SUMMARY:

In this article, Sami Zegnani and Alexandra Filhon focus on semantics and different usages of ethnicity in contemporary French society. The authors point to the fact that ethnicity is used to designate a specific part of the population that is defined by origin, territory of residence, and social/class status, as well as by their specific lifestyle. Thus, ethnicity becomes instrumentalized in the system of discursive domination and social and political segregation. The other side of this instrumentalization of ethnicity is its interiorization by the objects of segregation themselves. They use ethnic categories to denote their group boundaries and objectify their differences with others. Ethnic terms are part of their language of self-description, yet the meanings of these terms often have nothing to do with an objective understanding of ethnicity as being based on common origin, culture, language, and shared history.
The discussion in the article is based on a close study of youth in the Paris working-class suburb Plateau. The authors suggest that this ethnically heterogeneous group that is perceived externally as an “ethnicity” is, in fact, defined by its belonging to a specific urban space and its shared lifestyle, and thus can be better described as a status group. Regardless of the fact that the Plateau youth use ethnic terms to delineate their own group, this “ethnicity” cannot be separated from actual social practices and power discourses that inform its meaning.