Abstract
In France, the concept of ethnicity, contrary to its Anglo-Saxon definition and use in anthropology for example, is philosophically, historically and politically connoted. Indeed, its use has its roots in the colonial history of France. Since the 1980s and the increasing social problems in the suburbs of France, sheltering a large population of immigrants, the concept has reappeared, within the ethnographs, sociologists and anthropologists inspired by the American anthropology. The discussion on the concept of ethnicity in France is highly ideological. It is politically and socially problematized. Ethnicity in the French republican thought is linked to the Anglo-Saxon idea of ?communitarism', ?multiculturalism' or ?cultural particularism'.
