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The Biopolitics of Otherness: Undocumented Foreigners and Racial Discrimination in French

Public DebateAuthor(s): Didier FassinSource: Anthropology Today, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Feb., 2001), pp. 3-7Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2678317 .

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The biopolitics of othernessUndocumented foreigners and racial discrimination in French public debate

DIDIER FASSINDidierFassin sProfessorttheEcoledeshautes tudes nsciencesociales ndat theUniversityfParisNorth, ndDirectorftheCentreorResearch nPublicHealthIssues.He hasconductedresearchnSenegal, cuador,Southernfrica ndFrance,andhismain nterests in thepolitical nthropologyfhealth.His email s:dfassin@ hess.fr.

I amgratefulo MiriamTicktinorhervaluableelp nthe ranslationrom heFrench,oDalby,Pancho,Pessin ndPlantuoragreeingtoreproductionf theirwork,and o ATrefereesorhelpingmeclarifymyperspectivensomeof the ssuesdiscussednthis ext.1.For heconsequencesfthe ans-papiers ovementnintellectualndpoliticalife,see J.Benthall1997).Forananalysisf the ssueas awhole, eeD.Fassin,A.Morice ndC.Quiminaleds)1997.2.Publicizationf racialdiscriminations alsoamajorissue n theBritish ndNorthAmericanebate, s shown yM.Banton1999).Foranapproacho thephenomenoninFrance,ee P.Bataille(1998).3.WhileFoucault idnotdiscusshe heme fimmigrationxplicitly, isanalysesrepertinent,romtheadministrationf thesuffering odywhich sinscribednthe ogicof 'helpto ive andallow o die' ofbiopolitics1976),o thehandlingf theracializedodywhichs incorporatednhispieceon the racewars'(1997).4.Thecollectedworks fGodelierndPanoff1998)shedighton thisquestionnrelationo societies hat reeitherocially rgeographicallyistant,utaretotally ilent n theproductionof thebody n thecontemporaryestern orld.5.These tatisticsor heperiod 988-97 republishedbytheFrenchOffice or he-ProtectionfRefugeesndStateless eopleOFPRA).Therise n 1998doesnotcontradicthisanalysis,incehalfoftheagreementsoncernchildren frefugees hohavereachedheageofmajority,leadingLegoux1999)oestimateherealnumberfnewrefugees t2200.6. Theseunpublishedfigureswereobtainedromhe

The 'immigration debate' in France was marked in the1990s by two important events: the growth of the 'sans-papiers' movement which brought the issue of undocu-mented foreigners to the fore, and the admission of theexistence of racial discrimination in various social con-texts. The significant issue here is less the phenomena inthemselves than their eruption into public space, and theconsequences for French self-perception and for Frenchpeople's relationship to otherness.On the one hand, confronted with the social movementof undocumented foreigners and the support it receivedfrom community associations, intellectuals, artists andeven elected officials, the French public became awarethat those it had been accustomed to viewing as 'illegalworkers' were in reality often men and women who hadbeen settled legally in France for long periods of time.These immigrants were a heterogeneous group, and hadentered into clandestinity for various reasons: theyincluded wives or children who had joined husbands orfathers, themselves legal residents for years, young peoplewho had come as children and been prosecuted for pettycrimes in adolescence, students who had had to abandontheir studies after failing exams, and asylum-seekerswhose claims had been rejected. In other words, this hith-erto distant and illegitimate Other' suddenly appeared tobe humanly close and socially acceptable. Furthermore,the effects of the increasingly restrictive legislation andadministrative practices of the past 25 years brought tolight the extent to which the state and civil society wereresponsible for the very production of this illegality.1 The'sans-papiers' movement was widely supported, as a 1998poll bears out: one in two French people, rising to two inthree young people, were of the opinion that all undocu-mented foreigners should be given legal status. In a similarspirit, the socialist government elected in June 1997 wasprompted to issue a ministerial instruction defining criteriafor legalization from which 80,000 immigrants subse-quently benefited, and promulgated a new law on the entryand residence of foreigners.On the other hand, French people's belief that Francewas promoting an almost unique model of republican inte-gration, bypassing both the communitarianism and thexenophobia which often characterized other countries'policies, was confronted with evidence that discriminatorypractices based on assumed racial differences were multi-plying in French neighbourhoods, schools, factories,courts, hospitals and night clubs, mostly targeting peopleof African origin. It became clear that inequalities had tobe analysed not simply in terms of the traditional cate-gories of social class, profession, or even nationality, butalso from the point of view of origin, real or presumed, asidentified through skin colour or foreign-sounding names.Officially presented as an effort to avoid further stigma-tizing immigrants and their descendants, the denial ofthese practices had long served to enforce a law of silencewithin both the political and the scientific spheres.However, during the 1990s a series of studies, investiga-tions, legal actions and public interventions by humanrights and anti-racist groups gradually began to expose thisblind spot.2In 1998, for the first time, an official report bythe High Council on Integration (Haut conseil ? l'int?gra-tion) focused on the issue of racism through an account ofdiscrimination in France and proposed the creation of an

independent administrative body to address this question.As a result of this report, in March 2000, Prime MinisterLionel Jospin announced the appointment of a nationalCommission for the Study of Discrimination (Groupe d'?-tude des discriminations). The state thus recognized andrevealed the gap between the ideology promulgated in thename of the republican ideal and the reality reflected in thedaily lives of foreign residents and their families.In sociological terms these two phenomena - suddenincreased awareness of undocumented foreigners andrecognition of racial discrimination - are distinct, onereferring to the legal status of men and women movingtransnationally in the context of globalization (Kearney1995), the other linked with social representations andpractices vis-?-vis immigrants and their descendantswithin a national framework (Bonilla-Silva 1997).Nevertheless, at the level of individual experience they aremore closely connected than they might seem, since, forexample, the illegitimate status of undocumented for-eigners nurtures the negative perception of immigrants ingeneral and, reciprocally, racism provides an ideologicalbasis for restricting the legitimacy of transnational move-ments. More importantly, however, the two phenomenahave an anthropological trait in common which has passedlargely unnoticed in the heated debates that they have pro-voked in France. Albeit in different ways, both manifest anunprecedented form, at least in the French context, of man-agement of immigrant populations.In the case of undocumented foreigners, as all other pos-sibilities of getting a residence permit were progressivelyrestrained by successive legislation, health and illnesshave increasingly become the most legitimate ground forawarding legal status from the point of view of both thestate authorities and lawyers and advocates of the immi-grants' cause. In the same way, while civil and politicalrights have been increasingly eroded by repeated modifi-cations of the law and by unmonitored administrativepractices, the widely recognized legal right to health carehas hardly been challenged, even by the most conservativeparticipants in the immigration debate. The suffering bodyhas imposed its own legitimacy where other grounds forrecognition were increasingly brought into question.In the case of racial discrimination, the political changeresulted from another form of bodily inscription. Untilvery recently, as far as immigrants were concerned, theonly differences that the French were prepared toacknowledge related to culture, either promoted or stig-matized; the only inequalities that they allowed them-selves to examine derived from nationality, i.e. from alegal definition of identity. All other distinctions, particu-larly those based on physical traits or biological character-istics, were unanimously condemned, to the point ofdefining the political boundary between the acceptable andunacceptable, between legitimate political parties and theextreme right. Thus denied, racial discrimination wasassumed to be inexistent, in spite of all proofs to the con-trary. For the state and also for civil society, the currentrecognition of a discrimination apparently based in'nature', unacceptable though it is, is thus a radical inno-vation. The racialized body has become the most illegiti-mate object of social differentiation, yet one whoseexistence can no longer be denied.The two phenomena in fact correspond to two different

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DepartmentalirectoratefSocialandHealthWelfare(DASS) f theSeine-Saint-Denisd?partement,here hestatistics eregatheredspartofa researchrojectunbyD.Delettre1999),and rom heDirectoratef PublicLibertyttheHomeOffice,wherestatistics ere atheredrompoolof 38,000appealso theMinistry.7. In act, hisrightslimited ytheknowledgefandusagebyadministrativeofficials nd ocialworkerswithwhommmigrantsomeinto ontactBourdillon,Lombrail,ntonit al. 1991;however,emindersf the awissuedbyboth hestate ndcommunityssociationscontributedogreaterccess nthe 1990s.8.Theroleofphysiciansntherecognitionf theright fsick oreignerso betreated,whateverheiregal tatus, asbeen rucial, ut t isremarkablehat heirprofessionalrganizationsndunions ave emainedilent nthesubject, hich,hasbecomethecentralauseofmedicalassociationsnterveningngeneral umanitarianssues(M?decinsans ronti?res,M?decinsumonde,tc.)ormore pecificallyorimmigrantsComede, emede,etc.).Nevertheless,hestrikingphenomenonstherelativenovelty f thiscommitmentand hepublic upportt hasreceived.9. In act, heproductivevalue f the mmigrantodyhasnotcompletelydisappeared.t s maintainednthreemain orms:hepresenceof temporaryndpermanentagriculturalorkers;hedevelopmentf activeinformalillegal) conomiesnsectors uchas constructionand lothing;ndmorerecently,hecallforahighlyqualified orkforcespecificallyn thecomputerindustry.neachof thesecases,we canneverthelessspeak f a marginalizationfthe mmigrantorkforce,correspondingo a'globalizationrombelow'(Portes 999).10.Thewordrace'obviouslyoesnotdesignatebiologicalrphysicaleality,but efers oa social onstructbased ntherecognitionf abiologicalrphysicalfoundationfdifference ndproducednahistoricalcontext feconomicndpolitical omination.11.This deology nd hecorrespondinghetoricelatemore othenationalmythologyhan osocialrealities. sdemonstratedyG?rardoiriel1988), hestigmatizationf immigrantshasbeenapermanent,lbeitunrecognized,eature fFrench istoryince heendofthe 19th entury.12.Cf. Socialist rimeMinister aurent abius'famous hrasebout he

political approaches to the immigrant body: the legiti-macy of the suffering body proposed in the name of acommon humanity is opposed to the illegitimacy of theracialized body, promulgated in the name of insurmount-able difference. In the first case, the Other comes fromoutside and the treatment of his/her body depends on thehospitality of the host country. In the second, the Other isalready inside and the treatment of his/her body calls intoquestion the social order. The body has become the siteof inscription for the politics of immigration, definingwhat we can call, using Foucauldian terminology,3 abiopolitics of otherness. Analysis of this issue can pro-vide a means to understand the unprecedented anthropo-logical dimensions of the production of the body4 incontemporary societies.

CartoonyThierry albyllustratingahar en-Jellouns article nracismn LeMonde,9-30March 998.

The recognition of bodiesIn France, as in most Western European countries, thequestion of illegal immigration has become a criticalpublic policy issue. The creation of the Schengen spacerepresented an attempt to bring a policy solution at theEuropean level - but one whose limits are clearly revealedby the continuing influx of immigrants from the Balkans tothe Italian coast and from Africa to Spanish beaches. Therhetoric surrounding this question has been clearlyexposed in the public debate: on the one hand, the richcountries cannot absorb 'the poverty of the earth', asformer socialist Prime Minister Michel Rocard put it; onthe other hand, strict regulation of the undocumented is aprerequisite for integration of the documented, justifyingthe slogan 'zero illegal immigration' devised by CharlesPasqua, former conservative Minister of the Interior.Yet this apparently coherent argumentation has beencontradicted by the evidence that a rapidly growingnumber of undocumented foreigners do not correspondto the stereotype of the 'clandestine', but rather have acertain legitimate claim to legal status through thenumber of years they have spent in the host country, theservices they have provided, the family ties they havedeveloped, or the threats they would face if they shouldreturn home. This evidence debunks the official rhetoric,indicating that the country is confronted not only withpoverty from abroad, but also with the results of its ownpolitical processes, and that the boundary between docu-mented and undocumented is much less clear than waspreviously maintained, since it is possible to lose or gainresidence permits depending on changes in legislation.Thus, the question is less about who is legally presentthan who can legitimately claim legal status. In pub-lishing the ministerial instruction of 24 June 1997, whichspecifies the various criteria for legalization of undocu-mented migrants, and in proposing the law of 11 May1998 which defines the conditions of entry and residencefor foreigners, the French government took this shift into

account by drawing new boundaries of legitimacy forimmigrants.Asylum and humanitariarismTwo changes are particularly remarkable, both for theinverse relationship of their statistical trends and for theunderlying significance of these trends. These concern theright to asylum and the humanitarian rationale.Over a period of ten years from the end of 1980s, thenumber of foreigners granted political asylum in Francedecreased sixfold, gradually stabilizing at under 2000refugees per year. This decrease results from two distinctbut related changes: the number of claims submitted fellby a third, and the proportion of claims accepted washalved.5 The significant decrease in the number ofrefugees obviously does not derive from a more peacefulworld in the 1990s; it essentially results from the intensifi-cation of border officials' practice of driving back asylumseekers, and from the strictness of administrators whoassess the claims submitted. The prevailing attitude ofofficials at the French Office for the Protection ofRefugees and Stateless People (OFPRA) is to view claimswith suspicion; in fact, only one in ten applications forpolitical asylum is approved. The Geneva Convention isthus applied in an increasingly restrictive manner, espe-cially as France has introduced a ruling that restricts thegranting of political asylum to victims of state persecution:this interpretation of the treaty has allowed officials toreject nearly all applications from Algerians as comingfrom victims of Islamic terrorism (at least until the end ofthe 1990s, when a specific right to 'territorial asylum' wascreated, although parsimoniously implemented).At the same time, another category of foreigners wasbeing granted an increasing number of legal permits:people with illnesses, or more specifically, people withlife-threatening pathologies who are declared unable toreceive proper treatment in their home countries. Oncethese two criteria (severe pathology and absence of thera-peutic alternative) have been confirmed by medicalexperts, the patient receives a temporary legal permit, for-merly endorsed for 'humanitarian reasons' and nowsimply for 'medical care'. This status is doubly precarious,because it must be renewed every three to twelve monthsand because it is frequently accompanied by a prohibitionagainst working. Although there are no national statisticsavailable for this time period, local figures indicate that inthe d?partement with the largest number of claims forlegalization, applications for this humanitarian permitincreased sevenfold over the course of the 1990s, reaching1000 per year; three-quarters of these were favourablyassessed. At the national level, after the 1997-98 campaignfor legalization, 10 per cent of residence permits weregranted on medical grounds.6 This evolution reflects apolitical concern to respect the European Convention onHuman Rights, transgressions of which have previouslyled to several rulings against the French state by theEuropean Court of Justice.The correlation between the marked decrease in politicalasylum and the increasing recognition of humanitarianismis not mere coincidence. Associations defending the rightsof immigrants and state immigration services alike are cur-rently asking asylum-seekers whose claims have beenrefused whether they might have a 'pathology to put for-ward', leading them to increasingly treat the humanitarianrationale 'as a priority' and political asylum 'by sub-sidiarity', as a senior official at the Ministry of the Interiorhas put it. Thus greater importance is ascribed to the suf-fering body than to the threatened body, and the right to lifeis being displaced from the political to the humanitarianarena. It is more acceptable for the state to turn down anasylum claim, declaring it unfounded, than to reject a med-




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Nationalronteader:MrLePenasks oodquestionsowhich egivesbadanswers.'Duringhisperiod,uccessivegovernmentsfboth herightand he eft hrew hemselvesintoalegislative ompetitionthat imed o set ncreasinglyrestrictivemmigrationpolicies.Thiscontributedothe immigrationuestion'beingplaced t hecentre fpublic ebateLochak,997).13.The igures re akenfrom woarticlesn LeMonde,dated 6March 000and10August 000.Accordingo theauthorsfthestudy,hepercentagefpeoplewhocallthemselvesnon-racist'29%- is 'the owest ince hecreation f thispoll'.14.DrawingnthepopulationrojectionsadebytheHighCommissionnPopulationn1980andon thepolemicaliscussionshatappearediveyearsatern thegeneralnd cientific ress,eBras 1997)questionedheideologicalremisesorequaltreatmentfthe oreignpopulationnd hepopulationofforeign rigin, roducingdramaticemographicextrapolationsentitledWillwe stillbeFrenchn30years?').nherhostileresponse, espite riticizingismethodologicalnd hetoricalmoves,Tribalat1997) ailedto addresshecentral oint fhisargument,hich s aboutreliancenabiologicaldefinitionf immigration.15.Jacques hirac,otyetatthe imepresidentf theRepublic,ommentedntheannoyancefAfricanamilies''odours'nFrenchnner ities;this hocked portionf theFrenchublic, ecauseheculturalracticeshatweredenouncedtheirablemanners)voked hysicalcharacteristicst thesame ime(andhus epresentednordinaryormofracism).16.Themost amouspromoterf thisdisciplinenFrance, obieNathan,leadedfor ghettoso that familywouldnever ave oabandonitsculturalystem' nddenouncedhildren fAfricanparentsaisedn France s'janissarieshitenednrepublicanchools'Fassin2000c).Agamben, .1997.Homosacer:Lepouvoirouverainetlavienue.Paris: euil.Amselle, .L.1990.Logiquesm?tisses. aris: ayot.Arendt,H. 1958.Thehumancondition. hicago:UniversityfChicagoPress.Banton,M.1977.The deaofrace.London: avistockPublications.? 1999.Reportingnrace.Anthropologyoday 5(3):1-3.Bataille, . 1998.Le racismeau travail. aris:LaD?couverte.Benthall,. 1997.Repercussionsrom he

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'Seeinghewayhe'sstanding p o ourbeating,maybe e is a genuineasylumeeker. CartoonyPessinaccompanyingn article npoliceviolence gainst sylumeekers, eMonde, 3 December 998.ical opinion recommending a temporary legal permit forhealth reasons. But this should not simply be seen as cynicalpragmatism aimed at keeping France out of the Europeancourtroom: it also demonstrates the existence of sharedmoral principles thatrecognize the biological truth nscribedon the body as the ultimate source of legitimacy (Fassin,2000a). Bodily integrity threatened by ascertained illness isnot only seen as legitimate, in contrast to bodily integrityconfronted with potential violence, but ultimately providesthe basis for the right to live legally on French soil.Rights and pathosHowever, this right would make no sense if it were notcombined with access to health care. French law gives for-eigners access to medical allowances nearly identical tothose offered to nationals, provided they are permanentand legal residents. Those who do not have legal statusbenefit from state medical insurance (Aide m?dicale Etat)and have free access to medical care, including examina-tions and prescriptions. The main restriction is for thosewho have lived in France for less than three years, whoseaccess is limited to hospital care. The legislative remodel-ling of the social security system, introduced on 1 January2000 to bring in 'universal medical coverage' (CMU), hasresulted in modified arrangements, but retains free treat-ment for undocumented foreigners. Thus, the right tohealth care appears to be the most extensive of all rightsgiven to immigrants, whatever their legal status: it is morecomprehensive than any civil or political right, greaterthan all other social rights (Marshall 1965).7 Not even themost restrictive legislation, such as the Pasqua laws of1993 and the Debr? laws of 1997, has actually called thisright into question.The privileged status assigned to the body in legaliza-tion procedures and in access to health care has affectedimmigrants' consciousness of their identity. In legit-imizing illness to the point where it becomes the only jus-tification for their presence in France, society condemnsmany undocumented foreigners to exist officially only aspeople who are ill. It is in this sense that we can speak ofthe embodiment of a social condition of immigrant(Fassin, 2001). Having become a resource for undocu-mented foreigners in their struggles with the administra-tion, the suffering body is placed before physicians whomust then decide whether or not to grant legal status: theimmigrant searches in his/her history and his/her symp-toms for something that will help obtain the hoped-forlegal authorization, at the risk of hearing the doctor saythat the pathology offered is not 'serious enough' to backup the claim.8 In this social interaction, where the immi-grant must offer proof of his/her illness, the distinction

between manipulation, which appears when medicalrecords are falsified, and somatization, evident whenmaterial conditions provoke an illness, is often all themore difficult to discern, as immigrants live in precarioussituations productive of psychological as well as physicaleffects: depressive syndromes and gastric ulcers arecommon pathologies. The everyday life of undocumentedforeigners thus often becomes a social experience of suf-fering, where the pathos expresses the harshness of cir-cumstances and simultaneously serves as a resource tojustify one's existence. The narrative relationship to one'sown history and body, created by the repetition of self-justifying accounts to state authorities, generates apathetic self-image (Fassin, 2000b). The undocumentedforeigner perceives him/herself as a victim reduced tosoliciting compassion.Unskilled immigrants have long been considered a nec-essary complement to the native workforce, required forthe economic development of rich countries. Their bodieswere instruments in the service of the host country andtheir labour conferred upon them a legitimacy that the lawoften only confirmed a posteriori, as their work permitactually constituted their legal documentation (Weil1991). In this context, the sick or injured body was sus-pect in the eyes of both doctors and the state, to the extentthat a specific pathological condition was created - 'sin-istrosis', an intermediary form between simulation andhysteria (Sayad 1999). Today, as industry's need forunskilled labour has diminished considerably, immigrantsswell the ranks of the unemployed and are three timesmore likely than nationals to have no job. In a contextwhere their productive bodies have become useless -even undesirable - because of real or supposed competi-tion in the workforce, it is the suffering body that societyis prepared to recognize.9 Far from evoking distrust orsuspicion, illnesses or accidents seem to be the onlysource of legitimacy to which many undocumented immi-grants can lay claim.When economic transformations in the Western worldhave made immigrants into 'workers without work, that is,deprived of the only activity left for them', as HannahArendt (1958) phrases it, the body expresses no more thanwhat Giorgio Agamben calls 'bare life' - existencereduced to its physical expression or, in this case, therecognition of the human being through its pathology. Thebiopolitics of otherness must here be understood as anextreme reduction of the social to the biological: the bodyappears to be the ultimate refuge of a common humanity.The racialization of differenceThe 'idea of race' can also be seen as a reduction of thesocial to the biological, but in an inverse sense (Banton1977). It challenges the notion of a common humanity bydifferentiating among people at the deepest level of theirbeing, looking for the marks of origins.10Racial discrimi-nation is founded on an insurmountable difference,because it is inscribed in the body, indeed even in thegenes (Simpson 2000). Twentieth-century France gaveless credence to racial discourse than did many otherEuropean and North American countries, despite the factthat certain French intellectuals and doctors were attractedto racial theories associated with eugenics, and that in cer-tain periods the French state developed conceptions of thenation which employed biological referents (Wiewiorka1993). Any suggestion that difference or inequality isfounded on biology has been considered illegitimate andeven illegal, since it can be prosecuted under the 1881 lawprohibiting the 'incitement to acts of discrimination, hateor violence on the basis of origin or racial or religious affil-iation'. In this respect, French republican ideology isgrounded in the universalism of natural law (Amselle




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EgliseSaint-Bernard.Anthropologyoday 3 4):1-2.Bonilla-Silva,. 1997.Rethinkingacism.AmericanociologicalReview 2:465-479.Bourdillon,.,Lombrail,.,Antoni,M. et al. 1991.Lasant? espopulationsd'origine trang?renFrance. ocialScience ndMedicine 2(11):1219-1227.Delettre, . 1999.Lemaintiendes?trangersour aisonm?dicaleur e territoirefran?ais.Rennes: colenationaleesant? ublique.Fassin,D. 1999.L'indicibletGmpens?:a questionimmigr?e'ans espolitiquesusida.Sciencessociales t sant?17 4):5-36.? 2000a.Politiquesuvivantetpolitiquesela vie.Pouruneanthropologiee lasant?.Anthropologietsoci?t?s 4(1):95-116.? 2000b.Lasupplique:Strat?giesh?toriquestconstructionsdentitairesdans esdemandesesecours. nnales.Histoire,sciences ociales55(5):953-981.? 2000c.Lespolitiquesel'ethnopsychiatrie:apsych? fricaineescolonies ritanniquesuxbanlieuesarisiennes.L'Homme53:231-250.? 2001.Unedouble eine:Laconditionocialedel'immigr? alade usida.L'Homme,58(forthcoming).?, Morice,A. andQuiminal,C.(eds).1997.Us loisdeVinhospitalit?:asoci?t?fran?aise l'?preuveessans-papiers.aris: aD?couverte.Foucault,M.1976.Histoire elasexualit?,ome : Lavolont?e savoir.Paris:Gallimard.? 1997.7/ autd?fendreasoci?t?'.Cours uColl?gedeFrance 976.Paris:Hautes tudes-Gallimard-Seuil.Godeiier,M.andPanoff,M.(eds).1998.Laproductionducorps:Approchesanthropologiquesthistoriques.msterdam:Editions esarchivescontemporaines.Heller,A. 1996.Hasbiopoliticshangedheconcept fthepolitical?Some urtherhoughtsabout iopolitics.nHeller,A. andS.PuntscherRiekmanneds)Biopolitics:The olitics fthebody,raceandnature, -15.Avebury: ldershot.Kearney,M.1995.The ocaland heglobal:Theanthropologyfglobalizationndtransnationalism.nnualReviewf Anthropology4:547-565.LeBras,H. 1997.Dix ansdeperspectivese lapopulationtrang?re.

F^VJCH-o1Sorry, utmyclientswouldnt ike hecolour f your ie... CartoonyPanchoromLeMonde, April 999.1990): the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man andCitizen serves as a totem protecting against attempts toimpose ethnic divisions on social groups. Marceau Long,president of the High Council for Integration, expressesthis in locating France's choices with respect to immi-grants and their descendants (the word Minorities' is ban-ished from public discourse) within a 'logic of equality'which is true to Trance's very essence'.1 ' Officially then,the state has had a strategy to avoid the communitarian andracialized policies of other Western countries, which serveas a convenient foil for France's own policies.Origin' as a new frontierHowever, this fa?ade of a Trance of integration'(Schnapper, 1991) began to crumble in the 1980s, and theprocess intensified in the 1990s under the weight of thepolitical and social racialization of French society.

Politically there was the remarkable increase in electoralsupport for the extreme right party, the National Front,whose leitmotif is Trance for the French' - a unique post-World War II phenomenon. Their support rose to one insix voters at the national level and one in two or three insome cities, with electoral victories in a few municipali-ties. However, it would be wrong to attribute the rise ofracism in political life only to the extreme right, since atthe end of the 1970s, in a period when labour immigration,which had been abruptly halted, was giving way to perma-nent settlement, the Communist Party was the first to sug-gest that immigrants' right to employment, housing andsocial services were unfounded. Furthermore, during the1980s, when the National Front succeeded in exploitingpopular frustrations, the other political parties, includingthe Socialists,12 followed its lead in questioning whetherforeigners might be the source of socio-economic difficul-ties (Schain 1996). While the political discourse did notexplicitly refer to race, which remains a prohibited term,the populations targeted by this rhetoric and these lawswere increasingly those designated explicitly as 'unassim-ilable' and whose children are often distinguished as'Beurs' (youth of Arab origin). In fact, there has been agrowing lexical confusion, leading to the designation ofFrench people born in France as 'Maghr?bins', 'Africans','foreigners' or 'immigrants', revealing how skin colourand supposed origin have overwhelmed the legal defini-tion of the Other.

On the social front, during the same period, the phe-nomenon of segregation on the basis of nationality or eth-nicity was increasing: on the outskirts of large cities, thelow-cost housing developments today concentrate high

proportions of immigrants and their families. Thus,although restrictive policies were efficiently reducingflows from abroad (between the 1990 and 1999 censuses,the number of foreigners fell by 9%), the populations seenas outsiders paradoxically became more visible.Meanwhile, practices of racial discrimination becamemore and more obvious on the labour market whereindustry could ask for 'bleu-blanc-rouge' candidates(meaning 'whites'), in access to private housing whereblack skin or Arabic names were common negative selec-tion criteria (as proved by 'testing'), and in interactionswith administrative bodies, especially within welfare serv-ices (Simon, 1998). According to the annual poll of theNational Consultative Commission on Human Rights, in2000,70% of French people found 'the presence of peopleof non-European origin disturbing'. And the 500 callsreceived each day by the hotline for victims of 'racial dis-crimination', opened in 2000, indicate that this opinionpoll does translate into fact.13It would certainly be incor-rect to assume that racism is a novelty for France: collec-tive violence against foreigners, whether Italians at the endof the 19th century or Algerians in the 1960s, shows howfar xenophobia could go. Two new elements must never-theless be taken into account. First, discrimination isdirected not so much against foreigners as against peopleseen as illegitimate members of French society, whatevertheir nationality (the majority of them are French and bornin France): racism can thus no longer be hidden behind alegal definition. Second, discrimination has begun to berecognized for what it is both by the perpetrators and bythe victims (on this point, there is a striking contrastbetween the youth of the 'second generation' and their par-ents): whether supported or denounced, racialization ofsociety has become a public reality.This recent shift is significant in that it clearly identifiesthe object of discrimination. If racism was previously seenas the rejection of foreigners, the discovery of internalboundaries dividing a French community which finds itincreasingly difficult to perceive itself as national contrastswith the official discourse prevailing until the 1990s.Nationality no longer suffices to define the basis for exclu-sion of the Other: the concrete criteria according to which alandlord refuses housing, an employer rejects a job applica-tion, a policeman decides to check for identity papers, or anightclub owner chooses who enters his establishment, mustbe considered. These arephenomenological criteria thattendprimarily toward appearance, particularly skin colour, andmainly target people not identified as European, specifically

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Population: 103-134.Legoux,L. 1999.Lesp?pitesd'orde l'OFPRA. leinDroit44: 7-10.Lochak,D. 1997.Lespolitiquesel'immigrationauprisme e lal?gislationsur es?trangers.nFassin,D.,A.Morice ndC.Quiminaleds)Les oisdeGnhospitalit?,9-45.Paris:LaD?couverte.Marshall,.H.1965.Class,citizenshipnd ocialdevelopment.ewYork:Doubleday.Noiriel,G. 1988.Lecreusetfran?ais:Histoire el'immigrationIXe-XXesi?cles.Paris: euil.Portes,A. 1999.Lamondialisationare bas:L'?mergenceescommunaut?stransnationales.ctesde larecherchen sciencessociales,129:15-25.Rousseau,.J.1971.Discourssur Originet lesfondementsel'in?galit?parmies hommes.aris:Garnier-Flammarion.stedition 754.Sayad,A. 1999.Ladoubleabsence:Des illusions el'?migr?ux ouffrancesel'immigr?.euil:Paris.Schain,M.A.1996.Theracializationfimmigrationpolicy:Biopoliticsndpolicy-making.nHeller,A.andS. PuntscherRiekmanneds)Biopolitics:The oliticsofthebody,raceandnature, 57-177.Avebury, ldershot.Schnapper,. 1991.LaFrance el'int?gration:Sociologie ela nation n1990.Paris:Gallimard.Sim?ant,.1998.Lacausedessans-papiers.aris: ressesdelaFondationationale esciences olitiques.Simon,P. 1998.Ladiscrimination:ontexteinstitutionneltperceptionparesimmigr?s. ommesetmigrations211: 9-67.Simpson, . 2000.Imaginedgenetic ommunities:Ethnicitynd ssentialisminthe wenty-firstentury.Anthropologyoday 6(3):3-6.Taguieff, .A. 1991.Lesm?tamorphosesid?ologiquesuracismetlacrisede G ntiracisme.nP.A.Taguieffed.),Faceauracisme,ol.2, 13-63.Paris: aD?couverte.Tribalat,M.1997.Unesurprenante??critureel'histoire. opulation:137-148.Weil,P. 1991.LaFrance tses?trangers:'aventured'unepolitiqueel'immigratione 1938?nos ours.Paris:Gallimard.Wieviorka,M. 1993.Lad?mocratiel'?preuve:Nationalisme,opulisme,ethnicit?.aris: aD?couverte.Wilkinson, . 1996.Unhealthysocieties:The fflictionfinequality.ondon:Routledge.

those coming from North and sub-Saharan Africa. Theunderlying division of the world is no longer French vs non-French, nor even French-origin vs non-French-origin, butEuropean-origin vs non-European-origin.Scientific debate is not spared the effects of this change,which bear on social realities as much as on scientificmeans of accounting for them. One of the most virulentintellectual controversies of the 1990s occurred betweentwo researchers at the National Institute of DemographicStudies (INED) with respect to statistics about the foreignpopulation: beyond the technical problems of definitionand calculation, what was at stake was the scientific rele-vance of and the political justification for taking intoaccount 'origin' in addition to nationality.14 Introducingstatistical distinctions based on this criterion - using thecategory 'Fran?ais de souche' (of French stock) - was tan-tamount to legitimizing a more profound difference thanthat which is established using legal status: it is only to rec-ognize a social reality, argued one; it officializes a racial-ized discourse, replied the other.The avatars of racial discriminationOne might ask at this point, is this difference 'racial', or isit possible to make a more socially acceptable argumentthat it is 'cultural'? Is the distinction between Europeanand non-European populations

- or more often and moreimplicitly, between populations of European and non-European origin - not at heart a cultural incompatibilitymore than a biological unassimilability?15 Indeed, thisargument has often served to keep discrimination freefrom the suspicion of racism (Taguieff, 1991). Frenchpublic policy has for a long time maintained an ambiguityon the subject of immigrant/immigrant-origin populations,promoting, on the one hand, a rhetoric of equality and uni-versalism, and on the other, special modes of treatment forthese populations' problems, such as housing or health.To take an example from the medical arena, ethnopsy-chiatry, funded entirely by public money, gives specifictreatment to both psychological disorders and cases ofsocial deviance referred for diagnosis and treatment bydoctors, social workers, even judges, when the patients orthe delinquents happen to be of non-European origin andwhen this origin is presumed to be a source of particulardifficulties in interpretation and handling. Cultural singu-larity, advocated by those in favour of this type of therapy,has in fact an essentially ethnic and even racial substratewhich, along with the failure to take into account the socialdimension of immigrant experiences, results in a form of'naturalization' of culture, explicitly considered as anhereditary characteristic of the individual.16 More gener-ally, one can say that all extreme thinking about differ-ence, whether it be in the name of biology or culture, restson an essentialist presupposition of otherness.The ambiguity of public action on the matter is bestillustrated by the following paradox. While the sociolog-ical reality of the racialized body has recently been theobject of increasing recognition and denunciation, the con-sequences of racism on the body itself - as measured bymorbidity and mortality - have resisted evaluation (Fassin1999). Without instruments to measure discrimination orresearch to understand it, it is presumed to be non-existent.None of the numerous official and scientific reports on thehealth situation in France presents data referring to thisissue. In the case of AIDS, public health institutionswaited until 1999, 18 years after the beginning of the epi-demic, to publish the first report revealing the profoundinequalities between French and foreigners in terms ofincidence of the disease, earliness of detection and accessto treatment. In the case of lead-poisoning caused by poorliving conditions, official figures never mention the factthat, in the Paris region, all cases of severe intoxication

affected children of foreign families, 92% of themAfrican. The denial of racial discrimination thus seems toreach its highest level where it is most tangible; that is, atthe site of biological inscription itself.In fact, everything we know about the social determi-nants of health indicate that the racial discriminationwhich has been identified in diverse spheres of activityproduces inequalities in life expectancy (Wilkinson,1996). Republican universalism finds here its deepest con-tradiction - in the recognition that a difference read on thebody can produce an inequality in terms of sickness anddeath. In the terms of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's famousdiscourse on inequality, the recognition that a 'natural orphysical' difference, socially constructed as racial dis-crimination, can be at the origin of the most unacceptable'political' or 'moral' inequality of all - inequality of lifeexpectancy - would probably be the most radical invalida-tion of the human rights rhetoric so deeply bound to theFrench self-perception.A two-sided biopoliticsAccording to Agnes Heller (1996), biopolitics is 'inti-mately linked to the question of identity polities'. I havetried to show that it also implies necessarily a politics ofotherness. Based on the recognition of 'difference ofbodies' which have race, sex, ethnicity and genes as theirfoundation, biopolitics, as she interprets it, is 'ultimatelydefending the Body itself, its nature, integrity and health'.By renouncing 'membership in a common political body',biopolitics thus exemplifies a retreat from, and even a nega-tion of 'politics' in the Arendtian sense of the recognitionof human diversity from a universal perspective. However,examination of French immigration politics in the 1990sallows for a less pessimistic and more nuanced reading.The contemporary biopolitics of otherness in Francerests on one major foundation: the recognition of the bodyas the ultimate site of political legitimacy. But this recog-nition takes two parallel paths. On the one hand, the suf-fering body manifests itself as the ultimate (but notunique) resource, supplanting all other social justificationsfor immigrants to be granted legal status and residing in abasic right to keep oneself alive as long as possible. This isa minimalist vision, but one which tends toward a uni-versal horizon. On the other hand, the racialized bodyextends from the foreigner to the national and introducesinternal frontiers founded on physical difference. This is adiscriminatory concept, which creates hierarchies betweenpeople. In the first case, the reduction in political asylumis a corollary of the rise in the humanitarian rationale: therecognition of the suffering body imposes a legitimateorder defining citizenship on purely physiopathologicalgrounds. In the second, threats to human diversity lead toa response by civil society and the state, reminding us ofshared political values: the recognition of the racializedbody as principle of an illegitimate order allows for ameasure of return to politics through the denunciation ofthis principle by the victims and their supporters.That is to say, despite common perceptions, biopoliticsdoes not proceed by one logic. It demonstrates a tension,inscribed in the body, between the supreme universality oflife (which allows a sans-papiers with AIDS to be recog-nized by the state in the name of his/her pathology) and theexaltation of difference, for which biology offers anapparently insurmountable foundation (allowing eachperson to perceive a natural source of inequality in thephysical characteristics of others). If we can recognize, inan unusual form, the eternal anthropological theme of theunity and diversity of the human condition, the questionsraised here certainly call for a renewed commitment fromsocial scientists to the critique of the contemporary foun-dations of politics



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