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
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
PART I. INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
1. Introduction: The Politics of Belonging
3. The Campaign for a Post-National Model of Civic Membership
4. Nationality Law Reform: Launching a New Debate
5. Reconfiguring the Politics of Membership: The Work of the Nationality Commission
6. Nationality Law Reform in Comparative Perspective
PART III. PUBLIC EDUCATION AND ISLAMIC HEADSCARVES
7. Contested Conceptions of Citizenship and Integration in France’s Headscarves Affair (1989–1990)
8. Paradoxes of Civic Exclusion: Explaining Restrictions on Headscarves
PART IV. PROBLEMS OF POLITICAL MEMBERSHIP IN BRITAIN AND BEYOND
9. Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses: From Publication to Public Controversy
10. Rereading the Rushdie Affair: The Contested Terms of Being British
11. Membership Quandaries Beyond the Nation-State: European and Global Citizenship
Appendix: English Language Voluntary Exit Verbs and Usual Corresponding Objects
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