Asking the E question is still forbidden
Yesterday, while all eyes were focussed on the rail strike, an extremely disappointing piece of news slipped out quietly under the radar. The Constitutional Council has formally forbidden any studies which differentiate French citizens according to their ethnic origins or grouping. In other words it looks as though perfectly serious questionnaires such as the national census are still not allowed to ask whether the respondent or their family come or came from North or West Africa, or anywhere else. Thus it will continue to be impossible to know accurately how many people in France come originally from outside France and for the foreseeable future people (particularly tub-thumping politicians) will continue to be able to claim there are 5 million people of Arab origin, or 3, or 6 – choosing an emotive figure that suits their political point of view.
The ironically-named sages decided allowing people to ask such a question, or to carry out and publish such a study, would contravene Article 1 of the French Constitution: “France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social republic,” which “guarantees the equality before the law of all citizens, regardless or origin, race or religion.” But they do not explain why asking someone about where they or their family come from should affect their rights under the law. As it stands at the moment the law only allows questions about ethnicity if the person asked gives their permission. The inability to ask everyone about their origins seems particularly ridiculous when it is quite obvious from their skin colour.
Libération this morning publishes an interview with Patrick Simon, a socio-demographer who with a team from Ined has been working on a study called “Trajectoires et Origines”: the Constitutional Council’s decision may bin two years of good work and deprive us all of valuable information. The first thing Simon said to the paper was “Well, the statement is a bit difficult to decode.” One may well ask what is to be gained by announcing some legal measure in terms that are “difficult to decode”. Simon goes on to say “Neither we nor anyone else has the definition of ethnic origin nor of race. That’s not just in France, that’s in most countries. In our studies we ask the question about skin colour, is that the same as race?” Another example of the statement’s ambiguity is that the Constitutional Council says specifically “origin or race”, whereas the Constitution says “regardless of origin, race or religion”. Does that mean you can ask someone about their religion, but not where they come from? Or did the sages just leave it out by mistake?
November 17th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Oh dear, oh dear. How can you possibly know if you’re meeting a guarantee of equality before the law unless you ask people to identify themselves in terms of categories that might be being treated unequally? As long as there’s a “prefer not to say” option, of course - and crucially, categories that people themselves define as meaningful (irrespective of what some expert considers to be objective definitions of race and ethnicity).
November 18th, 2007 at 10:06 am
The British are so often considered hypocritical by our friends from l’outre-Manche. My suspicion has always been the h-syndrome is alive and kicking behind a wall of French flummery. As always with hypocrisy (see Le Misanthrope) the vexing and fascinating question remains: how far is the hypocrite aware of the failing. And where exactly on our scale of hypocrisy do we place individuals of the Conseil constitutionnel?
November 18th, 2007 at 11:12 am
This really is nuts. It combines the worst of French academic obscuratism (and a peculiar reading of the Consitution) with what seems to be a paranoid fear of finding out what the statistics are. It simply plays into the hands of the racist right and can only promote a climate of suspicion.
November 18th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
You’ve hit my hunch perfectly - I think the French are afraid of what a true statistic will produce - in terms of back-lash. It will be fascinating to see whether demographers now rush in and ask questions about religion before that loop-hole is stopped up again. The lack of statistics about how many Muslims there are, and whether they are lapsed, practising or wavering, allows populist politicians (and the people who listen to them) to assume that everyone from the Mahgreb is Muslim, and every Muslim is a 100% believer. Michèle Tribalat’s 2003 study showing there are in reality far fewer Muslims than most journalists say, a study which was pooh-poohed by many of her colleagues because it asked impertinent questions, may be given new credibility - see my article on laïcité in Prospect in February 2004