Race Politics in Britain and France: Ideas and Policymaking since the 1960s.

By Erik Bleich. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 246p. $65.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.

One of the most important results of the wave of third-world immigration into Europe during the past 30 years has been the emergence of multicultural and multiracial societies in countries in which the image of homogeneity has been widespread. The presence of people of color is no longer exotic, or even unusual, in major European cities, and, as Erik Bleich notes at the beginning of this fine study, ethnic minorities, frequently referred to as “immigrants,” are a substantial and growing part of the population of all major European countries.

In the European context, Britain and France provide us with a comparative puzzle. Both countries have had a large postwar wave of nonwhite immigrants from outside of the continent. In both countries, naturalization is relatively easy, and in both (with some exceptions) most children born on national soil are (or become) citizens. Thus, ethnic minorities, who start out as immigrant workers, have rapidly become settled citizens. In both countries, the legislative efforts to manage the challenges of race and racial relations that have emerged from this reality were initiated more than 30 years ago, and have been enhanced since. “Yet,” as Bleich argues, “the two states diverge substantially in the types of institutions they have established” (p. 7).

This policy puzzle is somewhat similar to that analyzed by Gary Freeman almost 25 years ago (in Immigrant Labor and Racial Conflict in Industrial Societies: The French and British Experience 1945–75, 1979). Like Bleich, Freeman used comparison to understand differences, and both tend to see ideas and ways of defining and framing questions as important in their analyses. For Freeman, however, the relationship between race and class is far more important. Racial conflict in France is held in check by institutions (particularly trade unions) for which ideas of working-class solidarity tend to dominate racial divisions. However, even as Freeman's book was in press, this argument as a basis for comparison with Britain was becoming more difficult to sustain. The racism of French working-class respondents toward immigrant workers, which has influenced trade union behavior, is demonstrated and analyzed by Michèle Lamont (in The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration, 2000).

Bleich's explanation of the differences between race policies in Britain and France is relatively simple and compelling. Essentially, the differences are explained by the sharp contrast of ideas in the form of “frames” that drove the dominant group of policymakers in each case. While many differences in policy outcomes can be explained by conflict theory—groups and parties—or the problem-solving approach that focuses on the role of policy communities, or by the institutionalist perspectives, Bleich sees these as secondary, assuming that what we want to understand is differences in the content of policy choices that are made. He argues that the same kinds of political actors in each country produced contrasting kinds of policies (p. 173) because they were operating with contrasting sets of ideas about the need for policy on racism, its goals, and the ways it should be effective.

For British policymakers in 1965, the concepts of race and ethnicity, essentially defined by color, were central to the way that they thought about policy. The core legislative problem was how to attack access racism in the context of deep anti-immigrant sentiment within the electorate. Although expressive racism (incitement to racial hatred) was not ignored, these policymakers were most concerned about breaking down barriers to integration, and therefore about access racism. Moreover, many within this group saw the British problem of racism as similar to that of the United States during the same period, and modeled their approach on legislation that been recently passed in Washington. They were particularly struck with the effectiveness of using an administrative/civil law approach for dealing with grievances, rather than using criminal procedures.

For French policymakers in 1972, on the other hand, the focus on expressive racism was most important. The context for this group was not the problems of integration that were emerging from immigration, argues Bleich, but rather expressions of postwar anti-Semitism (p. 120). Only gradually did they shift their concerns to immigrant minorities and access racism. For the French policy group, criminalizing racism was an assertion of the collective will against acts that were manifestly wrong, a reassertion of color-blind republican values. For them, there has been a tendency “to take race out of antiracism” (p. 182) by using the force of criminal justice against those who would violate the rights of others. For Bleich, there is no doubt that the British approach is more effective in dealing with the everyday kind of racism, since “obtaining convictions using criminal procedures proves extremely difficult” (pp. 52 and 10). Moreover, the basic legislation in each case set a path for each country that has largely determined legislation that has followed.

Although the argument is powerful, the analysis works better for the British case, primarily because the policymaking group was smaller and certainly more coherent, a group within the Labour Party itself. The core of the French initiating group was the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Among People (MRAP), a group often close to the Communist Party, but the larger group was unusual because it ranged across party and even ideological lines. In the French case, Bleich comes close to simply arguing a general political culture, rather than a group frame. Moreover, although the original legislation in both Britain and France was passed virtually without opposition, the reasons were very different in each case. The British legislation in 1965 was part of a government program, an important component of Labour's approach to integration, and part of consensus building with the Tories on immigration restriction. The French legislation in 1972 was a low-salience response to a series of racist incidents, initiated by a parliamentary committee in collaboration with the MRAP and other groups that had been advocating these ideas for well over a decade; the lack of partisan division was an indication of its perceived unimportance. This low salience has endured, and antiracism laws in France have never become as important as corresponding legislation in Britain. Therefore, it would seem that different frames not only influence policy content but the salience of policy as well.

With these few reservations, I find the analysis in Race Politics in Britain and France well conceived and well documented. Bleich demonstrates how relatively small groups in each country were able to define the problem of racism and to build that definition into subsequent legislation. In addition, their original influence was magnified by path dependency in legislation that followed. By focusing on the big ideas of frames, Bleich helps us to understand more clearly that it is impossible to understand policy without first understanding what the problem is and who defines it.