subject: Assess the strengths and weakness of anti-racist movements in France [print this page] Assess the strengths and weakness of anti-racist movements in France
In gradual reaction to the law of 1981 and the rise of the French Right, new movements emerged emphasizing anti-racism, participation in local affairs, and political integration to French public life, multiculturalism, ethnicity and secularism. They had to compete for government subsidies, for example, FASTI (Fdration des Associations de Solidarit avec les Travailleurs Immigres - Federation of Support Associations for Immigrant Workers), CIMADE (Service cumnique d'entraide the Protestant social action committee), MRAP (Mouvement contre le racisme et pour I' amiti entre les personnes - The Movement against racism and for Friendship Between Peoples), all competed for receiving funds from the government. The groups multiplied and were subsequently recognized as legitimate addresses and representatives for debates on immigration and incorporation policies.
The French antiracist movement temporarily adopted the new republican synthesis during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Their adoption of the new republican synthesis, which drew heavily on the nation-building practices of the Third Republic, sparked a crisis in antiracism as a consequence of its assimilatory monism. Antiracists were willing to embrace a certain assimilation, so long as their rights and identity were recognized in the public sphere. Initially, they underestimated the thoroughgoing assimilation and secularism entailed by the reappropriation of Third Republic republicanism. Indeed, antiracists could not possibly appreciate the difficulty of overcoming the forces of monarchy, church, and lack of modernization in the early Third Republic: the historical experience that neo-republicanism drew upon was a mass assimilatory, uncompromisingly secular approach to the formation of citizens who would be required to learn French, jettison the dream of monarchy, and exchange the tutelage of the priest for the tutelage of the state. Likewise, the new Paris consensus on citizenship could not realize the unnecessarily heavy hand that neo-republicanism would place on a late-modern, multicultural society. The objects of assimilation or their parents had already fled the clerical societies of North Africa, could not possibly entertain dreams of eighteenth century monarchy, already spoke French, and arguably yearned for a new civic identity. Given these two misunderstandings, immigrant discontent was evident.
The tension stemming from the shortcomings of neo-republicanism structured antiracist leaders to propagate the new citizenship politics. The negativities of the new republican synthesis motivated the elucidation and practice of a third model of citizenship: A new citizenship politics that would detach nationality from the category of modem citizenship, so that republican citizenship might be redefined for a new era. Indeed, antiracist dialogue evolved into the articulation of the new citizenship politics. However, the discontent with the new republican synthesis incited the leaders of the new social movement of antiracism to design a more participatory republicanism, one which was more accepting of pluralism.
As evident from the foregoing, the primary strength of the anti-racist movement lay in its recognition of the importance of redefining citizenship for greater consistency with France's pluralist and multicultural reality. Their redefinition of citizenship aimed towards inclusiveness and national unity, as opposed to socio-political fragmentation and disunity. Their weakness, however, lay in the fact that they were a reactive, rather than a proactive force. This means, their agenda evolved in reaction to the French Right more than it did to the social reality of the country. It was precisely because of this that their redefinition of citizenship did not garner the expected levels of support from the country's immigrant population.
