Critical Studies in Racism and Migration – serie

Deconstructing the Nation examines the connection between racism and the development of the nation-state in modern France. The author raises important questions about the nature of citizenship rights in modern French society and contributes to wider European debates on citizenship. By challenging the myths of the modern French nation Maxim Silverman opens up the debate on questions of immigration, racism, the nation and citizenship in France to non-French speaking readers. Until quite recently these matters have largely been ignored by researchers in Britain and the USA. However, European integration has made it essential to look beyond national frontiers. The major part of his analysis concerns the period from the end of the 1960s to the beginning of the 1990s. Yet contemporary developments are placed in a historical context: first through a consideration of the construction of the modern question of immigration since the second half of the nineteenth century, and second through a survey of political, economic and social developments since 1945. There are analyses of the major debates on nationality in 1987 and the headscarf' affair of 1989. Finally questions of immigration, racism and citizenship are considered within the framework of European integration.

First Published in 2004. This text argues that there is nothing obvious or natural about our ideas of sex and race and looks at the evolution of these ideas. The author contends that the slow crystallization of ideas on human races over the last few centuries can be grasped through the study of signs and their systems. However, race and sex are in no way purely abstract or symbolic phenomena. They are the hard facts of society. To be a man or woman, black or white are matters of social reality. To be a member of a particular race or sex does not bring with it the same opportunities, the same rights or the same constraints. The author examines how these constraints operate and shape our life experience. From a more theoretical standpoint, the text tackles the particular links between the daily materiality of social relationships and mental conventions. Materiality and ideology (in the sense of the perception of things) are two sides of the same coin. Relationships of sex and race follow an ancient history of physical right of the one over the other. Slavery and patriarchy are defined by direct physical rights which is not without its consequences.

Deconstructing the Nation examines the connection between racism and the development of the nation-state in modern France. The author raises important questions about the nature of citizenship rights in modern French society and contributes to wider European debates on citizenship. By challenging the myths of the modern French nation Maxim Silverman opens up the debate on questions of immigration, racism, the nation and citizenship in France to non-French speaking readers. Until quite recently these matters have largely been ignored by researchers in Britain and the USA. However, European integration has made it essential to look beyond national frontiers. The major part of his analysis concerns the period from the end of the 1960s to the beginning of the 1990s. Yet contemporary developments are placed in a historical context: first through a consideration of the construction of the modern question of immigration since the second half of the nineteenth century, and second through a survey of political, economic and social developments since 1945. There are analyses of the major debates on nationality in 1987 and the headscarf' affair of 1989. Finally questions of immigration, racism and citizenship are considered within the framework of European integration.