• 1 About racial microaggressions and their clinical consequences: Sue et al. 2007.
• 2 They mostly generate mental health inequalities: see the introduction of the issue.

1“The feeling of being discriminated against, writes Pierre Rosanvallon, does not exist in societies based on an established hierarchy of conditions. The peasant in the Middle Ages could lament his sad fate and occasionally revolt but had essentially come to terms with his inferior position” (Rosanvallon 2021: 98). The idea of discrimination emerges, de facto, with the rise of the idea of a “society of equals”, in which the state and its institutions determine to a large extent the process for equalizing conditions. Ethnic and racial discrimination, which is illegal and goes against the official understanding of equal opportunity, contradicts the democratic principles and legal standards of societies such as France. In addition to discrimination in the strict sense of the word, a wide range of actions not necessarily punished by the law might also have implications. These include racist microaggressions1 and behaviors that stigmatize groups or individuals based on criteria connected with race or origin. These actions and their consequences may go unnoticed by those who are not their victims, and remain partly invisible (Essed 1991). However, studies tend to show that they have massive repercussions on the daily existence,2 life trajectories and existential opportunities of members of ethnic and racial minorities. As such, they contradict the idea of a “society of equals” in which opportunities do not depend on a person’s perceived origin.

• 3 For an overview of these approaches, see for example Rosanvallon 2021.
• 4 It is also possible to cite the survey TeO, which on the basis of structured questionnaires inquire (...)

5Discrimination can be examined using different methods ranging from econometric analyses to situation tests, including the direct observation of practices and self-reporting, which is to ask people to describe the experiences they might have had3 using semi-structured interviews, for example. This last approach was adopted in several studies conducted –some of which are recent when it comes to France– such as those by Philomena Essed, Michèle Lamont, or François Dubet.4

• 5 If an individual is objectively discriminated against, but this discrimination goes unnoticed by th (...)

6They focus on all the events throughout the existence of an individual that can be considered by this individual as a form of unfair and illegitimate treatment received as a member of a social category in a broad sense, and more specifically an ethnoracial category (our definition). The very idea of experience, in its usual meaning and in the social sciences, combines two dimensions of existence and the events that fill it: an objective dimension (the facts as they actually occurred) and a subjective dimension (the way these facts were felt, lived, and interpreted by the individuals who went through them) leaving an imprint or a mark on them, and were remembered by them (Zeitler and Barbier 2012, Dewey 1938-1959, Dubet 1994). Thus, by definition, an experience is analyzed by grasping its subjective and temporal dimension, by seeking to understand the way an individual was and continues to be affected, the way it leaves an imprint on the individual’s memory, and how it is interpreted based on all the different facts, events, and experiences that resonate with it from the individual’s point of view, and contribute to give it meaning.5 This is why Philomena Essed points out that an experience of racism cannot be distinguished from the memory that individuals have of it (Essed 1991).

• 6 Except if the respondent mentioned it spontaneously. As a relatively scholarly word, it is not alwa (...)
• 7 In the United States, Elijah Anderson collects accounts of “nigger moment” experiences: the unexpec (...)

7The preferred method is the semi-structured and biographical interview, which is used to gather dense accounts recorded over a long period of time, but nevertheless does not avoid the pitfalls of any study of experience. A frequently mentioned risk in studies on discrimination is “over-declaration” of experiences more or less exaggerated or even fantasized. It refers, more particularly, to the supposed propensity of members of stigmatized minorities to misinterpret failures or ambiguous experiences as discriminatory. In our case, however, the sociology of the experience of discrimination, as well as the results of our survey, reveal the opposite phenomenon in the context of the interviews: overall, individuals avoided interpreting as a discrimination an ambiguous or even potentially and sometimes clearly discriminatory experience. In spite of this, could the interviewer who conducts the interview encourage the respondents to interpret certain experiences as discriminatory or exaggerate their importance by insisting on them? In the survey we conducted (see below), the interview strategy was designed to avoid framing effects: the interview concerned individuals’ relationship with their neighborhood, and the interviewers were instructed to never directly introduce the topic of discrimination –they carefully avoided saying the word6– but addressed related topics such as employment and the search for a job or housing. We must add that in most cases, the experiences reported were so detailed, circumstantiated, and explicit that if they were to be radically called into question, it would imply that the respondents had massively fabricated them.7

• 8 On the experience of “multiple hostile attitudes: jokes, mockery, posturing, mimicry, provocation, (...)
• 9 See the introduction to the section on the relatively significant tradition of quantitative studies (...)

10While several sociological studies in the United States have examined the processes of stigmatization from the victims’ point of view (Pescosolido and Martin 2015), no firm tradition has yet been established for the qualitative study through semi-structured interviews of the experience of ethnic and racial discrimination in the full sense of the word, in its subjective and discursive dimensions. The book Getting Respect published in 2016 by Michèle Lamont and her colleagues (2016), which focuses on the United States, Brazil, and Israel, is a major contribution to this field of research. The study based on nearly 450 semi-structured interviews focuses on the experience of discrimination in the strict sense –an individual is denied access to resources or opportunities– and the experiences of ethnoracial stigmatization, which represent “assaults on worth”. Based on an interview survey conducted in the United States and the Netherlands, Philomena Essed documented the consequences of these assaults on worth: “the accumulation of these incidents causes social, economic, and emotional trauma, and eventually becomes a burden that cannot be shed” (Essed 2005: 106). The current condemnation of overt racist acts may encourage these forms of “subtle racism”.8 However, this does not prevent overt acts of racism or violence (Jounin 2015: 7, Bonilla-Silva 2009), which are less frequent but leave a painful memory on individuals or cause an existential trauma.9

• 10 This refers to all the experiences or incidents mentioned, and not to the proportion of respondents (...)

12In the United States, as in the other national contexts studied by Michèle Lamont and her colleagues, one of the main results found is that experiences of stigmatization appear to be very frequent compared to experiences of discrimination in the strict sense of the term. “Attacks on worth” account for 81% of all the experiences mentioned in the interviews, as opposed to 32% that relate to discrimination10 (96% of the Black Americans mentioned at least one experience of discrimination or stigmatization).

• 11 Although we do not have a control sample or a substantial corpus of members of the ethnoracial majo (...)
• 12 For a characterization of the different neighborhoods: Talpin et al. 2021: 356-369, and 29-30 for a (...)
• 13 To this was added the participant observation of eleven anti-discrimination organizations.

14The results of the Eodipar survey, from which we partially draw here, are consistent with this research (Talpin et al. 2021). Experiences of discrimination and of ethnoracial, religious, and territorial stigmatization were analyzed by conducting 245 biographical interviews with a diverse sample of respondents who were for the most part11 members of ethnoracial minorities, living in six working-class neighborhoods in France (N=157), and three working-class neighborhoods in England, Canada (in Montreal) and the United States (N=88)12 between 2014 and 2018. The interviews in this case were biographical in the sense that the respondents were led to talk about their personal and even their family trajectory, their long-term experience with employment, their education, etc. Although the corpus was not representative in the statistical sense of the term, it aimed to represent diverse profiles –in terms of age, gender, migration history (first, second generation, etc.), length of time in the neighborhood, social and professional trajectories (descending or ascending, etc.), and professional status (employed, vulnerable profession, student, unemployed, etc.). It also represents a diversity of local contexts, particularly in terms of the town’s political majority (conservative or liberal), the number of non-profits, the size of the neighborhood, etc. A small proportion of the respondents were White people (who perceived themselves and were perceived as such). However, the study did not include members of ethnoracial minorities living outside working-class neighborhoods and does not allow us to know precisely which results are specific or not to people living in these neighborhoods (even if other studies provide certain indications).13

• 14 The consequences of the fact that none of them belonged to the working class nor were they likely t (...)

15The interviews were conducted face-to-face by the seven authors of the book (each on one or more sites), at the respondent’s home or in a community hall (room made available by a social or cultural non-profit, etc.). Depending on their profile, the interviewers were not all perceived as members of the ethnoracial majority,14 but we did not find that this made a difference in the comments collected. Given the often-painful nature of discriminatory experiences, which makes it hard for respondents to speak about them, it seemed relevant from a methodological as well as an ethical perspective for interviewers to adopt a caring and empathetic attitude. Respondents ultimately felt free to report hurtful and sometimes intimate experiences, which their relatives sometimes ignored, to unknown interviewers with whom they did not necessarily have spontaneous social affinities.

• 15 Along with Raymond Boudon, we could consider this a “psychology of convention” (and perhaps redefin (...)

16To determine whether experiences of institutional discrimination in connection with public institutions contribute to shaping a person’s relationship with the state and citizenship, the survey first documented the feelings of inequity or of general unfairness of the state or social order caused by institutional discrimination in connection with state action and compared it with other forms of discrimination and stigmatization. It also gathered the comments of respondents who explained how their experience of discriminatory treatment by public institutions had changed their perception of the law or of their status as citizens. Although the cause-and-effect relationships in this particular case are assumed by the respondents themselves, they nonetheless appear highly probable and congruent with other research findings. The analysis is also based on the observation in the comments collected of co-occurrences between certain themes or interpretations, such as when an ethnoracial identifier such as “us, North-Africans” is mentioned in a specific or unique way with respect to a discriminatory experience (or a certain type of experience).15

• 16 To limit the coder’s margin of subjective interpretation, the codes often refer to the formulations (...)

18The interviews were coded using text analysis software, based on a single standardized grid defined collectively (for example, in each interview, the “Identification” code for “us, Muslims” was associated with each relevant element of discourse. The precision and the large number of codes combined with a relatively literal coding of the interviews limited the margin of subjective interpretation of discourses).16

• 17 An euphemism for ethno-racial discrimination.

19The respondents were very often reluctant to talk about their experiences of discrimination or minimized them, as did Leïla, a 33-year-old French citizen of Algerian parents working as an insurance administrator and living in the Mistral neighborhood of Grenoble. After earning a two-year degree, she wondered why she could not find a job, unlike her classmates. After raising the hypothesis of racism, she finally concluded that her training was not sufficiently specialized. When the interviewer brought her back to the theme of racism, she explained that she “doesn’t really like to say”, doesn’t want to “be a victim” or to be accused of saying that “it’s always that”. Furthermore, she doesn’t want to have “a fatalistic mindset” or “fall into the thing where ‘well, I’m rebeu [Arab]’”. But she explains that she asked herself “questions that others don’t ask themselves”: is her North African first name a liability? Should she send resumes without a photo? Although she avoided talking about it “outside” for fear of being accused of blowing things up, she had talked about it with her parents who, “even less fatalistic than her”, told her that “it’s not that at all, maybe you did something [wrong] in your cover letter”. After further training, she found a job in a bank. When asked by the interviewer if she had faced any problems, she reported that the only employees in her branch who had not been promoted were the “Blacks and Rebeus”. A non-racialized colleague told her that the director of the agency applied the principle of “national preference”.17 Leïla passed over these events quite quickly to talk instead about her future and the decision she made as a result to go into teaching. When the interviewer came back to this experience towards the end of the interview, he found out that the branch employees, racialized or not, had noticed and condemned the director’s policy of “national preference” and that a staff representative was considering legal action, but that Leïla, believing that this procedure had little chance of succeeding, did not wish to pursue the issue.

• 18 Close to eight out of ten respondents reported at least one direct personal experience.

20Nevertheless, almost all respondents (93%) mentioned at least one experience of discrimination or stigmatization (most often ethnoracial, and to a lesser extent territorial) during the interview (in some cases experienced indirectly or by a relative).18 Respondents in France, England, Canada, and the United States have reported experiences of discrimination or stigmatization in comparable proportions.

• 19 Half of the respondents mentioned an emotional trauma expressed by crying, sadness, or depression ( (...)
• 20 One third of the respondents downplayed the discriminatory experience: “That’s life. That’s how it (...)
• 21 The same proportion was observed in foreign countries.
• 22 Related to the Muslim faith.
• 23 The different grounds for discrimination were reported based on the words used by the respondents t (...)

21The results confirm the extent (the strength and frequency) of the psychological damage that can be caused by experiences of discrimination and stigmatization, whether these are experiences that represent a trauma19 for the respondents, leave a lasting mark on them, and sometimes lead them to change their life trajectory, or are a repetition of experiences that they tend to downplay but20 that end up affecting them deeply. In the interviews conducted in other countries, we met respondents who said that they had left France precisely because of their experience of racism or discrimination (and who considered their new environment much more favorable from this point of view, though not ideal). The experiences of discrimination or stigmatization that were reported to us most often referred to criteria relating to ethnicity and race (70% of all experiences),21 followed by religion22 (in almost half of the cases) and territory (a little more than a third)23. But these distinctions can be partly misleading: the respondents often mentioned a plurality of intertwined criteria or characteristics.

• 24 They can be caused by school staff or students.
• 25 Given that the subject of police discrimination was not systematically addressed in the interviews, (...)
• 26 This was the case for approximately one out of every two of them.
• 27 More precisely: the respondents sometimes mentioned, during the interviews, the supposed causes of (...)

23The Eodipar survey which served as a basis for the book L’épreuve de la discrimination (2021) confirms the recurrent experiences of institutional discrimination or stigmatization that occur in relationships with public institutions. More than four out of ten respondents mentioned discrimination experienced in the school setting,24 and nearly one out of three, when interacting with police officers.25 When explaining the reasons for discrimination, half of the respondents mentioned causes that could be described as political26 in the broadest sense of the term. Half of them mentioned the action of the state or public institutions: mainly local institutions –schools, town halls, public services, etc. (43 respondents)– and legislative action (law on the veil in 2004, law on the state of emergency, etc.).27

• 28 That is, the use of ethnoracial classification criteria. See Lorcerie 1995, 2004.

25Few studies have been conducted in France on the occurrence and experience of ethnoracial discrimination in school settings. Fabrice Dhume points out that, in the absence of rigorous empirical examination, the social sciences have long contributed to the idea that schools are alien to discrimination or that they protect against it (Dhume 2019). As early as the mid-1970s, however, research has analyzed the influence of ethnoracial stereotypes on teachers’ judgments (Amigues et al. 1975, Zimmermann 1978), or the way in which the combined processes of spatial segregation and racialization28 have contributed to produce educational inequalities (Payet 1992, Broccolichi 1995).

• 29 We are effectively dealing here with a form of institutional discrimination, in the sense that the (...)

29Few studies examine the way in which urban and “zoning” policies contribute to the ethnoracial or spatioracial discrimination or stigmatization experienced by members of the relevant minorities. Scattered proof can be found: for example, a student in a high school in a priority-education zone (ZEP) who is convinced that a special class labeled “Europe” is reserved exclusively for whites (Van Zanten 2012). In the Eodipar survey, one respondent felt that educational zoning policies were designed to keep targeted groups inferior. And we could also mention the respondents who deplore forms of “abandonment” or neglect of their neighborhood by the public authorities, as expressed by this schoolboy from Vaulx-en-Velin:29

• 30 The same observation was made by Druez 2022.

32During the interviews, one third of the respondents mentioned an ethnoracial or religious “us”: “us, Arabs”, “us, Algerians, “us, Muslims”, etc. They also alluded to those living in the neighborhood as “us”. These references to an identity often appear to be intertwined. Frequently, the same “us”, in the same sequence or sentence, had both an ethnoracial (and sometimes religious) and territorial meaning:30 ”When you live here or are of North African origin… the scourge of racism, you know”; “a child like […] Karim who lives in a neighborhood where there are only people with an immigrant background”, etc.

• 31 See on this subject the analyses drawn from the Teo survey by Simon and Tiberj (2021).
• 32 It is to be noted that at the institutional level in France, nationality and citizenship are closel (...)
• 33 During the interview, she often mentioned her experience of discrimination at school, which confirm (...)

37The feeling of being denied Frenchness31 or of having a lesser citizenship32 can be associated with the experience of discrimination and, more particularly, of institutional discrimination (Sylvie and Idriss mentioned discrimination when applying for a job, Rachid mentioned media stigmatization). Rachid’s comments also alluded to public and political institutions when he mentioned “the political propaganda machine” that “spreads all day long” messages that stigmatize Muslims (and when Sylvie felt that “France” had not given her “the opportunity to feel French”, she might have been referring to French society in general but also to the state and its institutions).33

• 34 Escobar 1999: 6. See also Scklofski (2016) on how relations with the police make self-identificatio (...)
• 35 Epp et al. 2014. See also from the quantitative perspective of ATP studies: Bradford et al. 2017.

38While identifications such as “us, living in banlieue neighborhoods” (rather than “us” from one’s own specific neighborhood) rarely occurred in general, the survey shows that they often arose when respondents talked about their experience with the police. This finding is consistent with studies that have shown how experiences with the police contribute to shaping minority identities that are both racial and territorial or mix references to race and neighborhood. Drawing from historical records, Edward Escobar showed how, in Los Angeles in the 1940s, the Chicano (Mexican-American) ethnoracial identity became salient in the context of interaction between minorities and the police insofar as police actions “have altered the way in which society defines race”.34 More recently, Charles Epp and colleagues analyzed how race as a common-sense category was “shaped by police stops in often hidden and subtle but profound and foundational ways”, thereby redefining membership in the “Black” category.35

• 36 For a state of the art: Roux 2017.
• 37 For a focus group study: Roux and Roché 2016. For an interview and observation study confirming thi (...)

39In France, a few studies show that distrust of the police appears to be comparatively widespread among members of ethnoracial minorities who are, at the same time, residents of banlieue neighborhoods.36 Studies have focused specifically on the role of experiences with the police in the construction of ethnoracial and territorial identities among residents of banlieue neighborhoods. They have shown how territorial and ethnoracial identities (“us, racialized residents of a banlieue neighborhood”) are made salient by experiences with the police, notably when expressing criticism of police actions seen as stigmatizing for the neighborhood.37

• 38 According to available surveys (Trajectories and Origins (INED/INSEE) and the Regional Observatory (...)

40With respect to school, research shows that it is often in the school system that individuals learn that they “are” Black or “Arab”, i.e. perceived or labelled as such.38 But the research does not specifically examine how school might contribute to minority identifications.

• 39 On the reality of police discrimination in France, particularly based on ethnoracial criteria in th (...)

41How does the experience of institutional discrimination contribute to shape citizenship? In the United States, Charles Epp and his colleagues believe that official police practices “construct and reconstruct the meaning of rights, citizenship, and race” (Epp et al. 2014: xvi). Based on an opinion survey and semi-structured interviews, they show, among other things, that for Black Americans who are stopped by the police, these stops send a message: they look like criminals and are perceived as second-class citizens. The authors challenge a widely held interpretation in the field of ATP studies that the problem would disappear if police officers, while continuing to target Blacks to a greater extent, were fair and courteous. However, even in cases where police officers had this attitude, respondents felt that they had very likely been selected because of their racial belonging and considered that this affected their self-esteem.³⁹

• 40 Experiences of discrimination and their characterization by the respondents, which are the core iss (...)

42In France, the results of the Eodipar survey suggest that institutional discrimination (most often in connection with the police and school) particularly affects the respondents: the systematic comparative analysis of the interviews shows that it is more often associated with a feeling of injustice than other types of discriminatory experiences.40 This was the case for Fatima, a 52-year old retired maintenance worker living in the Mistral neighborhood of Grenoble: not very politically aware (poor knowledge of political institutions, etc.), she spoke a hesitant French and appeared resigned, almost despondent, when she reported having been the object of racist insults in a bus (she simply got off). While she said she was satisfied with the “success” of her children, she nonetheless added, again in a resigned tone (she repeated that it was “hard” or “aggravating” [galère]), how difficult it has been for them to find a job. From what she has observed around her, the problem is shared by racialized young people in general: “Some of them have a master’s degree, a PhD, and they do odd jobs […]. And yet, so many young people are born here, and grow up here.” Shortly afterwards, however, her tone was no longer resigned but vehement when she reported an experience of institutional discrimination in connection with public action: contrary to what was observed earlier, the feeling of injustice was obvious here. Even though she had been receiving the “activity bonus” given each year in France to low-income workers, a “French” public servant working at the reception desk of the French Family Allowance Fund (CAF), who had “not even seen the paper” told her that she was no longer entitled to it, and that she could check “on the Internet” for confirmation. After doing so, she concluded that the public servant had unduly deprived her of a right: “This annoys me! We’re entitled to it like everyone else! If it’s my right; it’s my right!”

• 41 Again, in the sense that the respondents commonly refer to a “us” that refers both to belonging to (...)
• 42 “[Concerning how hard it was for her children to find a job] What can they say to me, poor ones, th (...)
• 43 Which is probably the case here, as suggested by the fact that immediately before, she had referred (...)
• 44 “When my turn comes, there’s a girl who comes, it was an Arab girl […] I took the pay slip and ever (...)
• 45 The accounts of police discrimination were usually mentioned after the respondents had reported dis (...)
• 46 In other words, we cannot limit ourselves to an analysis of the explicit aspects of the speeches on (...)
• 47 Reference to race is often “kept at the boundary between the implicit and the explicit” or “stated (...)

43It should be noted that here, as in other excerpts presented, the interpretation of the experience as discriminatory and, particularly, as ethnoracial (and often at the same time territorial41) discrimination or stigmatization can be understood in light of the context and the implicit nature of the discourses. Typically, Fatima related this anecdote without transition, immediately after remarking on the problems her children have as North-African, and racialized people in general, to find work, which could indicate that all of these comments belong to the same theme (inequalities based on origin).42 She also used the designation of “French” –a term frequently used in banlieue neighborhoods as a synonym for White43– for the CAF employee who, in her eyes, was responsible for an injustice, immediately after mentioning a first interaction, which had a more favorable outcome, with another employee whom she described as “Arab”.44 Similarly, other respondents alluded to, particularly concerning their experiences of police stigmatization, a “we” or “us” that can be understood as racial or spatioracial in light of the context:45 several respondents used “we” or “us” to explain the way they felt demeaned in the presence of police officers. Even if we cannot present the same kind of analysis for each quoted extract as we did for Fatima, it appears essential to report the implicit meaning of ordinary discourses,46 which is very often crucial to understand what they mean, especially when the discourses refer to race.47

• 48 Respondents reported experiences with the police of discrimination (71 out of 245 respondents), sti (...)

44As regards the police, the Eodipar survey shows that the experience of police discrimination and stigmatization influences, more specifically, opinions concerning the state or the law. Respondents frequently mentioned the illegitimate or even downright illegal nature of the police actions and behavior they had encountered.48 They reported experiences of racial profiling or discriminatory checks, but also of unjustified violence, as in the case of Kevin, a 23-year-old living in Roubaix, with no degree and unemployed when we met him:

• 49 In the sociological sense, legality refers to the normative system of law in the strict and formal (...)

48Thus, in the comments collected, experiences of police discrimination or stigmatization, distrust of the police and especially of the police officers in charge of filing complaints, and more broadly of public and legal institutions, contribute to nourishing forms of resignation. Speaking about their experiences of discrimination, or of the reality of ethno-racial discrimination in general, the respondents often concluded: “That’s life. That’s the way it is.” More specifically, the strong connection between experiences of police discrimination and the idea that the law is ineffective or not implemented in practice contributed to a disillusioned view of the law and of legality.49 Institutional and especially police discrimination nourish a certain social and political fatalism that contributes to the shaping of lesser forms of citizenship.