what you need to know about this book on Islamophobia

ISLAMOPHOBIA – The release of this book, this Friday, April 26, says a lot about a subject that is a Source of great tension in our current society: Islamophobia. In France, you love it but you are leaving it (Seuil), researchers Olivier Esteves (researcher at CNRS), Alice Picard (researcher in economic and social sciences) and Julien Talpin (professor at the University of Lille and specialist in Islam) have written a vast survey, based on a quantitative sample of more than 1,000 people and after having conducted 140 in-depth interviews, on these young French people of Muslim faith who decide to leave their country.

London, Dubai, New York, Casablanca, Montreal… These French people, the majority highly qualified (53% have at least a bac +5), are taking the plunge into a future outside France, worn out by discrimination and stigmatization. for their religion or the doors that are closed when they look for work or positions of higher responsibility, or even to simply find an apartment.

However, the authors of the survey remain unable to precisely quantify this phenomenon, contenting themselves with writing in their introductory remarks that “thousands of French men and women decide (…) to leave their country”. HAS ReleaseOlivier Esteves says he has “purposely to be imprecise”because “ any ambition to give the figures is illusory and naive”. Almost impossible in fact, with the non-existence of data collection on the expatriation of Muslim people. Only the migration balance can be obtained, via information collected by INSEE.

What emerges a lot from the testimonies present in the book and from people interviewed in the press on the occasion of this literary outing, is that these technicians, executives, engineers or doctors can truly take the social elevator only once they have left for the foreigner. “They also find there the “right to indifference” which allows them to simply feel French”write the authors again in their presentation text.

Change of first name

Daily life Releasewho met around ten young Muslim graduates for the release of this book, perfectly illustrates this last point via the testimony of Salim, a thirty-year-old who uses his cousin living in London as an example: “no one thinks anything of it during Ramadan or after a terrorist attack. He is not seen as an Arab or a Muslim but as a French engineer. »

The world of work remains one of the main points of tension, between obstacles to development and unpleasant remarks heard from colleagues. “When I was young, I heard: “for positions of responsibility, I need a white person, employees want someone who looks like them””recalls Réda, interviewed by The Parisian, again within the framework of the publication of the work.

On RMC this Friday morning, a listener confided to Apolline de Malherbe that he had even gone so far as to have to change his usual first name. “If you want to progress in the job, you don’t have to be Muslim », he notes, bitterly.

An atmosphere of rejection which “increased since the 2015 attacks for many respondents”notes Julien Talpin to the Parisian. And a feeling which has been even more amplified since October 7 and the unprecedented deadly attack by Hamas on Israeli territory.

What emerges from these testimonies is that exile abroad will rarely be followed by a definitive return to France later, as is often the case for long-term expatriates. ” Never “Abdel categorically responds to Parisianadding that “even if there was war, I would not give in for my country”.

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