Negotiating the boundaries of Blackness and naming whiteness: the racialisation and identity formation process of French citizens of Indian descent

This article explores the racialisation and identity formation process of French citizens of Indian descent, an invisible minority in France. To do so, it centres the voices of two groups with connected histories originating in former French “Establishments” (colonies) in India – Non-Overseas Franco-Indians and Indo-Guadeloupeans – via twenty-one semi-structured interviews. It argues that as part of a marginally visible minority within the French State’s racial project, respondents are racialised through a complex intersection between anti-blackness and variations of Orientalism. It shows that in response, respondents actively negotiate the boundaries of Blackness as a category of visibility, and name the whiteness of dominant conceptions of Frenchness, thus challenging the State’s policy of universalism. This article theoretically contributes to debates about racism and racialisation by exploring how different racisms intersect to shape the experiences of particular groups, while empirically developing an account of how variations of Orientalism operate in contemporary France.