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France: Ethnicity and Population

Catherine Trent Norris: In general gathering information and statistics about the population society in France can be a bit of a touchy subject can’t it? Florence Villeminot: That’s right and what’s funny is that if you ask basic French people they probably don’t know that much about the makeup of French society, starting with how many French people there actually are. So even the number of French people can be tricky. According to the latest statistics in January 2016. France’s population came up to 66,627,602 people but the key question is, what kind of people? Now if you’ve spent any time in France you’ll have seen that it’s undeniably and multicultural, multiethnic and multi racial society. But getting to know more about the exact makeup of French society is tricky because in France its forbidden by law to collect statistics that refer to race, ethnicity and religion. Catherine Trent Norris: And this might seem crazy to people who live in the US or the UK or Canada where that kind of statistical information is routine and readily available. Do you understand the thinking behind this in France? You have to look right back to the French constitution don’t you? Florence Villeminot: Absolutely. Article 1 of the French constitution. Let’s take a look. It says France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic that ensures the equality of all citizens before the law, without a distinction of origin, race or religion. Essentially France likes to think about itself as a colour blind society. It treats all individuals as equal citizens refusing to group them into categories. Essentially you’re a citizen of the secular Republic before anything else. And remember here in France people are quite terrified of something called “Communitarisme”, that essentially a society where people cling to separate community identities, cultural or ethnic or religion before the national identity. Catherine Trent Norris: So they’re not gathering information in the name of non-discrimination. But the truth is in reality France does have significant problems of discrimination anyway and racial and economic discrimination. Florence Villeminot: Absolutely. France’s ideology of a colour blind Republic is noble in theory but often mocked by reality. In fact, there are several small private studies that have been carried out that show that black people and people of north African origin are more likely to get stopped by police. They have a harder time getting jobs and so many people argue that if France wants to recognize and correct discrimination first it has to have official data on minorities. And time and time again there have been pushes by the INSE and the INED to collect racial statistics. Catherine Trent Norris: Now some of the resistance to collecting this kind of data is present if France largely because of history, events of the past. Florence Villeminot: That’s right. Critics detect a nasty echo of colonialism but especially the vichy era of identity documents that were used to list and ultimately deport jews. And so a lot of people are just afraid that history could repeat itself. Catherine Trent Norris: There is a lot of resistance here in France to US style affirmative action or multiculturalism. Florence Villeminot: That’s right. Critics say that positive discrimination is still discrimination and classifying people by race and ethnicity is in a way racism. And there’s one thing that you need to know is that here in France, race is especially charged. In fact, it’s a word du jour. Literally it translates as race, but in France it has a racist connotation it’s considered a bad word. In fact, in 2013 French lawmakers banned the word ‘race’ from all legislation. They argued that the word had no scientific validity and had been the basis of racist ideologies. Catherine Trent Norris: So if there are no official statistics, what do we know about the makeup of French society in reality? Florence Villeminot: Well the prohibition of using racial and ethnic data, even if its volunteered means that French people have to guess or guesstimate about a lot about just what the French population is made up of often using indicators such as peoples names but that’s not 100% reliable. So we just don’t know for sure. We often say for instance that France is the largest home of Europe’s muslim population. But if you try to find exact statistics about just how many muslim people there are in France its really difficult. And what’s interesting is in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks, there’s been a major debate on national identity, what it means to be French. And so once again there have been calls to carry out an accurate snapshot of French society.