Between Care and Control: Laïcité (French Secularism), and the Ambivalent Role of Migrant-Support Organizations

This paper is based on a comparative ethnographic analysis of three migrant-support organizations in a French city, examining how French secularism laïcité, is transformed from an abstract republican ideal into a rigorous, evolving disciplinary code. Drawing on three years of participant observation and interviews with staff and newly arrived Muslim women, it situates local practices within the French civic-integration regime of contracts and mandatory trainings that tie residency and funding to the values of the Republic (Canut et Delahaie 2022; Lochak 2006; Vadot 2022). Building on critical work that conceptualizes laïcité as a plural, historically contingent, and increasingly identitarian project rather than a neutral legal principle (Asad 2006; Barras 2017; Baubérot 2016; Roy 2013; Scott 2007), the paper shows how this project is operationalized in the everyday governance of migrant lives. The fieldwork spans a period in which one organization first elaborated an internal charter on neutrality and gender equality, in the wake of earlier headscarf debates, and in which all three then saw their room for maneuver narrowed by the 2021 Contrat d’Engagement Républicain and the more restrictive 2024 immigration law. These instruments retrospectively harden existing rules and reframe them as conditions for public funding and recognition, compelling organizations to act as delegated monitors of ideological conformity (Gourdeau 2016; Hamidi et Paquet 2019). The comparison across the three organizations reveals a crucial spectrum of local responses to these top-down injunctions. Practices range from proactive legal advocacy and rights-based mobilization to subtle self-censorship around religion and gender to avoid controversy and protect fragile budgets. In all cases, organizations structurally participate in reproducing ethno racial inequalities, particularly regarding religious visibility and women’s roles, even as they also build counter-spaces of care and solidarity (Fernando 2014; Schmid 2019). This finding shows that, despite strong constraints, these organizations still retain some room to challenge restrictive policies and to shape local understandings of migrant inclusion. The findings argue that this struggle to reconcile an ethics of care with the pressures of control defines the critical and contradictory role these non-state actors now play within the contemporary French integration regime. Asad, Talal. 2006. « Trying to Understand French Secularism ». In Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, éd. Hent de Vries et Lawrence E. Sullivan. Fordham University Press, 0. Barras, Amélie. 2017. « Secularism in France ». In The Oxford Handbook of Secularism, éd. Phil Zuckerman et John R. Shook. Oxford University Press, 0. Fernando, Mayanthi L. 2014. The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism. Duke University Press. Gourdeau, Camille. 2016. « Un contrat au service de l’identité nationale ». Plein droit n°110(3): 32-35. Hamidi, Camille, et Mireille Paquet. 2019. « Redessiner les contours de l’État : la mise en oeuvre des politiques migratoires ». Lien social et Politiques (83): 5-35. Roy, Olivier. 2013. La laïcité face à l’islam. Paris: Pluriel. Schmid, Sophia. 2019. « Taking Care of the Other: Visions of a Caring Integration in Female Refugee Support Work ». Social Inclusion 7(2): 118-27.