same, active sense as the reformers. Though the active global citizens promoting reform might not seek to reserve any particular rights or material prerogatives for themselves, they would appear entitled at least to some particular glory and recognition. Even the kind of universal ideal of global citizenship that Falk invokes could therefore very conceivably, if unintentionally, open the way to arguments that those by whom global citizenship is actively embraced and consciously exercised are more fully ‘global citizens’ than the rest of humanity. The egalitarian aspirations of global citizenship do not resolve or eliminate the sorts of problems of inclusion and exclusion always central to the politics of belonging. Even if active global citizens sought to act in the best interests of all human beings, that alone would not eliminate distinctions between those actively engaged in such global citizenship and other people and its politically inactive beneficiaries. Were the mantle of “true global citizen” to become more hotly contested in the future­—­perhaps as a result of the growing perceived moral legitimacy of such true global citizens’ claims­—­it is even more likely that another kind of membership debate could develop: one pitting true global citizens against others they accuse of falsely claiming that title. There are already signs of such an incipient debate in the existing literature. Falk (1994), for instance, recounts a telling conversation he had with a business traveler. The businessman confidently characterizes himself as a “citizen of the world.” By this, Falk explains, he apparently meant “that his friends, his network, his travels were global, that he slept in the same kind of hotels whether he was in Tokyo or London or New York, that he talked English everywhere.” In short, his world

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is circumscribed not geographically but by a “homogenized elite global culture” (134). Though anecdotal, the conversation reported by Falk was not merely idiosyncratic. Hans Schattle (2005) reports a similar way of talking about “global citizenship” current among international businesspeople he interviewed between March 2000 and August 2001. Illustrating this idea of global citizenship, Schattle quotes from the remarks of Miles Colbrook, group president of the advertising agency JWT in London: “I personally find the phrase ‘global citizen’ perfectly comfortable. For me, it means that an individual feels they belong to a much bigger kind of global church and feels not just comfortable, but they feel pleasant about it and find the concept of moving effortlessly around the globe extremely easy to deal with” (126). In terms of the categories presented in this article, one could characterize this as primarily a Culture view of global citizenship, albeit one which, in Falk’s words, “went with a loss of any sense of cultural specificity that could be connected with a special attachment with place or community” (134). This is thus an understanding of culturally based citizenship that is, in important ways, at odds with the vision of many proponents of the Culture model in the more conventional, nationally oriented form presented above. Appeals to culturally based understandings of political membership often stress the value of precisely the kind of sense of attachment to a particular, proximate community characteristic of primary social bonds. As it comes back into play at the global level, however, the Culture model carries almost the opposite connotations. As the nature of the citizenship claimed shifts from national to global, the kind of shared culture that makes people “citizens” goes from being a force of attachment and rootedness to being the sign of a distinctive rootless cosmopolitanism. Extending the Culture category to discussions of global citizenship would therefore require a significant reworking of existing assumptions about the relationship of culturally based models of membership to community and subjective attachments. With some important adjustments of this kind, however, it seems that it would be possible to carry the Culture model of citizenship over to discussions involving competing claims to global citizenship. Potential grounds for such competing claims are revealed in Falk’s essay because the author clearly does not endorse the businessman’s view of what being a global citizen really means. Falk criticizes the traveler’s conception as characteristic of “a denationalized global elite that . . . lacks any global civic sense of responsibility” (2004: 135). It is precisely such a sense of responsibility that Falk himself presents as truly essential to global citizenship. As Falk

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writes elsewhere, “the corporate embrace of globalism should perhaps not even be associated with citizenship as it posits and acknowledges no accompanying global community, and hence contains no bonds of solidarity with those who are weak and disadvantaged, or with people generally” (181). Falk’s own thinking about what it means to be a global citizen—­and who really counts as one—­thus combines elements of the Contract and Belief models. Insofar as the responsibility of the global citizen is a duty to global society, and it is acceptance of that duty that makes him a citizen, Falk can be seen as drawing on the Contract model. At the same time, he also appeals to the Belief model in that he sees global citizens’ acceptance of such duties as a morally guided decision reflective of values he hopes will be definitive of new forms of global citizenship (140). In this respect, Falk’s vision of global citizenship generally closely resembles Elizabeth Jelin’s thinking about global environmental citizenship, which she associates with a historical process of social struggle for “Placing environmental issues in the global agenda, and defining them in terms of the paradigm of citizenship (as issues about rights and responsibilities within the framework of institutions that have to guarantee them).” Jelin explains: “The interdependence in the world implies the need for a global citizenship: if we are to be entitled to rights, including the basic right to breath . . . , the obverse is a global responsibility for the world” (2000: 51, 58). Falk’s thinking also fits comfortably with what Schattle (2005) characterizes as a “civic republican discourse” of global citizenship emphasizing “awareness, responsibility, participation and cross-­cultural empathy” and best exemplified by the statements of activists and advocacy group leaders (119–24). Schattle notes, “In many instances, self-­described ‘global citizens’ call upon the term to communicate sense of loyalty to humanity at large, especially persons trapped in poverty, displacement or oppression” (121). As an example of this understanding of global citizenship, Schattle quotes from statements by an advocacy manager from Oxfam who defines a “global citizen” as “an individual who has an understanding of the way a society operates at a global level, and having that understanding, that they interpret . . . that they have some responsibility as an individual to take action to achieve social justice or equity or environmental sustainability” (122). Certainly, in contrast to that of the business traveler, this vision of global citizenship would seem to be one that Falk would readily endorse. As with Falk’s thinking about global citizenship, the universality of that of the Oxfam manager and Elizabeth Jelin inheres in the global scale for which the global

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citizen acts. Only those who take such universally oriented responsibility upon themselves are counted as global citizens by the Oxfam advocacy manager, however. Global citizens, the Oxfam advocate implies, are a special type of individuals; not just anyone qualifies as a “global citizen.” Membership in the category of global citizens on this reading, again, then is not universal; even where global citizenship is for all it is not necessarily by all. Even where citizenship is not nationally delimited, issues of membership thus persist, and competing claims to “global citizenship” may vary along much the same lines as those pertaining to the politics of belonging at the national level. In his own analysis of different ideas of global citizenship, Falk initially contrasts the businessman’s view with four different alternatives, but then looks forward to “mixtures” of them. It is clearly hoped that the businessman’s “global culture” view will not be one of the elements of these desired “mixtures,” however (1994: 139–40). The businessman’s Culture view of global citizenship thus stands in opposition to Falk’s own vision, which instead combines elements of the Contract and Belief views. With some necessary adjustment to the Culture model, the ordinary language-­based framework for analyzing the politics of belonging can thus be used to interpret new kinds of controversies about global citizenship as well as the sorts of more nationally centered debates considered in prior chapters. Growing public discussion of global and European citizenship in fact represents an increasingly important field of application for the new approach to analyzing the politics of belonging that earlier chapters have applied to more nationally centered debates.

Conclusion Even if the power and importance of nation-­states should eventually be eclipsed by the rise of new regional and international forms of political organization, such radical organizational changes would do little to resolve the politics of belonging. The origin of current ongoing debates about political membership is largely conceptual, and changes in political organization alone thus will not do away with them. Globalization in its many forms today represents an important challenge to the nation-­state, but the politics of belonging can be expected to continue in recognizable forms whatever the outcome. Our understandings of membership, political and otherwise, are multiple and often inconsistent. This multiplicity and inconsistency in-

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forms our essentially contested concept of citizenship as well as nationality, and is regularly reflected in the different arguments advanced when political membership moves to the fore of public discussion. Though even radical organization change is therefore unlikely to bring these discussions and disagreements to an end, awareness of their recurring conceptual contours may, at least, allow us better to navigate them.

Chapter 12

Conclusion

The findings of this study point to the still largely unexplored possibilities for constructive application of ordinary language analysis. As we strive creatively to reorder and reinvent inherited theoretical frameworks, this approach can be used to sharpen our analytical tools and to tap into the largely tacit knowledge of key political concepts that we already have as ordinary language-­ users. Equipped with better theoretical frameworks and better mastery of our existing concepts, we can capture and render a clearer image of political reality and gain new perspective on present political problems. The new analytical perspective developed in this study promises to enable researchers and observers of political life better to identify, characterize, and compare the theoretical stakes of the politics of belonging in different countries. It can also to help us better to understand how conceptual logics intersect with political strategies in the context of particular membership-­related conflicts. The new conceptual framework derived using ordinary language methods and insights can therefore help us better interpret and ultimately better manage the politics of belonging. Both the post-­nationalist and “national traditions” views of immigration and growing cultural diversity’s influence on citizenship and nationality policies have given rise to expectations partly at odds with actual recent developments. As they have unfolded since 1980, neither French, British, and German immigration-­related changes in citizenship laws nor France’s politics of belonging have confirmed multiculturalists’ hopes or post-­nationalists’ expectations. Those with such expectations in France put too little stock in the independent influence of politics. Reasserting the privileged role of the

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state and continuing centrality of the nation-­state, French actors politically resisted supposedly inexorable processes of social development and departed from the policy course post-­nationalists expected, especially where immigrants and their descendants were concerned. This departure has been apparent in regard both to rights of religious minorities to recognition and freedom of public expression and to nationality law. Close attention to political interpretations of immigration and related social developments and to how ideas are politically manipulated or instrumentalized also helps make sense of otherwise puzzling policy decisions. The politics of publicly interpreting social change, not just the social effects of globalization itself, has significantly affected the nature and direction of policy reform where “immigrants’” recognition and inclusion as members of particular political communities is concerned. To understand recent policy changes, one needs to be attentive to the public discursive logics that came into play as decisions were being made. For instance, to understand why parts of the French left have eschewed multiculturalist approaches to inclusion, a position puzzling to many foreign observers, it is essential to understand how different policy options were justified and legitimated in France. Though recent developments have often been at odds with post-­nationalists’ expectations, the usual theoretical alternative stressing the enduring role of historically constituted national traditions also falls short as a corrective. Countries’ approaches to membership-­related policies and issues are less stable, and less internally unified, than perspectives emphasizing coherent, historically rooted “national models” suggest. In France, publicly acceptable answers to membership questions have actually shifted during recent decades. Between 1981 and 1985 in France, elements of the left campaigning for a “new citizenship” and local voting rights for foreigners invoked Contract and Monetary Contract ideas, emphasizing active participation in local collective life and the obligations of all residents to pay taxes. By virtue of their de facto participation and taxpaying, activists argued, foreigners settled in France were entitled to representation as (non-­national) citizens. Advocates of nationality law reform on the right called on a combination of Descent, Culture, and Belief perspectives, claiming that large numbers of foreigners who were being made French nationals “automatically” not only were of non-­ European stock, but despised France, did not identify with the nation, and therefore refused to assimilate to French culture. They were thus seen as falling short of the criteria for membership posited by the Descent, Belief, and Culture models.

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The Nationality Commission of 1987–1988 aimed to mend this rift and transcend the political stalemate by laying the theoretical groundwork for a new, centrist, “republican” position. The Commission’s final report relied heavily on the testimony of Alain Finkielkraut and his interpretation of nationality law reform as a choice between “elective” (civic) and “organic” (ethnic) ideas of the nation. Nonetheless, the report ultimately sought to justify its policy proposals by appealing to a combination of Culture, Belief, and Contract perspectives. Thus, while explicitly championing Finkielkraut’s call for a turn from the “organic” to the “elective” idea of the nation, the Commission implicitly laid the basis for an alliance that crossed not only left-­right political lines but also the supposedly deep conceptual dividing line between “civic” Belief and Contract views of political membership and a more “ethnic” Culture perspective.1 Political conflict and competition, not just historical understandings, have decisively shaped France’s recent politics of belonging. Harking back to revered historical tradition has itself been a tactic in political conflict. The work of the Nationality Commission, to take a prime example, was certainly framed by appeals to long-­standing French traditions but marked a clear break with the prevailing terms of France’s politics of belonging in the immediately preceding years. The “republican” position of the Commission was thus more a strategic maneuver and less a confirmation of the power of deeply rooted national traditions or national models to shape policy than it was made to appear. The new, supposedly unified amalgam of Culture, Contract, and Belief positions freshly forged by the Nationality Commission placed an increasingly heavy symbolic load on the integrative role of the public schools, setting the stage for more recent school-­centered controversies. The headscarves affair shattered the cleverly constructed but always fragile centrist, “neo-­ republican” amalgam of Culture, Belief, and Contract perspectives that had emerged from the preceding nationality law debates. Once policies directly touching on the school and its role in integration were themselves pushed to the fore, questions of how the school as to promote integration and what belonging in France was ultimately about quickly flared up. The school was then no longer available as a vague touchstone of apparent agreement and could no longer serve to glue the Culture-­Belief-­Contract amalgam together. Supporters of the Contract perspective on the left were divided from elements of the left emphasizing the Belief model as well as from politicians appealing to Culture and occasionally also Descent views of membership. The school was

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the symbolic glue but also the Achilles heel of the broad ranging, republican Culture-­Belief-­Contract mixture of perspectives crystallized through the Commission’s work. If one regards the field of competing conceptions of citizenship and nationality as divided into diametrically opposed “civic” and “ethnic” or “elective” and “organic” variants, the gap between the Culture model and Contract and Belief models would clearly appear as the deepest conceptual difference bridged by the new “republican” compromise the Commission cobbled together. From the perspective contrasting civic and ethnic membership, then, one would have thought that if and where the “republican” consensus were to fracture, it would divide along that underlying fault line. Supporters of the (organic and arguably ethnic) Culture model would have soon again been set against those favoring (civic and elective) Belief and Contract ideas. This prediction was belied by the actual course of events. When in 1989– 1990 the first French headscarves affair again divided defenders of the three perspectives combined by the Nationality Commission (Culture, Belief, and Contract), they did not divide along “civic” versus “ethnic” lines. Had the controversy broken down along such lines, those appealing to cultural nationalism would have been pitted against those appealing either to fundamental political beliefs or to active participation in collective life. The conflict could also have divided French actors along traditional left-­right political lines. In reality, however, the dividing line between advocates and opponents of tolerating headscarves ran right through the Socialist Party and dramatically split the “civic” camp. Like the line between “new citizenship” defenders who embraced Contract and Monetized Contract views and advocates of nationality law reform who drew on Belief as well as Culture and Descent perspectives a few years earlier, the affaire du foulard thus divided supporters of different “civic” but conceptually distinct perspectives on membership. As the headscarves issue continued evolving from 1989 to 2004, feminist concerns and a Belief model of membership stressing the need for shared principles, particularly laïcité and equality between men and women, became increasingly salient. Most notably, politicians on the right, who might earlier have appealed to the Culture model, increasingly referred to this Belief perspective in framing their positions. These shifts in public debate, encouraged by up and coming feminist activists of immigrant origin and their enthusiastic reception by Nicolas Sarkozy and others, helped pave the way to more restrictive policies clearly targeting “Islamic” attire. Dissatisfaction of teachers and administrators with the more tolerant policies of 1989–2003 also helped

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convince policy makers of the need for reform. France’s long-­standing “republican” traditions alone thus do not explain why France passed a new law banning headscarves in 2004. More conjunctural factors played a crucial role in this decision. From 1981 to 2004 there was a substantial shift in, and a partial consolidation of the prevailing terms of debate in France. This shift and consolidation did not dispel the conflict associated with competing conceptions of citizenship and integration. However, the range of theoretical perspectives actively invoked in national appeals by would-­be “respectable” political elites was notably curtailed. The Belief model has, even since the late 1980s, become far more salient, while public arguments rooted in Descent, Monetized Contract, and more recently even Culture views have waned. In contrast to perspectives stressing long-­term historical traditions, more unitary national models, and related binary theoretical oppositions like the one opposing some countries’ “civic” and others’ “ethnic” perspectives on political belonging, ordinary language analysis suggests a new, multifaceted idea of political membership and identity, in which multiple elements exist, overlap, and compete with one another. Comparing France’s headscarves affairs with the Rushdie affair in Britain—­both debates raising basic questions about the nature of political membership—­illustrates the heuristic value of this new approach. Compared to the French cases, the Rushdie affair looked more like a conflict between “civic” understandings of belonging and an “ethnic” one based on descent. Theoretically, however, the conflict went beyond that split, turning ultimately on competing political interpretations of the Belief and Contract models. British advocates of the conservative Muslim cause argued that The Satanic Verses should be banned as an indecent and blasphemous book that offended values of decency and religious propriety fundamental to civilized society.2 While one could certainly take issue with this position and challenge the attempt of conservative Muslims to take the high ground where “civility” was concerned, such arguments were not grounded in an “ethnic” conception of political membership. Their appeal was, in fact, framed in strikingly universal terms. Conservative Muslims in Britain thereby sought to lay the foundation for a conservative multifaith alliance pitting the religiously devout—­be they Muslims, Roman Catholics, or members of the Church of England—­against sacrilege, indecency, and public offense to the sensibilities of religious believers. Their argument centered not on a Culture or Descent view of political membership but rather on the Belief perspective that shared

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fundamental values and beliefs are what hold a society—­or, in this case, civilization itself—­together. This position clearly challenged the liberal interpretation of the Belief model, substituting conservative values of decency and religious propriety for fundamental political principles such as free speech. Nonetheless, it certainly did not reflect an “ethnic” understanding of political membership. In fact, one of the most convincing defenses of the conservative Muslim campaign was Bhikhu Parekh’s argument that, as long as British Muslims accepted the authority of the British state, the authorities were obliged to accept them as members of the political community, even if they did not assimilate to English national culture (Parekh 1990: 701). Parekh thus used the state-­centered Contract model to defend conservative Muslim groups’ rights legally to pursue their claims. The theoretical model Parekh called on in defense of the conservative Muslim campaign thus was not “ethnic” at all. It was instead rooted in the very same state-­centered Contract model also invoked—­but in combination with Belief and society-­centered Contract—­by British Conservative officials in rejecting conservative Muslims’ claims. These defenses of the conservative Muslim cause using the Belief and Contract models also show that the parameters of disagreement concerning political membership in Britain differed strikingly from those in France. In France’s politics of belonging, different underlying conceptions of political membership frequently coincided with and reinforced well-­established left-­ right political divisions, as well as long-­standing fault lines within each camp. In Britain, opponents and defenders of the conservative Muslim cause during the Rushdie affair often drew on the same conceptions, albeit in sometimes-­ different combinations as well as different ways. Though the conceptions of membership emphasized during the Rushdie affair differed from those emphasized during the affaire du foulard, it would be wrong to identify the Culture model as “French,” in contrast to a “British” state-­centered Contract view. Neither affair gave rise to any national consensus about what political membership was. Moreover, there was significant overlap in the models favored, with left-­wing opponents of conservative Muslim demands similarly favoring the Belief model in both countries. The new theoretical framework emerging from ordinary language analysis can also be applied to debates beyond the national level. Increasing attention to such forms of citizenship by no means spells the end of today’s politics of belonging, which have been fueled rather than dampened by globalization. Not only is political membership at more local and national levels still val-

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ued and contested, as often noted. More important here, more supranational forms of political membership continue to raise similar conceptual quandaries in their own right, as reflected in recent and emergent discussions of European and global citizenship. Although today’s politics of belonging are played out in the context of a growing perceived crisis of the nation-­state and often turn on national political belonging, the conceptual quandaries involved are not specific to the nation-­state and are therefore likely to continue fueling membership-­related disagreements, even if national forms of political membership should eventually be eclipsed by more global or international ones. The same conceptual confusions about political membership that have factored in controversies at the national level have complicated recent discussions of citizenship at the global and European levels as well. Contrary to what post-­nationalism suggests, emerging global and international forms of political membership thus do not fully transcend existing theoretical understandings of political membership. What is at the crux of the current politics of belonging is not a historical problem of the nation-­state. It is deep-­rooted conceptual ambiguity and confusion concerning the nature of membership in general, and political membership in particular. Even if basic changes in the standing of the nation-­state were to occur, these changes would therefore be unlikely to resolve or do away with the current politics of belonging and the sorts of theoretical debates currently associated with them. The findings of this study have some cautionary implications for more empirical, policy-­oriented research. Questions such as whether immigrants’ children are effectively learning the language of the receiving society at school, whether the taxes they pay equal or exceed the value of the publicly financed goods and services they consume, or to what extent naturalized citizens feel attached to their new country are increasingly at the center of political discussion. Naturally enough, such questions also inspire social scientific research, partly with an eye to clarifying whether immigrants are becoming good, full-­fledged members of different polities. Empirical studies’ perceived relevance in this regard may, however, be limited if the conceptions of citizenship behind researchers’ questions and those of the public, or of relevant policymakers, do not correspond. By the same token, the same questions are unlikely to be of equal interest to publics and policy makers in different countries. For instance, given the marginality of the Monetary Contract view in France, a study showing that Turkish immigrants typically paid taxes at an annual rate exceeding the value of social services and public goods they consumed would probably do little to persuade those concerned about France’s

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changing demographic base to be more accepting of Turkish families. A similar study of Mexican immigrants in the United States, where the Monetary Contract model is relatively strong, would be much more influential. The results of this study also suggest new ways of looking at the causes and dynamics of current immigration and citizenship policy conflicts, shedding new light on the conceptual conflicts involved and on how thinkers can contribute to settling rather than escalating them. Insofar as current migration and citizenship conflicts are interpreted as conflicts between civic perspectives and ethnic ones, membership-­related conflicts of this kind logically appear to be driven by the inherent theoretical incompatibility between these two ways of thinking about belonging. Logically, from this perspective, politically salient membership-­related issues appear to signal the persistence of preferences for ethnic forms of membership on the part of certain political actors, and thus their unwillingness fully to embrace more civic political ties. Much interesting research has correspondingly sought to explain how, why, and when certain actors embrace, and politicize, ethnic identities. The interpretive shift introduced in this study, however, shows that membership-­related conflicts in liberal democracies often cannot be adequately characterized simply as conflicts between civic and ethnic paradigms. To understand how the politics of belonging unfold in these contexts, one needs to be particularly critically attentive to the role of conflict definition, including the use of civic-­ethnic or other binary theoretical oppositions, in political strategies. Nor should one assume that the theoretical inconsistencies in actors’ positions, or combinations of positions, represent “mistakes.” Contrary to what one might assume, such mixtures and theoretical inconsistencies do not necessarily show that political actors are simply not thinking clearly. Instead, strategically combining theoretically disparate perspectives is often essential to actors’ efforts to achieve particular political ends. In some cases, actors use theoretically inconsistent combinations of appeals in order to build coalitions, or to break up and reshuffle existing ones. For example, the slippages between models and resulting inconsistent invocation of Culture, Contract, and Belief perspectives evident in the final report of France’s Nationality Commission in 1988 need not be regarded as a simple result of internal compromises, much less carelessness. The Commission’s selective combination of theoretically disparate appeals actually advanced its political aims, isolating the far-­right from nationalists on the traditional right and laying the foundations of a new, more centrist, republican “consensus” by

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dampening the left-­right conflict then impeding nationality law reform and imperiling the government’s legitimacy. In other cases, actors may lump several different conceptions of political membership under a single heading with an eye to vilifying enemies and bolstering their own position. This dynamic shapes not only public political debate over citizenship, but academic ones as well. For instance, in comparative politics the Culture and Descent models are often combined under a single, pejorative rubric, such as “ethnic nationalism,” and used to vilify cultural nationalists by making it seem that Culture model supporters are also, inherently, defenders of the Descent model and thus advocates of ethnically based exclusion. The problem is that such moves tend to reduce the options under consideration, thus diminishing prospects for effective negotiation or creative compromises among political players with positions invested in different ideas of political membership. Such attempts to reduce the wide array of possible conceptions of political membership to a starker pair of “opposites,” each of which is then attributed to one camp in a two-­sided debate, are often part of what could be called a “politics of competitive misrepresentation.” Political opponents instrumentally deploy theoretical dichotomies like the one between civic and ethnic, often to pejoratively misrepresent opponents’ positions as “ethnic” ones. That political dynamic then itself contributes to popularizing and politically rejuvenating such oversimplifying, binary perspectives on political membership, despite their conflict-­escalating tendencies and generally limited usefulness for understanding the current politics of belonging in liberal democratic countries. Recognizing this kind of political and intellectual dynamic should encourage us to look for more creative approaches to addressing current membership-­related conflicts. Interpreting such conflicts as driven by the theoretical incompatibility of two, diametrically opposed, ways of understanding political membership suggests two ways such conflicts may be eliminated or reduced. Ideally, one view—­preferably the good one—­can triumph decisively over the other, rooting out membership-­related political conflict altogether. Alternatively, while such theoretical disagreements over membership may remain unresolved and irresolvable, other issues, such as questions of socioeconomic policy, can instead dominate the political agenda. By contrast, if the politics of belonging is instead characterized as a series of conflicts between shifting combinations of ideas of membership rather than as a series of recurring face-­offs between two diametrically op-

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posed views, then other ways of quelling such conflicts become possible. Giving each model a name of its own, and thereby more clearly distinguishing among them, can help expose various conflict-­escalating moves, thereby making them easier to recognize and counter. Rereading the current politics of belonging in the terms suggested by this study can thus help reduce the sometimes extreme ideological intensity of membership-­related conflicts. It is worth noting that provisional compromises are often theoretically feasible, even where underlying conceptual tensions regarding the nature of political membership remain imperfectly resolved. The theoretical approach presented in this study can be used not just for interpreting political conflicts more perceptively but also for helping actors seeking solutions capable of garnering broadly based support to barter compromises. In pursuing such compromises, we should be leery of too readily embracing the tempting assumption that the Belief model always affords the best, perhaps even the only way of maintaining the cohesion of increasingly globalized and ethnically diverse political communities, whether in Europe or elsewhere. Analyses of recent debates do not “disprove” the Belief model and certainly do not show that, if properly interpreted and applied, it is unviable as a basis for integrating minorities of immigrant origin. However, we should be wary of arguments to the effect that, because societies of immigration bring together people of diverse cultural backgrounds, such societies inevitably and self-­evidently need shared commitments to fundamental principles to hold them together. Tracing and comparing recent membership-­ related discussions in France and Britain shows that which models have been on which side has actually varied from one controversy to another, and has sometimes been subject to dispute even within debates. Just as comparative social scientists too often rely on an overly simplistic dichotomy between “civic” and “ethnic,” people often tend to assume that there are just two alternative ways in which societies may be united and political membership understood: a Culture-­Descent way and a Belief or Belief-­Contract way. If this were an adequate way of casting the field of alternative ways of thinking about political membership, then the Belief or Belief-­ Contract model would indeed obviously be necessary for keeping countries of immigration integrated and cohesive. If the Culture model were but one indissociable facet of a single, intrinsically unified Culture-­Descent model, then it would be as intrinsically problematic as the Descent model in countries of immigration. A Culture-­Descent model would be particularly ill adapted as a formula for generating social cohesion where one hopes to turn large

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numbers of immigrants of diverse national or ethnic origins into members of the receiving polity. If the field of alternatives were adequately captured by the above dichotomies, then the Belief (or Belief-­Contract) model would arguably be the sole and therefore indispensable alternative to the more ascriptive and “ethnic” Descent-­Culture model. In reality, however, there are not two but multiple ways of thinking about citizenship, and there are multiple ways of approaching the problem of integrating migrants and their descendants. Nor do ideas of citizenship centered on shared fundamental principles and those centered on active service, or participation, inevitably go together, as the idea that the sole alternative to a Culture-­Descent option is an understanding of membership combining what we have called the Contract and the Belief views misleadingly suggests. In fact, in advancing demands for cultural recognition and political enfranchisement, European immigrant minorities and their defenders have often ended up appealing most compellingly to the Contract model. One of the most frequent and powerful arguments of those in favor of more tolerant public policies during France’s headscarves affairs, for example, has been the participation-­centered idea that banning headscarves would impede integration by preventing Muslim girls who did wear headscarves from attending public schools. Similarly, during the Rushdie affair in Britain, Bhikhu Parekh’s unusually compelling argument also drew directly on the Contract view, albeit on a more state-­centered variant. Those appealing to the Belief model, meanwhile, have sometimes actually allied with more conservative defenders of the Culture and even the Descent model. Such Belief-­Culture or even Belief-­Culture-­Descent alliances, as recent European politics of belonging also show, do not coalesce in all cases and are by no means inevitable. Nonetheless, they repeatedly developed in the course of France’s recurring headscarves affairs, particularly the first affair in 1989–1990. Defenders of the Belief model since then, moreover, have certainly not turned to supporting more tolerant public policies on headscarves, or more recently the burqa or niqab. Rather, if anything, more and more of French politicians’ argument in favor of more restrictive policies has been grounded in the Belief model rather than a more explicitly “cultural” view of belonging, diminishing the original anti-­headscarf alliance’s more explicitly Culture-­based aspect. Nor was such a combination of positions peculiar to the headscarves affair alone. The combination of Descent, Culture, and Belief positions allied during the first headscarves affair in fact reproduced the amalgam of appeals

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that had coalesced earlier in the 1980s when demands for restrictive nationality law reform first became a major issue of the French right. Keeping these key episodes in France’s recent politics of belonging in mind should therefore make us appropriately wary of treating a hybrid Belief-­Contract view as a single model, much less as the only alternative to a Culture-­Descent view, or to what is often loosely referred to as an “ethnocultural” model of political membership. In reality, as the varied dynamics of recent political controversies in France and Britain reveal, there are more competing ways of resolving the oft-­noted tensions between difference and cohesion than we typically recognize. Theoretically confounding though it may often be, this multiplicity of competing options and compromises is in many ways a good thing. Given the deep-­seated complexity of our underlying understandings of belonging and membership in general, arriving at a single, unitary, stable, and conceptually consistent model of political membership to which all good citizens of liberal democracies duly subscribe is not a theoretically realistic prospect. A more pragmatic approach to managing conflicts associated with today’s politics of belonging, rather than trying to eliminate them by finally discrediting the “other side” once and for all is therefore urgently needed. Using the fivefold ordinary language-­based schema introduced in this study as a new lens for interpreting the politics of belonging thus promises to help us not only better to understand current membership-­related conflicts but also more creatively and effectively to manage them.

Appendix: English Language Voluntar y Exit Verbs and Usual Corresponding Objects

Table A1. Verbs in English for Referring to Voluntary Terminations of Memberships Abandon Abjure Annul Change Cancel Convert from Depart from Desert Divorce End Give up (on) Leave Quit Remove oneself Renounce Repudiate Resign Secede Separate Withdraw

274  Appendix

Table A2. Categories of English Language Voluntary Exit Verbs, and Usual Corresponding Objects in Ordinary Language Verb­

Usual objects

Change type (personal attributes) Abjure religious beliefs Convert from religion Renounce legal citizenship (membership in the citizenry) political orientation title or privileges (membership in aristocracy) Repudiate political orientation wife (thus exiting marriage) Leave type (loyalty or principled affiliation) Abandon ship electoral campaign team Annul marriage Desert army family Divorce husband/wife Give up on ideology (thus exiting an ideological camp) electoral campaign social or political movement Separate from army husband/wife (thus exiting marriage) Secede religious congregation political party federation Quit type (active participation or service) Depart from federation committee army Remove oneself from committee list of volunteers Resign committee job (exit from firm or organization) Withdraw from committee list of candidates Boy Scouts a class (at school) Cancel type (dues or fees-­paying) End contract/policy with AAA insurance group

Notes

Chapter 1. Introduction: The Politics of Belonging 1. For a selection of key articles comprising this debate, collected and translated from leading European newspapers, see Sign and Sight, “The ‘Islam in Europe’ Debate,” http://www.signandsight.com/features/1167.html, consulted 15 August 2008. 2. The French census does not inquire about religious affiliation, making an exact figure difficult to determine. Estimates of France’s Muslim population range from to 3.7 to 6 million; cf. Haut Conseil à l’Intégration (2000: 26); the 1999 survey results of Michèle Tribalat reported in Charles and Lahouri (2003); Tribalat (2008); Central Intelligence Agency (2008); For comparative estimated percentages of Muslim residents in European countries, see BBC News (2005). 3. In this regard, as noted by Hansen and Weil (2001: 3), Brubaker’s (1992) perspective closely follows that of Schnapper (1991). 4. Of course, the actual development of nationality law in nineteenth-­century France was somewhat more complicated, and less linear, than this summary would suggest; see Weil (2002). 5. A brief review of a number of these may be found in Vincent (1997: 275–95). For an older but more extensive interdisciplinary review of such typologies, see Snyder (1954: 112–32). 6. The bases of classification will, logically, be as innumerable as the explanatory aims of their creators. In addition to ideas, as Vincent (1997) notes, bases of classification may include nationalists’ strategic aims (e.g., unificatory versus secessionist) or the historical phases during which they emerge. 7. Having emigrated to the U.S., Kohn was apparently less concerned with similarly legitimating the patriotism of the war’s Eastern victors. 8. Beyond their intrinsic horror, these front-­page conflicts have also been widely interpreted as signaling a new kind of political danger; fears of imminent nuclear holocaust were to some extent replaced after 1989 by fears of atrocious ethnic conflict, to which it was increasingly feared that many or all countries, including the U.S., could be susceptible (Nairn 1995: 91–92). 9. Ignatieff also appears to concede that nationalism might have some intrinsic value, observing that “Every people must have a home.” In principle, one might argue that “home” need not be national in form, but Ignatieff seems to accept this equation, challenging only the ethnic character of some nationalisms, which he equates with the

276  Notes to Pages 15–18

violent means some nationalists use, saying “What’s wrong is the kind of nation, the kind of home that nationalists want to create and the means they use” (cited in Nairn 1995: 100–101). Drawing another important connection between the post–1989 political context and the revival of the Kohnian perspective, Jowitt (1992) notes that “the civic/ ethnic distinction” recently became “a central boundary/identity distinction” because, in the cognitive confusion associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it emerged as an invaluable “conceptual base for making sense of a disordered world” (325–26). 10. Greenfeld (1992) cross-­cuts the civic-­ethnic dichotomy with a second, “individualist-­libertarian” versus “”collectivist-­authoritarian” axis, which theoretically gives rise to four possibilities. However, as there are, by her own account, no cases of ethnic/individualistic-­liberal nationalism and few of civic/collectivist-­authoritarian nationalism, there are ultimately only three kinds of real cases, two of which predominate. One could also argue that only the civic-­ethnic axis of Greenfeld’s theoretical scheme distinguishes cases in terms of their conceptions of membership, while the second axis distinguishes nations in terms of their theories of popular sovereignty (10–11). Early in his discussion of the civic/ethnic issue, Jowitt (1992) argues that, “The nation-­state is a partially antagonistic amalgam of state, civic, and ethnic orientations and organization.” This seems to suggest the possibility of a more nuanced tripartite analytical perspective, but the third, statist element, apparently judged less significant for the interpretation of current political conflicts, rapidly disappears from view, so his discussion rapidly comes to center on the familiar civic versus ethnic dichotomy (319–26). In an earlier piece, unusual for its time, Schaar (1981) begins with four possibilities: nationalism and three types of patriotism (land, city, and covenanted). However, only nationalism and covenanted patriotism turn out to be possibilities that could be meaningful for Americans today (285–311). Lind also considers patriotism as an alternative to nationalism, but characterizes it as a commitment to governmental institutions as such, which gives rise to a “mere collection of individuals who share nothing other than common rulers and common laws.” In other words, Lind sees patriotism, which he associates with obsolete cases such as the Soviet, Romanov, Hapsburg, and Ottoman empires and shaky countries like Canada, as a form of commonality that neither unites nor meaningfully integrates a political community (1995: 5, 259). While mentioning it in passing early in the book, he subsequently devotes little attention to it. In a notable deviation from this pattern, equating civic nationalism with Schaar’s city patriotism and then finding it rooted in an experience of city-­state membership that is historically obsolete while dismissing both Schaar’s land patriotism or the covenanted patriotism of nation-­states as theoretically viable alternatives to nationalism, Xenos appears to end up with only one category, nationalism tout court (Xenos 1996: 213–31). 11. Conversely, others, writing on national identity in the United States, depict the settlement of practical problems surrounding the absorption of immigrants of diverse ethnic backgrounds as having given rise to a distinctive, non-­ethnic, conception of nationality (Huntington 1981: 26–30; cf. Kohn 1957: 135–69; Walzer 1992: 28–44; Lind 1995: 74–90). 12. Tamir (1993) presents “liberal” nationalism as possible for culturally based political communities, deeming at least some cases of cultural nationalism “liberal.” While not directly addressing cultural nationalism at all, Greenfeld (1992) presents the distinc-

Notes to Pages 18–48  277

tion between “civic” and “ethnic” as depending whether nationality can be acquired. If and when culture can be acquired, cultural nationalism would qualify as “civic.” Nairn (1995) sees “identity politics” as marking a turn from “ethnic” to “civic-­political” group differentiation and self-­definition; this suggests that cultural nationalism may be civic if political actors see themselves as actively creating rather than passively inheriting and defending particular cultures. Lind (1994) claims that cultural-­linguistic nationalism is “liberal,” while “illiberal” nationalism is genetic or religious in character. Chapter 2. What We Talk About When We Talk About Belonging: A New Framework for Analyzing Political Controversies An earlier version of this chapter was originally published as “Who Belongs? Competing Conceptions of Political Membership,” European Journal of Social Theory 5, 3 (2002): 323–49. 1. The same may not be said of “leaving” one’s family by marriage. 2. Only memberships for which we only use the verb “to change” to refer to voluntary terminations of membership count as Change memberships. 3. While the first term is rooted in a more political conception of the polity and the second in a more cultural or more ethnic conception, as Rogers Brubaker’s work suggests, the meaning of the two terms has tended to converge in practice. Thus, in France “nationality” has to some extent taken on a meaning rooted in the idea of citizenship, while in Germany “citizenship” has taken on a definition rooted in the idea of nationality (Brubaker 1992). On the complicated history of the relationship between citizenship and nationality in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, see Taguieff and Weil (1990: 95–97). 4. For example, see Patrick Weil’s defense of French schooling, rather than birthplace or the expression of individual will, as the proper basis for the attribution of French nationality to French-born children of foreign parents (Le Monde, 13 May 1993). 5. The other necessary condition for the existence of the Nation, in Žižek ‘s view, is the belief that it is meaningful to other members of the national community. 6. Gellner does argue that there are also forces other than nationalism at work in the modern world, and that nationalism may not always prevail. The nature of the countervailing forces is not indicated, however, and this point appears as a brief caveat at the end of the text (1983: 138–39). While Gellner is relevant here in his emphasis on the privileged role of culture in defining modern political membership, he does not present culture as having the privileged relationship to a sense of belonging, rootedness, attachment, and “deep” identification described by Sandel (1980, 1984). Instead, he sees such sentiments as characteristic of all forms of political membership, including membership in political units defined in non-cultural ways (1983: 140). 7. Paradoxically, the label “French Muslims,” a holdover from the earlier pattern, was still used, even in the very order to prevent their resettlement in France. France was referred to in the same order as “the metropole,” also following the then newly outdated colonial pattern of usage. 8. For further relevant discussion of these ideological processes, see Conklin (1997) and above all Shepard (2006). On the relationship between the Algerian War and new ideas about “decolonization,” see Shepard, chap. 2.

278  Notes to Pages 53–73

Chapter 3. The Campaign for a Post-­National Model of Civic Membership 1. In reality, this dissociation was not so new. In fact, until the 1970s newly naturalized citizens were subject to a range of “incapacities” for several years, including ineligibility to run for office, work for the public service, practice law or various other professions, or even vote. These incapacities were reduced by the 1973 revision of the Nationality Code and only fully eliminated in 1983. 2. For example, see Richard Marienstras’s call for public funding of minority cultures as necessary to enable them to withstand the assimilative pressures of public education and the media (Espaces 89: 1985). 3. On the importance of the idea of European and non-European cultural compatibility in new right discourse and ideology more generally, see Taguieff (1993). 4. Also see “Convaincre, rassembler et conquérir!” (1986: 3). 5. See “Une journée pour le droit de vote” (1986: 21). Similarly, see the photo of demonstrators carrying a banner reading, “For a Pluriethnic and Pluricultural France,” accompanying a 1985 article in FASTI’s monthly reiterating the organization’s support for immigrant voting rights, Expressions immigré(e)s français(es) 31 (May–June 1985): 11. 6. Percentages calculated from 1986 statistics reported by the Ministry of the Interior and cited in Figaro-Magazine (19 May 1990): 162. While suggestive of the relative combined weight of the Algerian and Portuguese populations, these numbers do not include dual nationals or French nationals of Algerian or Portuguese descent. 7. The wording of the question in the two surveys was also somewhat different. The 1978 survey asked whether it was “normal” (normal) that immigrants have the right to vote in local elections; the 1989 survey asked whether it was “desirable.” While this difference may have contributed to the apparent increase in support, it should be noted that, as the expressions are typically used in France, calling something “not normal” (pas normal) is not as different from deeming it “undesirable” (pas souhaitable), and saying something is “normal” (normal) comes closer to saying it is “desirable” (souhaitable) than is the case in American usage. 8. Also see report of the efforts of the Southeastern Regional Committee of Associations of Immigrant Origin in Expressions immigré(e)s français(es) 30 (April 1985): 18. At the same time, the common broad usage of the term “immigré” to encompass French-born individuals who themselves had never actually “immigrated” was regularly publicly contested by SOS-Racisme’s leader Harlem Désir. See testimony cited in Long (1988: 547–48) and Désir (1987). 9. Also see “Convaincre, rassembler et conquérir!” 3. 10. See “Le droit de vote: à quand les actes?” (1985: 18). 11. “Communiqué de presse—de la lutte anti-raciste à l’égalité des droits.” (1985: 17). 12. Reported in “Colloque des droits civiques—la citoyenneté” (1986: 7). 13. Paris VIII is in the far northern outskirts of Paris, bordering the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, a department, that in the 1980s was very heavily populated by immigrants. 14. Complicating the story somewhat however, some, including Michel Rocard, later migrated from the PSU back to the PS.

Notes to Pages 77–108  279

Chapter 4. Nationality Law Reform: The Launching of a New Debate 1. Proposition de loi no. 1627; registered with the Presidency of the National Assembly 15 June 1983. 2. The option of refusing French nationality was exercised by around 1,700 people per year. For more detailed explanation of the law and statistics on the number of cases involved annually, see Courbe 1994: 23–61. 3. Declaration to members of the Nationality Commission, Paris, 22 June 1987. 4. Meanwhile, in May 1986, a Tunisian man with ties to a dissident splinter group of the PLO who had been living illegally in France for several years confessed to the 1985 bombing of a Marks & Spencer store. This case also linked terrorism to illegal immigration, though not to “unwitting citizenship” (New York Times, 13 May 1986). 5. Declaration of Jean-Yves Le Gallou, general secretary of the FN group in the National Assembly, on the necessity of a reform of the nationality code and on immigration, Argumentaires (29 January 1987): 14. 6. Rossinot was then minister in charge of relations with Parliament. 7. The one exception in the 1986 RPR nationality code reform bill to the rule against automatic attribution of nationality to those of non-French parentage thus applied to adopted children. Chapter 5. Reconfiguring the Politics of Membership: The Work of the Nationality Commission 1. A prime example of this view is captured by Pierre Rosanvallon’s (1990) idea of the state as “l’instituteur du social.” 2. On the idea of France’s “mission civilisatrice,” see Conklin (1997). 3. Note the application of “sauvage” in French ordinary language not only to underdeveloped countries (e.g., the wicker- and bamboo-oriented furniture store in Paris called “Le Monde Sauvage”), but also to liberal economic systems (e.g., “le capitalisme sauvage”). 4. The working process of the Commission is described in detail in Long (1988: 17–20). 5. For a more detailed explanatory review of the provisions of the 1993 law and the Commission’s role in shaping its content, also see Courbe (1994). 6. Readers seeking a historical account of this kind may wish to refer to Nicolet (1994) and Deloyes (1994). 7. The Commission’s report, aiming in this section to discredit the Liberal perspective, did not note the reversal of causal logic involved. 8. The same argument was later made by Lagarde (1993), a critic of the practical effects of the symbolically guided reforms proposed by the Commission. 9. Thus, as GRECE had done more explicitly in 1985, the Commission, writing for Chirac, sought to echo De Gaulle’s appeal to “une certaine idée de la France.” 10. This criticism was echoed in Terquem (1988). 11. Their criticisms also focused on the Commission’s proposed extension of the waiting period imposed on foreign spouses of French nationals, which was actually one of the most restrictive changes proposed, though it was by no means as vigorously debated as were modifications of the Nationality Code’s jus soli provisions. 12. By contrast, the FN criticized turning the issue over to the Commission rather

280  Notes to Pages 108–126

than the legislature as undemocratic and refused to participate in the Commission’s interviews (Le Monde, 11 September 1987). 13. Proposals suggesting that not only should eligible individuals choose France, but the state should also have the right to choose its members had been made by politicians on the right prior to the Commission’s appointment. However, this idea has lost ground as the reform turned in a more moderate direction, and such a right of the state to reject unwanted applicants for French nationality on a purely discretionary basis was not recommended by the Commission or included in the 1993 reform. 14. Here I concur emphatically with the critique by Favell (1998: 43–46, 58–59). Cf. Brubaker (1992) and Hollifield (2004: 183–213). 15.As Finkielkraut argued, “one cannot say that it is racist to ask people to determine themselves. To appeal, once again, to the will and the conscience of individuals is not racist. Racism begins when the will of individuals counts for nothing” (Long 1998a: 599). 16.See Long 1998a: 595–96. 17. On this point, see the testimony of JALB president Djida Tazdait, LDH president Yves Jouffa, and Momadou Kante, secretary of cultural affairs at the Federation of African Workers in France (FAWF). Also note commissioner Bethold Goldman’s emphatic rejection of the relevance of taxpaying for the granting of citizenship, and the marked ambivalence of the three South Saharan African FAWF representatives in this regard (Long 1988a: 401, 450, 539, 93–97). 18. While the Commission began by calling this the “organic” view, the term “ethnic” was repeatedly used to refer to this idea later in the report. 19. Also see Long (1988b: 102–3) and the Commission’s proposed easing of the requirements those from Francophonie would have to meet to claim French nationality (Long 1988b: 176–77). 20. The idea of a citoyenneté de la francophonie {the idea was for people in the countries of “francophonie”—countries in which France is a major language--to have this form of citizenship, not for francophones per se to have it (regardless of place of residence)} also highlights that such a language-centered, Culture model of citizenship would often give rise to a community that would not be national in scope. Not only the rejection of the Culture model sought by “new citizenship” defenders, but also its fullfledged defense might thus point toward a dissociation of the idea of nationality and that of citizenship, although, in the latter case, it is not clear how closely such a “citizenship” would be associated with political or other rights. 21. However, on this point, the Commission seemingly contradicted itself a few pages later, calling for “the organization of a better capacity to verify the assimilation of persons who accede to French nationality” (113). 22. The survey, by BVA, was based on a national representative sample of 1,130 respondents. 23. Another survey, conducted by Sofres in November 1984, found an even higher rate of opposition (74 percent, versus only 21 percent in favor) (Nouvel Observateur, 13–19 September 1990). The results of the 1984 survey, however, deviated substantially from those of several other polls conducted between 1985 and 1990, all of which found a rate of opposition in the range of 49–55 percent, results much closer to those of the 1981

Notes to Pages 126–137  281

BVA poll. Cf. CSA survey reported in Politis 96 (15–21 March 1990): 20; BVA survey results cited in “Immigration” (1990); “Immigration: un problème clé” (1985); and Sofres results cited in “Le grand sondage” (1990). 24. Also cf. sociologist Michel Crozier’s testimony (Long 1988a: 583–84). 25. Between 1983 and 1998, the rate of unemployment among French youth twentyfive and under was rarely less than 20 percent; see Bruno and Cazes (1998). Chapter 6. Nationality Law Reform in Comparative Perspective This chapter was originally published as “Immigration and Changing Definitions of National Citizenship in France, Germany, and Britain,” French Politics 4, 3 (2006): 237–65. 1. The option of refusing French nationality was exercised by around 1,700 people per year. For more detailed explanation of the law and statistics on the number of cases involved annually, see Courbe (1994: 23–61). 2. Prior to this, the possible need for reform had also been raised by the left and within the bureaucracy (Feldblum 1999), but it was the right and its concerns about the existing code’s apparent laxity that moved the issue squarely onto the national political agenda. 3. For a comparative discussion of devaluation and revaluation of citizenship in Europe and the U.S., see Schuck (1998). 4. Surveys suggested that fears of immigration threatening national identity were actually quite widespread. Fully 68 percent of those interviewed in 1985 agreed that France’s national identity would be endangered if the number of foreigners in France was not restricted (“Immigration” 1985). 5. While the recommendation passed applied only to migrants from within the EEC, this was not a distinction made in the original report by Italian Communist F. Mariano that led to the recommendation. This suggests that, at that time, more and less bounded versions of such initiatives were not yet clearly distinguished or opposed. 6. Meanwhile third-generation immigrants continued to receive French nationality automatically at birth under Article 23. The application of Article 23 to French overseas territories and former colonies and to children of Algerian immigrants born in Algeria prior to independence was restricted, however (Feldblum 1999: 150–51). 7. Of those eligible to claim French citizenship in 1996, between 65 percent and 81 percent had done so by the end of the year (calculated on the basis of statistics provided by the Ministry of Justice and reported in Weil (1997: 26). The imprecision in this figure is due to imprecision in the estimates of the number of youth eligible. 8. To avoid excluding immigrants raised and educated in France who left school at sixteen and lacked suitable documentation of their presence in France thereafter, requirements were also adjusted to require five years residency in France after age eleven, rather than five consecutive years immediately prior to requesting citizenship. Weil argued that, in any case, it was not necessary that one’s presence in France be uninterrupted for one to have received a decisively French socialization (1997: 28). 9. By the 1 November 1997 closing date, some 150,000 applications for regularization had been filed (Le Figaro, 12 November 1997). 10. Such concerns are by no means merely a thing of the past. More recently, con-

282  Notes to Pages 137–164

cern about illegal immigrants to the DOM/TOMs has led some to question the application of jus soli to children born to them there. 11. This public establishment of Germany as a central point of invidious comparison securing the new French “republican” consensus occurred through invocations of Renan in the National Commission hearings as well as invidious comparisons in the work of wellregarded French intellectuals working on immigration and nationality during this period. See especially Todd (1994), a nationally self-congratulatory comparative study quite popular and widely discussed in France (for further references, see Favell 1998: 91 n 41). 12. Either the unbefristete Aufenthaltserlaubnis or the Aufenhaltsberechtigung. An apparently unforeseen problem is that less than 40 percent of those in Germany over eight years actually held either of the required permits, making the law’s application more restrictive than it initially appeared (Green 2000: 113–14). 13. Correcting for the low portion of such parents holding the required residency papers, when the law passed, this number was really only about 38,000. 14. The following categories are noted as eligible to register to vote: British citizens, British Dependent Territories citizens, British Overseas citizens, British Subjects as defined in Part IV of the British Nationality Act of 1981, citizens of Commonwealth countries, and Irish citizens (Dummett 1994: 75–76). 15. Each of the colonies, meanwhile, had its own immigration restrictions. 16. The trend in that direction was not entirely consistent. For instance, Parliament subsequently decided to admit ethnic Chinese who had worked for the imperial service. 17. This also creates new difficulties of proving eligibility. A birth certificate showing birth in the UK, previously sufficient evidence, now needs to be accompanied by documentation of the parent’s status at the time the candidate was born (Dummett 1994). 18. On jus soli’s 1981 modification in Britain, see Dummett (1994: 79–82). 19. One might dispute this reasoning by pointing out that dual citizenship is also legally prohibited in the United States, which requires naturalizing citizens to forswear allegiance to foreign powers. However, this U.S. rule is widely recognized as an empty formality and is not backed by any organized means of enforcement. The rule arguably endures in part precisely because it is so practically inconsequential. Certainly, though there is currently much popular outcry in the U.S. against illegal immigration, it is still very difficult to imagine in the U.S. the sort of popular campaign against dual citizenship seen in Germany in late 1998. Chapter 7. Contested Conceptions of Citizenship and Integration in France’s Headscarves Affair (1989–1990) An earlier version of this chapter was originally published as “Competing Visions of Citizenship and Integration in France’s Headscarves Affair,” Europe’s Other, special issue, Journal of European Area Studies 8, 2 (November 2000): 167–85. 1. The exact number of Muslim students is unknown because the administration kept statistics on students’ nationalities but not on their religion. 2. One of these buildings (K2) was demolished shortly after the census as part of a local rehabilitation project. 3. This was not the “Scouts de France” but the “Israélite” section of a similar organization, the “Éclaireurs de France.”

Notes to Pages 165–182  283

4. On the French tradition of laïcité see Deloyes (1994) and Nicolet (1994). The concept, its history and peculiar significance in France will be further examined in the next chapter. 5. On relations between Antillean and Maghrebian “blacks” in France, see Marie (1991) 6. Voile (veil) and foulard (headscarf) were not used interchangeably by everyone in 1989, but in parliamentary discussion the term voile was used on the right, and the discussions were indexed accordingly. Some representatives on the left resisted this political use of the voile, pointedly laughing in the assembly at colleagues who used it to encompass headscarves, but to little avail. 7. While politically controversial and arguably misleading, as Moruzzi (1994) emphasizes, voile was the term used in the official headings of Journal Officiel reporting of discussions of the headscarves affair in the National Assembly. 8. A database of position statements was thus created by compiling all relevant statements from Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, L’Express, Le Point, Aspects de la France, Rouge, Le Nouvel Observateur, Quotidien de Paris, Argumentaires, and Évenèment du Jeudi, as well as all relevant statements from French radio and television broadcasts indexed by Documentation Française. 9. Tellingly, at the 8 November 1989 National Assembly meeting, voile was used only by deputies from the right. In each instance, those seated on the left began laughing in response. Opponents of headscarves on the right were trying to equate headscarves (foulards) with veils (voiles). Certain deputies on the left were resisting this usage, using laughter to mark their dismissal of the term as a “ridiculous” exaggeration (see Journal Officiel, 8 November 1989: 4757–58). 10. By contrast, French Muslim organizations’ efforts to defend the right to wear headscarves in schools attracted notable support from Catholic and Jewish leaders in France. In fact, in keeping with the long-standing secular-religious cleavage in France, they showed themselves singularly sympathetic to Muslims’ pro-headscarf demands. 11. Jospin originally announced this position in an interview to Nouvel Observateur and presented it later the same day in a National Assembly meeting. 12. The French verb means both “to exclude” and “to expel.” Exclusion is also the term currently used to refer to socially marginalizing unjust inequalities. Supporting exclusion is therefore a position no Socialist would have accepted. Feldblum’s treatment of the nationality code debates of 1986–1987 is telling in this regard. Efforts to change the law in the name of preventing foreigners from becoming French without wanting to were limited by the fact that, at the same time, no one wanted to be seen as for exclusion. Reframing the issue as one of exclusion therefore moderated the initially popular reform effort (Feldblum 1991: 95–175). Similarly, during the affaire du foulard, Jospin was trying to define the issue as one of exclusion, on which the left had succeeded in capturing the high ground in 1987, and to situate himself on the “anti-exclusion” side. That is why this camp so adamantly resisted being defined by others as “pro-foulard.” Chapter 8. Paradoxes of Civic Exclusion: Explaining Restrictions on Headscarves An earlier version of this chapter was originally published as “Keeping Identity at a Distance: Explaining France’s New Legal Restrictions on the Islamic Headscarf,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 29, 2 (2006): 237–59. A revised version, “Islamic Headscarves in

284  Notes to Pages 182–193

Public Schools: Explaining France’s Legal Restrictions,” was republished in Culture and Belonging: Symbolic Landscapes and Contested Identities in Divided Societies, ed. Marc H. Ross (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). 1. France’s Muslim population, Europe’s largest, is estimated at approximately 5 million. Wholly reliable figures are lacking, however, since France prohibits collecting census data on religion. A 1994 survey by Le Monde found that 27 percent of Muslims in France were “believing and practicing” (Caldwell 2000). 2. Surveys of CSA, Ifop, and BVA before the law was passed in the Assembly found anywhere from 57 to 72 percent in favor (Libération, 8 December 2003). 3. For an in-depth comparative examination of evolving “state practice” concerning headscarves in other national contexts, see McGoldrick 2007: 107–236. 4. On the concept of cultural, or “psychocultural” narratives and their role in cultural and ethnic conflict, see Ross 2002, 2009: 8–10. 5. France’s highly respected and influential supreme administrative court, the Council of State (Conseil d’État) issues opinions on all proposed legislative measures before they are submitted to Parliament. Members of the government can also seek advice from the Council on particular legal and administrative issues, as the minister of national education first did in regard to the headscarves question in 1989. For more extensive discussion of this body and its functions, see http://www.conseil-etat.fr and Langrod (1955: 676). 6. In the words of Commission member Ghislaine Hudson, “Le fait de demander que l’école soit un milieu protégé des influences religieuses et politiques, parce que c’est un lieu de formation d’esprit, ne vise pas a exclure mais à s`intégrer et donc à s’émanciper” (emphasis added). (“Demanding that the schools be a milieu protected from religious and political influences because they are a site of personal and intellectual development does not aim to exclude but to integrate and thus to emancipate”) (Le Monde, 11 December 2003). Translations from French sources are my own unless otherwise noted. 7. Here my analysis closely follows that of Pierre Birnbaum (Libération, 13 December 2003). 8. Results reported in Elle, 15 December 2003. Also see the very diverse reactions to the proposed law on the part of Muslim women questioned in “ ’Si c’est ça, je ne me sens plus française,’ ” Libération, 18 December 2003. 9. Important pro-secular groups opposing the law included the Ligue de l’Enseignement, Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l’Amitié entre les Peuples (MRAP), and Fédération des Conseils de Parents d’Elèves (FCPE). 10. It is unfortunately impossible on the basis of this work to put percentages to these possibilities; for that, a more representative study with a larger sample would be required. 11. Most notably, Lutte Ouvrière 1115 (20 October 1989) linked the headscarves issue to Muslim girls’ submission to their fathers and brothers, complaining of families constraining girls to wear the veil. Even within the LCR, the hard line against head­ scarves on feminist grounds was in 1989–1990 a minority position; the majority instead stressed anti-colonialism and opposed a firm crackdown. The feminist hard line was also taken within the PS by feminists including Yvette Roudy and Geneviève ­Domanach-Chich. There again, however, it remained a relatively subordinate line of argument (see La Croix, 26 October 1989; Le Quotidien de Paris, 24 October 1989).

Notes to Pages 193–208  285

12. Bellil’s book was released just five days after the murder of Sohane Benziane. On Bellil’s role in NPNS, see Mouedden 2004. 13. The two terms most often used in France, le foulard (the headscarf) and le voile (the veil), are sometimes used to refer to the same garments, but they are not synonymous and have different political connotations. The former (foulard) refers specifically to a headscarf, a garment covering the head, ears, hair, and usually the neck. The latter (le voile) is more inclusive. Many in France now do refer to foulards as voiles, but the term voile can also refer to various types of large gowns or cloaks worn over other clothes. A full-length burqa or chador, for instance, would be a veil, but certainly not a headscarf. The term voile therefore lends itself more readily to conceptual inflation and has more often been used by those seeking to dramatize issues of “Islamic” women’s dress in France, whereas the term foulard has been more readily favored by those seeking to de-dramatize the issue. 14. I refer here to Bauberot’s presentation at the May 2004 meeting of the FrenchCanadian Association for the Advancement of the Sciences (ACFAS) rather than the text of the paper. 15. Cf. Kepel (1994)’s much subtler earlier account of the connection between veiled students and international Islamic currents. Also see Roy’s (2004) very sophisticated analysis. 16. The full title of the article was “Fighting Words—French Move Fast to Expel Foreigners Espousing Violence—Nation Targets Several Imams from a Muslim Populace Poorly Integrated in Society—Trying to Pre-Empt Terrorism.” 17. Le Monde (21 August 2004) reported the number of deportations during this period as only seven, that is, half the number of allegedly dangerous “Islamists” deported by Interior Minister Charles Pasqua a decade before. Deportation of imams was thus not a “new” practice that took hold only post-9/11 as the Wall Street Journal suggested. Chapter 9. Salman Rusdie’s Satanic Verses: From Publication to Public Controversy 1. The Council for Racial Equality and Runnymede Trust explicitly defined one of the main challenges presented by the Rushdie affair as determining “the kind of society Britain needs to evolve into if it is to reconcile the demands of social cohesion and national integration with proper respect for cultural diversity and autonomy” (quoted in Asad 1990: 480). While never as numerous and influential as Muslims against Rushdie, it is worth noting that there was also a liberal, generally intellectual and professional, international Muslim reaction in defense of Rushdie. The liberal position was reflected in a February 1989 petition, signed by thirty Arab, Turkish, and Iranian writers, saying, “We are all Rushdies,” and the essays in support of free speech by Arab and Muslim intellectuals collected in Tazi (1993). On the February 1989 petition and the conflict among Muslim intellectuals to which it gave rise, see Saadi (1993: 255–57). 2. The Islamic Foundation was the publishing and research center for the Islamic Party (Jama῾at -i Islami) in Britain. Establishment of the Foundation is claimed by the main Jama῾at-i Islami organization in Britain, the UK Islamic Mission (UKIM). The Islamic Foundation runs a vast multilingual and multimedia publishing business and produces Islamic educational material in English, including a glossy youth magazine called Trends. Heavily reliant on Jama’at-i Islami personnel from South Asia, UKIM is evangelical in orientation. As Maulana Ahmed declared in his presidential address at UKIM’s August 1988 annual conference, “If the Muslim settlers...want to safeguard their

286  Notes to Pages 208–217

progeny, property, businesses...the only way, safe and certain, is to convert the indigenous population to Muslim majority.” UKIM is institutionally tied to Young Muslims UK and runs a selective scholarship program directed at developing a committed core of young leaders to pursue the establishment of an Islamic socio-political order in Britain. UKIM was also active in the creation of Impact International in the 1970s. Jama῾at-i Islami is political-ideological in orientation. Founded in Pakistan in the 1941 and opposed to such “superstitious” aspects of other Islamic sects as the role of sufis and belief in healing spirits but also militantly anti-Western and anti-colonial, the movement draws most of its support in South Asia from urban, university-educated professionals and businessmen, historically excluded from anglicized colonial society. This constellation of Jama῾at-linked institutions thus has two notable aspects. On the one hand, it lends credence to some of Western European’s worst fears concerning Muslims’ potential social and political ambitions. It is not a sect devoted to seeking mere toleration for Islam as a private, religious practice. On the other hand, it is among the least “obscurantist” or “anti-intellectual” strains of Islam. It aims to develop a more critical, self-reflective, even questioning support of Islam among the second generation in Britain, adamantly rejects the more mystical aspects of some of the other major sects, publishes extensively in English, and receives most of its support from the relatively well-educated. This chapter draws heavily on material produced by Jama῾at-linked organizations mainly because they publish very extensively in English. It should be noted, however, that Jama῾at-i is only one of several branches of Islam actively competing within Britain’s Muslim communities, and it has historically had limited appeal among either rural Muslims in South Asia or the Muslim population in Bradford, which is largely rural in origin (Lewis 1994: 40–43, 102–8). 3. Parekh (1989: 33) also explains Muslim anger at the book in these terms. 4. As the controversy continued, the word “Rushdie” came to be used as a taunt to provoke Muslims in lower-class neighborhoods. 5. More surprisingly, in his list of offensive passages of this kind included in this article, Vetta also included those targeted at the English, including several taken out of context from a passage in which Gibreel, qua avenging angel, is raving madly against London. 6. The damages demanded were characterized by the director general of the Islamic Foundation as a settlement for damages to the image of Islam and offense to Muslims. These three demands of Muslim organizations in Britain were advanced by the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs and seconded by the editors of Impact International and the secretary general of the forty-six-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). See Impact International, 14–27 October 1988 (rpt. in Anees 1989: 108); 23 February–8 March), rpt. in Anees 1989: 165; 28 October–10 November 1988. 7. A first protest rally in London on 10 December 1989 was organized by the Islamic Defence Council, a second, on 27 May 1989, by the British Muslim Action Front (Ahsan and Kidwai 1991: 12). Chapter 10. Rereading the Rushdie Affair: The Contested Terms of Being British 1. The full text of this speech is reprinted in Smithies and Fiddick (1969: 35–43); also see Foot (1969) and Schoen (1977: 25–44). 2. As also noted by Akhtar (1989: 113). 3. The Satanic Verses itself is suggestive of how the phrase figured in British culture

Notes to Pages 217–234  287

in the 1980s. In the novel, a sixties radical is caught looking like a reactionary for using the “rivers of blood” image in his 1980s writing, even though he is trying unsuccessfully to subvert it in a poem about humanity in the city. 4. The full text of Patten’s letter is also reprinted in Ahsan and Kidwai (1991: 321–25). 5. Where this learning did not occur, parents were held to be to blame. It should also be noted that responsibility for de facto inequalities of opportunity suffered by second- and third-generation immigrants was also thereby assigned to the families of disadvantaged members of minority groups, rather than to racism or broader social factors. Enforcing nondiscrimination in employment and housing was one of the responsibilities assigned to Britain’s race relations institutions by the Race Relations Act 1976. Britain’s race relations framework was thus based on an understanding of inequality of opportunity as discrimination, and of discrimination as a “race relations” problem, that is, as a consequence of racism. Muslims also criticized this perspective in 1989 for obscuring other forms of discrimination, particularly discrimination against members of minority religious or cultural groups (see Modood 1989: 280–84). 6. German and American authors have also written in favor of this approach, making it exceptionally widespread internationally as a preferred option. However, there are national obstacles, and it may have more natural appeal in polities with written constitutions. Cf. Pipes (1990: 246–47); Habermas (1992: 28–29; 1994). 7. Lynch was invited from, but did not speak on behalf of, the World Bank. 8. In claiming that Muslims were being asked actually to leave Britain, Akhtar (1989) may have been thinking of the position of Sunday Sport, which offered free oneway plane tickets to Iran for British Muslims siding with Khomeini. 9. Rushdie later regretted trying to make amends with his adversaries, who did not reciprocate as hoped by seeing that the threats to his life, and those of his translators, were subsequently lifted. For his account of the major turns in his thinking on this score, see Rushdie (1993: 15–24). 10. On the development and decline of Britain’s race relations system, see Messina (1989: 54–71). 11. Cf. Schonfield (1999), and “Perdition” (n.d.). Following pro-Zionist outcry against Perdition in 1987, Royal Court Theatre canceled its staging of the play two days before its scheduled preview. Critics maintained that the play was historically inaccurate and anti-semitic. It was nonetheless shown once, at Conway Hall. The playwright, Jim Allen, was attacked in the press, charged with libel, and forced to mount a costly legal defense. Twelve years later, in 1999, Perdition was revived at the Gate Theatre in London. 12. 19 July 1989 letter to John Patten, Minister of State, Home Office, reprint in Ahsan and Kidwai (1991: 327). 13. Repeal of the blasphemy law was recommended after the 1976 Gay News trial by the Law Commission, which judged the law discriminatory and too difficult to extend to all religions. Liberal critic Michael Ignatieff condemned the law as a holdover from the “theocratic past” incompatible with the “legal ethos” of modern Britain (letter to The Observer, 2 April 1989; rpt. in Appignanesi and Maitland 1989: 251–52). 14. For example, see Daily Telegraph editorial, quoted in Reuters Library Report (16 February 1989) and “Towards the Next Rushdie” (1991). 15. The category of British citizenship was legally defined for the first time only in

288  Notes to Pages 234–265

1981. Many of the rights typically associated with citizenship, such as rights of free entry and the right to vote, were in Britain historically extended to all British subjects, including those of the New Commonwealth; see Hansen (2000). 16. Parekh’s position was thus the direct opposite of Enoch Powell’s. In response to decolonization, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Powell pressed for adjustment of British immigration policy to the loss of the Empire. He argued that attachment to the imperial idea was dangerous because it legitimated immigration to the British Isles of “British” citizens from the new Commonwealth who were not “Englishmen” and thus did not “belong” in England. Powell’s appeal was premised on an implicit but widely shared idea: that Englishness equaled civility. Acceptance of British citizens who lacked English national culture was therefore supposed to present a danger to English society because such citizens were prone to incivility, and therefore, allegedly, to such uncivilized acts as passing excrement through English families’ letterboxes. 17. May 1998 interview with Osama bin Laden, retrieved 2 June 2006 from http:// www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html. In the same interview, bin Laden refers to “the Islamic nation.” He calls on Muslims wherever they may live to defend that “nation” by taking arms and practicing terrorism—in all places— against the United States, “the Jews,” and “the traitors who commit acts of treason against their own countries and against their own faith and against their own prophet.” Chapter 11. Membership Quandaries Beyond the Nation-­State: European and Global Citizenship 1. While generally enhancing the role of European citizenship, the Treaty thus added to Article 8d the statement that “Citizenship of the Union shall complement and not replace national citizenship.” 2. Of course, Habermas might very well grant that Europe is a “civilization,” but he conceives its substance and boundaries very differently from the thinkers discussed above. 3. Key for Habermas is the shift to a “community of citizens,” not escaping the nation-state. Indeed, as Habermas indicates—and in direct contrast to the national communitarian view discussed below—“A nation of citizens must not be confused with a community of fate shaped by common descent, language and history” (2001: 15). 4. Here I follow Lacroix’s labeling of theoretical positions (2002: 946). 5. Indeed, in contrast to most of the other recent controversies we have examined, the theoretical debates about European citizenship respond to a situation in which the statutory extension of citizenship has arguable outstripped its real development as opposed to lagging behind it. Chapter 12. Conclusion 1. One might argue that it is unclear whether the Culture model is truly “ethnic,” not “civic.” By deeming it “civic,” one could argue that the outcome of the Commission’s work was not so paradoxical, but simply combined three “civic” perspectives. Finkielkraut himself, however, clearly characterized cultural nationalism as an “organic” conception of the nation. 2. Ahsan and Kidwai’s 1991 collection of editorials in favor of the conservative Muslim cause was even titled Sacrilege Versus Civility. The themes of civility and civilization also regularly figured in the editorials collected in Anees (1989).

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Index

Achaboun, Fatima, 162, 166 Achaboun, Leila, 162, 166 active citizenship, 41 affaire du foulard (headscarves affair), 161–99; Belief model for viewing, 175–77; case-­ by-­case approach to, 189; citizenship and membership questions raised by, 184–88; combining membership models for viewing, 271–72; and common values, 224; Contract model for viewing, 177–80; Culture and Descent models for viewing, 171–75; earlier policy responses to, 183, 188–90; emergence of, 10; intense reactions to, 184; international response to, 182; as local conflict, 162–71; as national conflict, 169–71; political effects of, 263–65; and pro-­Christian prejudice, 191–92; questions of women’s submission raised by, 192–115; role of ECHR in, 196–98; and Satanic Verses controversy, 204; and terrorism, 195–96 Ahsan, M. M., 208 Akhtar, Shabbir, 208–9, 223–24, 227–28, 230, 234, 243 Algeria, 63. See also Front Islamique de Salut Algerian immigrants: effect of nationality law reform on, 81; and Nationality Commission, 113, 115–17; and post-­nationalist perspective, 59–60; voting rights of, 64 Algerian War, 47–48, 73, 113 Alsace, 116 Amicale des Travailleurs Africains en France (ATAF, Association of African Workers in France), 62, 120 amnesty, 137 ancestry, 18, 98–100. See also Descent model of political membership ancient Greece, 35

ancient Rome, 35 anti-­colonialism, 284 n.11 anti-­imperialism, 62 anti-­racism, 65, 66, 106–7, 180 anti-­Semitism, 116–17 anti-­statism, 67, 71–75, 91–97, 102, 186 Arendt, Hannah, 59 Aristotle, 252, 254 Asad, Talal, 229 Asian People’s National Association, 231 assimilation: and affaire du foulard, 169–71, 178; and Belief model of political membership, 38; in Britain, 218–19; in Germany, 141, 150; and imperialism, 238; and nationality law reform, 78–79, 84; and post-­ nationalist perspective, 54–60; and public education, 136, 150; research on, 136; significance of, 132 assimilationist cultural nationalism, 18 Association of African Workers in France. See Amicale des Travailleurs Africains en France Association of Children’s Houses of the Château de Laversine, 164 Association of Workers from Turkey (ATT), 63 “Asylum Compromise,” 141 ATAF. See Amicale des Travailleurs Africains en France ATT. See Association of Workers from Turkey Augustine, 39 Aurillac, Michel, 82–83 Auslandsdeutsche, 145 Australia, 4 Austro-­Hungarian Empire, 59 Badawi, Zaki, 209 Balibar, Étienne, 248

304  Index “Balkanization,” 172 Bangladeshi immigrants, 205 Barrot, Jacques, 173 Battacharya, Rimli, 210–12 Bauberot, Jean, 188 Be Careful with Muhammad! (Akhtar), 224, 227 Belief model of political membership: and affaire du foulard, 162, 171, 175–77, 180–81, 263, 264; combining Contract model with, 270–72; and cultural diversity, 224–32; and “ethnic” Culture perspective, 263; European citizenship in, 249, 252–54; global citizenship in, 258; growth in popularity of, 265; interpretations of, 265–66; and multiculturalism, 229; and Nationality Commission, 90, 100, 119–23; and nationality law reform, 84–86; and “new citizenship,” 262; other models vs., 46–48, 270; overview, 38–39, 50; and rejections of multiculturalism, 218–24; and Satanic Verses controversy, 209 Bellil, Samira, 193 belonging: conflict resulting from politics of, 269–70; emergence of questions about, 3; recent research on, 5 Bentebria, Mahjoud, 122 Bharucha, Rustom, 211 Bild Zeitung, 141 bilingual education, 4 birthplace, 80 blasphemy, 230, 232 Bloch, Marc, 40 Bowen, John R., 188 Bradford Council of Mosques, 224, 232–34, 239–40 Braudel, Fernand, 74 Bresson, Jean-­Jacques de, 128 Britain: citizenship in, 145, 147–49, 224; concepts of state and nation in, 19; immigration issues in, 131, 153–55; jus soli in, 205; Muslims in, 205–12, 219–23, 227–40, 265, 266; national integrity, 11; nationality law reform in, 145–48, 155; national status as individual choice in, 153; separation of church and state in, 187 British Isles, 145 British Nationality Act (1948), 145–47 Britishness, 213, 226, 239, 242 British Parliament, 147

Brown, Wendy, 253 Brubaker, Rogers, 140 CAIF. See Council of Immigrant Associations in France Cancel memberships, 22–23, 26, 28–33, 43, 49 Carrère d’Encausse, Hélène, 127 Catholicism, 92, 93, 186 central state control, 65 Une certaine idée de la France, 58 CFCM. See French Council for the Muslim Religion CFDT. See Confédération Français Démocratique du Travail Chalandon bill, 82–83, 107 Chalon sur Saône, 62 Change memberships, 24–26, 28, 31–34 Charette, Hervé de, 173 Chenière, Ernest, 164–69 Chevènement, Jean-­Pierre, 15, 176–77 Chirac, Jacques: and affaire du foulard, 191; and Nationality Commission, 91, 96; and nationality law reform, 81, 82, 88, 134; and public education, 125, 175; Socialist and Communist opposition to, 108 Christianity: and affaire du foulard, 191–92; blasphemy, 230; in Britain, 222–23; predominance of, 248 church-­state relations, 6. See also laïcité; secularism CIMADE. See Comité Inter-­mouvements auprès des Évacués citizenship: and affaire du foulard, 169, 184– 88; in Britain, 145, 147–49, 224; changes in, 148–52; and cultural unity, 59; definitions of, 40, 42; European, 245–54; global, 254–59; global environmental, 258; legal elements of, 7; and nationality, 19, 72, 120, 264; and social entitlements, 43; termination of, 30–31; ways of looking at conflicts over, 268. See also national citizenship citoyenneté de la francophonie, 280 n.20 civic-­civic conflicts, 10, 12 civic-­ethnic dichotomy: crossing line of, 263; and “good nationalism,” 13; Hans Kohn’s work on, 13–14; limitations of, 17–20; in political theory, 16–17; revival of concept, 14–16 civic nationalism: ­ethnic nationalism vs., 15; in polite ethnic nationalism vs., 15; in political theory, 16–17.

Index  305 civic participation, 252 “civic republican discourse,” 258 civil society, 92 Club 89, 80, 82 Club de l’Horloge, 55, 57, 81 code de le nationalité française (Nationality Code): Article 23, 80–83, 101, 133; Article 44, 80–82, 84, 115, 133, 136; conception of French nation in, 105; Jeunes Arabes de Lyon et Banlieu, 111; and nationality, 19; and Nationality Commission, 94; nationality law reform, 79–80, 133; and racism, 104; revision of, 9 Colbrook, Miles, 257 Collective for Civic Rights, 65 Collective for Studies and Dynamicization of the Portuguese Emigrant Community, 120 Collège Gabriel Havez, 162–69 colonialism, 59, 72, 147 Comité Inter-­mouvements auprès des Évacués (CIMADE), 62 Commission de Réflexion sur l’Application du Principe de Laïcité dans la République (Stasi Commission), 182, 183, 186–88, 190 Commission for Racial Equality, 224 Commission of Sages, 96 common values, 47, 224–32 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 146 Communist papers, 108. See also French Communist Party (PCF) communitarian sense of membership, 37 compromises, 270 Confédération Français Démocratique du Travail (CFDT), 62, 92 Conseil d’État, 96, 184 Conservatism, 41 constitutional faith, 38 constitutional patriotism, 38–39, 247–49, 251, 252 Contract model of political membership: and affaire du foulard, 162, 171, 177–80, 263, 264; combining Belief model with, 270–72; Culture model vs., 266; decline in popularity of, 265; and “ethnic” Culture perspective, 263; European citizenship in, 247, 252, 253; global citizenship in, 258; and Nationality Commission, 90, 111, 119–23, 127; and nationality law reform, 86; and “new citizenship,” 70, 71, 262; overview, 39–42, 50; and Satanic Verses controversy,

215; and social participation, 220; state-­ centered Contract arguments, 232–40; use by conservative Muslims, 266 cosmopolitanism, 254 Council for Race Equality (Britain), 236 Council of Immigrant Associations in France (CAIF), 66 Council of State, 161, 189, 190, 193 CRC (Community Relations Council), 231 Creil, France, 162–71 Cultural Attachment perspective, 36 cultural difference: in nationality law reform, 79; and post-­nationalist perspective, 58– 59; recognition of, 10; respect for, 174 cultural diversity, 90, 224–32 cultural nationalism, 157, 171–75 cultural unity, 59 Culture model of political membership: and affaire du foulard, 162, 171–75, 264; Belief model vs., 46–48; combining Descent model and, 269–72; Contract model vs., 266; criticism of, 227; decline in popularity of, 265; global citizenship in, 257, 259; and multiculturalism, 218; and Nationality Commission, 90, 100, 119–23; and nationality law reform, 84–86; and “new citizenship,” 262; overview, 35–38, 50 Dans l’enfer des tournantes (Bellil), 193 decentralization, 65–66, 92 de Gaulle, Charles, 58 de la Bastide, Henri, 57, 71, 81 democracy, 253 Democratic Union of Kurdish Workers in France (UDTKF), 62 Denmark, 187 deportations, 285 n.17 Descent model of political membership, 34–35, 50; and affaire du foulard, 162, 171–75, 263; combining Culture model and, 269–72; and cultural nationalism, 157; decline in popularity of, 265; and Nationality Commission, 94, 97–100; and nationality law reform, 84–86; and “new citizenship,” 262; and Satanic Verses controversy, 215, 218 Désir, Harlem, 65–66, 71, 107–8 discrimination, 287 n.5 Djavann, Chahdortt, 194 Dreyfus Affair, 116

306  Index dual nationality, 63, 139, 141, 153, 282 n.19 Dummett, Anne, 145–46 duties, 251 Eastern European immigrants, 141 Eastern nationalism, 13–14 ECHR. See European Court of Human Rights école laïque concept, 165. See also laïcité Economist, 225 education, public. See public education Education Reform Act (Britain), 222–23 Elle, 194 empirical research, 267 “English only” policies, 4 equality, 193, 194, 264 equal rights, 39–42, 73 equity, 173 Espaces 89 conference, 58, 60 ethnic conflict, 275 n.8 ethnic diversity, 169 ethnic nationalism: ancestry and culture in, 18; civic nationalism vs., 15; in political theory, 16–17 “ethnocultural” concept, 150–51 Être français cela se mérite (Le Gallou and Jalkh), 85 EU. See European Union European citizenship, 245–54; and constitutional patriotism, 248, 249; and European identity, 246, 248; models of, 249–54; as political membership, 248; scope of, 247 European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), 11, 196–98 European identity, 246, 248 Europeanism, 92 European “network,” 251 European Parliament, 60, 135 European Union (EU): legal issues with citizenship, 253; Maastricht Treaty, 149, 246; and national citizenship, 247; research on European identity, 246; Turkey’s accession to, 248 exclusion, 134, 255 L’Express, 109 Falk, Richard A., 255–59 Faruqi, M. H., 208–9 fascist nationalism, 14 FASTI. See Fédération des Associations de Solidarité avec les Travailleurs Immigrés FDP. See Free Democratic Party

Federal Constitutional Court (Germany), 140 federalism, 59–60 Fédération des Associations de Solidarité avec les Travailleurs Immigrés (FASTI), 61, 62, 66, 69, 75, 87–88 fees, membership, 23, 28–29 Feldblum, Miriam, 135 feminists, 188, 189, 192, 194, 198, 264 Ferry, Jean-­Marc, 248 Le Figaro, 107, 138 Finkielkraut, Alain, 113, 115–19, 121, 263 FN party. See National Front party Føllesdal, Andreas, 250–51 forced return of immigrants, 78–79 foreign citizens: naturalization of, 57; in “new citizenship,” 53–54; voting rights for, 262 foulard, affaire du. See affaire du foulard France, 8. See also specific headings France Plus, 97 Free Democratic Party (FDP), 140 free speech, 204, 209, 225, 229–30, 242 French Communist Party (Parti Communiste Français, PCF): and affaire du foulard, 175–76; opposition to Méhaignerie bill, 97; and voting rights, 66 French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM), 198–99 French culture, 55 French language, 68, 121–22, 127, 221 Frenchness, 113–14, 176–77 French Revolution, 217 French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO), 73 French syndicalism, 54, 67, 73, 92 Front Islamique de Salut (Algeria), 196 full veils, 174. See also voiles fundamentalism, 173, 185, 196 Fyfe, Maxwell, 146 Gallisot, René, 72–73 Gaudin, Jean-­Claude, 84 Gaullists, 54, 108, 137, 174 Gellner, Ernest, 37 Génération 2001, 122 Georges-­Brassens Center, 164, 168 German language, 150 Germany: acculturation in, 156; and Alsace/ Lorraine, 116; cultural nationalism in, 157; and descent, 35; dual citizenship in, 4; immigrant labor in, 131; jus soli citizenship

Index  307 in, 141–43, 152, 154; nationalism in, 15–16; nationality law reform in, 139–45, 149–50; nation-­building in, 6; political rights in, 149 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry, 78, 79, 173 global citizenship, 254–59; global environmental citizenship, 258 globalization: European citizenship, 245; and membership politics, 3; and modern nationhood, 19; and Nationality Commission, 90; social effects of, 262 “good nationalism,” 13–16 “la grande nation,” France as, 72 GRECE. See Groupement de Recherche et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne Green Party (Germany), 140–42 Groupement de Recherche et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne (GRECE), 55 Guadeloupe, 66 Gueroui, Mohamed, 113–14, 117 guest-­hosts, 235–36 guest workers, 46, 73 Guigou bill, 137–39, 150 Habermas, Jürgen, 38, 39, 143, 248–54 Hall, Stuart, 40 Hannoun, Michel, 55, 108, 174–75 harkis, 47–48, 113, 128 Harrison, M. L., 43 Hartley, Anthony, 226–27, 236 Haut Conseil à l’Intégration, 137 headscarves affair. See affaire du foulard Heath, Edward, 216 Held, David, 40 Herrick, Jim, 206 history, 36, 39 holidays, 4 Hollifield, James F., 6 home, concept of, 275–76 n.9 Honeyford, Ray, 225; “Honeyford affair,” 225 Honig, Bonnie, 45 housing projects, 195 L’Humanité, 108 human rights: and affaire du foulard, 184, 189; based on personhood, 7; international influence of, 6; and partisanship, 65; in Turkey, 248 Human Rights League. See Ligue des Droits Humaines (LDH) Huntington, Samuel, 248

Hurd, Douglas, 40, 219–21, 236 L’identité de la France, 58 L’identité française, 58 identity politics, 34, 277 n.12 Ignatieff, Michael, 15, 287 n.13 illegal immigrants: amnesty for, 137; education and social services for, 4; expelling of, 31 illiberal nationalism, 16, 277 n.12. See also ethnic nationalism immigrants: Eastern European, 141; education of, 103, 124–27; effect of nationality law reform on, 80–82; forced return of, 78–79; illegal, 4, 31, 137; rights of, 147; in social order, 101 immigration: and Britain, 131, 153–55, 226; changes in citizenship laws, 148, 261–62; effects on citizenship, 132–33; in Monetized Contract model of political membership, 44; restrictions on, 81–82, 205; side effects of, 6; ways of looking at conflicts over, 268 Immigration Control Act (1971), 147 immigration quotas, 85 imperialism, 72–73, 108, 238 inclusion, 134, 255, 262 Indian immigrants, 205 Indians, 210–11 individual choice: in anti-­statism, 93; and Nationality Commission, 94, 95; with nationality law reform, 83–86, 136, 138–39; national status as matter of, 153 individualist-­libertarian vs. collectivist-­ authoritarian dichotomy, 276 n.10 integration: and affaire du foulard, 169, 171– 75, 177–80; and racism, 103; role of school in, 126–28, 136. See also assimilation intercultural reductionism, 5 involuntary terminations of memberships, 26–31 Islam,194; French treatment of, 173, 176–77; public debate over, 3–4; radical sects of, 195–96. See also Muslims: criticism of. Islamic Defense Council, 209, 286 n.7 Islamic headscarves affair. See affaire du foulard Jacobsohn, Gary Jeffrey, 38 Jalkh, Jean-­François, 85

308  Index Jama’at-­i Islami (Islamic Party), 234, 285–86 n.2 Jelin, Elizabeth, 258 Jenkins, Roy, 218–19 Jeunes Arabes de Lyon et Banlieu, 111–12 Jewish refugees, 144–45 Jewish students, 164–67 John Paul II, 15 Joppke, Christian, 141, 149–50 Jospin, Lionel, 136, 161, 175–76, 178–80, 221, 283 n.12 Jouffa, Yves, 70–71, 88, 120, 125 jus sanguinis: combining jus soli with, 7; defined, 6; in Germany, 139; and nationality law reform, 80, 133; and parental acculturation, 126 jus soli: abolishment of, 137, 138, 151; in Britain, 205; combining jus sanguinis with, 7; defined, 6; in Germany, 141–43, 152, 154; and Nationality Commission, 119, 135; and nationality law reform, 80, 83, 133; resistance to, 153 justice, 36 Kaltenbach, Pierre-­Patrick, 110 Kapur, Geeta, 211 Khali, Khadija, 114 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 203, 213, 215–16, 226, 232–34 Kiely, Richard, 19–20 Kohn, Hans, 13–16, 18 Koskakopoulou, Theodora, 246–47 Kulturnation, 18 labor movement, 67–71 Labour party (Britain), 147 Lacroix, Justine, 248 laïcité: and affaire du foulard, 165, 167–69; broad public legitimacy of, 182; defined, 186–87; and European Court of Human Rights, 197; explanatory limits of, 186–88; importance of, 184; as shared principle, 264 Lajoindrie, André, 175–76 Layton-­Henry, Zig, 147 LDH. See Ligue des Droits Humaines Leave memberships: and Change memberships, 49; and nationality law reform, 84; in ordinary language philosophy, 23, 25, 26, 28, 33 Le Chevallier, Jean-­Marie, 138

leftists, 8–9; and imperialism, 72–73; and jus soli, 119; and multiculturalism, 262; and Nationality Commission, 95, 101; and nationality law reform, 86, 88; and “new citizenship” campaign, 61 Le Gallou, Jean-­Yves, 85, 100, 121 Lehning, Percy B., 248 Leitkultur, 144, 145 Le Pen, Jean-­Marie, 67, 171–72, 191 liberal contractualist perspective, 250–51, 254 liberal nationalism, 16. See also civic nationalism liberty, 176–77 Ligue des Droits Humaines (LDH): criticism of Nationality Commission, 107; and “new citizenship,” 62, 67, 70–71 Lindberg, Daniel, 74–75 localism, 92 local voting rights. See voting rights Long, Marceau, 126 Lorraine, 116 Maastricht Treaty, 149, 246 machismo, 194 Maghrebin immigrants: and affaire du foulard, 163; effect of nationality law reform on, 81; in Nationality Commission report, 112–18; and nationality law reform, 133–34; second-­ generation, 57, 168; voting rights of, 65 Maistre, Joseph de, 105, 121, 128 Marshall, Alfred, 40 Marshall, T. H., 40 Martinique, 66 Mayoud, Alain, 56, 79 Mazeaud, Pierre, 82–83, 121 McCrone, David, 19–20 Méhaignerie bill, 96, 97, 118, 134, 136 Meinecke, Friedrich, 18 metamorphosis, 207 Mexican immigrants, 268 migrants, 135. See also immigrants migration, 3, 207. See also immigration Miller, David, 249–50 Millon, Charles, 172–73 Ministry of Justice, 82, 83 Mitterand, François, 57, 65–67, 87 “modern citizenship,” 43 Le Monde, 108–9 Monetized Contract model of political membership: decline in popularity of, 265;

Index  309 marginality of, 267–68; and Nationality Commission, 91, 94, 98, 101–3; and nationality law reform, 86; and “new citizenship,” 70, 71, 262; overview, 42–46, 50 moral entitlement, 43 morality, 228 Mosque of Paris, 117–18 mosques, 4, 165, 173–74 Mouffe, Chantal, 38 Movement Against Racism and for Amity Between Peoples (MRAP), 66, 108 multicommunitarian France, 56 multiculturalism: and affaire du foulard, 178; cultural diversity and common values in, 224–32; and French nationality, 150; and leftists, 262; and Nationality Commission, 90; in nationality policy, 9; in public education, 126; rejections of, 218–24; supporters of, 229 Muslims: in Britain, 205–12, 219–23, 227–40, 265, 266; and free speech, 230; increase in population, 182, 184; traditions of, 6; voting rights of, 64. See also affaire du foulard Nair, Rukmini B., 210–12 Nair, Sami, 58 Nairn, Tom, 14, 277 n.12 National Assembly, 182 national citizenship: jus sanguinis for determining, 6; post-­nationalist perspective on, 5–6 national communitarians, 249, 253–54 National Front (FN) party: and affaire du foulard, 171, 173, 176, 191–92; and jus soli, 137; and Nationality Commission, 93; and nationality law reform, 85, 87, 88, 133; and voting rights, 67 National Hebdo, 191–92 national identity: attachment to, 101–2; defenses of, 55–57; and Nationality Commission, 118; in nationality law reform, 106 nationalism: advent of, 37; assimilationist cultural, 18; civic, 15–17 (See also civic-­ ethnic dichotomy); cultural, 157, 171–75; ethnic, 15–18; fascist, 14; “good,” 13–16; illiberal, 16, 277 n.12; liberal, 16; and nationality policy, 9; Western vs. Eastern, 13–14; xenophobic, 15; zealous, 16. See also civic-­ethnic dichotomy nationality: in Belief model of political membership, 38; in Britain, 145; and citizenship, 19, 72, 120, 264; civic understanding

of, 135; and French language, 121–22; and multiculturalism, 150; nationhood vs., 19; and “new citizenship,” 60; and political rights, 120. See also dual nationality Nationality Code. See code de le nationalité française Nationality Commission, 90–130; centrist, republican position of, 263; and Descent model, 97–100; interview with Djida Tazdait, 110–12; investigatory process of, 95–97; and Maghrebin immigrants, 112–18; and Monetized Contract model, 101–3; nationality law reform, 77–78, 88, 89; neo-­republican remixing of culture, contract, and belief, 119–23; and “new citizenship,” 135; objectives and effectiveness of, 95–97; political strategy of, 136; political vs. philosopical aims, 104–7; and public education, 123–29; public reception of, 107–10; and racism, 103–4, 106–7; recommendations of, 134; statist vs. anti-­ statist political orientations, 91–97; variety of perspectives represented in, 268–69 nationality law reform, 77–89; in Britain, 145–48, 155; civic vs. ethnic, 263; of code de le nationalité française, 79–80; conception of nation with, 104; debates over, 96–97; demands for restrictive, 78–79; developing better account of, 152–55; in France since 1980, 133–39; in Germany, 139–45, 149–50; and individual choice, 83–86; legal approach to, 82–83; national identity in, 106; and political membership, 86–88; post-­nationalist perspective, 131– 32, 149; problems with, 120; right-­wing conceptions of nationality, 80–82 nationality laws: changes in, 7; in France; and state-­building, 6. See also code de le nationalité française national political cultures, 6 national republican thinkers, 253–54 “national traditions” view, 261 nationhood, 19 nativism, 16 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization naturalization: assimilation with, 57; in Britain, 148; with dual nationality, 153; and nationality law reform, 81, 83, 84; of Turkish residents in Germany, 141 Nazis, 230 neo-­republicanism, 119–30

310  Index “new citizenship”: anti-­statist qualities of, 67, 71–75; campaigns for, 57, 262; defined, 8; divide in supporters of, 264; foreign citizens in, 53–54; international context of, 60–61; and labor movement, 67–71; Nationality Commission’s distance from, 135; and nationality law reform, 85–88; social and political bases of, 61–67 New Statesman & Society, 225 Nieguth, Tim, 18 Ni Putes, Ni Soumises (NPNS), 193–94 No Exit memberships, 24–26, 32–35, 49, 215 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 82 nouvelle citoyenneté. See “new citizenship” NPNS. See Ni Putes, Ni Soumises obligation, 36 “On Being British” (Patten), 220 ordinary language philosophy of membership, 7–8; applications of, 266–67, 272; involuntary terminations of memberships, 26–31; ordering types of memberships, 32–34; typology, 21–22; voluntary terminations of memberships, 22–26. See also specific membership models Ory, Pascal, 59 Oxfordshire Community Relations Council, 231 Pakistani immigrants, 205 Parekh, Bhikhu, 237–38, 266 parents, 193 Parry, Geraint, 43, 250 Parti des Musulmans de France (PMF), 185 partisanship, 65 “patriality” rules, 148 patriotism: and colonialism, 72; constitutional, 38–39, 247–49, 251, 252; nationalism vs., 16; republican, 15 Patten, John, 219–21, 235–39, 242 Pau-­Langevin, George, 125 PCF. See French Communist Party Perdition (Allen), 287 n.11 personhood, 6, 7 Phillips, Andrew, 41–42 pieds noirs, 59 Plateau Rouher, 163–64 “plural society,” 224 PMF. See Parti des Musulmans de France

Le Point, 109 Polin, Raymond, 57, 78 political culture, 38 political membership: and affaire du foulard, 170, 184–88; and globalization, 3; international comparison of, 4–5; levels of, 266–67; models of, 9; and nationality law reform, 86–88; ordinary language philosophy of (See ordinary language philosophy of membership); polarization of, 97 political principles, 47 political rights, 120, 251 political theory, 16–17 politics, separating education from, 165–66 “politics of misrepresentation,” 9 Poor Laws, 41 Portalis, Jean-­Étienne-­Marie, 98–100 Portugal, 63 post-­nationalist perspective, 53–76; anti-­ statist qualities of “new citizenship,” 71–75; and assimilation crisis, 54–60; citizenship in, 132, 148–49; development of, 261–62; European citizenship in, 246; international context of France, 60–61; and labor movement, 67–71; and Nationality Commission, 90; and nationality law reform, 131–32; and nationality policy, 9; overview, 5–6; proponents of, 130; rights in, 7; social and political bases of France’s “new citizenship,” 61–67; and social change, 75–76; validity of, 152; voting rights in, 135 Powell, Enoch, 216–18, 288 n.16 PR. See Republican Party Preuss, Ulrich, 250 primordial perspectives, 150–51 PS. See Socialist Party PSU See Unified Socialist Party public education.: anti-­racism in, 180; and assimilation, 136, 150; in Britain, 221–23; as means to children’s integration, 179–80; and neo-­republicanism, 123–30; purpose of, 175; social rights in, 180; special courses for immigrants, 103. See also affaire du foulard public sphere, European, 251–52 Quddas, Abdul, 233 “Qu’est-­ce qu’une nation?” (Renan), 115–16 Quit memberships: and European

Index  311 citizenship, 254; in ordinary language philosophy, 23, 26, 28–30, 33, 34 Le Quotidien de Paris, 109 race, 24, 35 Race Relations Act (Britain), 230, 287 n.5 racism.: and civic-­ethnic dichotomy, 15; and free speech, 230; and Nationality Commission, 103–4, 106–7, 116–18; and nationality law reform, 78, 85; rise of, 69. See also anti-­racism Raffarin, Jean-­Pierre, 190, 194 reactionary anti-­statism, 93 Rebérioux, Madeline, 72 Refah Partisi and Others v. Turkey, 197 religion: as choice, 232; freedom of, 186; and fundamentalism, 173; separation of education and, 165–66 religious difference, 10 religious education, 222 Renan, Ernest, 105, 115–16 republicanism, 90, 98, 263. See also neo-­republicanism Republican Party (Parti Républicain,PR), 56 republican patriotism, 15 residency requirements, 141, 144 resident aliens, 31 restrictive nationality law reform, 78–79, 85, 87–88, 133 rights: equal, 39–42, 73; of immigrants, 147; in Monetized Contract model, 46; political, 120, 251; social, 180. See also human rights; voting rights “rights for duties” contract, 39–41 right wing, 80–82, 86, 95, 101, 120 “Rivers of Blood” speech, 216–18 Rocard, Michel, 178 Rouge, 108 RPR (Rassemblement pour la République), 55, 88, 174, 175 Runnymede Trust, 224 Rushdie, Salman, 203–4.; activism of, 208; biographical background of, 207; criticism of, 208–12; fatwa against, 214–16, 232–40; and free speech, 229. See also Satanic Verses controversy Rwanda, 15 Sadouni, Brahim, 113, 119, 128 Sandel, Michael, 36–37, 186

Sardar, Ziauddin, 211 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 264 Sartre, Jean-­Paul, 116 Satanic Verses controversy, 203–13; acclaim and popularity of book, 205–6; and affaire du foulard, 204; banning of book, 232, 265–66; and common values, 224; Contract view of, 271; emergence of, 11; fatwa against Rushdie, 214–16, 232–40; Indians’ reactions to book, 210–11; intellectual defenses of campaign against, 227–29; legal problems with, 231; and multiculturalism, 223; Muslims’ reactions to book, 208–10, 212–13; public protest, 212–13; and status of Muslims in Britain, 205–12 Schattle, Hans, 254, 257, 258 Schily, Otto, 143 Schnapper, Dominique, 19, 122, 137, 249–50 schools, public. See public education Schröder, Gerhard, 143 SDP. See Social Democratic Party secession, 60 secularism, 18, 174, 183. See also laïcité segregation, 59 Séguin, Philippe, 54–55 September 11 (9/11) terrorist attacks, 195–96 sexual equality, 193–94 SFIO (French Section of the Workers’ International), 73 “shared citizenship identity,” 248 shared values. See common values Shklar, Judith N., 44 Siddiqui, Kalim, 215, 216, 234 Silverstein, Paul, 195 Snyder, Louis, 14 social change, 75–76, 262 Social Democratic Party (SDP), 140–42 social entitlements, 43 Socialist Party (PS): and affaire du foulard, 170, 176, 193; and cultural diversity, 58; and human rights movement, 65; and Nationality Commission, 92, 108; and nationality law reform, 87, 136; and “new citizenship” campaign, 61, 62; opposition to Méhaignerie bill, 97; splits in, 264 social organizational view, 177–80. See also Contract model of political membership social participation, 220 social rights, 180 Soriano, Paul, 55

312  Index SOS-­Racisme, 15, 71, 107, 109, 119 speech, freedom of. See free speech Staatsnation, 18 Staatsvolk, 140 Stasi, Bernard, 182. See also Commission de Réflexion sur l’Application du Principe de Laïcité dans la République state-­building, 6 state-­centered Contract arguments, 232–40 state discretion, 83–86 state-­society relations, 101–3, 123 statism, 91–97, 103, 123 Stokes, John, 236 Stoléru, Lionel, 78 Stora, Benjamin, 73–74 student movement, 87 subjective self-­identification, 25–26 Sunday Sport, 233 Sunday Times, 217 supranatural citizenship, 255, 267 Swann Committee Report, 219, 229 syndicalism, French. See French syndicalism Tamir, Yael, 15 Tassin, Étienne, 252–54 taxes, 44, 70, 262 Tazdait, Djida, 110–12, 120 teachers’ unions, 188 territorial nationalist movements, 15 terrorism, 82, 195–96 tolerance, 174 trade unions, 68, 97 traditions: and immigration’s effect on citizenship, 132; importance of, 6; of Muslim minorities, 6; and Nationality Commission, 118 Treaty of Amsterdam, 246, 247 Tribalat, 150 “tribalization,” 172 Turkey, 248 Turkish citizens, 139, 141, 268 UDF. See Union for French Democracy UDTKF. See Democratic Union of Kurdish Workers in France UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs (UKACIA), 212, 231, 233–35, 238–39 UK Islamic Mission (UKIM), 234, 285–86 n.2 unemployment, 45

uni-­culturalist policies, 221–23 Unified Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste Unifié, PSU), 73, 92 union citizenship, 251 Union des Organisations Islamistes de France (UOIF), 185 Union for French Democracy (UDF), 88, 137, 171–73 Union of Tunisian Workers (UTIT), 62 United States: dual citizenship in, 4; Mexican immigrants in, 268; national identity in, 39 UOIF. See Union des Organisations Islamistes de France UTIT. See Union of Tunisian Workers, 62 verbs, 22 Verneuil, Henri, 111–12 Vetta, Atam, 210, 228–29 Viking-­Penguin, 205, 212, 230 Villiers, Philippe de, 93 voiles, 283 nn. 6, 7, 9, 285 n.13. See also affaire du foulard Voix de l’Islam, 174 volonté. See individual choice voluntary terminations of memberships, 22–26, 273–74 voting, 41, 42 voting rights: in Britain, 145, 205; campaigns for, 134–35, 262; in Germany, 140; as part of “new citizenship,” 53, 62–67, 71, 73; survey responses on, 125–26 Walzer, Michael, 46 Weale, Albert, 39–40 Weil, Patrick, 136, 137, 150, 190, 281 n.8 Weldon, Fay, 221–23, 244 Western Europe, 3, 43 Western nationalism, 13–14 women, 189, 192–95. See also feminists World War II, 116, 141 xenophobia, 102 xenophobic nationalism, 15 youth, 87 Yugoslavia, 15 zealous nationalism, 16 Žižek, Slavoj, 37

Acknowledgments

My research and extended writing of this book would not have been possible without many who provided encouragement, shared their expertise, and gave generously of their time and resources. Material and financial support for the first stages of the project were provided by a Social Science Research Council­MacArthur Foundation Fellowship on Peace and Security in a Changing World and through several organizational channels at the University of California, Berkeley: the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, Department of Political Science, Institute for International Studies, and Center for German and European Studies. I later extended, refined, and updated the project as a visiting fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of Notre Dame and the Chaire de recherche du Canada en Mondialisation, Citoyenneté et Démocratie then held by Jules Duchastel at Université du Québec à Montréal. Bard College provided a junior sabbatical. The Townsend Center, Joan B. Kroc Institute, and Chaire MCD graciously hosted me during crucial periods of writing, with participants in their seminars providing valuable comments and criticism of my work in progress. Special thanks are due to Patrick Weil for hosting and incorporating me into his dynamic équipe at the Centre d’Étude des Politiques d’Immigration, d’Intégration, et de la Citoyenneté at the Institut d’Études Politiques during a semester of writing in Paris and to Erhard Friedberg and Martha Zuber for finding me work space and allowing me to participate in the various CSO-CNRS seminars during my first long stay in France. Laurence McFalls also graciously incorporated me in activities of the Canadian Center for German and European Studies during my time in Montreal. More individuals than I can name generously contributed to the book’s genesis, long development, and final production. Michael Rogin gave freely of his all too finite time and provided early unfailing support, on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as insightful comments and tireless engagement with

314  Acknowledgments

my evolving ideas, the overarching logic and political implications of which he often grasped before I did. Hanna Pitkin provided wisdom and sound judgment as well as extensive editing and detailed comments on multiple drafts. Above all, she taught me to look for the unsuspected truth in the details. I would also like to thank Kiren Aziz Chaudhry for encouraging me to “think bigger” and travel more ambitiously and John Zysman for his inspiring confidence, help with French contacts, and first fatefully suggesting I examine the then still relatively obscure “affaire du foulard.” Beyond my early circle of mentors and advisors at UC Berkeley, friends and colleagues far and wide were kind enough to take an interest in what I was doing and contributed intellectually to this book in myriad ways. Valuable comments and suggestions, only some of which I was able fully to incorporate or act upon, were provided in Europe by Pierre Birnbaum, Sophie Duchesne, Patrick Weil, Tariq Modood, Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, Jean-Pierre Wörms, Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux, and Serge Halimi, among others. Many also read and provided helpful feedback on portions of the text at different stages, among them Jonah Levy, David Laitin, Marc Howard Ross, Aristide Zolberg, Gary P. Freeman, Jeremy Waldron, Peter Sahlins, Randall Hansen, Anthony Messsina, Gary Herrigel, William Sewell, Giuseppe Di Palma, members of the University of Chicago Interdisciplinary Workshop on Modern France, students of my Immigration and Citizenship seminar at Bard College, and several unusually helpful and constructive anonymous reviewers. I was also inspired by the provocative questions, suggestions, and comments of Michael Green, Erik Bleich, Virginie Guiraudon, Martin Schain, Jocelyne Cesari, Marc Morjé Howard, Shannon Stimson, Anthony Chase, Donald Moon, Samuel Nolutshungu, Jacqueline Stevens, and participants in numerous conferences, talks, and seminars where I presented work in progress in France, Quebec, Britain, and the United States. The European Journal of Social Theory, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, French Politics, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and University of Pennsylvania Press kindly allowed me to include work previously published with them in several chapters. Last but not least, special thanks are due to my family. My spouse, Pierre Ostiguy, contributed to improving the text conceptually and provided ongoing support and intellectual comradery from the time we first joined forces in the midst of our respective graduate theses. Nicolas and Sophie arrived on the scene as I turned to preparing the full text for review. While embracing the adventure of early days away from home with merciful good humor, they undoubtedly also helped me to keep the whole endeavor in perspective.