establish the existence of unequal treatment (as in incidents of indirect discrimination).
In fact, the introduction of indirect racial discrimination is one of the most important
innovations of the race directive, and the lack of data collection, even collection that
attempts to protect the identity of the subjects, makes this innovation almost null.
Institutions in Flux: Citizenship and Naturalization in Germany and the Evolution
of the Problem of Racism in France
Institutions are dynamic and hard to capture in social science analysis, it is for
that reason that I began this essay with a somewhat historical approach, hoping to show
both institutional evolution and also inertia. There were two instances of institutional
change in the late 1990s that seem especially important to the analysis of the national
response to the race directive in both countries. In Germany, as was discussed above,
there were two major laws reforming the naturalization and citizenship laws, making it
easier for immigrants and their German born descendants to claim German citizenship.
Although these reforms still leave Germany far behind France and the US in terms of
openness to new citizens, they are a major break with the past and show that although
German institutions are still a bad fit with the race directive, they are getting closer. I
expect that it will take a generation of new citizens before their full impact is felt.
There were also a number of small events in France that lead me to argue that the
republican ideal is being challenged and rearticulated (as I mentioned above). The
particular events that suggest this state of flux, began in the late 1990s with changes in
the anti-racism policy that foreshadow the French response to the race directive. With
the benefit of hindsight it now seems that France was already, if slowly and weakly,
54
It should be noted that in interviews, Virginie Guiraudon and Patrick Simon, two French academics,
mentioned that are currently involved in a European-sponsored project that attempts to establish some basic
data on race and ethnicity in France. Their efforts could be the first step towards giving life to the indirect
discrimination provision of the directive.
Convention