La construction argumentative de l’ethos et des identités collectives dans les propositions de loi de l’Assemblée nationale française concernant les étrangers et les migrations

Abstract

This study deals with a body of law proposals discussed by the French National Assembly during the 13th and 14th legislatures concerning, from different angles, “foreigners” living on French soil. Although these texts do not deal directly with migratory phenomena, they emerge from them and affect both immigrants and the inhabitants of the host country. The speeches of the proposals show the construction of a national collective ethos as well as the evocation of foreign collective identities. Some proposals evoke a target collective for the laws under scrutiny, which means that the parliamentarians of the National Assembly, proposing these laws, speak as spokespersons of the communities to whom these same legislative devices are supposed to extend rights. Thus, we will examine how the collective ethos of the proposers is shaped in the argumentation by the identification with the values of the Nation and in the evocation of collective identities to protect but also, and often, to integrate, even assimilate.

Keywords

• argumentation
• collective ethos
• collective identity
• republican identity
• law proposals
• foreigners
• integration