A Republican Hypocrisy? The Strategic Use of Cultural Policies to Incorporate Minorities in France

When crafting policies to incorporate immigrant and minority populations in France, authorities are bound by strict Republican taboos against recognizing ethnic or religious communities in the public arena. As a result, official minority “integration” measures are never targeted at minority groups themselves. Instead, they are routinely framed as policies to combat discrimination or reduce inequality in problematic geographic zones (albeit, ones in which minorities are usually overrepresented). The one notable exception to this prohibition against group recognition appears in the domain of cultural policies – music, theater, associations, festivals. Here, minority communities and policymakers can openly negotiate and make claims to state resources and accommodations on the basis of ethnic or religious identity. But, why is minority visibility acceptable in this domain at all? And more importantly, what impact might this have on the ability of local actors to navigate the terrain of immigrant and minority inclusion beyond matters of culture? This paper addresses these questions by mapping patterns of municipal policymaking debate, voting, and implementation across 3 Parisian suburbs between 2000-2015. Through a systematic analysis of 125 elite interviews and 200 policy proposals, two potentially countervailing trends emerge: first, culture provides a valuable platform for descriptive representation, where minorities capitalizing on their visibility can vocalize grievances in other domains like housing, education, or employment; however, as minority demands to address such socio-economic inequalities increase, so too does the municipality’s reliance on group-targeted cultural initiatives, suggesting that elites may view culture as low hanging fruit in the context of substantive policy concessions.