URN:NBN:fi:tsv-oa45243 DOI: 10.11143/45243 Contesting and re-negotiating the national in French cities: examining policies of governance, Europeanisation and co-option in Marseille and Lyon JOSEPH DOWNING Downing, Joseph (2015). Contesting and re-negotiating the national in French cities: examining policies of governance, Europeanisation and co-option in Mar- seille and Lyon. Fennia 193: 2, pp. 185–197. ISSN 1798-5617. The past decade has seen a dynamic and contradictory treatment of difference in French policy-making, both nationally and locally. However, the means by which local difference orientated policies redefine the national is understudied. This article bridges this gap with a case study analysis of Marseille and Lyon to assess and typologize the ways that difference is deployed in local policy to in- fluence, contest and negotiate the discursive performance and construction of the nation. Of particular importance here are modes of municipal governance, the influence of European government and the co-option of local voluntary groups into policy. This article concludes that both Marseille and Lyon provide rich examples of not only how municipalities are increasingly concerned with the notion of difference in policy-making, but also how their policies and en- gagement with local actors in dealing with nationally salient issues might lead to a redefinition of the national. Keywords: France, diversity, migrants, national, local, state Joseph Downing, European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom, E-mail: j.s.downing@lse.ac.uk Introduction The past decade has seen scholars identify an in- creasingly contradictory and negotiated process of formulating recognition-based policies in France that deploy notions of ethno-cultural and religious ‘difference’ (Bhabha 1994). This challenges the na- tionally ordained policy of assimilation, based around individual, formal, legal and political equality, in addition to the separation of church and state (laïcité), which has long worked as the guarantor of social integration and equality (Wih- tol de Wenden 2003; Hargreaves 2007). The ina- bility of this policy to resolve the socio-economic deprivation and discrimination experienced by communities from France’s ex-colonies (Cesari et al. 2001; Hargreaves 2007) has indeed pushed policy makers to look for alternatives. The move away from assimilation towards difference-orien- tated policies has however taken place in a contra- dictory and contested manner, at both the national (Modood 2012; Dixon 2012) and local (Moore 2003; Doytcheva 2007; Raymond & Modood 2007) scales. This article seeks to add to this debate by shed- ding further light on the increasing use of such dis- cursively constructed notions of difference at the local level (Moore 2003; Doytcheva 2007) and reflecting on their impact on the national1. In so doing, it assesses and typologizes how municipali- ties in Marseille and Lyon are deploying notions of difference in their policies, which end up chal- lenging mainstream discourses of the national. To achieve this, the analysis conducted here begins with the idea that the local provides a medium through which shifting notions of national identi- ties are articulated, negotiated and reproduced (Appleton 2002). Accordingly, as local municipali- 186 FENNIA 193: 2 (2015)Joseph Downing ties deploy difference in various ways to address issues relevant to migrant communities, they indi- rectly influence how the national is articulated and constructed. This is not, however, to negate how discourses hostile to immigrants continue to inform the national public debate. Rather, this arti- cle aims to nuance the salience of these discourses in France by demonstrating how local policies and practices may also work to dovetail with, and re- configure, them. To this end, the article pursues a comparative analysis across three areas of policy activity in Marseille and Lyon. First, it will consider the rela- tionship of the local French state to creating and deploying notions of difference in municipal gov- ernance and how these impinge on notions of French nationhood. Secondly, it will continue this analysis by examining the influence of European policy principles on the deployment of difference to contest or re-negotiate the national. Finally, it will look at the ways in which the local state is us- ing notions of difference as a rationale dictating how it funds and co-opts local voluntary organisa- tions and how this in turn resonates with a differ- ent understanding of the French nation. Nation, assimilation, and diversity in France Much has been written about assimilation rising to prominence in France (Brubaker 2001; Alba 2005; Bleich 2011). However, assimilation should not be seen as a unitary and static policy. While it has been venerated for successfully integrating France’s diverse regions (Weber 1976) and multiple waves of immigrants from South and Eastern Europe (Weil 2008), this process has remained contradic- tory. It has never been a simple assimilation to a single, essential and unchanging notion of French- ness, untouched by social and temporal develop- ments. Rather, as Norial (1988) states, notions of Frenchness were remade by the very waves of im- migration that the state sought to assimilate and resulted in new versions of Frenchness being forged (Swamy 2011). Today the state continues, in a number of ways, to define the national in often contradictory terms, by deploying notions of difference in some meas- ures, while maintaining assimilationist policies in other areas. Evidencing the application of princi- ples of difference, Modood (2012) cites the crea- tion of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM, Conseil français du culte musulman) to represent Muslims in matters regulating worship and ritual and the creation of France’s first national black association (CRAN, Conseil représentatif des associations noires de France) as important evi- dence of a possible shift towards multicultural pol- icies in France. This, however, is not a completely novel development on the French scene, with a similar national Jewish association existing for over 50 years (CRIF, Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France). These developments also occurred in tandem with assimilationist measures, such as the 2007 in- troduction of French language tests for migrants (Contrat d’accueil et d’intégration) and the 2010 ban on the full face veil (Loi interdisant la dissimu- lation du visage dans l'espace public). Within this, it has long been argued from the latter half of the 20th century that the ability of assimilation to ad- equately integrate migrants from France’s ex-colo- nies is extremely limited. This criticism stems in large part from the state’s inability to resolve the severe socio-economic deprivation and xenopho- bic discrimination levelled at those immigrant communities from France’s ex-colonies in the post-World War II epoch (Cesari et al. 2001; Har- greaves 2007). Thus, Hargreaves (2007) explains the participation in the 2005 riots of those from post-migration communities as a result of their al- ienation from the material and social benefits, ow- ing to significant socio-economic disadvantage and racial and ethnic discrimination. This point is particularly important, because it connects the na- tional and the local in an important way. The dis- crimination and marginalisation felt by those riot- ing in 2005 is a multifaceted process. At one level, this marginalisation is reproduced through nation- al processes and discourses hostile to the place of migrants and their descendants in France. How- ever, equal if not more important is the reproduc- tion of this marginalisation locally, through a range of measures including direct employment discrim- ination, and sub-standard housing. In fact, as shall be demonstrated below, attempts to ameliorate social marginalisation in France have focused on the local contexts deemed such key dimensions in marginalisation’s reproduction (Raymond & Mo- dood 2007). Understanding the role of the local in this con- tradictory context is vital. This is because it has important implications for identifying and analys- ing how difference-orientated policies are de- FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) 187Contesting and re-negotiating the national in French cities ployed locally. The emergence of these policies does not occur in a vacuum, rather they are part of a broader process redefining and re-negotiating the relationship between difference and discur- sively formed notions of Frenchness. Within this relationship between notions of difference and the national, the local level has long been conceptual- ised as being notably dynamic in a number of ways (Raymond & Modood 2007). The application of principles of difference in local policies is par- ticularly notable for its plurality of forms across a plethora of locales. Moore’s (2003) comparison of local policies of the management of difference in Manchester and Marseille highlights this trend. Here, Moore (2003) concludes that the French are moving towards a ‘socio-cultural’ model of multi- culturalism, through the local authority’s recogni- tion of ethno-religious difference in the local poli- cies. However, at the time of his research in the early 2000s, these policies remained covert and implicitly implemented without making a formal explicit statement that Marseille had decided to abandon assimilation and move towards a policy of recognition. This concurs with another broad observation in the literature that difference-orien- tated policies are frequently formulated and ap- plied in France, without overt declarations. Doytcheva (2007) echoes this sentiment, by iden- tifying the application of difference-orientated policies in the domain of an equality-driven mod- el, where resources are funnelled to minority pop- ulations under the guise of urban renewal. Doytch- eva’s (2007) research in the Garges-Les-Gonesse and Vitry areas of Paris identifies a “French affirma- tive action” being practiced at the local level that singled out minorities for special funding, without making reference to such a policy goal. This picture remains highly dynamic, with poli- cy makers increasingly referencing the difference- orientated nature of their policies. One such ex- ample is the work by Marseille’s ex-mayor, Jean Vigouroux, who attempted to reconcile the differ- ence-orientated vision of the Marseille Espérance forum2, based on the notion of religious differ- ence, with French secularism. For Vigouroux, his approach is an attempt at instituting a “secularism + religion” working framework (Vigouroux & Ouaknin 2005). Here, bringing religion into the state is set as part of a tradition of “open secular- ism” (Vigouroux & Ouaknin 2005) that does not contradict or jeopardise the neutrality (laïcité) of the central state. As such, the local and the na- tional are locked into interplay where the national attempts to dictate policy principles locally, and the local replies with a negotiation of exactly how to interpret and apply these principles. As such, with important implications for this study, this ex- ample demonstrates how the national principles are moulded and applied locally. In other words, individuals will experience the nationally defining principle of laïcité at least partly through their ap- plication in the local context. This experience of the local being a prism for the experience of the national is a well-established phenomenon in the literature where local process- es are involved in not only representing, but also reproducing the nation (Appleton 2002; Confino & Skaria 2002; Jones & Fowler 2007). It is through the interplay between the local and the national that the nation as a discursive formation is repro- duced (Jones & Desforges 2003). As theorised in the literature (Billig 1995; Yoshino 1999; Brubaker et al. 2006), this discursive formation requires con- stant reproduction through performance, while also taking into account variations of interpreta- tion by ordinary people as to a nation’s meanings (Laitin 2007). Thus, the local provides a medium through which shifting notions of national identities are ar- ticulated (Appleton 2002). Therefore, one should not take the local as being subsumed within the national, rather the local is transcended into higher levels of existence by becoming part of the nation- al, as well as existing alongside it (Confino & Skaria 2002). Bringing this discussion down to the empiri- cal example of France, Confino and Skaria (2002) criticise Weber (1976), who asserted that the move from local peasants into Frenchmen was central to the making of the French nation. For them, instead, Weber (1976) mistakenly assumes that local identi- ties are obliterated by the creation of the national. Rather, it is more accurate to assert that the local appropriates the national in such a way that the na- tion has various local meanings (Confino & Skaria 2002). In summary, drawing on these arguments and applying them to the cases analysed here, it can be argued that at the local level, the spaces and places of local politics have an important effect in influencing the reproduction of the nation. This is even the case where local politics do not overtly seek to reproduce the nation, as Bodnar (1994: 16) argued: “Citizens view the larger entity of the na- tion through the lens of smaller units and places that they know first-hand”. This assertion of the local’s importance in re- shaping the national with the implementation of 188 FENNIA 193: 2 (2015)Joseph Downing difference-orientated policies should not be taken, however, as an unproblematic endorsement of such difference-orientated policies. The observa- tion that multiculturalism remains a multivalent and often contradictory, albeit important policy tool (Modood & Uberoi 2013) rings as true today as ever. Any discussion of difference-orientated policies engages an enormous range of measures that are often reactionary, sometimes contradic- tory, owing to their ad-hoc evolution in response to temporal, social and economic changes (Mo- dood 2007). However, under rising inequality imposed by the combined constraints of neo-lib- eral economic policies and post-2008 austerity, ensuring real economic equality for minority populations through multicultural policies is be- coming an increasingly marginalized aim of such policies (Young 2009). Rather, socio-cultural models of multiculturalism have come to the fore (Young 2009), focusing on providing cultural and religious concessions to minorities and offering minorities ‘recognition’ of the validity of their cultures in the public realm, in a means analo- gous to Taylor’s (1994) “politics of recognition”. The issues with this policy platform have been long debated, including but not limited to the al- legations of post-colonial ‘paternalism’ (Littler & Naidoo 2011), enshrining gender inequality (Phil- lips 2009) or abandoning overarching national identities (Modood 2012). Therefore, an a-histori- cised focus on the separation of minority cultures from unified mainstream that in some way should be preserved in its separateness and uniqueness has been correctly critiqued as divisive (Apping- nanesi 2011) and cannot form the foundation of a viable socio-cultural model of multiculturalism. Both Appingnanesi (2011) and Littler and Naidoo (2011) assert that the issue of cultural diversity should not be handled as something that is either new, or something that will seep out into wider society in the future, but something that is part of the historical fact of cultures. This development of socio-cultural multiculturalism is important be- cause, across Europe, the questions of race and ethnicity remain at the centre of debates about na- tional heritage (Littler & Naidoo 2011; Modood & Uberoi 2013). Public culture, and the socio-cul- tural concessions possibly granted by multicultur- alism remain important sites of cultural politics where power relations can be established, repro- duced and importantly unsettled (Hall et al. 2013) by subverting and negotiating the hierarchies of symbolic and cultural power. Situating the case studies: Marseille and Lyon As France’s second and third largest urban agglom- erations, Marseille and Lyon, respectively, play an important role in redefining the national through the policy stances that they adopt. This is not to say that this redefinition is happening in similar ways. Rather, as can be expected, two separate cases will demonstrate varying degrees of commonality and difference in both socio-economic structures and policy trajectories. Lyon sits at the centre of one of the richest regions in Europe while Marseille is marked as a centre of urban precarity. Urban pov- erty in the Rhone department, of which Lyon is the capital, was 13.4% in 2011 compared to 17.8% in Bouches du Rhone, of which Marseille is the capi- tal (INSEE 2011, cited in Hargreaves 2007). Mar- seille houses a “triangle of poverty”, an area unpar- alleled in France for the proportion of the popula- tion living in poverty (Moore 2003). This very pop- ulous area is where the city’s poor housing, unem- ployment and social problems are concentrated. Although Marseille is a much poorer city compared to Lyon, the latter has a higher level of income in- equality; with significant poverty pockets concen- trated in its suburban public housing estates, par- ticularly to the south and east (Coudène 2010). In both cities, poverty overlaps with ethnicity, as areas of deprivation in both Marseille and Lyon coincide with areas inhabited by people with mi- grant background, primarily from France’s ex- colonies (Hargreaves 2007). The pitfalls of French ethnic minority statistics are well documented (Hargreaves 2007; Maxwell 2012), with the French census not collecting statistics on ethnic- ity or religion. However, researchers have chal- lenged this state of affairs by making estimates. Hargreaves (2007), citing the INSEE statistics of foreign-born populations, indicates that 57.5% of these foreign-born reside in only three regions of France – Île de France, with Paris at its centre, Rhône-Alpes, with Lyon at its core, and Provence- Alpes-Côte d’Azur, with Marseille at its middle. Out of these, both Rhône-Alpes and Provence- Alpes-Côte d’Azur have similar proportions of this population, at 11% and 10%, respectively. Policy wise, it is important to understand the historical situations of both cities that show sig- nificant differences. Marseille, as the main har- bour of the French colonial empire, saw large- scale migration earlier and in larger numbers FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) 189Contesting and re-negotiating the national in French cities than Lyon (Temine 1999; Gastaut 2003). After the independence of Algeria, over two million pieds- noirs3 entered France through Marseille, where many settled. This was alongside a well-estab- lished North-African population of economic mi- grants, whose numbers grew throughout the 20th century (Temine 1999). This led to early issues of discrimination and racism in Marseille that re- quired the intervention of the municipal authori- ties to stop police violence against those of North African origin (Gastaut 1993). Lyon, however, saw inward migration from France’s ex-colonies later, beginning in the middle of the 20th century with the arrival of North African migrant workers to fill industrial jobs in the greater Lyon region. Therefore, it is not surprising that Marseille and Lyon have been conceptualized as exhibiting dis- tinct policy responses to the treatment of post- migration difference. Moore (2003) and Mitchell (2011) have asserted the unique nature of Mar- seille as an early adopter of multicultural poli- cies, while Dikec (2007) and the Council of Eu- rope (2008) have both identified Lyon as a case where the state has not engaged in the deploy- ment of such policies. The differing governing structures existing in the two cases also compli- cates this picture. Marseille and its suburban con- centrations of poverty are governed within the same urban municipality. Lyon, however, sits separately to its poor suburbs that exist in differ- ent communes, such as Vaulx-en-Velin and Vé- nissieux. While these are incorporated together in the Urban Community of Lyon (Communauté urbaine de Lyon, Grand Lyon) they retain consid- erable autonomy and separate planning and pol- icy functions that have hampered efforts at great- er incorporation of deprived suburbs into the Lyon urban area (Dikec 2007). However, this situ- ation remains extremely dynamic, with Lyon be- ing later identified as redefining the national by “taking a positive approach to interculturalism which is quite distinctive within the French con- text” (Wood 2010: 98), through its membership of the intercultural cities program. In order to analyse the two examples of Lyon and Marseille, this article adopts a case study methodological approach. Here, it aims to sketch the key arguments about how municipal authori- ties in both cities are redefining the discursive nature of the national at the local level through the formulation and application of difference- orientated policies. Case studies are widely used in the social sciences. They serve a deductive purpose in their established use in research meth- odology as a means to highlight a more general theoretical point (Eckstein 1975). Case study methodology clearly has many shortcomings – especially in terms of generalisation, where it is not possible to discriminate between theoretical causations from the single data point presented from one case study (Eckstein 1975). However, in a well-structured and logically reasoned deduc- tive case study analysis important observations can be made about the nature of trends within a given situation (King et al. 1994). A case study research design suites the analysis conducted here. While the goal of research is often to make inferences that go beyond particular observations (King et al. 1994), and while this study has wider implications, generalisations will be kept to a minimum. To pursue the arguments within the key themes of this article, a deductive and theo- retical approach will be adopted. This means that specific examples of the formulation and imple- mentation of a redefinition of the national in dif- ference-orientated policies will be selected as il- lustrations of the broader claims that policies formulated and applied in both cases demon- strates ways in which the discursive formation of the national is influenced at the local level. As such, the examples used are intended to paint a coherent yet incomplete account of process of the redefinition of the national at a particular place (Marseille and Lyon) and time. The Author collected primary data through di- rect fieldwork in Marseille and Lyon, during 2011/2012. A total of ten interviews were con- ducted with policy-makers and organizations based in the two cities. However, important is- sues exist with making direct interview quota- tions in France, where permission is required from the local state to directly attribute quotes to a civil servant. In addition, interviews were often not set up as interviews to be quoted directly be- cause of the mentioned constraints. Rather, inter- views were used as a means to guide this research through the exploration of real policy events and occurrences, which have been researched mainly through archival data. This included examining policy documents, the archives held by the or- ganisations themselves (often available online) and newspaper reports about the particular ac- tivities of local actors. Importantly, these exam- ples have been selected in line with the case study method criteria of choosing deductive ex- amples that highlight a broader trend. It is from 190 FENNIA 193: 2 (2015)Joseph Downing these deductive examples that the key arguments made in this article emerge. This approach is not intended, however, to ignore the broader, deep and persistent structural socio-economic prob- lems in either Marseille or Lyon. Nor is the focus presented in this article a denial of the significant issues created for the redefinition of the national by media and political discourses in France that marginalise migrants and their descendants. Rather, the illustrative examples of the redefini- tion of the national discussed here serve to iden- tify and analyse the various ways that principles of difference are deployed to challenge, negotiate and redefine the national. Redefining the national in the local: diversity and municipal governance in Marseille and Lyon As discussed above, the deployment of principles of difference remains contradictory and contested nationally. The local state, however, has been identified as more willing to deploy notions of dif- ference in local policy (Raymond & Modood 2007). As such, the local state and its modes of governance have played an important role in me- diating how the discursively formed national can be redefined towards one that can include notions of difference. This is a critical observation for this study, in that the local prism through which indi- viduals experience the national is being redefined in important ways. As such, it represents an impor- tant means by which the relationship between be- ing French and notions of difference is being re- written from the “bottom up” and demonstrates how the local does not exist independently of the national and vice-versa (Appleton 2002; Confino & Skaria 2002; Jones & Fowler 2007). As such, this local performance of the national contributes to the redefinition of the national context alongside, and in contestation with, measures from the cen- tral state hostile to difference, such as the head- scarf ban (Simon 2005). The ways in which Marseille and Lyon are de- ploying notions of difference that contribute more or less directly to redefine the national are multifarious. In Marseille, difference is primarily deployed in municipal governance as religious difference. This stems in part from local realities, where the municipality attempts to engage with an urban context that has seen both violent anti- Jewish and anti-Muslim incidents (Gastaut 1993; Temine 1999). A civil servant interviewed for this research identified this communal violence as a starting point for thinking around policies that would enable the municipal authorities to engage directly with fighting racism and mediating dis- putes in the city. Initial attempts in this direction centred on identifying difference in an ethnic form to set up an inter-ethnic forum in the city. The civil servant interviewed stated that this re- sulted in too many groups being identified, some- where in the hundreds, that would have made the forum unworkable. It was at this point that it was decided to use religious difference as the foundation to create the forum in Marseille. Out of this context came the centrepiece of Marseille’s urban governance strategy, the Marseille Espérance forum. The fo- rum deploys religious difference to define mem- bership based upon the city’s seven largest reli- gious communities – Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Armenian, Greek Orthodox, and Bud- dhist. This then brings the religious leaders of these communities together to undertake a num- ber of municipal projects in the public domain. The public activities of the group are important in redefining the national for several reasons. The municipal authorities took the nascent principles of recognising religious difference used by the French state for some time, locally in Alsace-Lor- raine4, and nationally in creating a council for Jewish affairs (Conseil représentatif des institu- tions juives de France). Owing to colonial and post-colonial history, those of North African Mus- lim descent also suffered significant economic marginalisation and direct racial discrimination in the post-war period nationally (Gastaut 2003). The municipality also gives the Marseille Espé- rance forum a high public profile by providing direct material support to the yearly Marseille Es- pérance intercultural gala event, where perfor- mances by various cultural community groups take place. This continues with the organisation of a “Marseille Espérance Jury” each year at the Marseille Documentary film festival, where they award the “Marseille Espérance Prize”, endowed by the city of Marseille. However, its activities are not linked just to these symbolic events, as it also plays a more pronounced role in addressing local issues. Marseille Espérance’s public endorsement of Marseille’s grand mosque project demonstrates its concrete role in working on behalf of disad- vantaged communities. The construction of this FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) 191Contesting and re-negotiating the national in French cities mosque can be read as an important step by the local state in reshaping the national so to incor- porate ethno-religious difference. However, the importance placed on this development should not be overstretched, in that this event remains very much tied up in local considerations and occurs in a continued hostility towards Muslims in the French press. Importantly, the use of difference as a policy principle is not a phenomenon limited to Mar- seille, but, in different ways, it is also at work in Lyon. Here, the explicit focus on difference de- ployed in Marseille is absent. Rather, difference is formulated in broader terms, also touching on no- tions of ethnicity that the French central state has been historically reluctant to engage with (Wihtol de Wenden 2003). The deployment of a broad definition of difference can be seen in the munici- pal authorities’ ratification of the Charter of Diver- sity against discrimination in the workplace. This is a charter that seeks to fight discrimination in work- places so to have workforces that “better reflect… the diversity of the French population” (Charte de la Diversité 2013: 1). Lyon was the first municipal authority in France to sign such a charter. This is significant given the trend of French state institutions being reluctant to deploy no- tions of difference to promote the need to fight discrimination in the economic sphere. Previ- ously, the central state has deemed a focus on individual equality before the law as being a suf- ficient guarantor of equality in the domain of employment (Withol de Wenden 2003; Har- greaves 2007). Now, as clearly evident in the case of Lyon, the French population is no longer treated as ethnically homogenous, but rather made up of a plurality of groups. Ethnically di- verse citizens are subject to comparative disad- vantages based on group membership and as such they require protection against discrimina- tion. This explicitly difference-orientated ap- proach designed to address endemic social is- sues through the recognition of group difference also applies to Lyon’s creation of an “equality task force” to combat discrimination and pro- mote equal opportunities, most importantly in housing and employment (Council of Europe 2012). This directly engages again with the ques- tions of difference defined in both religious and ethnic terms, something that the central French state is yet to do. These measures, while again not expressly identifying the national as their scale of activity, can be argued to be influencing the construction of the national at the local level through the per- formance of the discursive formation of the na- tion in that they cast ethnic and religious discrim- ination as inappropriate. As such, this public per- formance by the local state of a difference-orien- tated policy stance redefines how the legitimate conceptions of approaching the question of na- tional identity are defined. As discussed under the promotion of equality in employment meas- ures in the charter of diversity, the French popula- tion moves from being a homogenous national whole, to one that is constituted by both ethnic and religious difference. Again, however, this is happening in a broader context where such poli- cies are yet to be implemented nationally, thus limiting the effect these measures have in redefin- ing the national community as a whole. European influence on difference: redefining the national with Europeanisation in Marseille and Lyon The ability of the local to influence the discursive forms of the nation towards recognizing difference in both Marseille and Lyon is not limited to the activities of the local state in the domain of gov- ernance. Rather, this is also occurring through the application of European principles to cultural pol- icy of both cities. Marseille and Lyon demonstrate a nascent, emergent trend within the French treat- ments of difference. Namely, the influence of Eu- ropean levels of government is being strongly felt in the aspects of both municipalities’ cultural poli- cies. This is important, because in both cities the cultural policies pursued by the municipal author- ities are another important domain where the local French state is deploying difference in a number of ways. The character of the cultural production fa- cilitated by the municipalities in both cases clearly points towards a redefinition of the nation as a dis- cursive form towards one that accommodates vari- ous forms of difference. Importantly, this ability of municipal public culture to inform discursive for- mations in this way is not limited to the cases of Marseille and Lyon. Rather, there exists a literature addressing how municipal cultural policy has tak- en an active role in the redefinition of the national in, for instance, the UK, Canada and the US (Taylor 1994; Modood 2012; Littler & Naidoo 2011). This is not to say that these activities have not been 192 FENNIA 193: 2 (2015)Joseph Downing seen as problematic, as scholars have argued that they reinforce otherness and represent minority cultures as unitary entities with little room for het- erogeneity (Littler & Naidoo 2011). However, even their most adamant critics acknowledge that they are important means to redefine the national and challenge power hierarchies (Hall et al. 2013), providing they acknowledge the inherent diversity of both majority and minority cultures (Littler & Naidoo 2011) and cast minorities in the positive positions of equality (Modood 2012). However, what has been under-researched is how European levels of government are impinging on how such notions of difference are deployed in municipal cultural policies. Both Marseille and Lyon repre- sent important examples of how this trend is be- coming increasingly important in France. In Marseille, the influence of European govern- ance is felt through the city’s participation in the European Capital of Culture initiative in 2013. Here, the activities of the municipality in public culture have used difference in several forms. This represents an important example of how Eu- ropean principles are being applied to difference at the local level in France and it also results in an important contribution to the redefinition of the national. The use of cultural policies to inform the discursive reproduction of the national has in fact been central to the programme of Marseille’s 2013 European Capital of Culture (Marseille- Provence 2013). In my interviews with civil serv- ants working on Marseille-Provence 2013 (MP2013), they specifically identified as a focus of the programme the use of culture to represent and include all of the city’s diverse residents. They placed significant importance on the role that MP2013 could play in challenging the nega- tive conceptions of race and ethnicity not just in Marseille, but also in France more generally. This is important, because a key factor of the tender- ing process to hold the capital of culture title is to have a workable and viable means to express the difference present in potential candidate cities. Thus, in contesting for this European title, the mu- nicipality in Marseille was required to deploy dif- ference in particular manners. The way this was operationalized was through recourse to the im- portance of the cultures of the Mediterranean re- gion in contributing to the founding and growth of Marseille, from which the vast majority of Mar- seille’s post-migration populations originate. As such, the notion of ‘Mediterraneaness’ in its appli- cation of difference could be argued to be a vector for a broader engagement with the contemporary cultural and ethnic difference present in Marseille. This theme runs through a number of flagship pro- jects, for example, the Maison de la région, which was specially refitted in 2013 to include an interac- tive space to allow visitors to “discover the [Medi- terranean] region” (Marseille-Provence 2013). Lo- cated in central Marseille in a prominent position on the city’s best-known and busiest street, la Cane- bière, the Maison de la région commemorates the history and culture of the entire Mediterranean re- gion. Inside there are posters, exhibitions and stone cladding on the walls showcasing all of the alpha- bets of the Mediterranean region, including Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Armenian, and Phoenician. In ad- dition, the Centre régional de la Méditerranée à Marseille (CRM), located on Marseille’s docks, is another example of this process of recognizing dif- ference in public culture through the 2013 pro- gram. Its mission statement is to be a “symbol of the exchange of knowledge and continuing dia- logue between the cultures of the contemporary Mediterranean world” (Marseille-Provence 2013: 44). The centre acts as a forward thinking forum and marketplace where, at the same time “the commons roots of Mediterranean people are re- membered” (Marseille-Provence 2013: 44). The above shows how the EU is indirectly influencing the treatment of difference in France towards its ac- ceptance in the public realm. This trend, again centred on the use of the idea of the Mediterranean as a vector for engaging with the city’s difference, continues in the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée — MuCEM), also opened in 2013. The museum is designed to commemorate the cultures and civili- zations that have existed in the Mediterranean with a focus on their achievements. The museum hosts permanent collections from different Mediterrane- an civilizations as well as rotating exhibitions. One of the first of these exhibitions has been about dif- ferent maps of the Mediterranean region from the 18th century onwards. The exhibition place Europe and France on par with North Africa and the East- ern Mediterranean and thus it implicitly recognizes that all these actors have contributed to the civili- zation of each other. These large projects emanating from 2013 can be read as a clear attempt to re-tell the story of the national to take account of the contribution of regions and people from outside France. Impor- tantly, in this case, these ‘outsides’ that have con- FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) 193Contesting and re-negotiating the national in French cities tributed to constituting France are places from where large proportions of post-migration popu- lations have originated, thus opening up a space for them in the national narrative not simply to be assimilated, but as entities to be recognised for their contributions to France. As such, the repro- duction and performance of the discursive form of the nation take on an interesting form here, where the contribution of those outside of the na- tional frame adds to the national story. This theme of European influence on the treat- ment of difference in cultural policy continues in Lyon through a different route. While in Mar- seille this influence has been exercised through the EU’s European Capital of Culture initiative, in Lyon it has been through the Intercultural Cities Programme (ICP), co-produced by the EU and the Council of Europe. This is a program that spe- cifically sets out to engage with challenging is- sues presented by difference in a way not present per se in the European Capital of Culture pro- gramme. The ICP seeks to facilitate member cit- ies to combat discrimination and racism through the construction of meaningful dialogue between different cultural groups (Wood 2010). Central to Lyon’s membership of the ICP has been the adop- tion of the citywide charter of cultural coopera- tion (Charte de coopération culturelle). While the charter was first drafted in 2004, it has been ratified during the 2012–2015 period. The at- tempt to redefine the national at the local level can be seen in a clause in the latest draft of the charter, ratified by all of the city’s large, flagship cultural institutions, for the “valorisation of di- versity, more visibility of minorities” and to pro- mote “inter-culturality to introduce new arrivals [to Lyon]” (Ville de Lyon 2012: 1). This is a very important means to challenge the xenophobic constructions of the nation so prevalent in con- temporary French discourse. By bringing minori- ties into the public displays of culture in the city directed by the local French state, the charter validates the place of these groups in society. This is a very important aspect of how theorists such as Taylor (1994) and Honneth (2007) have seen the provision of public recognition work- ing. In addition, the anti-racism efforts widely documented in the USA and the UK demonstrate how the local level works as a very important vector in challenging national problems such as racism and discrimination (Modood 2007). Thus, given the fact that citizens also view the national through the prism of the local (Bodnar 1994), this could be said to be another measure by which, at least partially, the discursive form of the nation is being influenced. However, membership of the ICP did not ini- tially translate into difference-orientated policies in Lyon. Rather, Lyon has only actively undertak- en this process much more recently. In 2008, Lyon was noted for a municipal cultural policy where diversity was still a ‘non-issue’ (Council of Europe 2008). This questionable start, however, has given way to significant dynamism. Lyon’s municipal endorsement of deploying difference to redefine how minorities are included in broad- er discursive constructions of the national in- volves the co-option of local organisations work- ing in closely related areas, among which is the Abrahamic group of la Duchère. Originating in the working class neighbourhood of la Duchère in 1986, the initial focus of the group was con- cerned with sharing spaces of worship and facili- tating interreligious dialogue in La Duchère be- tween Muslim, Jewish and Christian groups (Cen- tre resource prospective du Grand Lyon 2012). However, given the state’s commitment to laïci- té, which removes religion from public life, the local state did not become involved in these ac- tivities until its ICP membership. This points to the importance of the European level of govern- ance in the ways difference is deployed locally. As such, the EU plays an important part in rede- fining how the national is performed locally, by facilitating the state’s greater engagement with overtly religious groups locally. So far, this has re- sulted in the organisation, at the publically fund- ed Musées Gadagne, of an exhibition about the religious minorities of Lyon. The event included discussions of the Armenian Christian, Jewish and Muslim presence in the city, with a session discussion of how “Lyonnais Islam” has been rep- resented over the decades by community associa- tions such as the Rhône-Alpes Council for the Muslim Faith (Musées Gadagne 2013). This is a significant step in redefining the national with the engagement of a key issue in the treatment of di- versity in France. Speaking of a “Lyonnais Islam” redefines the national and local in important ways. It casts religion, importantly Islam, as something internal to the city at a time when the French media and political establishment have focused on Islam as external, alien and threaten- ing to Republican values, through such political events as the banning of the headscarf in French schools in 2004. This incorporation of difference, 194 FENNIA 193: 2 (2015)Joseph Downing however, should again not be over stated, given the remaining significant issues France is experi- encing with discrimination against Muslim com- munities. Rather, it should be seen as an example of how the negotiation and contestation of the nation are very much still occurring, at multiple scales, and are far from settled. Redefining the national from below: cooperating with NGOs in Marseille and Lyon Another means by which the local state in Mar- seille and Lyon is offering recognition to difference is through the funding and cooperation agree- ments with local non-governmental organisations (NGOs). By influencing how difference is played out in local spaces, NGOs are taking part in rede- fining the discursive performance and re-produc- tion of the national. This is because they are using notions of religious and ethno-cultural difference to validate the place of those of migrants in socie- ty. Thus, this is in direct confrontation with the per- formance of the nation present in France, where discussions about ethnic and religious difference are depicted as incompatible with French society. This is specifically prevalent around the depictions of those of Muslim of North African origin, with measures such as the banning of praying in the streets in France (Vinocur 2011). This ban occurred after extensive media and political debate during which Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, declared praying in the street a form of occupation and invasion. As previously demonstrated, the exact implementation of this co-option of local NGOs and the implications this has for applications of difference principles varies between Marseille and Lyon. For Marseille, NGOs such as the Union of Mus- lim Families of the Bouches-du-Rhône have re- ceived direct funding from the city municipal au- thorities for activities such as the “Eid in the city” festival. Given the considerable hostility towards religion in recent French legislation, particularly directed towards Islam, Marseille’s stance as the only city in France that funds a public celebration of the Muslim holiday of Eid al Adha poses a sig- nificant challenge to the national mainstream. The “L'Aïd dans la Cité” (Eid in the city) festival is therefore a unique example of how a city is rewrit- ing locally a sense of the national to publically validate and normalize a minority religion in the public realm (Pervis 2007). Eid in the city is con- sidered to be a valuable opportunity to meet other members of the local community in a festive con- text, and it helps counter the more negative images of Muslims that tend to predominate and get the most attention (Open Society Foundations 2011). It is also important to note that this example of the redefinition of the national is not simply con- cerned with, and serving, the Muslim community, as the event specifically invites members of the non-Muslim community and regularly achieve 30% attendance by non-Muslims (Pervis 2007). The celebration of the festival takes a broader ap- proach than a focus on religion, since it offers a vast range of activities so that a wide community and family audience can join in the festive atmos- phere. Here, the use of public space and munici- pal funds to perform the validity of the place of Muslims in France is a powerful means by which national and local prejudice is countered, chal- lenged and renegotiated. This overt character of locally based measures offering the public recognition of diversity in France is also evident in the relationship between NGOs and the local state in Lyon. In this case, the means by which difference is addressed overlaps with, and varies from, measures deployed in Mar- seille. The religious overtones deployed in the support of Eid in the city in Marseille are absent while the actual substantive cultural content bears many similarities between the two cases. An example of this is the collaboration with the Rhône-Alps Centre of Traditional Music (Centre Des Musiques Traditionnelles Rhônes-Alpes, CMTRA). While working for several decades on “valorizing heritage and recognizing the cultural diversities of the territories of Rhône-Alps” (Cen- tre Des Musiques Traditionelles Rhone-Alps 2012: 1), the CMTRA has only recently been co-opted by the Lyon’s municipality to aid in their imple- mentation of the ICP. The municipality has pro- vided the CMTRA with a public space to hold “World Music Thursdays” (Ville de Lyon 2012). This can also be read as an effort to open up Lyon to music whose origin makes cultural diversity present in the public realm. Here, the CMTRA concentrates on bringing out in the public sphere music and cultural forms that may otherwise be confined into the private sphere of the family and religious services. To this end, among other pro- jects, they generated a “sound atlas” of the 8th arrondissement (an ethnically diverse area of FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) 195Contesting and re-negotiating the national in French cities Lyon), which is available online (www.cmtra.org). It was accomplished over a two-year period by a team of researchers who lived in the area and who employed anthropological ethnographic methods to document the stories and daily lives and music of musicians living in the area, meet- ing them in their houses and taking pictures for online publication. In total this atlas showcases 13 acts from Africa, South America, the Arab world, and the Caribbean. This is another exam- ple of how work being done to recognise differ- ence in Lyon is being co-opted and, therefore be- ing given greater exposure, by the local state. Conclusion The varying ways in which difference is deployed in France to renegotiate and redefine the national re- mains an important issue for scholarship. As seen from the evidence presented here, the national re- mains in France a very dynamic subject. In identify- ing the flexibility of local politics to deal with ques- tions of difference-orientated policies, this article has added to the earlier work of Raymond and Mo- dood (2007). However, building on the work of Moore (2003) and Dyotecheva (2007), the article has also demonstrated that the formulation of differ- ence-orientated policies are increasingly occurring in the public realm, with overt recourse being made to notions of difference in public policy. More importantly for the analysis conducted here is how this increased attention to difference dovetails with redefining and contesting the na- tional. Building on various scholarships (Bodnar 1994; Appleton 2002; Confino & Skaria 2002; Jones & Fowler 2007) that have demonstrated the importance of the local in defining the national, the article has also shown how the national is repro- duced and performed in a plurality of discursive ways (Billig 1995; Yoshino 1999; Brubaker et al. 2006). The local is important in redefining the na- tional both as a vector for the contestation of na- tional grievances and also as the lived experience through which individuals encounter and make the national present. The analysis has also demonstrat- ed the importance of local policy initiatives in tack- ling discourses of xenophobia and discrimination that remain nevertheless prevalent in how the French nation is reproduced. However, one should remain cautious about the extent to which the measures discussed here have a general effect. These policy innovations remain in- deed situated in France within a context of height- ened anti-immigrant, specifically anti-Muslim, rhet- oric. This has significant implications for attempting to redefine the national locally, in a context where paradoxical and contradictory messages of exclu- sion have significant visibility. In addition, the en- during conditions of austerity in the French social policy context mean that it is unlikely that, in the medium term, the measures discussed here will be coupled with concerted efforts to reduce economic marginalisation in post-migration communities. Nevertheless, with these limitations in mind, it is worth reflecting on how the examples discussed above reflect an important evolution in the ways in which the national might be redefined ‘bottom-up’. Firstly, measures like Marseille Espérance and Lyon’s commitment to fighting racial discrimination in its workforce demonstrate how local policies initia- tives can address the issues of marginalisation faced by those of migrant origin in France. It is important to note that measures to tackle difference-related is- sues are also influenced by European government. Both Marseille and Lyon demonstrate how efforts to validate the place of minorities in society through European initiatives such as the European Capital of Culture or the ICP can be harnessed by policy mak- ers to redefine the national via local activities. Fi- nally, this analysis demonstrates how NGOs are be- ing co-opted to further these processes of providing recognition to minorities in Marseille and Lyon. This is an important point, because as well as a national trend, the social and economic dimensions of dis- crimination and racism are indelibly local in their manifestation. Thus, by offering some elements of inclusion at the local level, inclusion in the national can be created by extension. NOTES 1 Echoing Antonsich and Matejskova (2015), I use the term ‘national’ to refer to both an identity discourse and a spatial register which intervenes in political, social or economic contexts. 2 The Marseille Espérance forum was instituted in 1990 by the then mayor Robert Vigouroux in re- sponse to a rise in anti-semitic activity that culminat- ed in the desecration of the historic Jewish cemetery in Carpentras, 100 kilometres outside of Marseille, by far right extremists. 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