Abstract
The recent construction of “gender equality” as a defining value of European societies has shaped the policy goals of immigrant integration programs. This focus on “gender equality” may function, paradoxically, to exclude immigrants, if immigrant integration policies rely on stereotypical representations of immigrants and fail to acknowledge the multiple, intersecting forms of inequality that immigrant women face. This article contributes to the critical scholarship on the role of “gender equality” in the field of immigrant integration policy by examining the framing of this concept in the policy documents and implementation of the French civic integration program. Using ethnographic observations and field interviews, I illustrate how frontline workers, many of whom were women of immigrant origin, interacted with participants to frame “gender equality” in exclusionary and inclusionary ways, and how “gender equality” functioned as a racial boundary within the program. The tensions in the discourses of frontline workers mirrored those of the political context in which the policy developed; they were constrained by a difference-blind ideology of French republicanism as they insisted on “gender equality” as the pathway to belonging in France.
“I have a conviction, almost a religion, that it is imperative to teach about the equality of women and about laïcité,” the instructor declared. We sat on a bus together, making our way to the metro station after I had observed her teaching a day-long civics course for immigrants who were completing the French “Reception and Integration Contract” (Contrat d’Accueil et d’Intégration [CAI]). 1 Throughout the class, she had indeed claimed “gender equality” as one of the fundamental values of the French Republic that immigrants must respect in order to live in France. This emphasis on “gender equality” could reinforce stereotypes of immigrants as patriarchal and thus exclude them from the French community or, conversely, it could include immigrant women through the extension of equal rights and protections. Further complicating the matter, the agent of the French state articulating these potentially inclusive or exclusive discourses was herself a naturalized French citizen from North Africa, the region of origin for many of the program participants. How did the frontline workers of the CAI, like this instructor, define “gender equality” during the implementation of this immigrant integration policy?
Liberal feminists and anti-immigration nativists alike claim “gender equality” as a defining value of modern European societies that immigrants must share in order to reside in Europe (Siim 2014). The emphasis on “gender equality” during the development of civic integration programs was strongly influenced by such claims, as well as contrasting constructions of European societies as open and egalitarian and immigrant women as victims in need of rescue from immigrant cultures, religions, and men (Lentin and Titley 2011). When policies that aim to establish “gender equality” for immigrants are motivated by such stereotypes, they are more likely to employ an exclusionary intersectionality, which prioritizes “gender equality” over other forms of equality and blames the oppression of immigrant women solely on their culture and religion (Montoya and Agustín 2013; Siim 2009). In contrast, policies guided by an inclusionary intersectionality acknowledge the various structures of power—such as poverty and racism—that intersect to shape immigrant women’s access to resources in Europe (Christensen and Siim 2010).
This article builds on previous studies of the role and framing of “gender equality” in the field of immigrant integration policy in two main ways. First, whereas previous studies examine the operation of “gender equality” through national or cross-national policy analyses, I respond to calls to focus on policy implementation and identify how frontline workers may influence policy goals and frame the issue of “gender equality” differently than do policy makers (Engeli and Mazur 2018; Mazur and Revillard 2016). I compare the framing and deployment of “gender equality” at multiple levels by outlining the political context that produced the CAI, analyzing the discourses of the program materials, and presenting rare ethnographic observations and field interviews with the CAI staff. I place the concept of “gender equality” in quotation marks to indicate that I am referring to a discursive construction that varies across time and space (see, e.g., Orloff and Shiff 2016). These varying constructions inform actors’ approaches to achieving a state or practice of gender equality that has a material basis—for example, people of different genders having equal agency to make decisions and receiving equal treatment under the law. Second, I use these multi-level data to examine how the framing of “gender equality” contributes to the gendered racialization of immigrants in a country where “race” is taboo and racialization is a “public secret” (Mazouz 2017).
“Gender Equality” in Immigrant Integration Policy
Intersectionality and Constructions of “Gender Equality”
Civic integration programs are an important site in which to study the intersection of gender and race due to the political context of their development, their emphasis on the value of “gender equality,” and their target populations. European Union member states may impose integration conditions that require immigrants to complete a course or pass a test to access residency. The French civic integration program applies to all foreigners except those from the European Union, the European Economic Area, and those who were educated in overseas French secondary institutions. Consequently, most of the targeted populations come from regions that have defined Europe through contrast. The stated goals of integration policies include combating the oppression of immigrant women (Kofman, Saharso, and Vacchelli 2015) and facilitating immigrant incorporation by teaching national languages, laws, and values (Goodman 2014).
The development of civic integration programs was marked by a convergence of right-wing nationalists and feminists around forms of “femonationalism” (Farris 2017) or “sexual nationalism” (Fassin 2006). Far-right, populist political parties have (re)constructed visions of their national identities as ethnically and racially homogeneous (white) and as sharing certain values, including “gender equality” and sexual liberation (Fassin 2006; Fekete 2018). These far-right parties and conservative parties seeking to capture far-right votes argue that European nations must grant entry only to migrants who share European values (Bertossi 2011). At the same time, feminists who have struggled to promote women’s equality and combat discrimination and violence against women are deploying representations of Islam as inherently misogynistic (Farris 2016, 2017) and are claiming the need to “save” Muslim women (Abu-Lughod 2002).
This unlikely alliance of feminists and nationalists hinges on the joining of discursive constructions of Europeans and Muslims. The representations of “gender equality” as a European value and of “Western women” as modern and emancipated (Mohanty 1984; Schrover and Schinkel 2013) are more recent constructions, whereas the portrayals of Muslim women as the victims of violent Muslim men and Islam as patriarchal can be traced back to representations of colonial subjects (Farris 2016; Scott 2007). The contemporary preoccupation with Europeans “saving brown women from brown men” (Spivak 1988, 296; cited in Yildiz 2011) also appeared in the justifications for European colonial projects (Grosfoguel and Mielants 2006). Muslims remain the focus of immigration policy discourses today (Korteweg and Triadafilopoulos 2013), although the discursive constructions of immigrant women also include other women from the Global South and represent them monolithically as oppressed victims of patriarchal cultures (Farris 2017; Mohanty 1984; Volpp 2011). The focus on “gender equality” is more recent, but Europe has long represented itself as “enlightened” in contrast to Muslims (Said 1979). Indeed, the contrast between “European” and the broader category of “non-European” historically facilitated the cultural, economic, and political formation of “Europe” as white, civilized, and Christian (Goldberg 2006; Hesse 2007). The origin of “race” as a relation of power can be found in this contrasting binary, which defined Europeans as superior and served to justify imperial expansion and colonial governance. Race is, therefore, articulated through the many forms of difference used to distinguish “Europeans” and “non-Europeans,” including phenotype, religion, culture, and specifically, the value of “gender equality” (Onasch 2017).
Policy makers attending to the intersection of gender with race, religion, ethnicity, and other social differences may define “gender equality” in exclusionary or inclusionary ways. Based on their analyses of political discourses and policies related to gender equality and immigration in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the European Union, Birte Siim, Ann-Dorte Christensen, and Lise Rolandsen Agustín formulated a distinction between “exclusionary intersectionality” and “inclusionary intersectionality,” which lead to different, consequential, framings of “gender equality.” 2 Exclusionary intersectionality discursively “shrinks” the definition of “gender equality” (Lombardo, Meier, and Verloo 2009) so as to exclude—and consequently, exacerbate—other forms of (in)equality (Siim 2009). Exclusionary intersectionality addresses the racial or religious differences among women by framing them as the sources of gender inequality (Lombardo and Agustín 2012), thereby relying on the same stereotypes as “femonationalism” (Farris 2017). In contrast, inclusionary intersectionality recognizes that immigrant women’s lives are shaped by the interaction of multiple forms of difference (Christensen and Siim 2010). Policy makers with this perspective may consider how immigrant women’s access to housing and education is limited by institutionalized racism or the relationship between poverty and women’s economic dependency (Lombardo and Agustín 2012). Inclusive intersectionality thus discursively “stretches” the definition of “gender equality” to address other forms of (in)equality (Lombardo, Meier, and Verloo 2009). Previous work has found that when immigrant women are involved in the design and implementation of policies related to immigration and “gender equality,” they may break away from essentialist binaries and call for attention to the various roots of gender inequality, in line with an inclusionary intersectionality (Korteweg and Triadafilopoulos 2013).
This article extends previous analyses of policy and political discourses by examining the framing of “gender equality” in both the policy texts and implementation of the French immigrant integration policy. Research on frontline workers has shed light on how they draw upon cultural schemas and biases as they interpret official policy directives (see, e.g., Haney 1996; Spire 2008) and how their racial and gender identities can influence their engagement with state bureaucracies, each other, and their clients (e.g., Lewis 2000; Mazouz 2017). Because many of the staff and instructors in the CAI were first- or second-generation immigrant women, I examine whether their involvement in policy implementation led to “inclusive policy empowerment” (Engeli and Mazur 2018) and more inclusionary framings of “gender equality” than appeared in the policy texts. Furthermore, I investigate what these constructions and the deployment of “gender equality” in the CAI illustrate about the gendered construction of race. In the following section, I describe the political context and development of the French immigrant integration program, with special attention to the roles of French feminists and republican ideology.
The French Case
French republicanism 3 has shaped French feminists’ strategies and the development of French immigrant integration policy. French republican universalism purportedly holds that French national identity supersedes all other aspects of identity, including gender, race, and religion, and that equality among members of the national community requires the relegation of these forms of differences to the private sphere (Jennings 2000). This ideology constrained the development of feminism in France. Although the “formally neutral notion of citizenship entails a deeply engrained gender bias,” any attempts to make political claims on the basis of gender were dismissed as “communitarianism,” or divisive identity politics (Lépinard and Mazur 2009, 248; Mazur and Revillard 2016). To avoid these charges, French feminists framed gender as a universal concept that overrides other forms of difference, thereby “shrinking” the concept of “gender equality” and applying an exclusionary intersectionality (Lépinard 2014). French politicians have also deployed this concept of universalism to frame assimilation as the pathway to national belonging (Bertossi 2011). The requirement of cultural assimilation can be traced back to the myth that a French nation was forged out of disparate provincial groups through the imposition of a universalist French culture (Laborde 2008) and the French colonial mission civilisatrice (Conklin 1997). Assimilationism appeared again in concerns over the integration of postcolonial migrants who settled permanently in France (Brubaker 2001).
The contents and contractual format of the French civic integration program reflect the rise of the political right and the increasing legitimacy of gender-based claims in France (Morgan 2017). 4 The integration program started as voluntary, half-day workshops for family migrants in 1998. In 2003, Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy proposed that the program take the form of a contract. This came as part of a shift by conservative parties in France toward a more forceful, culturalist immigrant integration platform, as they tried to capture votes from the far-right party FN (Front National), which had done well in the 2002 presidential election after promoting an anti-immigrant platform (Marthaler 2008). The policy’s emphasis on “gender equality” was influenced by the growing presence of women’s issues in the French political sphere in the early 2000s (Morgan 2017). The 2000 parity law increased the number of female political candidates, and as public support for “gender equality” grew, so too did the resources dedicated by the conservative government to combating discrimination, sexual harassment, and domestic violence (Lépinard and Mazur 2009). In the same time period, an organization of immigrant-origin women, Ni Putes Ni Soumises (“neither sluts nor doormats” [NPNS]), led a mass mobilization, calling attention to violence against women from marginalized communities and deploying republican values to demand their issues be addressed (Morgan 2017, 895). The High Council for Integration (Haut Conseil à l’intégration [HCI]) issued a report in 2003 that emphasized immigrant women’s lack of access to rights and framed them as one of the key target populations for integration policies (Farris 2016). The subsequent civic integration program legislation prioritized “gender equality” in the list of French “republican values” that immigrants must know and respect (Alaoui 2012).
In 2006, amid political and scholarly claims that first- and second-generation Muslim immigrants were failing to assimilate into French society, the integration contract became mandatory (Bertossi 2011). The policy was further expanded in 2007 to require family migrants to complete an integration program while still in their countries of origin before receiving a French visa, and migrants with children to attend a special course on the “rights and duties of parents in France,” as part of a new Reception and Integration Contract for the Family (Contrat d’Accueil et d’Intégration Pour la Famille [CAIF]). The legislation that introduced these new policy elements included measures to encourage “choisie” (selective) immigration based on labor market demands and limit “subie” (imposed) immigration, which referred mainly to family migration. Consequently, scholars such as Goodman (2014) have argued that integration programs may function to restrict certain forms of family migration.
In 2011, during the period of my observations, 102,254 people signed the CAI. The largest groups of participants were from former French colonies in North Africa (about 37 percent) and sub-Saharan Africa (about 14 percent) (Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration [OFII] 2012). More than half of the participating migrants were family members of French nationals or residents, while 6 percent were labor migrants and 14 percent were migrating for other personal reasons (OFII 2012, 10). These migrants first attended a welcome session at the OFII, which included a short presentation about the contract and a film about life in France. They then completed a medical examination and a personal interview, during which a staff member assessed their French fluency and determined the components of their contract. If a migrant’s level of fluency was below the required minimum, they were assigned additional evaluation and up to 350 hours of French classes. All CAI participants were required to attend a daylong civics class. Migrants who had been in France for less than two years were usually assigned a daylong workshop on “Life in France,” migrants with children had to attend a daylong CAIF session, and unemployed migrants were assigned a labor market integration interview. All program components were free, and the daylong courses included a halal lunch. In signing the contract, migrants committed to respecting the values of the Republic and completing their assigned components, thereby earning the certificates of completion necessary for renewing their residence permits. If migrants could not prove they had completed their contract within a maximum period of two years, their application to renew their residence permit could be denied.
Methods and Data
This study relies on a combination of content analysis, ethnographic observations, and field interviews to examine the construction “gender equality” during the implementation of the French civic integration program. The program materials that I analyzed included a welcome booklet (Agence Nationale de l’Accueil des Étrangers et des Migrants [ANAEM] 2008), a slide deck used during every civics course, and the contract (OFII 2010) itself. I used inductive coding and initially focused on identifying constructions of the French and targeted migrant groups. I read the texts carefully, noting the use of categories and the naming and contrasting of groups. Based on this reading, I created a list of the most salient themes, which included the framing of “gender equality” as a defining characteristic of the French and not of immigrants. I then re-read the texts and systematically characterized, or coded, phrases and portions of the text according to how they manifested the concept of “gender equality,” in addition to other themes defining the nation and immigrants.
Ethnographic observations of the CAI and field interviews with staff allowed me to examine the construction of “gender equality” on the ground, as frontline workers interacted with program participants. I obtained permission from OFII administrators to observe the components of the CAI that took place at the OFII offices (the welcome session and intake interviews) and at the contracted training centers (the labor market integration interviews and courses) in four different departments in the greater Parisian region. I conducted more than 50 observations during seven months in the period 2010–2011. As with the content analysis, I began my observations attending to how the program represented the French nation and immigrants; the focus on “gender equality” emerged from my data. I met with the staff in advance, and after they consented to being observed, they introduced me to program participants as an American researcher at the beginning of each class or appointment. To capture variation in the presentation of the program materials and interactions between frontline workers and participants, I observed staff working with different participants and instructors teaching the same course to participants from different countries. The classes were not segregated by sex, and because the sex composition was rarely skewed strongly, it did not appear to affect the framing of “gender equality.” During my observations, I carried a notebook in which I recorded as closely as possible the lectures and conversations of the staff and participants and any other observations about the posture, tone, and behavior of people in the room and the environment itself.
I also conducted semi-structured interviews with nine course instructors, nine staff, and seven administrators or managers, asking about their understanding of the program’s mission, their role, and immigrant integration more broadly. This article draws on the interviews with the staff and instructors, which took place in the field during breaks and lasted between 30 minutes and 2 hours. Most of the program staff and instructors I observed were women and first- or second-generation immigrants. My interviewees included nine women with North African origins, four white, European women (three of whom were French), two men with North African origins, one white French man, one man from a French Caribbean overseas department, and one man from West Africa. Due to a program requirement, almost all the instructors held the equivalent of a master’s degree in law. When I obtained their consent, several interviewees requested to remain anonymous. Therefore, I do not provide names or indicate specific countries of origin or the location (department) of the observation or interview in this article.
My identity as a white American woman who speaks French positioned me as both an “outsider” and an “insider” and shaped my data collection and analysis. My outsider status as a non-French person gave me access to more information as my interviewees explained French concepts to me at great length, rather than assuming shared tacit knowledge. As an outsider, I also ran the risk of misinterpreting my data through faulty translation or imposing American frameworks. Although I understood most of the speech I observed, I recorded any words or phrases that were unclear to me and consulted a native French speaker. I guarded against inappropriately applying American understandings by triangulating my findings with those of other scholars working on the French case. As a temporary migrant myself, I was also an insider in this program, which allowed me access to critiques of the French by immigrant participants and frontline workers. My insider status also made me appear less threatening. I was not an agent of the French state and I shared a gender identity with many of my respondents, which facilitated my access to interviews. In the following presentation of my findings, I first outline how “gender equality” was defined through representations of the French nation and immigrants within the program materials. I then explore how these discourses were reinforced, complicated, and challenged as frontline workers interacted with participants during policy implementation.
“Gender Equality”: A Central French Value
The program materials of the CAI framed “gender equality” as a central value of the French Republic. Both the welcome booklet and the contract listed republican values, highlighting “gender equality” and laïcité. The contract defined “gender equality” by describing the equal rights and obligations of men and women, and the welcome booklet had a section dedicated to explaining how “gender equality” is “a fundamental principle of French society,” and outlining shared rights and the articles that support the freedom of choice in marriage. The program texts further defined the concept of “gender equality” by providing detailed descriptions of prescribed and proscribed practices. For instance, the welcome booklet described French gender-equal spousal relations as follows: In the family, the husband and wife are equal and stand together in making important decisions. . . . The woman does not need her husband’s permission to work or to open a bank account. Concerning the children, both parents jointly exercise parental authority and participate in the child’s education. (ANAEM 2008)
The civics course slides also described the nature of an egalitarian relationship by stating that “spouses owe each other mutual respect, fidelity, aide, and support.” These details grounded the abstract value of “gender equality” in everyday life and provided representations of French spousal relations.
The program texts also used gendered practices to illustrate other French values and further construct “gender equality” as an expression of French republicanism. Within the seven slides covering the republican principle of “equality” in the civics course slide deck, four were dedicated to “gender equality,” women’s rights, and the protection of women, and two mentioned gender; for example, the slide on “Equality of Access to Political Rights” described the gender parity law. The slide on “Liberté” included the statement that “women can travel alone, without being accompanied,” and the slide on “Safety” included a statement that “it is illegal to cover one’s face in public by wearing, for example, a burqa or a niqab.” Such examples indicate both the contents and the limits of “gender equality” in France.
Although the official goal of the integration program was to educate migrants about the values that define the French national community, it is possible to discern representations of immigrants within the program discourses. The repetition of the claims that “gender equality” and “laïcité” are important French values suggests the perception that immigrants do not share these values. The examples of prescribed and prohibited practices indicate the specific behaviors that identify migrants as gender unequal. For instance, the program documents’ frequent proscriptions of polygamy, female genital mutilation, and “forced marriage” suggest that these are practices of immigrants. 5 Representations of immigrants were even more evident in the instructors’ attempts to engage participants by tailoring the courses to the groups present, as I describe below.
Framing “Gender Equality” on the Ground
Confirming and Complicating Representations of Immigrants and the French
The instructors and staff articulated many of the program materials’ representations of “gender equality” as a French value and immigrants as patriarchal, but they diverged from the policy texts in the following ways: First, they acknowledged the discrimination immigrant women might face because of their race, culture, and religion. Second, they pushed back against some stereotypical portrayals of immigrant cultures and religious practices. Third, they distinguished among different groups of migrants. Instructors and staff repeated the representations of the French nation as modern, liberal, and secular that appeared in the policy documents, and instructors used examples of specific gendered practices to illustrate the concept of “gender equality” and other French values. For instance, most of the instructors of the civics and “Life in France” (LF) courses explained the principle of individual liberty by stating a version of “women have the freedom to wear miniskirts, travel, and work, even if their husbands do not want them to do so.”
Unlike the program documents, the frontline workers clearly acknowledged the difference between French ideals and life in France, including the persistence of gender inequality and discrimination based on race and religion. All the civics course instructors included discussions of the historical struggle for women’s rights in France, the gender wage gap, and the need to mandate gender parity in the government. One instructor, a white, French woman, put special emphasis on the evolution of women’s rights in France during her civics classes by providing a detailed timeline and declaring that the fight for “gender equality” in France was far from over. The program materials acknowledged racial discrimination by stating it was illegal and by providing contact information to report discrimination. The frontline workers regularly went farther in acknowledging the reality of discrimination and the colonial history behind immigrants’ reception in France. For instance, a male staff member from an overseas department counseled a Moroccan woman who wore a hijab during her labor market integration interview to “stay true to herself” and weather the storm of discrimination she would likely face. While showing the civics course slides that mentioned France’s “vast colonial empire in Africa and Asia” and the historical and continuing contributions of “foreigners” and colonial subjects, two of the North African women instructors emphasized the close ties that postcolonial immigrants had with France, and all of the North African women instructors regularly emphasized the important “cultural richness” that immigrants brought to France. One North African instructor also emphasized the voracious nature of France’s colonial empire when she taught about the French overseas departments in the civics course. This attention to discrimination and colonial history fits with an inclusionary intersectionality that recognizes the multiple forms of inequality that shape immigrant women’s lives.
The staff and instructors employed an exclusionary intersectionality to define “gender equality” when they consistently used specific examples of prescribed or proscribed practices that represented immigrant women as subject to patriarchal oppression, similar to the program materials. For instance, the instructors’ frequent insistence that women could work or travel “no matter what their husbands say” during civics and LF courses suggested that immigrant women were under the control of their husbands. A North African instructor also regularly used the practice of “women drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette in a café” in her civics courses as an example of something that was “shocking in some countries” but not in France, thereby characterizing immigrants’ cultures of origin as discouraging women’s participation in public life. Instructors of civics and LF courses repeated proscribed practices such as genital cutting or the isolation of women, and often stated that these practices occur in “some countries,” thus discursively associating these practices with immigrants.
In many of the courses I observed, instructors and participants pushed back against these representations and stated that proscribed practices were not present in or germane to their countries or cultures of origin. In one civics class, I observed a man from Côte d’Ivoire argue to a North African woman instructor that genital cutting was not practiced in his country, while she insisted that it was practiced “in the north.” Interestingly, she ended the argument by stating that she was “not trying to stigmatize people” and that “just because it exists in certain countries doesn’t mean that everyone who comes from that country is okay with it.” In another civics class, a North African woman instructor was emphasizing the illegality of genital cutting in France when an older Algerian woman participant interrupted her, exclaiming that this wasn’t something Algerians traditionally did. The instructor agreed and suggested that when genital cutting occurred in Algeria, it was the result of recent religious extremism.
Similarly, in an LF class, several participants from North Africa objected during a discussion of the legal definition of marriage in France, arguing that the practice of polygamy was very rare in their countries. The instructor, who was from the same region, agreed with them. She added, The rules in the Quran make it nearly impossible. If a man has multiple wives, he must treat each wife exactly the same and give them the same money, attention. . . . No man can do this.
In another example, a North African woman instructor informed her civics class that in Tunisia, [Women] have been able to do many things for a long time; women do not have to cover their heads, there are women lawyers and doctors, we were more advanced than France in some ways.
In the first example, the instructor insists that a practice is present in a participant’s country of origin, but then states that immigrants cannot be stereotyped based on their country of origin. In the three following examples, the course participants and/or instructors recognized the representations of immigrants that were implied by the descriptions of French laws and contradicted those stereotypes with firsthand knowledge. In doing so, they challenged the idea that immigrants’ cultures and Islam are the causes of gender inequality for immigrant women. Thus, these instructors, along with the participants, were employing an inclusionary intersectionality as they interacted to define “gender equality.”
Distinguishing Groups of Immigrants
Although the integration program documents presented “immigrants” as a monolithic category, the frontline workers regularly distinguished between the groups that participated in the program. These distinctions were evident in interactions such as those described above and in instructors’ attempts to make the material relevant to different participants by referencing their countries of origin. For example, a white, European woman instructor of a civics class referenced a recent scandal in Algeria in her discussion of the right to abortion in France. Distinct representations of immigrant groups are apparent in the questions that instructors directed to specific participants. Two of the most salient groups in the program discourses and in public discussions of immigration during the time of my observations were North Africans, who constituted the largest group in the program: 17 percent of program participants were from Algeria, 13 percent from Morocco, and 7 percent from Tunisia. Sub-Saharan Africans constituted 16 percent of the participants, with the largest groups coming from Mali (4 percent) and Senegal (3 percent) (OFII 2012).
Representations of North Africans in the frontline workers’ discourses fit most closely with the images of immigrant women that appeared in the program legislation, emphasizing a gendered oppression linked to a patriarchal culture or to Islam. A common trope expressed by staff and instructors was that of a Muslim woman who was trapped at home by patriarchal cultural and religious norms. In a typical example of this narrative, a North African woman instructor recounted to a civics class, I once had a participant in this class who had been in France for 15 years and had never seen the Eiffel Tower. Never, in 15 years. I asked her, “But, Madame, surely you could have taken the bus yourself? It is not that far and it is important to see.” She told me that her children had seen it during school fieldtrips, but that she had never gone. This is impossible, you live in France now, you must get out, not just stay home and make couscous.
The instructor signaled that the woman in her story is also from North Africa by mentioning the traditional dish of couscous and presented her as isolated at home in a way that is incompatible with life in France, where women “get out” and visit important public spaces.
All the instructors addressed the bans on head- and face-covering attire in their classes. The public debates around these bans have explicitly focused on North African Muslim women. Questions about when and where it is permissible to wear a headscarf in France were, however, never directed at North African women in the classes. In fact, the instructors of both civics and LF classes usually went to great lengths to emphasize that Muslims were not being singled out by France’s laws against proselytizing symbols of religion in public institutions. Most instructors would list multiple kinds of prohibited religious symbols, so that the headscarf appeared to be one among many. Exceptionally, two of the women instructors from North Africa would regularly make the point that both orthodox Jews and Muslims from sub-Saharan Africa had found ways to cover their heads in accordance with their religious beliefs that did not violate the French ban on proselytizing symbols. This point specifically highlighted North African women as practicing their religion in a way that conflicted with French values.
The most common representations of sub-Saharan Africans in the program discourses emphasized polygamy and genital cutting as oppressive practices. Women instructors—more so than the few male instructors—often went to great lengths to condemn the practice of genital cutting by telling emotional stories of girls who had suffered from the procedure and the legal fines that their parents had incurred in France. Several of the North African instructors represented these practices as linked to violent and traditional cultures that were less evolved than French culture, claiming that those who practice genital cutting were barbaric and “in the stone age.” Despite the many sub-Saharan African participants who were practicing Muslims, Islam did not figure into the stereotypes of this group in the program. The representations of sub-Saharan Africans were often relayed via targeted questioning in civics classes, as instructors consistently directed questions about genital cutting and polygamy, such as “Sir, how many wives are you allowed to have in France?” to sub-Saharan African men. Similar questions were rarely, if ever, directed at sub-Saharan African women. The practice of more regularly questioning immigrant men than women about gendered practices suggests that the instructors believed men were the aggressors who needed to be confronted.
“Saving” Immigrant Women
Like the instructor quoted at the beginning of this article, most of the frontline workers expressed a strong commitment to helping immigrant women by educating them about their rights and the resources available to combat domestic violence. In the following example, a North African instructor made it clear that she believed the Bangladeshi women following the civics class through the aid of a translator were subjugated and that they would be “saved” through this type of education. Gesturing at the women, she stated, Some people might complain that we are talking too much about women’s rights, but this is why we have these days, to explain that [men’s] rights and women’s rights are the same. But ladies, if you don’t speak French, it is not possible for you to take advantage of your rights. The day that they learn to speak French, these women will revolt.
Her statement framed immigrant women as victims who could gain agency by learning French and taking advantage of the rights they were accorded by French law. By referencing women’s and men’s rights, the instructor indicated that the women would revolt against immigrant men or their communities.
The civics and LF course contents and the format of the intake interview also reflected the representation of immigrant women as potential victims of immigrant men or their communities. The staff spoke to women alone, separated from a male partner or companion, for at least part of the intake interview and asked whether they wanted to report issues of domestic abuse or familial problems. I did not observe any participants indicate that they were experiencing abuse. Several of the staff—two white French women, and two North African women—did share stories of immigrant women whom they had accompanied through the processes of finding alternate housing and filing criminal complaints. I also observed a North African woman staff member asking women of different backgrounds whether their husbands would allow them to work during their labor market integration interviews. As part of the civics and LF course discussions on the legal protections for women in France (specifically, protection from physical and emotional abuse, marital rape, and divorce by repudiation), instructors provided a hotline to call for help, and I observed many of the women participants recording the number. In this case, women were allowed agency in deciding whether and when to draw upon these resources.
This contrasts with instances where staff denied women’s autonomy. Perceptions of immigrant women sometimes informed how the staff exercised discretion in deciding what requirements to include in a participant’s contract. For example, after an intake interview with an Algerian woman wearing a headscarf, a white male staff member explained that he included language courses as an obligatory component in her contract even though she met the language proficiency requirements because this will give her an opportunity to get out of the house and meet people. Did you see her husband, [who had escorted her]? The beard, the cap. . . . It seemed like she might want an excuse to get out a little.
This staff member appeared to interpret the participant as a victim suffering from isolation based on the religious signifiers of her male companion, and ended up reproducing that representation by imposing assistance in a way that denied her agency—she would be required to complete the language courses whether or not she was actually isolated and seeking “an excuse to get out.”
Discussion
The preceding examples indicate important variations in the framing of “gender equality” in policy texts and implementation. With some exceptions, such as the acknowledgement of racial discrimination in France, the policy materials largely applied an exclusionary intersectionality to define “gender equality” as a French value and portray immigrants as having traditional, patriarchal, and even violent gender relations. These discourses reflect the combination of French feminists’ framing of “gender equality” as a universal, republican value and colonial, racist stereotypes of Muslims and “non-Europeans” more broadly. The discourses also thereby illustrate a gendered process of racialization, as “gender equality” functions as a facet of race that excludes migrants from belonging in the French nation. However, policy documents are only one product of the policy-making process, and these documents were critiqued by the HCI (2009) for containing too little discussion of French values as ideals that may be imperfectly realized by the French. As frontline workers implemented this policy, they framed “gender equality” in different ways and articulated distinct sets of stereotypes that demonstrate group-specific processes of gendered racialization.
In interacting with program participants, the frontline workers of the CAI deployed both exclusionary and inclusionary forms of intersectionality. Program staff and instructors presented immigrant women participants as potential victims and immigrant men as perpetrators of oppression and reinforced this through their stated dedication to educating and assisting immigrant women. While these representations were also imbued with social class—instructors had higher levels of education and socioeconomic status than most of the program participants, and their representations of immigrants generally corresponded with a lower social class—instructors did not openly address economic inequality as a possible source of immigrant women’s oppression. Instead, their discourses targeted immigrant religions and communities as the sources of gender inequality, thereby exhibiting an exclusionary intersectionality. In contrast, frontline workers applied an inclusionary intersectionality when they went farther than the program materials to acknowledge the intersecting inequalities that immigrant women face in France, including discrimination based on race and religion. In doing so, these program staff stretched the definition of “gender equality” beyond equal rights for men and women and incorporated other social structures that influenced access to those equal rights. Instructors and staff with immigrant backgrounds were more likely than the few white, European frontline workers to use their own experiences to challenge an ideal image of the French and some of the program’s implicit representations of immigrant cultures or religions.
Frontline workers with immigrant backgrounds were also more likely to articulate stereotypes of specific groups in their efforts to engage participants. The specific stereotypes assigned to North African and sub-Saharan African immigrants echo colonial representations of these same groups. French colonial discourses represented Islam as incompatible with French nationality and as a tyrannical religion that subjugated women (Scott 2007). French feminists in the early twentieth century argued that their “soeurs musulmanes” (Muslim sisters) in Algeria were too often passive victims of their patriarchal cultures and traditional families and that they would benefit from learning about their rights under French law (Kimble 2006). French colonial discourses did not focus on the form of Islam practiced in West Africa as a threat to governance or women (Motadel 2012). Like the emphasis on genital cutting and polygamy articulated within the CAI, colonial representations of sub-Saharan Africans focused on culture and presented them as “naturally violent” and barbaric (see, e.g., Reid 2007). Thus, while the construction of “gender equality” figures in the racialization—or the essentializing and exclusion—of both North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans in the program discourses, this concept is articulated with different stereotypes of religion and culture for the two groups.
Conclusions
The framing of “gender equality” by women of immigrant origin who were implementing the CAI cannot be categorized neatly as either inclusionary or exclusionary. In many ways, the ambivalences and tensions in their discourses reflect those of the French feminists and immigrant women’s organizations whose claims were co-opted by conservative politicians in the creation of the CAI. 6 Just as with those activists, frontline workers’ discursive framing of “gender equality” may be related to their own claims of belonging in a context defined by dominant interpretations of French republicanism. Scholars such as Cécile Laborde (2008) have suggested that racialized populations in France could use a form of “critical republicanism” and mobilize the concept of universalism to assert their equality and belonging in France, no matter their racial or religious identities. Indeed, Mazouz (2017) identified racialized populations who proclaimed their adherence to republicanism in her ethnography of French naturalization and anti-discrimination policies, and Beaman (2017) documented how upwardly mobile, second-generation North African immigrants, whose Frenchness was regularly questioned because of their race, emphasized their belief in republican values as proof of their national membership. In some cases, Muslims in France have even called upon republican values to argue for greater recognition of difference (Fredette 2014), in contrast to the difference-blind interpretation of universalism that has historically particularized and marginalized feminist and anti-racist claims. By participating in the construction of “gender equality” as a French, republican value, while also acknowledging the failure of the French to fully achieve this ideal, these frontline workers of immigrant origin could claim their membership in France and position themselves as more French than the French.
By documenting the processes of framing and claiming “gender equality” in the policy materials and implementation of the French civic integration program, this study furthers understanding of the contingent, social processes of defining “gender equality,” which may discursively include or exclude immigrants from belonging. The participation of immigrant women did not uniformly influence policy discourses or goals to be more inclusionary. To better understand how the discourses and strategies of the frontline workers are shaped by their own racial, gender, and class identities, future research could conduct in-depth interviews addressing these workers’ histories of immigration and engagement with “gender equality” before participating in the implementation of the civic integration program. However, the findings of this study do suggest some possible ways to make immigrant integration programs more inclusive. To break away from a limiting, essentialized binary, policy makers should follow the example of frontline workers to both emphasize the ongoing struggle for gender equality in France—an issue that includes, but is not limited to, women of immigrant origin—and challenge stereotypical representations of immigrants, by highlighting feminist movements within immigrants’ countries of origins, for example. An inclusive, feminist policy of immigrant integration would also explicitly articulate and emphasize the intersecting structures of inequality that shape immigrant women’s lives in France and provide access to educational and economic resources to address these systems simultaneously.
Footnotes
Author’s Note:
The author would like to thank the Gender & Society editors and the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and guidance in the revision process, and the members of her feminist writing group, including Ann Shola Orloff, Savina Balasubramanian, Nisa Göksel, Marie Laperrière, Jane Pryma, and Talia Shiff, for their encouragement and feedback on previous versions of this article. This research was funded through a doctoral exchange fellowship from Sciences Po and grants and fellowships from the Graduate School and Sociology Department at Northwestern University.
Notes
Elizabeth Onasch is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. Her research focuses on the intersections of immigration, race, gender, and nation, and investigates racialization as a boundary-drawing process from a comparative, critical race perspective.