France

Racial and ethnic inequalities remain an underdeveloped area of research in France. This situation can mainly be attributed to the fact that researchers have been strongly influenced, on the one hand, by a political model of integration (presented in more detail in Section 12.3.3) that has led France ‘to ignore itself as a country of immigration’ (Noiriel, 1988) and encouraged a colorblind approach to social reality (Lorcerie, 1994a) and, on the other hand, by Marxist political and scientific perspectives giving central importance to class in the study of society. However, since the 1980s, due to important changes in the immigrant population and in policy towards immigrants, as well as to the arrival of a new generation of researchers and the growing internationalization of French research, the number of studies in this domain has increased and diversified. There are however very few reviews of the existing scientific literature (Lorcerie, 1995, 2003; Payet, 2003; Payet and van Zanten, 1996; van Zanten, 1997b) and only one in English (van Zanten, 1997a). Therefore, the following critical survey, based on a systematic sampling of the literature and covering 30 years of research, including very recent studies, should prove useful to various, and especially anglophone, audiences. [Chapter's first paragraph