Immigrants in France Assert Their Own Culture as Their Numbers Increase
North African immigrants in France who were given French names have started to change their names back to Arabic versions in an assertion of their increasing numbers and power in that country.
Requests from immigrants’ children for name changes back into Arabic are mounting in the French courts and worrying a state that lays store on melding a single national culture.
This is a superb example of how immigrant communities do not assimilate but, once their numbers reach large enough amounts, assert their own culture and change the nature of the nation in which they have settled.
Image alongside: An official map from France showing the population proportion of Muslims by region in that country. The darkest regions have in excess of 30 percent.
In France, children with families from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are reversing the old custom in which immigrants from the old colonies gave French names to their children.
Driven by a feeling that they do not belong to their Gallic Christian names, the applicants are meeting resistance from judges who are reluctant to endorse what they see as a rejection of France.
Under France’s strict administrative laws, an official change of first name requires court consent. Until 1992 parents could only register their babies with names from an approved list.
“The way I look is out of sync with my name,” said Jacques, 25, who wants to adopt a name from his parents’ native Algeria.
Nadine, who is in her forties, failed to convince a Paris court to let her go back to Zoubida, the name she had before naturalisation. “I want to return to my roots,” she told Judge Anne-Marie Lemarinier, according to Le Monde newspaper.
Frédéric Grilli, a Melun lawyer who acts for applicants, said that there was a connection between the desire to claim Maghebrin (North African) identity and France’s three-year-old ban against girls wearing Muslim headscarves in state schools.
Dominique Sopo, president of SOS Racism, a campaign group, has admitted that France’s policy of integration was failing.
