The “Indigènes de la République” and political mobilization strategies in postcolonial France

• Autor(a) principal: Zobel, Clemens
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10316/36166; https://doi.org/10.4000/eces.390
• topic: Indigènes de la République; Postcolonialism; Republicanism; Immigration; Political mobilization; Identity

I discuss the debate on the controversial petition “Nous sommes les Indigènes de la République!” (We are the Indigenous of the Republic) published in 2005 by a group of intellectuals and activists working in the field of immigration issues in France. It critically scrutinizes the idea that the petition could be understood as a new political mobilization strategy emphasizing ethnic, religious or racial differences. While recognizing the salience of this argument, I address its implicit conclusions concerning the supposedly depoliticizing and essentializing consequences of such a move. Placing the petition in its historical context and analysing its content, I contend that, referring to colonial regimes of segregation, the self-identification “indigenes” fundamentally concerns the denial of full citizen’s rights through religious, ethnic or racial categories rather than the entrenching of difference. Drawing parallels with a dominant trend in the appraisal of post-colonial studies in France, I conclude that academic thought on the petition reflects a general tendency of failing to come to terms with difference without falling back on an opposition between political universalism and apolitical communitarianism.