Promoting Diversity in French Workplaces: Targeting and Signaling Ethnoracial Origin in a Colorblind Context

Abstract

France is traditionally reluctant to recognize groups in the public sphere and discourages the assertion of separate subnational identities (Amiraux and Simon 2006; Calvès 2005). Policies that target race, religion, or ethnic origin are considered to be unconstitutional. 1 This makes affirmative actionstyle policy rather ill suited to the French political and legal system and explains the weak and fragmented state-level antidiscrimination policy (Calvès 1999, 2008; Fassin 2003). Faced with the structural colorblindness of the state, it was the private sector that created the first tangible actions during the early 2000s, originally targeting ethnoracial discrimination and progressively establishing what since have been called diversity policies, taking cues from U.S.-style diversity management (

Governing racial justice through standards and the birth of ‘White diversity’: a Foucauldian perspective

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The local turn in integration policies: why French cities differ

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Diversity and inclusion in employer branding: an explorative analysis of European companies' digital communication

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