They held the wedding in a town hall outside Lyon. Her family was Algerian, Muslim, and had been in France for three generations. His was Catholic and from Toulouse.
It is one of thousands of such intermarriages France rubberstamps each year—about one in four Muslim women now marry outside the faith. And yet, the same week of the wedding, parts of suburban Paris saw riots over race-based policing. While these incidents make headlines, more peaceful indications that France’s ethnic makeup is changing, such as by the aforementioned families’ union, are left ignored. France’s evolving story isn’t being constructed by either violent or peaceable means, but by both at once.
France’s history of immigration mirrors that of much of Western Europe. Since the devastation of World War II had left many European countries without enough labourers, it needed extra pairs of hands for its heavy industry. Migrants came to plug the gap—first from southern European countries, like Spain and Italy, then from its former colonies in North and West Africa. Most were expected to stay only briefly. Only they didn’t. Even as the industries that relied on migrant labor—like steelmaking or textiles—left France, many of the workers stayed. During the three postwar decades of economic growth, immigration accounted for 40% of France’s population increase. What began as a short-term fix became a permanent shift—one that outlived the industries it was meant to support.
Mixing and Mistrust
Getting a clear picture of France’s ethnic and religious makeup is no easy task. The French state is famous for its reluctance in collecting data on race or religion—part of a long-standing belief in its universal, colour-blind republic. Unlike countries in the Anglosphere that track, and often celebrate, the many cultural identities inhabiting them, France has clung to a model of assimilation: wherever you come from, you become French. Still, estimates suggest around one in five people in France today has an at least partly non-European background, mainly Northern or Sub-Saharan African. Roughly 10% of the population is Muslim—likely the highest in Europe.
