National identity politics
Green, Nancy L.
THE FRENCH HAVE a curious custom. Whenever the Cabinet changes, the names of the ministries change as well. This is theoretically linked to deep thoughts about theories of state and which...
...Immigration": the clear intent is to decrease it...
...National Identity" hammers the point that unassimilated immigrants threaten a notion of Frenchness that, as, New Yorker journalist Jane Kramer observed, means "white" and "Christian...
...The resignations had a triple purpose: to insist on the independence of the institution itself...
...They are now jointly administered by a new and highly contested ministry with a long name: Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity, and Codevelopment...
...As soon as the new ministry was formally announced, eight historians, including this writer, publicly resigned from the Cite rationale de l'histoire de l'immigration (CNHI...
...Because of the stir created by our resignation (the first public resistance to Sarkozy's program), Hortefeux invited the CNHI historians to meet him at the ministry...
...Under Lionel Jospin's presidency, the Socialists considered it, but never acted on it...
...The minister argued that the new government had been democratically elected with a comfortable majority, that the polls backed his ministry, and that if it were not for Sarkozy's party, "the extremes" (that is, Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front) would get the upper hand...
...But an important political question still lurks: what happens when far-right rhetoric and politics are absorbed by the mainstream right...
...The museum is scheduled to open this fall...
...Thus, the historians' resignations were not against the museum itself...
...The implication is clearly that immigrants don't suit French national identity...
...The historians were at first wary of Toubon, a well-known man of the right and close collaborator of Chirac...
...On the contrary, the point was to maintain the spirit of intellectual liberty and independence of the museum...
...The invitational message referred to the "Ministry of Integration and Codevelopment," leaving out the two problematic words...
...Kouchner, the humanitarian interventionist organizer, was given the Foreign Affairs Ministry, but he lost control over visas and asylum...
...If the state uses symbols and naming as weapons, the historians sought to respond in kind...
...Finally, "codevelopment," a form of foreign aid to poor countries, is primarily intended in this context not just to help the countries themselves but to discourage emigration and thus immigration to France...
...The ninety-minute conversation over croissaints and coffee was quite cordial...
...Changing French life is good, but this is about enforcement...
...All of those who had resigned emphasized that they would continue to support the CNHI to the extent that it remains independent, and the discussion turned essentially around the problem of defining national identity...
...However, the May 2007 government shuffle by the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, created a storm for several reasons...
...He was the architect of the 1994 "loi Toubon" legislating the use of the French language in public places...
...Stay away and all will be well: immigration will drop, French national identity will be saved, and the integration of those left will advance...
...Hortefeux asked that he be judged by his actions, not his words, and suggested he would call us in for future consultations...
...The virtual elimination of Le Pen's farright party in both the presidential and legislative elections of 2007 is indeed an uncontested victory for Sarkozy's party...
...and above all to warn Sarkozy's new minister, Brice Hortefeux, that the title of his ministry went against the ideal of the museum and indeed the French Republic itself...
...THE MINISTRY'S TITLE has four terms...
...The words themselves are not the problem (pundits interpret them differently), but their political use in contemporary (and historic) French politics is...
...NANCY L. GREEN teaches history at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and is author of many studies on immigration, labor, and multiculturalism in France...
...The far right in France has always sought to define "national identity" in its own image...
...However, his enthusiasm for the museum project, the free rein given to the advisory board, his continued support of the historians, and his determination to change the negative meaning of the very word immigration in France resulted in a mutual collaborative project...
...and Jacques Toubon, head of the museum project...
...Integrate or else...
...The CNHI project had been urged by historians and immigrant groups for some twenty years...
...This is theoretically linked to deep thoughts about theories of state and which functions are best connected to which rubrics, but for the average citizen, it looks like corporate reorganization and usually makes little difference...
...Decades of research point to the "imagined" and constructed nature of all identities...
...How can one identify national identity, and who creates it...
...Sarkozy suggested during the campaign that he would create a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, but people on both the left and right criticized the idea and accused him of pandering to the far right, with its hostility, especially, toward North Africans...
...Integration": the clear intent is to favor it (with the implication that immigrants are not "French" enough...
...I wondered if this was a first—albeit very small—victory...
...Simone Weil, who had rallied to Sarkozy, spoke out, as did then-Socialist Kouchner, who told the New Yorker that "The idea of 'national identity' is more than dangerous...
...Couscous as much as the croissant defines France today...
...Toubon reiterated the purpose of the museum...
...DISSENT / Fall 2007 35 Bringing together various experts to advise on different aspects of the project (the permanent exhibit, academic conferences, archives, pedagogy), the CNHI meetings had the secondary effect of becoming a lively place for exchange and collective reflection among the "historians" themselves (including, in fact, a political scientist and a demographer...
...In 2002, it was the center-right president, Jacques Chirac, who finally pushed it forward...
...He seriously snubbed friends on the right by not including them in the inner circle while at the same time irritating the left by hiring away some high profile Socialists, notably Bernard Kouchner, who protested in a front-page advertisement in Le Monde that he remained a socialist at heart...
...The French debate about immigration and national identity is not new, but a ministry dedicated to the issue bodes ill...
...The meeting was held in a glorious, "very French," eighteenthcentury salon, complete with elegant chandelier and massive mirror, looking out onto a lovely garden...
...Four other academics who had not resigned also participated but stressed that they, too, objected to the new ministry and the assumption that a democratic state should en36 DISSENT / Fall 2007 force a monolithic identity on citizens...
...Most civil servants stay in the same office as the nameplates on the doors change...
...Many historians have argued that immigrants should be seen as constituent parts of French national identity, not a force that undermines it...
...Since 2003, our group had been working on the project to open a national immigration history museum in France...
...to stress the independence of academics collaborating on state institutions (most of those who resigned continue to advise informally on ongoing museum projects...
...Indeed, in a country where the arts and culture are, happily, heavily subsidized by the government, the general assumption is that the receiving institutions are independent from immediate political intervention (other than the usual political nepotism invariably involved in making appointments...
...However, the creation of a ministry that seemed to vitiate the purpose of the new museum forced us to speak out...
...Is one beret enough, are three baguettes too many...
...immigrant-cultural groups...
Vol. 54 • September 2007 • No. 4
