“We, binationals, will not accept being reduced to spachable parts of competing nations” | EUROtoday

Nou who’re binational, who’ve grown up between a number of languages, a number of tales, a number of horizons, we really feel with explicit acuity the violence of this period which, failing to know ourselves, tries to pressure us to decide on. As if selecting meant giving up a part of ourselves. As if our existence, formed by the dialogue between our identities, was to undergo the injunction of suspicion, to the requirement of unique loyalty, to the incessant questioning of our attachment to France.

When Amin Maalouf answered those that requested him if he was “Rather French” Or “Rather Lebanese”, that he was “Both! »» (The deadly identitiesGrasset 1998), he expressed a deep truth, ours.

Because we are not made of halves, pieces that we could remove or add. We are whole, inseparable from these multiple inheritances which nourish our gaze on the world. We will not accept to be reduced to spachable parts of competing nations, nor to be relegated to the periphery of the Republic on the pretext that we embody its diversity.

A fortress

Montesquieu (1689-1755), in his wisdom, refused to favor an attachment to the detriment of another: he knew that to love his homeland did not mean excluding the rest of the world, but understand that humanity is a whole.

However, today, voices are raised to make identity a fortress, a rampart drawn up against those who, like us, refuse to abdicate their plural dimension. These voices are not only those of the extreme right; They infiltrate insidiously in public discourse, normalizing the idea that some French people should constantly prove their belonging, while others would be the natural depositaries.

The current climate in France stirs up this suspicion. The controversies around immigration, secularism, national identity keep reminding us that our presence disturbs, that our names, our faces, our traditions are perceived as cracks in the unity of the country. It is no longer just the rhetoric of a Jean-Marie Le Pen (1928-2025) claiming that he prefers his daughters to his nieces, his nieces to his cousins ​​and so on until the other. It is now a thought that is invited in the corridors of power, in the columns of the newspapers, on the television sets, in the mouths of those who claim to embody the republican spirit, while distilling the poison of doubt towards us.

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