ABSTRACT
Since the suspension of labour recruitment from non-EC countries in 1974, French perceptions of immigration and its social consequences have changed radically. A process which was once seen as narrowly economic has now become highly politicized, and its cultural dimensions have raised searching questions about French national identity. Anxieties over the degree to which people of immigrant origin can or should be incorporated into French society have crystallized in the debate over 'integration' (Wieviorka 1990). Among politicians and the public at large, there is a widely held view that integration has become more difficult because recent immigrants and their descendants are both more different in their cultural traditions and more resistant to cultural change than were earlier minority groups. It is true that the cultural roots of today's minorities, which are predominantly of African and Asian origin, are often more distant from the norms prevailing in France than are the traditions in which most European immigrants were raised. Yet if recent immigrants and their descendants appear less well incorporated than earlier minority groups, the evidence examined in the course of this study suggests that this is due far more to socioeconomic and political changes which have taken place within the receiving society than to differences in the cultural complexion of the minority population.
