When Merit Becomes Institutional Drift

This article examines how racialized inequalities may persist within French public administration despite formal commitments to equality, impartiality, and equal access to public employment and rights. It develops Institutional Drift Theory as a framework for studying the organizational processes through which recurring departures from declared standards are minimized, fragmented, or left without correction. The analysis connects four administrative sites: recruitment, internal complaint handling, residence-permit administration, and asylum procedures. The evidence base is deliberately differentiated. Correspondence tests offer causal evidence of unequal recruitment responses in specified occupations; administrative statistics document longer processing times and growing backlogs in residence procedures; complaints and association reports identify barriers and possible mechanisms; none alone establishes a single, intentional system of discrimination. A central reported claim, that US citizens’ residence files are handled more quickly than comparable files of Algerian, Arab, or African applicants, remains unverified in public data and is formulated as a research hypothesis. The article advances a mechanism-based account of drift and proposes a comparative research design combining matched administrative records, testing, process tracing, and carefully protected testimony. It argues that the central institutional question is not only whether unequal outcomes occur, but whether public organizations can detect recurring patterns, provide reviewable reasons, protect those who report them, and change routines that fail to meet their equality commitments.