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ABSTRACT
Drawing on the qualitative study of three French local governments (Paris, Nantes and the Seine-Saint-Denis department), this article examines the implementation of local anti-discrimination policy during the 2010s. To what extent have these local governments, particularly eager to assert “diversity” values, renegotiated the dominant, colour-blind perspective prevailing at the national level? To address this question, we examined how they used a policy instrument called the “Diversity Label”. We found that in the three cases, the commitment to the label reinforced both the institutionalization and the managerialization of anti-discrimination policy. Yet, in Nantes and Paris, it also led to a deracialization of anti-discrimination policy – i.e. to the obliteration of its ethno-racial dimension. The Seine-Saint-Denis department, where the majority group tends to become a minority, appears as a contrasting case, as ethno-racial concerns have remained central. This study reveals the unlikely conditions under which French local governments differ from national colour-blindness.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Several historical studies showed that the republican principle of colour-blindness co-existed with the use of ethno-racial categories in the colonized territories overseas (Larcher Citation2014).
3 https://www.fonction-publique.gouv.fr/label-diversite-dans-la-fonction-publique. It should be noted that these numbers do not take into account the hundreds of - mostly private – organizations that had been granted the label in the early 2010s, but did not apply for renewal after a 4-year period.
4 France has three layers of local government (collectivités territoriales): regions, departments, municipalities. In addition to that, an intermediate metropolitan layer is emerging between the local and the departmental levels in large urban areas.
5 The label was also granted to Lyon (2010), Dijon (2018), and Bordeaux (2019).
6 According to French administrative categories, an immigrant (immigré) is a person who is born a foreigner and abroad, and resides in France. Thus, an immigrant is not necessarily a foreigner: in 2013, 40% of immigrants were French (INSEE Citation2016). In 2008, immigrants made up 10 per cent of the population living in France, as well as people of immigrant descent (descendants d’immigrés) (Beauchemin, Hamel, and Simon Citation2018). 52 per cent of immigrants and people of foreign descent stem from a non-EU country, most frequently from countries that used to be under French colonial rule.
7 In 2011, the High Authority for the Fight against Discrimination and for Equality (HALDE) merged into a new Administrative Independent Authority, the Défenseur des Droits.
8 Workshop of the Inter-Réseau du Développement Social Urbain, 2011, « Les politiques d'égalité: concurrence des publics ou convergence des luttes ? », Poitiers, April 14–15.
9 In January 2019, seven local governments were holders of the Equality label.
10 Interview with the diversity coordinator of Paris, 2018.
11 Since 1987 the French state has required private and public employers above a certain size to hire a quota of 6 per cent disabled individuals. Employers that do not comply must pay financial penalties, which were substantially increased by a 2005 law. Alongside this, a gender equality policy has been in place since the early 1980s; it was strengthened during the 2000s. It is based on incentives for collective bargaining, reporting obligations, and gender quotas for senior official jobs in public administration.
12 AFNOR website.
13 Report “Le Département et ses agents face aux discriminations” [The department and its officers faced with discrimination], September 2017.
14 Ibid.