France, You Love It but Leave It

Their names are Mohamed, Samira, sometimes Matthieu or Sophie. They were born and bred in many parts of France and are highly qualified, but they have decided to go and live in London, New York, Montreal, Brussels, Geneva or Dubai. Many were discriminated against on the French job market, or stigmatised because they have the wrong religion or wrong-sounding names. Whether devout Muslims or not, they felt unloved and unwanted in France, and they find outside of France a sense of peace and fulfilment their native country would not give them. Outside of France they enjoy a ‘right to indifference’ they just couldn’t find in their native country.

This book, based on original research, sheds new light on the silent, never-talked-about flight abroad of French Muslims. It unpacks their motivations, their experiences in France and abroad, and their sense of Frenchness, fraught with bitterness as well as with gratitude. This book isn’t just about an unreported brain-drain: it is also about the deleterious effects of Islamophobia in a country that balks at using the very concept. And it is about an urgent challenge that most countries with Muslim minorities need to confront.

Olivier Esteves is Professor of British Studies at the University of Lille. He works on race and ethnicity in the Anglophone world;

Alice Picard is post-doctoral researcher in political science at the French School of Public Health. She works on the local governance of Islam and, with Olivier Esteves and Julien Talpin;

Julien Talpin is research director in sociology at CNRS, University of Lille. He works on discrimination and the French banlieues, and, with Olivier Esteves and Alice Picard.

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