Beyond Assimilation The second Generation Debate in France

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Beyond AssimilationThe second Generation Debate
in France

• Patrick SIMON - INED

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Outline

• The integrationnist paradigm and its crisis
• The second generation or the challenge to the
  unity
• The categorisations controversy diversity and
  colorblindness
• Anti-discrimination policies strategies and
  shortcomings

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The Integrationnist Paradigm

• Merging the immigrants in the French crucible
  there aint no minorities in France
•  Integration is a way to obtain the active
  participation to society as a whole of all women
  and men who are lastingly going to live on our
  land while overtly accepting that specific,
  mostly cultural, features will be preserved and
  nevertheless insisting on the similarities and
  the convergence, with equal rights and duties for
  all in order to preserve the cohesion of our
  social fabric. Integration considers that
  differences are a part of a common project unlike
  either assimilation which aims at suppressing
  differences, or indeed insertion which
  establishes that their perpetuation is a
  guarantee for protection.

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The crisis of the french model of Integration

• Despite huge acculturation, visibility of
  migrants and their descendents remains quite high
  
• Claims for recognition ( Droit à la
  différence ) is combined with civil rights
  activism during the  Marches pour légalité 
  (1983-1984)
• Beurs as hyphenated French the first step
  towards multiculturalism
• Rise of awareness about ethnic and racial
  discriminations against French citizens
• Riots in deprived sub-urbs the republican model
  and its discontents

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Study on social mobility for 2nd Generation in
France (Meurs, Pailhé and Simon, 2006)

• Family History Survey linked to the 1999 census
• Identification by
• Citizenship at birth
• Country of birth
• Country of birth of parents
• Sample of 380000 individuals
• Large size to breakdown by specific ethnicity
• To reduce the age structure effects analysis
  conducted on the 18-40 years old

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Categories

• Immigrants  Foreign born with a foreign
  citizenship, migration after 10 (6483 obs)
• Generation 1.5  immigrants who have migrated
  before 10 (2882 obs)
• Generation 2  Born in France from two immigrants
  parents (8698 obs)
• Mixed Generation 2   Born in France from a mixed
  parentage (11497 obs)
• Natives  Born in France from 2 parents born in
  France (118 380 obs).

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Unemployment rate
MEN
WOMEN
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Unemployment rates for 3 ethnic groups
MEN
WOMEN
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Relative risk for being unemployed (ref natives)
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Relative risks of being unemployed by ethnicity
(ref natives)
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Relative risks of not having long term contract
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Relative risks of not having long term contract
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Proportion of public servants
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Relative risk of being public servant
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Relative risk of being public servant
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Occupational segregation
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Occupational segregation
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Main findings about Second Generation Outcomes

• Change of sectors of activity and a reduction in
  the ethnic segmentation of the labour market when
  compare to immigrants (gender segregation is
  higher)
• But persistence of an ethnic penalty for the
  second generation higher unemployment,precarity,
  subsidised jobs, queue process
• Specific position of G2,5
• Proofs of discrimination

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Antidiscrimination policy

• Discrimination on the political agenda in
  1998-1999, and reinforcement after the 2000
  European Race directive
• Two phases for anti-discrimination schemes
• GELD (hotline) and CODAC (local agencies)
  1999-2003, but almost no cases brought to court
• HALDE (2004-), a strategy on ligitation but no
  law on equal opportunities
• The misconception of the post-riots equal
  opportunities Act of 2006.

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The French Law and the EU Race Directive

• Eu 2000 indirect discrimination shall be taken
  to occur where an apparently neutral provision,
  criterion or practice would put persons of a
  racial or ethnic origin at a particular
  disadvantage compared with other persons, unless
  that provision, criterion or practice is
  objectively justified by a legitimate aim and the
  means of achieving that aim are appropriate and
  necessary.
• Formal equality more than effective equality or
  equity
• Statistics are not explicitly required to support
  indirect discrimination analysis

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Contradictions between integration and
anti-discrimination paradigm

• The indirect discrimination concept and the
  related action schemes are against the
  traditional integrationnist strategy of
  color-blindness (undifferentiation) .
• ? No positive action and no collection of
  statistics on ethnic and racial discrimination
  are explicitly required
• Individuals more than groups are targeted in the
  integrationnist perspective
• ? individual victims are targeted in the
  French strategy (ligitation in court) and no
  communities nor groups are considered
• Territorial action schemes are preferred against
  redistribution policies targeting immigrants or
  minorities

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Consequences of this strategy

• No pre-defined categories victims are making
  the case by themselves (Halde)
• Situation testing is promoted as the main
  approach for revealing discriminations (equal
  opportunities act, 2006)
• Extended use of proxys onomastic methods,
  place of birth of the parents or deprived
  neighbourhoods

• No understanding of systemic discriminations
• No analysis in terms of disparate impacts in
  jobs or schools the implementation of the
  concept of indirect discrimination is simply not
  operational

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Categorizations controversies

• No race nor ethnic groups in statistics
• Foreigners (citizenship), immigrants (place of
  birth and nationality) and, more recently,
  second generation (native born from immigrants
  parentage)
• Post-MGIS survey controversy (1996-1999) How
  to analyze integration
• The return of the controversy in the context of
  anti-discrimination strategy and debate around
  diversity
• High pressures from employers organizations and
  some new minority lobbyists
• The Trajectories and Origins survey

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Data protection and the controversy

• Data protection Act (1978, amended in 2004)
  sensitive data that should not be collected
  without special requirements (legal provisions,
  public interest, )
• CNILs statement (july 2005/ march 2007)  Is it
  possible to collect ethnic or racial for
  measuring diversity ?
• Collection of data concerning ethnic or racial
  background,real or alleged, for diversity
  measurement purposes should be prohibited ()
  since there is currently no national referentials
  of ethno-racial typologies. No ethno-racial
  indicators can be therefore produced and
  disseminated by the national statistics for
  providing reliable benchmarks to the employers
  (indicators at national level or job areas
  level).
• Mainly a political choice rather than a pure
  legal debate

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Legal, political and methodological issues behind
ethnic categorisation

• Identity politics and the  Diversitys Buzz 
  a new approach of the  french integration
  model 
• Data protection and privacy confusions between
  misuses and sensitive data
• Struggling against racial and ethnic divisions
  the universalist legacy
• Different objectives recognition of identities,
  targeting  groups at risks  of discrimination
  and dealing with the memory of slavery and the
  post-colonial debate
• Moving identities reliability issues

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Collecting ethnic data an experimental survey

• A survey conducted at INED with 7 firms, 3
  universities, 1327 respondants
• A questionnaire testing three types of  ethnic
  identification 
• by a genealogical approach (parents and
  grand-parents)
• by self-identification in a list of different
  origins (labels by regions or countries)
• by self-identification in an ethno-racial list.
• An evaluation of these three methods, according
  to different contexts (census, employment
  registers, administrative files or scientific
  surveys)

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Ethno-racial categories in the  measuring
diversity  survey
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Main results

• High level of acceptance of the genealogical or
  the ancestry approach (more than 80) and a
  significant hostility against ethno-racial
  categorization
• Immigrants and second generation are more
  critical against ethno-racial categories
• Arabs show the highest rate of hostility to any
  method, Blacks express the higher degree of
  acceptance differences in the experience of
  ascription and expectations of passing,
  incorporation of the republican credo of
  undifferentiation

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Ethno-racial categories
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Self-identification vs perception of third party
identification
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Reliability of 2nd Generation category vs 3rd
Generation
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2nd Generation vs Ethno-racial classification
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Conclusion

• There is a 2nd Generation debate in France and
  possibly an ethnicization and racialization of
  this debate
• Statistics are at the heart of this debate,
  because they provide the references, but also
  because they make visible the invisible
• The so-called ethnic and racial statistics are
  intrinsically heterogeneous, fuzzy and rooted in
  each society where they attempt to grasp
  primordial hierarchies
• There will be an European choice to focus on
  the 2nd Generation to deal with
  antidiscrimination issues Labour Force Survey
  (2008) and recommendations from UNECE