‘All daughters and sons of the Republic’? Producing difference in French education

Abstract

Anthropological focus on public sphere debates can have the unintended consequence of reaffirming ideological oppositions ('secularism versus Islam') while ignoring other processes of difference production. In this article, I examine how French school employees build a logic of cultural otherness in an arena of uncertain social reproduction. Contrary to analyses of the French public sphere that emphasize the ideology of secular universalism, I argue that this dominant ideology has little purchase in the thick of social relations in a peripheral school. Faced with neoliberal transformations and diminishing resources, teachers draw instead on diverse discourses that have the effect of producing cultural difference. Through this process, immigrant-origin students are presented as incommensurable with Frenchness, and Frenchness becomes rooted in family structure and territory. This case illustrates how state actors confront the contradictions that inhabit universal citizenship and reconfigure the project of Republican schooling.

Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France

“…School is also a site where difference is learned and reinforced (Kleinman 2016). Through the homogenizing nature of its curriculum, school also reifies a national history and national cultural repertoire, one that often excludes the contributions of immigrant-origin individuals (Keaton 2006;Lamont 1992).…”

‘Edgy’ politics and European anthropology in 2016

“…Ritual and religion can be vibrant platforms for political re‐imaginings, whereas other ideologies may have the inverse effect. Julie Kleinman's analysis of secular universalism in French schools, for example, shows how secular ideals of inclusion often exacerbate categories of difference that exclude immigrant others, complicating a simplistic equation between secular states and cosmopolitan moral values (Kleinman ). In contrast, Liana Chua shows how playful combinations of developmental and Christian mythic‐historical frameworks in Malaysia allowed for imagining alternative futures, and relationships with government (Chua ).…”