The_Nation_October_9_2017

O

n the fast train from Brussels to

Paris a few years ago, I met a

young woman from the Philip-

pines who was taking a weekend

holiday from her job in Belgium

to visit France for the first time. As the

train entered the outskirts of Paris, she

turned to me and said in surprise, “I

didn’t realize the French were a black

people.” It was my turn to be surprised,

until I looked out the window and saw

that we were in the banlieues, the segre-

gated neighborhoods consisting largely

of West and North African “immi-

grants” that ring the city. I put “immi-

grants” in scare quotes because many of

these people are long-term residents of

France; indeed, many of them are citi-

zens. The word is nonetheless regularly

used in France to distinguish them from

the Français de souche—the legitimate

(white) members of the nation.

“Immigrant” has become a kind of

epithet these days, and not only in France.

Everywhere in Europe, and also in the

United States, immigrants are blamed

for all manner of problems: crime, un-

employment, disease, the deterioration of

public services, the exhaustion of public

funds, threats to liberal culture and mores.

Right-wing populist politicians in nearly

every country of the Western Hemisphere

appeal to voters with plans to cleanse the

national body of these impure invaders,

to expel them, to build walls to keep them

Joan W. Scott is the author of The Politics

of the Veil. Her new book is Sex and

Secularism.

THE CULTURE VEIL

by JOAN W. SCOTT

GETTY IMAGES / PETER MACDIARMID

Two women protesting against anti-veil policies outside the French Embassy in London.

The real crisis of European multiculturalism

Books & the Arts.