Books & ideas

Discrimination as a “test”

Frédérique Jean — 2025-09-09T12:20:16Z

Mickaëlle Provost seeks to understand oppression through lived experience, in all its uniqueness. She also shows how shared awareness of this suffering and the ways in which it is erased can create solidarity and pave the way for collective resistance.

The Racist Motivations Behind the National Rally Vote in France

Nicolas Duvoux — 2025-07-03T09:09:00Z

This fascinating political sociology study looks at the lifestyles and subjective perceptions of average National Rally voters in the South of France. It sheds light on the racist motivations behind people's support for the party.

The Pseudoscience that Shieldied Police Violence

Magda Boutros — 2025-04-03T07:29:00Z

“Excited delirium” is a diagnosis that was used to absolve police officers of responsibility for the deaths of Black and Brown men. For decades, it was legitimized by a network of forensic pathologists, law enforcement agencies, and private companies that sustained this pseudoscience.

Female, French, Arab

Mariem Guellouz — 2024-12-10T07:30:00Z

How have French women of Arab and North African descent become the subject of a collective fantasy? If the language of immigration reveals collective imaginaries and social and discursive practices that are worth analyzing, then the word beurette also deserves our attention.

The Other Side of Model Minorities

Margot Delon — 2024-03-21T07:37:00Z

While Chinese immigrants and their descendants have long been portrayed as a “model minority”, Ya-Han Chuang shows how this qualifier papers over the representations that are imposed on members of this minority in France – who are now fighting back against racism.

The Cleaver and the Hussar

Michel Porret — 2023-07-20T07:30:00Z

Can the law be broken to maintain public order? This is the question addressed in a remarkable comparative work on vigilantism and ‘rough justice' in the security era.

Summers in the Motherland

Yasmine Siblot — 2023-07-04T09:00:00Z

From the 1980s onwards, the practice of vacationing in the Maghreb homeland became widespread, and gradually replaced any hopes of resettlement. These summer vacations allowed people to return to their roots in a family setting and temporarily escape the subjugation and social labels they endured in France.

Medicine and Race during the French Empire

Élodie Edwards-Grossi — 2023-05-04T06:20:00Z

Drawing on treatises by naturalists and doctors, as well as reports from colonial missions, historian Delphine Peiretti-Courtis examines how racialized bodies were belittled and dehumanized by medical professionals in the French Empire from the 19^th century onwards.

Racist Violence before the Law

Magda Boutros — 2023-04-25T19:11:26Z

French law defines racism in terms of discourses, not actions. Based on an analysis of 731 crimes, R. Brahim shows how physical violence is compounded by psychological violence when the legislative and judicial system denies or downplays the racist nature of the crimes.

From Slavery to Police Torture

Jules Naudet — 2022-10-17T07:40:00Z

Laurence Ralph's ethnography explores the various systems of punishment that injure black and brown Americans' bodies and that contribute to maintain social hierarchies that rely on the vestiges of slavery. These injuries call for healing and overcoming trauma, and also for reparative justice.