Segregation by place

Almost to a person, the parents recognize that France is segregated by place as is the United States. So how is it that the parents explain this segregation? Parents do not readily resort to race as an explanation, as in Table 7.3. They instead offer multiple explanations linked to social class, economics, and public policy, and then to factors linked to ethnicity, such as culture, preferences, behavior, fear, and history. They also tie together place and school segregation, in accordance with the empirical evidence that school segregation is strongly related to place segregation because of residential choices (Grzegorczyk 2013; Safi 2013; Mons 2016).

As for place segregation, however, the empirical evidence is that the Paris region is not as segregated as U.S. cities. French immigrants are not as concentrated or as spatially separated as U.S. minorities, and the data do not generally support that minorities are becoming more

concentrated or separated (Préteceille 2011; Shon 2011; Verdugo 2011; Grzegorczyk 2013). The Paris region’s dissimilarity index for North African and sub-Saharan immigrants is about half of that for New York City’s African Americans (Préteceille 2011).27 _{If anything, the evidence is not}

that the middle class is separating itself from others by class, ethnicity, and race, but that the wealthy are becoming more spatially concentrated and separated from everyone else (Préteceille 2006; Bacqué et al. 2014). The difference between empirical data and parental discourse may be

27 _{A limitation here is that this comparison with the Paris region is with New York, a city in}

which hyper-segregation exists (Massey and Denton 1993). Préteceille, for example, is also comparing French nationality data to U.S. racial data, which are categorically different.

tied to a rising fear that France is coming apart socially and culturally, rather than moving apart by where people live (Hoibian 2011; Hoibian 2013; Lamont and Duvoux 2014).

Parents blame place segregation by ethnicity on social class and economic factors. Their views align with the deeply embedded French discourse that social class is the primary means to understand social stratification, inherited from Marxian social philosophy, and still encapsulated within much of French social science and public policy (Lamont 2000b; van Zanten 2006; Lamont and Duvoux 2014). For example, in explaining why place segregation exists, this parent, who agrees the United States and France are similar in place segregation by ethnicity, then excludes ethnicity as the primary determinant, preferring social class and Marx.

M. Fresnel, a teacher with one child at Arche, an Appraiser

RESPONDENT: If people have enough money to go to live in a city, or in a comfortable, quiet neighborhood, people will go to live in these houses and in these apartments, whatever the skin color of people. So, it's not a question of skin color, it's not a question of ethnic origins of individuals. It is can I live with my income in a neighborhood where I can live comfortably? I sincerely believe that the skin color is very secondary. It's first a question of standard of living. It's the standard of living of people that determines where they live. We see that among people who have the least money that there are a high proportion of foreigners or people of immigrant origin. So, of course, but it's less a question of ethnicity, but an economic question ... I think that the ethnic and economic question overlap, but I think the ethnic question … is dependent on the economic question. I will give a Marxist interpretation. I think that actually for a few years one has overestimated ethnic issues, and one forgets that economic issues should be put first, though it's [ethnicity] that is more fashionable somehow.

INTERVIEWER: A question of class.

RESPONDENT: Yeah, yes. I do not really like class categorization. I do not really like class categorization, but I think we need more of an economic interpretation than criterion that is ethnic.

The reference at the end on categorization by the parent is to the Marxian concept of class that it forms itself, class for itself, rather than is created as an empirical category. This teacher- parent is the most hardline of all in his Marxian take on class and ethnicity.

Some parents blame public policy for segregation. One parent points to lack of affordable housing in Riviereville, where she lives, as the result of public officials who refuse to build public housing, so to maintain the town’s homogeneity. The town instead eschews public housing by paying an annual fine to the national government (Parny 2016; Serafini 2018).

Finally, a few parents point to racism. Even then, this parent claims racism plays out differently in France than in the United States. The parent agrees that the countries are similar when it comes to segregation, though the example the parent gives is about schools, not places.

Mme. Bossuet, a doctoral student with one child at Legacy, an Assenter In France, there is a different perception … one is not going to ask questions when one is going to enroll a child in a middle school if there is a high proportion of people of color, unless one is in a city. One knows that it is more of a suburban problem, and in the city, it is a social problem … One is going to put it more on the social side, and one is going to say, “I'm not going to go to this collège

because there are too many problems.” But if there is a collège with children who are very, very strong, who score 20 out of 20,28 and they are black and Asian, it seems to me one will say, no problem there. That's why I think there is a different perception.

And in correspondence with Mme. Bossuet’s earlier excerpt on how parents perceive the causes of segregation, six parents cite outright racism as the cause. Ten parents link ethnic place segregation to social class, and nine link it to economic factors (see Table 7.3). Additionally, eight parents blame public policy. Other reasons, such as religion, behavior, preferences, fears,

and history, are less often cited, from 21 percent to 10 percent of parents. Parents often cite multiple reasons, mingling causes related to social class and economic factors with causes related to ethnic mix. Parents in better off Riviereville are more likely to cite economic and social

factors, while parents in highly mixed Petiteville are more likely to cite cultural factors, such as religion (data not shown).

Parents frequently tie place and school segregation together, which the empirical data supports, sometimes with the implicit acknowledgement that they are part of that process of place and school segregation. In all, the case of ethnic place segregation I find is clouded by other distinctions that these parents push forward, in which race is infrequently cited. A not insignificant number do agree that place segregation results from ethnic differences. They may not blame ethnicity itself, however, but they blame factors they link to ethnicity, such as forms of parenting. The parents also tie together ethnic place segregation and ethnic school segregation.