The day after the Paris murders, some secondary school students refused to observe a minute of silence for the victims, arguing that there are double standards about freedom of expression in France. Why did this attack get so much attention when people were dying unreported in the Middle East? Why was Charlie Hebdo free to insult a figure sacred in Islam, when the comedian Dieudonné is not allowed to criticise Jews? The French government took these questions so seriously that on 15 January the education minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, announced it would train teachers to help them reply.

That training may use the argument developed by media and political parties since the early cartoons: there is a difference between blasphemous drawings that insult the divine, and anti-Semitic remarks that constitute a criminal offence because they “infringe personal dignity”. That probably won’t satisfy all the rebels, for the cases of Dieudonné and the cartoons mask a deeper problem: columnists and intellectuals such as Alain Finkielkraut, Eric Zemmour and Philippe Tesson, and newspapers and magazines including Le Point, L’Express,Valeurs actuelles and Le Figaro, are able to loudly reject Islam, either as a backward belief or a “threat to our nation’s identity” (to quote a survey by the rightwing news website Atlantico.fr, which it is hard to imagine discussing any other religion in the same terms). The ethnologist Jean-Loup Amselle says: “Dieudonné is popular because he claims you can say anything about blacks, Arabs and Muslims — ‘inferiors’ — but it’s almost impossible ... to touch a single hair on the head of a Jew or criticise Israel without immediately being labelled anti-Semitic” (1).

This inequality in freedom of speech is understood in different ways. For some people, the need to guard against the holocaust and anti-Semitism comes first. For others, the inequality reflects an Islamophobia deeply rooted in the colonial past, which makes anti-Muslim comments seem acceptable. Conspiracy theorists see a supposed Jewish control over the media and politics: by encouraging hatred of Islam, the “Jewish lobby” legitimises western intervention in the Arab world to help Israel or the US. That line (published on the websites of Alain Soral and Thierry Meyssan) is ever more popular. It fills the theoretical and political vacuum left by the decline of progressive parties.

These interpretations, however dissimilar, are based on a single ethno-cultural approach that defines social groups according to their origin or religion (Jews, Muslims, Arabs, etc). Yet the double standards on freedom of speech are quite different, and essentially societal. There have been Jews in France since the first centuries of the Christian era; many more settled between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the second world war, fleeing the pogroms and then the rise of Nazism. After 1945 a new wave followed the decolonisation of North Africa. The Jews who arrived between the wars were workers, artisans or small shopkeepers, and often lived in run-down areas where they faced racism. Like many political refugees, they had an above-average education (as do refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and Africa). Over the decades, some of their descendants rose to positions of power in journalism, politics and academia — the circles that produce, guide and control public discourse.

Waves of incomers

Muslim immigrants arrived in France after the second world war, mostly in the 1960s, first from North Africa and then from sub-Saharan Africa (sometimes recruited by industry according to physical criteria). Their children and grandchildren grew up in a society hit by mass unemployment and lack of job security of which they were the first victims, reducing their chances of upward mobility. While some have succeeded in reaching the middle, or even upper classes, they are poorly represented at the top. Foreigners and French Muslims are often attacked in the media or by political leaders; and their inability to defend themselves publicly allows xenophobic discourse to go unchecked. It’s not by chance that the Roma, the group with the fewest resources, are the subject of the most virulent attacks by everybody from the former far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who talked of their “odorous and irritating presence”, to prime minister Manuel Valls, who has said that “the majority of Roma cannot fit in, in France” and should “go home”.

The present situation of Jews and Muslims echoes that of Russian and Armenian immigrants between the wars. Russians migrated to France after the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, and by 1931 there were 72,000. Most had jobs in the car industry or as taxi drivers, and were working-class, but there was an elite (often from the nobility or the bourgeoisie) that included painters, journalists, publishers and writers, who became so well integrated into the Parisian cultural scene that there was a “Russian fashion” in the 1920s. All Russian immigrants benefitted from this, with preferential treatment that sheltered them from the disdain towards other immigrants.

Armenians arrived in France after the 1915 genocide and almost all took unqualified jobs. There were only 17,000 in 1931, and they were seen as “impossible to assimilate”. “The Russians may be very different from the French in many respects, but they generally have a level of culture that permits contact. However, with Armenians even that contact is difficult,” said Georges Mauco, the brains behind French immigration policy during the 1930s and under the Vichy regime (2). Social status is a powerful determinant in the perception of migrants and their descendants. And yet in the past 30 years, this has given way to a cultural analysis, which examines immigration according to origin.

The turning point was between 1977 and 1984. People talked about immigration during the three previous decades, and the media mentioned foreigners when discussing housing, employment or the economy (not the same as the media attitude of the 1930s when the right welcomed the contribution of foreign workers). When five African workers were asphyxiated in their sleep by smoke in their hostel in the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers, Le Figaro asked, in a compassionate tone it has long since lost, “Who is caring for the health of these unfortunate migrants? They sweep our streets when the gutters are frozen, and then are sapped by tuberculosis, or carbon monoxide... We must urgently find a solution.”

The ‘Muslim problem’

The situation changed with the 1975 economic crisis, and even more with François Mitterrand’s election. In three years “immigrant workers” gave way to “the Arab problem” and the “second generation”, and by extension, Muslims. Events previously analysed in social terms were now analysed from an ethnic angle.

In July 1981, young people clashed with the police in the Lyon suburbs. There had been incidents in 1976 and in 1979, which the local press had relegated to miscellaneous news. In 1981 the right was in opposition, and capitalised on the event to weaken the leftwing government, which had just granted legal status to 100,000 illegal immigrants. The right turned the clashes into a social issue and a sign of the “immigration problem” even though the incident was a result of the physical and social deterioration of housing estates and the enforced idleness of young people during a time of high unemployment and massive lay-offs of manual workers. According to Le Figaro, “The situation is becoming explosive in neighbourhoods with a high population density of North Africans. By ceasing to deport doubtful individuals, the government is encouraging delinquency” (7 July 1981). From then on, Le Figaro exploited what the historian Gérard Noiriel calls “the national security theme”, denouncing the legalisation of illegal immigrants for “leaving our country wide open to invasion and risk” (22 September 1981), the “bands of hooligans ... mainly of North African origin” or “the immigrants’ law” that supposedly reigned in the neighbourhood.

Religion was added to the mix during the strikes in the car industry — a sector badly hit by the economic crisis, where foreign labour made up more than half the workforce. The strike movement began in 1981 and peaked in 1983-84. It started as a labour conflict, not unlike the spontaneous strike movement after the victory of the Popular Front leftwing alliance in 1936, but then started to be seen as a clash of cultures. On the pretext that the strikers were demanding places of worship in the factories — encouraged by employers in the 1970s, who saw it as a way of achieving social harmony — the government and the press accused the strikers of being manipulated by Iranian ayatollahs. The workers “are agitated by religious and political groups, whose motives have little to do with French social realities,” said the Socialist prime minister Pierre Mauroy in 1983. Le Figaro added: “The more optimistic among us are counting on the foreigners’ capacity to be assimilated, as in the past with the Italian and Portuguese communities. Unfortunately that example is no longer valid because the cultural origins of these new immigrants are a difficult obstacle to overcome.” The Portuguese hadn’t always had such a good press, as their conspicuous religious practices were held against them; between the wars they were described as “an exotic race”, harder to integrate than the Italians — who were deemed to be less easy to integrate than the Belgians.

In 1980 the left responded to attacks on North African immigrants by emphasising “beur culture” (beur is non-racist slang for Arab, describing second-generation North Africans), inverting rightwing culturalist discourse. Libération, which played an active role, launched a “Beur” column in 1982, with information about cultural events supposedly of interest to this “community”. It actively supported the March for Equality and against Racism — which it renamed the Beur March, distorting its meaning — and supported the establishment of the anti-racist organisation SOS Racisme by sympathisers of the Socialist Party, replacing the fight for equality with the fight against discrimination. Le Monde was delighted in July 1983 that “the children of second generation of immigrants are taking possession of music, cinema and the theatre”, while the magazine Marie-Claire celebrated the “Best of the Beurs” in April 1984. But while beur elite culture gained legitimacy, the people at the bottom, whose living conditions were deteriorating with de-industrialisation, remained stigmatised.

In less than three years, the debate about immigration was rid of social content. Since then, foreigners and their descendants have been reminded of their “community” and their religion, deepening the gulf between them and “native” French people. Subjects directly related to immigration (such as racism or discrimination) are treated as cultural issues, fuelling prejudices, the illusion of the “clash of civilisations” and the surge in support for the far right. Any geopolitical, social or even sporting event involving a majority of Arabs or Muslims revives the debate about Islam, immigration and immigrants’ role in the Republic, whether it is the Gulf war, 9/11, the Israel-Palestine conflict, clashes between young people and police in the suburbs, or football players of Algerian origin not singing the Marseillaise.

A constructed community

But the feeling of belonging to an Arab or Muslim “community” is not natural. It emerged as public policy developed (with the creation of organisations such as the Union of Islamic Organisations of France, in 1983, the public financing of Islamic associations) and as a result of events that took immigrants back to their origins. The Gulf war (1990-91) was key: as the allied bombers took off for Baghdad, a few secondary school students denounced the West and asserted their solidarity with the Arab world. “Saddam is an Arab and being ostracised by everyone, like we are on our housing estates,” said one. Such minority reactions provoked a debate about the loyalty of children of immigrants. Le Figaro Magazine wrote: “The beur from Saint-Denis will always feel closer to his brothers who boo the French in the streets of Algiers and Tunis” (25 January 1991). The children of immigrants reacted by flaunting their disparaged origins and religion. According to sociologists Stéphane Beaud and Olivier Masclet, the Gulf war “played an important role in the construction of a more ‘radical’ rather than ‘social’ awareness in the children of North African immigrants, especially since they are more inclined to view society as a series of opposites: them/us, westerners/Arabs, French/immigrants, rich/poor, etc, because they are marked by their experience of being typecast” (3).

The idea that black and Arab populations are a new problem in the history of immigration has permeated the political spectrum. It even divides the radical left, where some see “post-colonial” immigrants as a unique group including in the way they are perceived by “whites”. The “Appel des Indigènes de la République” (Call to the natives of the Republic) appeal in 2005 said that “the treatment of people from the former French colonies is an extension of colonial policy.” Sadri Khiari, a founder, said: “It’s as Arabs, blacks or Muslims that people from the former colonies are discriminated against ... the specific violence targeting black people and Arabs, or which they carry in their collective memory as descendants of colonised peoples and emigrants/immigrants ... determines the nature of their specific demands, like those relating to racial discrimination, respect for their parents, the repeal of the double punishment law [foreign offenders may be expelled after serving their sentence], and, for Muslims, the right to have dignified places of worship and to wear the veil. Even when their demands are identical to those of their white neighbours, they’ll be considered different” (4).

This makes for competition among legitimate causes (of the “whites” and of the “minorities”). Is discrimination against black people and Arabs because of their colour, or because they are poor? Racial bias in checking IDs, the cause of frequent clashes between young people and the police, sheds light on this. In 2007-08, two sociologists followed police patrols at the Gare du Nord and Châtelet-les-Halles metro stations in Paris. They examined 525 ID checks and observed that people identified as “black” or “Arab” were respectively 6 and 7.8 times more likely to be checked than whites. There was another important variable: clothing. People dressed counter-culturally, especially those with a “hip-hop appearance”, were 11.4 times more likely to have their papers checked than those in city or casual clothes. A white male in a hoodie and baseball cap (the uniform of working class suburban youth) was more likely to be harassed than a black man in a suit.

The borderline between these variables is far from static. Young people of immigrant origin are over-represented in the “hip-hop” category. Racial discrimination is added to social inequality, reinforcing it until they become impossible to dissociate. The decision to emphasise any criterion (skin colour or class) is both political and strategic. It helps define the divisions in French society. Stressing the social components of inequality would combat the idea that people of North African or African origin create a specific problem that has nothing to do with previous waves of immigration or the working class as a whole.