Immigration, Islam, and the Politics of Belonging in France. Elaine R. Thomas
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Contract models because, when used in arguments about contemporary issues, they often have ultimately different implications. For instance, Walzer (1983) uses the state-centered variant to defend guest workers’ entitlement to citizenship, arguing: “Men and women are either subject to the state’s authority, or they are not; and if they are subject, they must be given a say, and ultimately an equal say, in what the authority does” (61). While working “in the local economy” is one of the conditions Walzer mentions as giving rise to a right to citizenship in the sense of enjoying equal political rights, his argument is not, as one might expect, that guest workers are entitled to rights because they contribute to the national economy. Instead, he emphasizes that guest workers are subject to national law. That explains why, in his view, working in the local economy gives rise to rights to citizenship only where the workers concerned also live on a given (democratic) state’s territory, so that they are “subject to local law” (60).
If Walzer had based his argument for guest workers receiving citizenship on the society-centered version of the Monetized Contract model instead, an argument that also readily suggests itself in this case, his claims would then have become much less tenable, as the above discussion of the limitations of the society-centered version of the Monetized Contract model suggests.
Distinguishing Between the Culture and Belief Models
One may wonder whether the values and principles stressed by the Belief model are really distinct from culture and thus whether the Belief and Culture models truly differ. Are shared values and principles not cultural products? And are they not in most, if not all, cases culturally specific? Answering these profound ethical and philosophical question is unfortunately beyond the scope of this study.
However, whether or not values and political principles are culturally based, or can even be shown to be entirely culturally specific, the Culture and Belief conceptions of political membership are still analytically distinct ideas. As defined in this study, the Culture conception of citizenship grounds commonality in the kinds of shared language, manners, customs, and habits typically associated with primary socialization. The Belief model focuses more narrowly on political culture, values, and identification.
Where one might logically expect the Belief and Culture models to come into the most direct conflict would thus be in the case of migrants raised in a non-European cultural milieu who nonetheless come to identify politically with a European state or the values for which it claims to stand. The case of native non-European soldiers who fought on the French side during the Algerian War (the harkis) is an excellent example in this regard. The Belief and Culture conceptions of being French had notably different implications for harkis’ treatment after the war; in practical policy terms, the two models were clearly opposed.
The harkis had Belief as well as state-centered Contract claims to French political membership that were stressed throughout the war, but eclipsed in practice by more Culture and Descent-based understandings of political membership in the war’s immediate aftermath. During the conflict in Algeria, not only the harkis’ military service but also their love of and political identification with France were frequently emphasized. Indeed, their numbers were taken to demonstrate the justice of the French cause, showing that not only European settlers in Algeria but also significant numbers of native Muslims had become “French” and wished to remain so. Those who demonstrated their love and loyalty by fighting on France’s side were promised faithful French support; their Contract- and Belief-based claims to political membership were thus validated and encouraged. When the military conflict ended, however, far more refugees than anticipated sought immediate departure to France, overwhelming French authorities and officials. Perhaps seeking to thin the numbers, the director of France’s Military Cabinet ordered the military to try to prevent resettlement of “French Muslims” in the metropole (Perville 1991: 121), even though the former harkis were in imminent danger in Algeria (Hamoumou 1990: 25–45, 1991: 112–14; Meliani 1993; Roux 1991).
The idea that those who fought for the French military, and supposedly demonstrated their love of and identification with France by doing so, showed themselves to have become as indelibly “French” as the settlers of European origin in Algeria would logically have entailed putting the harkis on the same boats “back” to France as the European refugees. Both the state-centered Contract and the Belief models of political membership favored that conclusion and pointed to such a commitment, above and beyond more general human rights claims. However, the policy implications of the Contract and Belief models were directly at odds with those of the Culture and Descent models. Ideas of political membership based on cultural affinity or ancestral ties, albeit with a larger European family, unfortunately came more decisively to the fore once Algeria’s independence was conceded. An immediate practical consequence was that French military personnel were ordered to discriminate ethnically between Muslim and other “French” refugees seeking passage to France.7
For years Contract and Belief ideas of political membership had contributed to legitimizing France’s political and territorial claims in Algeria and in colonies elsewhere. But after Algeria’s independence was granted and the longer process of what came to be understood as “decolonization” was thereby all but concluded, such broader Belief and Contract visions of political membership quickly lost much of their political cachet.8 The harkis’ treatment after the Algerian War illustrates how the Culture and Belief models can in practice have starkly contrasting entailments for policy, regardless whether the values and principles grounding Belief-based claims to political membership are truly universal or culturally relative. In this regard, the Culture and Belief conceptions of political membership are distinct from one another, just as they are analytically distinct from each of the other models of political membership.
Conclusion
Citizenship is a political form of membership, and we think about it in the same ways that we think about other memberships with which we are familiar. But there are several different kinds of memberships, and what we tend to talk about when we talk about belonging depends largely on what kind of membership we have in mind. With respect to most sorts of groups, this is not particularly problematic. We ordinarily have little occasion to contemplate the fact that our memberships in different sorts of groups are different in kind.
In the case of political membership, however, it is possible to think of belonging as modeled on each of the types of membership with which we are familiar in other spheres. Political membership may be understood and discussed as an unchangeable characteristic determined by descent, and thus as a particular case of No Exit membership. As with other memberships of that type, it figures as something one simply “is.” Or it may be discussed as something one “becomes,” a matter of acquiring and becoming defined in terms of a particular culture, and thus as a type of Change membership. At other times, it is discussed as if it were a Leave membership, a political membership defined in terms of subjective identification with a particular group and a project associated with it. It can also, however, be imagined as a form of Quit membership, a status conferring rights achieved on the basis of participation in or fulfillment of certain duties. In that case, the necessary condition for membership is then not what one is but what one does. Finally, citizenship may be discussed as if it were a form of Cancel membership, in which membership rights are granted to those who “pay their dues” through taxes, work, or economic investment. Citizenship, in that view, is defined neither by what one is nor by what one does but by what one contributes. One of the reasons discussions of political membership are often confused is that we are rarely altogether consistent in this regard. When we talk about belonging to a polity or political community, we wind up talking about disparate things: descent, cultural attachments, beliefs, civic duties and participation, and taxes and benefits. Table 2.3 summarizes the key features of our five main conceptions of political membership, and their relationship to our ways of understanding membership more generally.
One of the reasons for the intractability and confusion that surround current debates about the meaning, appropriate criteria, and implications of political forms of membership is that we do not even realize that these five very different models are in play. Our inconsistencies may well be an