National Identity and Immigrants’ Assimilation in France

Determination and changes of immigrants' identity resulting from intercultural contacts impact their socio-economic integration. To precisely assess individuals’ identity, we propose a continuous index which aims to overcome interpretation troubles faced by usual measures of ethnic identity. Then, we investigate the determinants of immigrants' ethnic identity in France. We compare our composite and continuous index exhibiting individuals' assimilation with a usual measure of ethnic identity – the national identity ("I feel French" dummy). We underline the importance of some sociodemographic characteristics in ethnic identity formation and detail immigrants' assimilation in France. We are thus able to show that cultural assimilation and national identity do not always coincide. It seems that the further the origin (in cultural terms), the higher the national identity, but the lower the assimilation. We also present evidence of second generations' identity convergence to natives’ one, either in terms of national identity (almost total commitment) or assimilation.