Is there a French Affirmative Action?

Résumé du document

The debate over affirmative action is a burning issue in France, because it lays the French model of integration flat again. It deals with the 'French exception', which can be traced back to the Revolution era. It deals with very passionate subjects like school, universalism etc. Moreover, this debate occurs during what is considered by many thinkers as the decline of France. After 1998s euphoria, after the victory at the world cup, the French universalism success and sanity of the society, last years social conflicts and the riots, it has become difficult to analyze between social and ethnic concerns, which has been completely misunderstood by the other countries, specially America. But it is going to be seen that this misundersting is mutual. Even if it is hard to conclude anything within just one year of the riots, it seems obvious that the French model of integration leaves strong inequalities and discriminations. That is why those events take a particular place in the French debate on affirmative actions, and pragmatic solutions are searched. Nevertheless, this debate seems misrepresented by a distorted vision of what affirmative action is.

Extraits

[...] But why could not it be a social affirmative action ? The Welfare State targeted ?The affirmative action is in many cases ethnic, but it cannot be the most efficient way to answer to poverty, as many studies proved that affirmative action was efficient only for the upper middle classes of the minorities. A study proved that affirmative action marked the inequalities between the rich and the poor [Wolf-Devine, 1995]. The problem is that the poor were not helped while public action was supposed to be targeted for him : more than inefficient, it is stigmatizing. [...]

[...] Then the author shows the two kinds of affirmative action. One gives rights straightaway to unprivileged groups in order to repair a harm. It is aimed by an objective of results, like the imposition of a proportional representation of specific groups in different sphere of the society (quotas). It would seem efficient quickly, but its basis would be fragile (as one could think while looking at the results of minority students trying to get into Universities after the end of affirmative action in California). [...]

[...] Affirmative action is most of the time distorted, with the fear of quotas and of ghettos. France would be finally more democratic as it does not take ethnicity into account. The idea is that ethnic problems do not exist, they are only social problems. It can be interesting to notice that the French and American conceptions of the nation are nevertheless quite near. Renan's voluntary nation can be understood in comparison with the American Dream. The two countries are not based upon blood, but upon the will, and the share of the same values. [...]

[...] Those two countries are both universal Republics. But the United States is a multicultural State, where as France has always put the necessity of assimilation first. However, in the two countries an immigrant can keep his specificity. France is not intolerant, and accepts the difference. But it does not recognize it. Cultural specificities are private, as the existence of communities could be a threat to the social cohesion [Guiraudon, 2006]. But it could be interesting too to see that assimilation is a base of the American feeling too. [...]

[...] Cahn, The Affirmative Action Debate, New York, Routledge Milena Doytcheva, Le Multiculturalisme, Paris, La Découverte - Collection Repères Virginie Guiraudon, “Different Nation, Same Nationhood : the Challenges of Immigrant Policy”, in P. Culpepper, P. Hall & B. Palier (eds.), Changing France. The Politics that Market Makes, London, Palgrave Sydney Hook, “Reverse discrimination”, in S. Cahn, The Affirmative Action Debate, New York, Routledge Samuel Huntington, Who Are We ? The Challenges to America's National Identity, New York, Simon & Schuster Jeremy Jennings, “Citizenship, Republicanism and Multiculturalism in Contemporary France”, British Journal of Political Science, vol Lisa H. Newton, “Reverse Discrimination as Unjustified”, in S. [...]