Laicité in public political discourse, between securitization and desecuritization of Muslims: The Case of France

Abstract

This article examines the role of the Secularism in the political debates around the Muslim populations (of immigrant origin) in Western Europe and their framing as a security threat. It examines the case of France, and more specifically the public discourse of the French executive on the issue in the context of the 'anti-separatism law' (passed in August 2021) aimed to strike a balance on the religious aspect of Muslim immigrant integration. It draws on both Securitization theory -often used to study how migrants are framed as a threat -and secularization studies that divided (French) secularism into many traditions with different historical origins and political goals. The Thesis brings to the literature a new perspective as it also examines the desecuritizing potential of Laicité discourse, and conceptualizes Laicité based on the historical understanding of the term . It therefore argues that the level of (de)securitization of these communities will depend on the invoked lexicon of laicité. Using an integrative nested mixed method, the thesis (1) maps out the different lexicons and determine the relation of each one of them to securitization through a content analysis, then (2) conducts an in-depth discourse analysis to analyze the more ambiguous references harder to understand through solely...