France - Diversity
France is the most ethnically diverse country of Europe. At least a third of French people have foreign origins. That figure will likely increase in the coming years. A crossroads since prehistoric times, the country’s “historic populations” were a blend of European ethnic stocks, Celtic (Gallic and Breton), Aquitanian (related to Basque), Latin, and Germanic. Over the past 200 years, France has been unusual among European states in periodically attracting large-scale immigration.
In the nineteenth century, the new populations that arrived - forebears of 40 percent of today’s inhabitants - included southern Europeans, Belgians, Poles, Armenians, East European and Maghrebi Jews, Maghrebi Arabs and Berbers, sub-Saharan Africans, and Chinese. After World War II, large-scale immigration to France initially came mainly from southern Europe and subsequently from France’s former colonial possessions, especially North Africa. Other ethnic minorities from the French colonial empire - apart from North African Muslims - are the Indochinese and francophone sub-Saharan Africans.
A whole group of reactionary intellectuals believe that the France of the past was better than today's France and reject multiculturalism. They pretend being French only includes white people. But these people seem to forget that the country was founded based on a political project - the founding principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. Everybody who concurs with it has the right to become French. France has a strong tradition of secularism, known as laïcité, which separates religious institutions from the state. This principle ensures that public institutions and the government remain neutral in matters of religion and that individuals are free to practice their faith privately.
Among European countries, France has the largest number of people of Muslim origin, perhaps 5–6 million, although some estimate only 2.6 million. The exact number of Muslims of different national origins living in France is not known, because the state does not collect religious or ethnic census data. The Muslim presence in France is of an earlier date than Muslim communities in Germany and the United Kingdom. More than 1 million Muslims immigrated in the 1960s and early 1970s from North Africa, especially Algeria.
France’s census figures for 1999 showed 4.33 million foreign nationals living in France, and every year a further 140,000 enter using legal channels, overwhelmingly family reunification. In addition, some 90,000 are believed to enter illegally every year, mainly by overstaying on short-term visas. The government believes there are between 200,000 and 400,000 “sans-papiers” — literally, “paperless ones.” Resisting calls to regularize their situation, the government has recently toughened its stance on immigration, for example, increasing the number of deportations, as well as the number of people refused asylum. In 2006 the government expects to make 26,000 repatriations.
The term "banlieue" [literally, the he territory outside the city walls, but within the legal limits, of the city] is French and generally refers to a suburb or outskirts of a city. These areas are often residential and can be quite diverse in terms of socio-economic status and cultural makeup. In recent years, the term "banlieue" has sometimes been used specifically as a synonum for the American term "the projects", to refer to the socially disadvantaged suburbs of large French cities, especially Paris. These areas have high concentrations of immigrant populations and have been the sites of social and economic tension. This image is partly a result of high-profile riots in 2005 and ongoing socio-economic challenges. in the poor and racially mixed banlieue suburbs of major French cities, Muslim communities of north African descent in particular have long accused police of racial profiling and violent tactics.
These banlieues, as author Johny Pitts wrote in his book "Afropean — Notes from Black Europe," were actually a side effect of the creation of the Paris so many love and cherish nowadays. In the mid-19th century, funded mainly by colonial riches from Africa, Napoleon III commissioned city planner Georges-Eugene Haussmann to create a new Paris with wider streets and a better sewage system. Those with lower incomes were pushed to the outskirts. After World War II, high-rise buildings were constructed in response to economic growth which encouraged migration. The French Republic’s universalist model is based on the cherished principles of égalité and fraternité. Top officials deny that the country has a racism problem. France likes to see itself as color-blind, where citizens are expected to abide by a principle of universalism and identify with the nation over any ethnic or religious identity. In 2018, lawmakers voted to remove the word ‘race' from the French constitution and the government is not allowed to collect information about people's race or religion. But things are slowly changing. A report by the national ombudsman, an independent authority overseeing human rights in France, found that that young Arab and black men are 20 times more likely to be stopped than their white counterparts, confirming what activists had been decrying for years.
French police protested on 12 June 2020 against a ban on chokeholds and limits to what they can do during arrests, part of new government efforts to stem police brutality and systemic racism in the wake of global protests over George Floyd’s death in the United States and a reckoning in France over the 2016 death of Adama Traoré, who died in police custody.
While France famously doesn’t compile official statistics based on faith, ethnicity or skin color, racial discrimination in all spheres of public life has been widely documented, frequently overlapping with socio-economic inequality. Some trace the origins of France’s unspoken racism to the “contradiction” between the French Republic’s universalist principles and the reality of colonialism. Because slavery was illegal on the mainland, people in France have the impression that this hyper-racialised history that is characteristic of the modern world only concerns the Americas.
The intersecting social and racial disparities were glaringly exposed during the nationwide lockdown imposed in mid-March 2020 to stem the spread of the coronavirus. The immigrant-rich Seine-Saint-Denis department northeast of Paris – France’s poorest – accounted for a disproportionately high number of both fatalities from Covid-19 and fines handed out for breaching the lockdown rules. There are obvious reasons for this. The combination of large families in cramped quarters and a lack of doctors and hospital beds left the local population particularly exposed to the virus. And while many Parisians fled to countryside residences or switched to working from home, the capital’s poorer suburbs supplied most of the frontline workers who kept the metropolis running.
The government battled riots and looting since 17-year-old Nahel M., a 17-year-old of Algerian-Moroccan descent, was killed by an officer during a traffic stop on 27 June 2023 just outside Paris. Police initially claimed one officer used his firearm because Nahel was driving at him, but a video of the events on social media showed this was not the case. “You are going to get a bullet in the head,” a voice is heard saying. The officer shoots the boy point-blank as the car quickly drives away, reaching a crossroad a few metres ahead before crashing.
The shooting rekindled long-standing accusations of systemic racism among security forces. Fatal shootings by police officers during traffic stops are on the rise in France. While police say it’s due to a spike in public non-compliance and dangerous behaviour, experts say this is not the only explanation. In 2022, a record 13 people were killed by police for failing to stop for the police. That’s six times more than in 2021.
A key anti-terrorism security bill was passed by the French government in 2017. Human rights groups at the time sharply criticised the law, saying it dangerously broadened the legal framework for when a police officer could use their firearm. French researchers found that five times as many people in vehicles were shot by police after the law was introduced. While cases of non-compliance increased by about 35% on average since 2017, the researches argued this didn’t justify the 350% increase in fatal shootings on vehicles for the same period.
The Nahel shooting incident led to a surge of false information on social media platforms. Many of these misleading posts were shared by far-right, anti-migrant users, who circulated videos taken out of context to discredit the protesters, cultural minorities in France, and French immigration policies.
What started as an uprising in the high-rise estates morphed into a broader outpouring of hate and anger toward the state, and opportunistic violence in towns and cities. Rioters torched more than 5,000 cars, looted shopping malls and targeted town halls, schools and state-owned properties considered symbols of the state.
Just under 4,000 arrests have been made since 30 June 2023, including more than 1,200 minors, according to justice ministry figures. The head of France's main employers' organisation estimated that the cost of repairing the damage caused by the riots would surpass 1 billion euros, citing 200 looted shops and the vandalisation of 300 bank branches and 250 tobacconists.
France Police, a union close to the far right, went so far as to justify Nahel’s death in a (now deleted) tweet. “Congratulations to the colleagues who opened fire on a young 17-year-old criminal. By neutralising his vehicle, they protected their lives and those of other drivers. The only ones responsible for this thug’s death are his parents, who were incapable of educating their son,” it read. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin did not let the tweet slide. The interior minister asked his department to “look into the procedure for dissolving this group”.
President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin all condemned the officer, shifting their tone to avoid adding more fuel to the fiery riots. President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin have all condemned the officer, shifting their tone to avoid adding more fuel to the fiery riots. France's President Emmanuel Macron called the killing of Nahel "inexcusable" and "inexplicable." A description Crystal Fleming, a professor of sociology at Stony Brook University in New York, disagrees with: "It is not inexplicable," she told DW. "It is not a mystery. It is racism."
"There is a problem of systematic racism in the French police," said Rokhaya Diallo, an author and one of France's best-known racial equality activists. According to a studyby the country's human rights ombudsman, young men who are perceived as Black or Arab are 20 times more likely to be stopped by French police. And many of those young men trace their roots back to former French colonies and live in the so-called banlieues, the suburbs of big cities like Paris, Marseille or Lyon.
