There are two thrusts to French immigration policy: restricting new arrivals and, simultaneously, facilitating access to French nationality. In the recent period, the public authorities have focused closely on naturalization, and this has led to a significant increase in number of persons naturalized French, and to the development of a solemn ceremony for conferring on them the certificate officializing their new status. On the basis of a three-year study conducted in the Paris region, we show that naturalization may be considered as a rite of passage that transforms the foreigner into a citizen after a long selection test, whose positive outcome is then celebrated by an integration ceremony. Above all, it may be considered as a rite of institution that brings about a dual separation: among immigrants who are candidates for citizenship, the test distinguishes those deemed worthy of joining the national community, but the ceremony also differentiates within the nation those who came from elsewhere. The ambiguity of naturalization thus inheres in the fact that at the moment it produces sameness, it introduces otherness, as is brought to light by a comparison of the celebrations observed in the state administration of the prefecture with those observed in municipalities. Nevertheless, the ritual is a performative act that brings into existence what it utters and ties the national community together through the promise of a genuine contract.

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La France a-t-elle peur de ses autres ? En revenant sur les discours et les pratiques qui se formalisent depuis une quinzaine d’années, Sarah Mazouz interroge les « politiques françaises de l’altérité ». À partir d’une double enquête ethnographique conduite dans les dispositifs de lutte contre les discriminations raciales et dans les bureaux de naturalisation d’une grande ville de la région parisienne, elle montre comment s’articulent dans l’espace social les questions de l’immigration, de la nation et de la racialisation. En faisant porter l’examen de manière originale sur ces deux politiques, elle interroge les processus d’inclusion et d’exclusion à l’intérieur même du groupe national (via l’examen de la lutte contre les discriminations raciales) et à l’extérieur, entre le national et étranger (via l’étude des pratiques de naturalisation). Ce faisant, elle s’attache à saisir la relation paradoxale qui lie la République à ses autres et les logiques plurielles qui concourent à la production de l’ordre national.

Drawing on observations and on interviews conducted in a préfecture and in a municipalité of the Paris periphery, this article analyzes how republican universalism operates as a “particularizing” tool that enacts Whiteness. Starting from the paradoxical situation in which White state officials are reluctant to engage with the notion of racial discrimination when they are keen to ascribe racial categories to people of color, I argue that race blindness is in fact a form of White blindness to racialization. People of color who subscribe to the ideology of colorblindness tend to adopt a position whereby their loyalty toward the requirement of race blindness is supposed to protect them from suspicions raised by the racialized identity they are assigned to. But in practice, this stance internalizes the way they are viewed by Whites. The article concludes by discussing the link between White race blindness and the failure of republican policies against racial discrimination.

Drawing on ethnographical observations made in the Naturalization Office of a prefecture of the Paris region, and on interviews carried out with bureaucrats and French citizens who have been naturalized, this article examines both the institutional process of granting citizenship as well as its impact on subjectivities. It investigates the assumptions and broad judgments that underlie the granting of French citizenship to see how norms and values linked to this procedure circulate between bureaucrats and applicants. It focuses on the idea of “deservingness,” linked to the act of being granted French citizenship, to determine how bureaucrats from the Naturalization Office and French naturalized citizens differently appropriate this notion. By addressing the articulated difference between bureaucratic practice and lived experience, this article aims to highlight the political, moral, and ethical dimensions at stake in the procedure of making foreigners into French citizens.