Abstract

Despite being the country with the oldest immigration in Europe, France gives the impression of a strong cultural unity. Considering this experience forces to take into account colonialism and the system of social inequalities involved into it. This puts current ideologies of "multiculturalism" in a different perspective: they postulate an equivalence of cultures, claim that cultural integration is sufficient and promote "ethnicity" as a useful category of analysis. Rather, a strategy of citizenship today demands to find ways of respecting cultural differences without falling in a stereotyped differentialism, and to accept the challenge of questioning the place that Europe after Schengen makes to immigrants.