The Gates of the Nation

How do policies to combat racial discrimination and naturalization shed light on our relationship with others and foreigners? By drawing on the work of Franz Fanon and British literature, Sarah Mazouz considers social relations through the processes of “racializing assignment” (p. 14) to jointly study these two policies in order “to grasp the practices of group delimitation as well as the modes of production of the national order” (p. 18). She shows how a society produces race by distinguishing nationals from “others”, defined or perceived as foreigners, despite a political display of Colorblindness and republican universalism.

The book studies the production of internal and external borders to the nation and is part of the work of Alexis Spire on immigration counters, Vincent Arnaud Chappe on discrimination and Claire Zalc on the loss of nationality. The logics of inclusion and exclusion are described both within the national group, through the examination of the methods of implementing the fight against racial discrimination, but also outside between the national and the foreign, through the study of the naturalization practices of the prefecture agents. While the recognition of racial discrimination was built in half-tones because it was thought of as an extension of the integration policy, the naturalization procedure participates in reinvesting the idea of ​​the nation, staging the Republic and its greatness.

Racial discrimination, producers of internal borders

The term discrimination, understood as “unfavorable treatment because of real or supposed origin”, appeared in the lexicon of public action at the end of the 1990s. The author then distinguishes 3 moments in the construction of a policy of recognition of racial discrimination. The period from 1998 to 2000 marks a change in the way of thinking about discrimination: it is no longer the attributes of foreigners that are responsible for their difficulties in integrating but on the contrary society itself that discriminates. The report of the High Commission for Integration (HCI), submitted to the Prime Minister in 1998, changed the direction of the policy to combat discrimination, which had been built up until then around the paradigm of integration and the immigrant issue. From 2001 to 2003, a policy of repair or compensation for the damage suffered was implemented through the transposition into French law of European directives relating to the principle of equal treatment. Finally, from 2004 to 2011, the anti-discrimination policy opened up to criteria other than race, in the name of “equal opportunities” and “diversity”.

Sarah Mazouz’s work allows us to enter the daily practices of institutional actors responsible for implementing an anti-discrimination policy and to reveal their positions based on their experiences and their trajectory. The book highlights that the issue of discrimination has been progressively depoliticized, by the erasure of the issue of inequalities and a “burying” of the racial issue. Similarly, the fight against discrimination has not been constructed as a policy aimed at reestablishing equal treatment, in particular through the exercise of law, but rather as a “technical problem” aimed at promoting the exercise of “good practices” (p. 96): it is thought of as a preventive action in the same way as that of road safety (p. 95). This technicalization contributes to erasing the figure of the producer of discrimination and produces a hierarchy between the victims of discrimination. The figure of the disabled person would be, for example, more legitimate than that of the Muslim, very often excluded from the space of audible complaints (p. 99).

By examining the way in which political and associative actors and certain researchers participated in putting the problem of racial discrimination on the agenda, Sarah Mazouz offers a vision of the games of actors that structure public action. While associations such as SOS Racism sees the fight against discrimination as a competition with anti-racism, some senior officials think of anti-discrimination as a cause competing with integration. This policy is then constructed as a “trompe-l’oeil” (p. 65) since some researchers, from the laboratory URMIS (Migration and Society Research Unit), are not taken seriously and associations are deserting this issue. The reflection on the role of social science researchers in the development of public policies, generally little studied, is one of the originalities of the work.

The naturalization procedure, incorporation into the nation

After studying the mechanisms for combating discrimination as producers of internal borders in French society, Sarah Mazouz questions the naturalization procedure and what it says about the drawing of the borders between national and foreign. The decision to grant or not nationality falls within the discretionary power of the State and remains a “favor” for which “the administration has a broad power of assessment” on the basis of “admissibility criteria” (p. 109). The last two chapters of the book focus on both the administrative practices of the agents responsible for granting French nationality, the effects that this has on applicants, but also “the ceremonies for the presentation of naturalization decrees celebrating the symbolic part of incorporation into the nation” (p. 20).

The observation of linguistic assimilation interviews reveals the way in which category C civil servants appropriate legal categories (those of “favor”) and rely on moral notions such as merit to evaluate applicants and determine who is eligible for naturalization. The latter must be in a situation of “deferred equality” in relation to the French, i.e. have diplomas, associate with and dress in the French way without appearing to be in a situation of superiority vis-à-vis the agent conducting the interview. Sarah Mazouz, herself an applicant for the naturalization procedure at the time of her investigation, was initially refused on the grounds that her file was “too big” (p. 126). By mobilizing an “interactionist micro-sociology of individual practices” at the naturalization counter in the prefecture, the author proposes a typology of bureaucratic postures. Civil servants can thus set themselves up as guardians of national order (p. 137), adopt a missionary attitude (p. 143) or a benevolent attitude (p. 149) depending on their personal trajectory, their arrival in the service, as well as according to the standards and constraints linked to the work requested. The postures and reactions of candidates for naturalization are also described: some prepare for the interview by anticipating the content (p. 152) while others are, on the contrary, taken by surprise by the administrative request (p. 159). The detailed observation of interactions at the counter informs us, more broadly, on the definition and permanent construction of social roles, identities and the conditions for maintaining social order through administrative relations.

The description of the ceremonies for the presentation of naturalization decrees highlights the “symbolic deficit” that affects the status of the naturalized “in comparison with that of someone who was born French” (p. 168). Sarah Mazouz distinguishes the ceremonies organized by the prefecture, where the national packaging highlights the values ​​of the Republic and the incorporation of naturalized citizens into the nation, from the more festive and convivial ceremonies organized by the town hall. While the town halls emphasize acquired rights, the prefectures insist on the notions of favor and merit, which places the lucky ones in “a situation of recognition vis-à-vis the State that granted them French nationality” (p. 188). In both cases, it is a rite aimed at producing an adherence to national symbolism. Speech, slideshow projection France, a country, a history, a culture and singing the Marseillaise are common elements.

“Observant participation” at the counter

By including her own administrative procedures in her research, Sarah Mazouz adopts an ethnographic stance through observant participation in the naturalization procedure. The description of her personal feelings and the atmosphere constructed during the ceremonies for handing over the naturalization decrees (p. 167-168) gives depth to the materials and makes theorizing work possible. This work of self-elucidation by questioning her own stance and what it imposes on interlocutors (p. 25) allows the author to take into account the question of objectification and reflexivity.

By supplementing observations of immediate interactions with interviews on individual trajectories, Sarah Mazouz reintegrates a macrosociological dimension, by situating the agents in the social structure and in the contexts of production of interactions.

However, as in most of the works at the counter, we can regret the little information on the way in which applicants for naturalization accumulate resources and capital throughout their journey. Generally speaking, these studies start from the postulate that the individual is alone in the face of the Republic. But what can we say about the collective dynamics and networks in the learning of the “right” answers for applicants for naturalization? Some people may be registered in community associations and thus help each other in learning the codes and postures to adopt. The work describes in detail the different tactics and strategies that applicants demonstrate to face the administration, but we know little about their multiple identities, their feeling of belonging to an administrative and social category, their power relations, their coalitions and their conflicts. This is an avenue that would be interesting to follow.