A crisis of the representation of the nation in France

The 2015 “migration crisis” did not affect France where, unlike its neighbors, the flows did not significantly increase. This has not prevented the representation of a migration crisis, or even of an invasion, from having significant geopolitical effects on the country. If there is an immigration crisis in France, it actually deals with the fact that France has been transformed into a multicultural nation by generations of citizens born out of an immigration from the former colonies and yet, the dominant representations of the nation didn’t take notice of that. Apart from the far right, no political force has put at the center of its discourse what exactly the French nation should become, and an inclusive and positive discourse on this subject is sorely lacking. Racial segregation plays a major role in this stalemate, strongly aggravated by the rejection of the new visibility taken by the religious practice of Islam, a prejudice reinforced by the jihadist attacks that have unfolded since 2012, in 2015 especially.