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Introduction

The ambiguous relation between race and ethnicity. Theoretical debates and variability of usages
Jean-Luc Bonniol, Ary Gordien et Jocelyne Streiff-Fénart
Traduction de Yvonne van der Does (Office of International Scientific Visibility - IdEx Université Côte d’Azur)
Cet article est une traduction de :
Introduction [fr]

Texte intégral

1Some words have been worn out from overuse. Meanings they had in the past continue to haunt present usage. This is certainly the case for the words “race” and “ethnic group,” often found side by side in the semantic field of “origins.” In French politics, both notions have been perceived as contrary to the Republic’s egalitarian principles and are viewed with the same suspicion. This is confirmed by their absence in administrative and common usage, contrary to what can be observed in various countries of North and South America (Prewitt 2005, Simon 2017, Loveman 2014). Both notions have given rise to controversies at the crossroads of scientific debate and political battles, notably about removing the word “race” from the French Constitution (Mots, 1992) or so-called “ethnic” statistics (Revue Française de Sociologie, 2008).

2French-speaking research on “race,” “ethnic group” (“ethnie”) and “ethnicity” has been marginal until recently. Apart from research on the French Caribbean (Giraud 1979, Bonniol 1992), the term “race” was widely banned due to its negative connotations as a category used in the hierarchical classifications of physical anthropology in the 19th century and later as justification for Nazi crimes.

3Lately, as attention has increasingly focused on the issue of discrimination and the emergence of a “racial issue” (Fassin 2002, Fassin and Fassin 2006), the notion of race has been freed from its original meaning (the identification of groups by reproducible phenotypic traits) to take on the meaning of a classification category that shapes the experiences of subjects identified as “racialized” in a social relationship of domination and/or exclusion. Used as a category of critical analysis, race has established itself as a legitimate concept in social science while remaining highly controversial, despite its new meaning. The question is no longer whether the use of the word race is legitimate, but whether it is an essential criterion of social classification, similarly to other criteria such as social class (Fassin and Fassin 2006, Hajjat and Larcher 2019, Beaud and Noiriel 2021).

4In the 1990s, ethnicity as a concept, and no longer an entity, caught the attention of a few anthropologists and sociologists who showed a growing interest in the deconstruction of the ethnic group proposed by Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth, who had not been widely known until then in French-speaking academia (Martinello 1995, Poutignat and Streiff-Fénart 1995). Although studies of ethnic relations were still rare in French research, the idea slowly gained ground that the concept of ethnicity did not refer to the origin of groups but served to question the modalities of their social production and the nature of the boundaries that separate them.

5The two notions have thus undergone successive stages of theoretical investigation that correspond to undeniable advances compared to the highly essentialist definitions that prevailed in earlier years, when silence hung over the concepts of race and racism ever since Guillaumin's pioneering work (1972). The constructivist approach is now widely accepted. It should be noted however that while both concepts continue to be debated in English-language scientific research and in South American studies (Wade 1997, Boyer 2023), in the French context, ethnicity is not discussed with the same fervor as race (Bertheleu 2021). It is sometimes even vaguely associated with race, as in the term “ethno-racial,” which has gained traction, without anyone clarifying the “racial” or “ethnic” share in these phenomena and relations, or explaining what this distinction means. Some authors refuse to use the term because, for them, it only serves to mask the concept of race and acts as a euphemism for those who cannot confront the political and ideological discomfort they feel when faced with this historically charged notion. While this euphemistic function is clear in the ordinary and political uses of the adjective “ethnic,” it is a clumsy reference—and at worst a biased one—to the outdated French concept of “ethnie” rather than to the contemporary understanding of “ethnicity.” It also overlooks the longstanding and renewed debates about the concept of ethnicity and its intersection with race.

6This journal issue heuristically re-examines the relationship between “racial” and “ethnic” phenomena in light of the successive redefinitions of the analytical categories used to identify them.

7The first question is whether it is justified to consider the concepts of race and ethnicity within the same analytical framework. In the most reductionist sense, we can argue that they are based on groups identified by characteristics derived from a shared origin, transmitted across generations. But is this similarity enough to consider them analytically related categories, distinct from other categories used to classify social groups (such as gender or class)? The interpretation of a difference in social position in relation to an origin that can be transmitted by heredity can also be applied to social class. Under the French Ancien Régime, the transmission of royal blood confirmed membership in the aristocratic “race,” and in the 19th century, the idea that workers belonged to the same “race” was widespread. This idea can notably be found in the works of Émile Zola, who described a genealogical continuum of servitude, as shown by Alain Morice (Morice 2006). The transmission of cultural traditions is equally fundamental to sustaining the sense of belonging to a class, whether the bourgeoisie (Pinçon-Charlot and Charlot 2003) or the working class (Hoggart 1970).

  • 1 The choice of De Rudder, Poiret and Vourch (2006) to refer to “racist” rather than racial inequalit (...)

8There is nevertheless a strong argument for considering race and ethnicity as related concepts. Unlike other categories of differentiation such as class or gender, these concepts do not have a material basis independent of cognition. They share a specific ambiguity in the relationship between their epistemological status and the ontological status of the objects to which they refer (Wacquant 2022: 74). Sociolinguist Alice Krieg offers a relevant analysis of the relationship between the idea and the object when using the adjectives “racial” and “ethnic.” She claims that expressions such as “racial extermination” or “ethnic purification,” as opposed to other adjectives such as national, religious, employed, or sexual, either presuppose the existence of an object they refer to (extermination of races, purification of ethnic groups) or imply actions based on racial or ethnic criteria.1

9We can thus admit that because of this ambiguity, which distinguishes them from other social classification categories, race and ethnicity can be analytically grouped together. How, then, can we precisely define the theoretical purpose of these related concepts? Are they both valid because of the differences in the phenomena they describe or the different ways of understanding them? Before examining these questions more closely, it may be useful to explore the genealogy of the two notions to better grasp the debated issues, as well as the misunderstandings that sometimes continue to influence their current uses.

Concepts built on successive semantic sedimentation

10The notion of race, when it emerged in the 18th century with the rise of classificatory thinking, refers to the scholarly idea of differentiating humanity into distinct groups, based on unique physical characteristics derived from separate ancestries. Identification “markers” were chosen among various human biological traits, that could be immediately cognitively processed and classified into socially constructed groups based on origin. These genealogical entities (Doron 2016) were viewed as natural, since they relied on the transmission of phenotypic traits and implied representations of heredity. This emphasis on genealogy over phenotype is evident in the popular representations that were widely adopted and have persisted to this day. In examining racial thinking during the Middle Ages (Heng 2011, Schaub 2015), notably at the time of the limpieza de sangre statutes in medieval Spain and the persecution of the Marranos and Moriscos, one notices the absence of discriminating phenotypic markers, replaced instead by a genealogical fixation on identifying conversos who remained suspect despite their baptism. In this context, a person embodied the culmination of a lineage combining religious orthodoxy and purity of lineage. This genealogical fixation reappears centuries later in the “color line” of colonial slave societies, where it can be interpreted as a discriminatory search for a former servile status (Bonniol 2020), most notably illustrated by the American one-drop rule.

11In this framework of racial thinking, cultural traits were often associated with physical characteristics, including the intellectual and moral capacities of individuals. Historically, this categorization was combined with two corollary ideologies that were likely to emerge in the context of differential social treatment of individuals, that can be termed “racism.” The first is essentialization, namely the absolutization and naturalization of differences implying that categorizations of individuals are fixed and definitive. The second is the inegalitarian interpretation of differences, either in the form of domination or exclusion.

12This is how the concept of race gained its negative reputation, particularly after it served to justify Nazi crimes during the Second World War, which provoked a strong backlash in the biological sciences where its scientific invalidity was established. A significant shift occurred in the early 1960s and especially in the 1970s, leading to a radical reevaluation of the notion. The prevailing idea became that human differentiation exists on a continuum (Lewontin 1972). The rejection of the concept of race by many biologists soon had an impact on the social sciences and even on political ideas. It marked the beginning of a “magical period,” during which, for many, the idea of race seemed to be permanently discredited (Jacquard 1978). This seemed to reinforce anti-racist sentiment, which could now be based on the popular expression at the time: “Races do not exist.”

  • 2 For more on these aspects, see the introduction to the issue on “race and biology” published in thi (...)

13In the early 2000s, the biological sciences were once again the first to re-examine the concept of race as a social construct, along with its rejection as a biological concept. With the rise of genomics, new possibilities arose for studying human biological variability. Did these advances in genomic knowledge of human diversity signal the return of the concept of “biological race” in biological and medical sciences? The use of the term “return” leads us to focus less on the “disappearance” of biological race and more on its mutation and transformation throughout the historical evolution of biological and medical discourse and their influence on the social sciences and, beyond that, on the non-academic world.2

14However, it is important to note that biological race had never disappeared from scientific publications (Duster 1995, 2005, Bolnick et al. 2007):

Mobilized in healthcare categorizations and routine medical practices […], the category of race, theorized as a biological entity, has long been juxtaposed with other uses of the term, as social construct, administrative category, or cultural substrate. (Bonniol, Edwards Grossi, Wang 2021)

15The combination of genetic data with social identities is not merely an academic concern, as evidenced by the various ways the public has adopted genetic categories, notably due to the popularity of genomics and commercialization of genetic ancestry tests in the United States since the early 2000s, which often racialize these categories (Bolnick 2008, Bonniol and Darlu 2015b).

16To resolve the dilemma surrounding the use of the term “race,” which periodically resurfaces in public debate, some biologists have proposed abandoning it, in strict application of advances in genomics. Specialists in population genetics and molecular biology, such as Bertrand Jordan, have proposed a clarification of terminology and suggested the term “ancestry,” which has the advantage of referring to a precise definition:

a set of people who are genetically related through their common origin, often attached to a part of the world where this group has remained relatively isolated for several millennia. […] Unlike “ethnic groups,” “ancestry groups” are not a politically correct substitute for the term “race.” (Jordan 2021)

17A recent attempt to rehabilitate the term race has been made by analytical philosopher Michal O. Hardimon. In contrast to “eliminative materialism” and from a “realist” standpoint (thus positing the existence of human groups that can be called races), he removes the semantic layers of the term. The first level corresponding to the old use of the term marked by essentialism and hierarchy is obviously to be rejected. However, he identifies a second level, which he calls “minimalist,” freed from these two attributes and characterized by combinations of visible physical traits, common ancestry, and distinct geographical origin, which he considers neutral and “harmless” in its political implications. Hence, he asserts a position of “deflationary realism.” He distinguishes two further levels of meaning. The first relates to population theories in genetics and biomedical research, referring to groups belonging to biological lineages, distinguished by combinations of phenotypic differences traceable to founding populations, that were geographically separated and extrinsically isolated in terms of reproduction, a meaning corresponding more or less to an ancestry group. The second level refers to groups socially conceived as races, for which he uses the neologism “socialrace” that can have two dimensions, one oppressive and the other emancipatory, by reversing the stigma (Hardimon 2017).

18The term ethnicity has much less historical depth than race, as its use has only become widespread in the social sciences, mainly in English-speaking countries, since the 1970s. Unlike the word “race,” which has long had several different meanings, “ethnicity” first appeared as a scientific term specific to the language of the social sciences. As a result, there is less confusion between its academic and popular usage. However, in French, it is equally difficult to separate it from the sedimented layers associated with the French word “ethnie” (ethnic group) from which it is derived. In French ethnology, ethnies have long been the basic units analyzed by the discipline, notably in the study of non-European groups, often in a colonial context. There is no equivalent in English for “ethnie.” Anthropologists engaged in ethnographic descriptions of human groups in that language most often use the term “tribe,” or occasionally other terms such as “culture-bearing unit” (Narrol 1964) or “ethnic group.” In the common anthropological sense, an ethnic group refers to a human group characterized mainly by a common language and culture viewed as a homogeneous whole.

19The study of ethnicity seeks precisely to break away from substantialist definitions of an ethnic entity. It is based on two strands that have contributed to deconstructing the traditional representation of the ethnic group as an object with undisputed consistency and reality. The first challenge came from English-speaking anthropology. From the mid-20th century onwards, several specialists in the field (Nadel 1942, Leach 1954, Moerman 1965) have refuted the existence of “ethnic groups” as closed entities defined by a correspondence between social organization, language, and culture. Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth (1969) even radicalized the separation between objective cultural or linguistic traits and ethnic identity. The novelty of his approach was to shift the observer’s attention from within the ethnic group (its language, culture, and political organization) to the boundaries where distinctions between “us” and “them” are drawn. When an ethnic group is studied as a process of borderization, it is considered within a system of relations, and this approach is diametrically opposed to the traditional monographic approach in ethnology. In French-language anthropology, the concept of “ethnie” as the basic unit of ethnology was only later challenged with the publication of Au coeur de l'ethnie (Amselle and M’Bokolo 1985). In a radical critique of the essentialist connotations and realist usage of the concept of “ethnie,” the contributors to this book demonstrate how cultural signs express identity in the political power struggles in which they participate.

20In the United States, where relations between ethnicity and race are burdened by the history of immigration and slavery, another genealogy of the notion of ethnicity can be traced. In the 1970s, marked by an ethnic revival movement, the new concept of ethnicity diverged from the view of the “ethnic group” as the fundamental unit forming what were then referred to as pre-modern and pre-state societies. In American sociology and political science, it became a construct specific to “hyphenated groups” in modern society, formed by the descendants of non-WASP immigrants (Italians, Jews, and Irish) who took pride in their origins (Glazer and Moynihan 1975).

21However, constructivist redefinitions of race and ethnicity are not the final chapter in the history of these concepts. As both terms evolved separately, the constructivist consensus itself was challenged, casting doubt on their validity (Morning 2014, Poutignat and Streiff-Fénart 2015). Should these concepts be abandoned or preserved? And if they are retained, should their analysis become more nuanced? Should the components of race be dismantled to better isolate and refute their racialist ideological uses (Hardimon 2025)? Should the subjective dimensions of ethnicity be considered, both in terms of cognition and affect, to counter substantialist or “groupist” ontologies (Brubaker et al. 2004)?

Race versus ethnicity: the debate is ongoing

22Several authors (Brun and Cosquer 2022, Sabbagh 2022) have recently attempted to inventory and synthesize the different ways in which the two concepts relate to each other. The next section briefly lists some of the questions raised and the debates they sparked among specialists in the field. This rapid overview does not do full justice to the authors, who often present sophisticated arguments, but it highlights the contradictions, uncertainties, and ambiguities that confirm that despite the extensive literature on these notions, a number of questions remain unanswered.

1. Is race a sub-category of ethnicity, or is ethnicity merely a less consequential form of race?

23In English-language academia, with its long tradition of research on race and ethnicity, the relationship between the two concepts has been the subject of much discussion and clarification (see Ethnic and Racial Studies 2014, 2017, Ethnicities 2025). Some authors view race as a variant or subtype of ethnicity and racism as a specific form of ethnic enclosure (Loveman 1999, Wacquant 2022, Wimmer 2014). They are radically opposed to those who argue that race plays a fundamental role in structuring social relations in the United States and globally (Bonilla Silva 1997, Omi and Winant 1994). For the former, race has no specific analytical value. It belongs to the broad field of issues involved in the processes and consequences of the construction, maintenance, and decline of symbolic boundaries and represents one form among the more general processes of ethnic enclosure. For them, the concept of ethnicity takes analytical precedence over that of race, while ethnicity is of little interest to authors who consider race as a principle that structures all areas of social life.

24In French-language studies, some researchers establish a continuum between ethnicization and racialization. Both concepts refer to a process of othering, with nuances or differences in the degree of essentialization or naturalization. For them, racialization implies radical and absolute essentialization, while ethnicization is relative and allows for cultural assimilation (Poiret 2011). Other researchers argue that ethnicization is not a milder form of racial othering but rather an attempt to escape it by reconstructing the racialized group around an alternative identity based on a shared culture and history. Carin and Jaffrelot (2002) describe this process with respect to the ethnicization of castes, where the challenge for lower castes is to form an alternative identity by redefining their identity and replacing the hierarchical order with cultural differentiation. The same concept is thus used by authors in different contexts to describe a form of domination or a fundamental factor of social emancipation (Carin and Jaffrelot, ibid.).

2. Can these notions be conceptually dissociated from their roots in biology and culture?

  • 3 Until the early 20th century, it was believed that both physical characteristics and collective tem (...)

25It has now been widely accepted that the object of sociology is the study of race relations rather than the somatic characteristics of race. In the 1950s, Wagley proposed a distinction between “biological race” and “social race.” He defined the latter as “the way in which the members of society classify each other by physical characteristics” (Wagley 1952). In the 1970s, specialists in this field of research considered race to be a symbolic or semantic element, a sign by which a social category is identified (Banton 1971: 15, Guillaumin 1972). But this circular argument raises a new question: can they utilize a category while claiming that it does not correspond to a real group? Is the transformation of race into a social representation, a belief, or a disposition of actors to distinguish groups by color or phenotype simply another way of perpetuating the idea that biosomatic differences lie at the core of race? Another difficulty arose from the “discovery”3 in the 1980s of cultural racism. The idea that culture can also function as nature and that it encloses individuals and groups in a genealogy, according to Balibar (1998: 34), nuances the notion that racial thinking is mainly concerned with phenotypic characteristics. But rather than abolishing the biological myth, does cultural racism not simply create new variants of it (ibid.)?

26Regarding ethnicity, the role played by cultural contrasts in specific ethnic affiliations and distinctions has rarely been contested. The importance of references to culture in the process of ethnicity construction derives from the etymological link between ethnicity and the French “ethnie,” but also from Boas’s resolve to challenge the concepts of blood, heredity, and race that dominated popular and scholarly representations at least until the 1920s. Cultural anthropology undoubtedly contributed to a major scientific advance by refuting both scientific racism and socio-cultural evolutionism. Some of Boas’ students, however, tended to overemphasize this point by reifying cultures as organic wholes that entirely shape individuals. This idea, which came to be known as culturalism and is now considered one of the main pitfalls of anthropology, has been challenged by the dynamic and interactional approach to ethnic groups. While this approach has stripped the notion of culture of its substantial character, the fact remains that cultural traits, whether reinvented, symbolic, highlighted in a particular situation, or manipulated for strategic purposes, remain markers of contemporary conceptions of ethnicity.

27It is therefore not so simple to abandon the opposition between biology and culture, which often remains explicit or implicit when distinguishing race and ethnicity. However, if we intend to use both notions as analytical categories, this opposition must be systematically questioned. 

3. Are race and ethnicity distinct phenomena belonging to different temporal frameworks?

28Decolonial approaches view the conquest of the Americas as the starting point of modernity. Following the analyses of Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (Balibar and Wallerstein 2018 [1988]), Ramón Grosfoguel established a genealogy of racism stemming from colonization. He noted that, in the late 15th century, the Catholic conquest of Al-Andalus was waged in the name of “purity of blood” (“pureza de sangre”), a discourse he described as “proto-racist,” “but not yet fully racist” (Grosfoguel, 2013: 73-90). He argued that the treatment of Jews and Muslims during this period amounted to “ethnic cleansing,” “physical and cultural genocide,” and “epistemicide” (ibid.: 77). Through the conquest of indigenous populations and the enslavement of deported African captives, race became the criterion for social stratification in colonial regimes. As such, it represented a core element of coloniality that, according to decolonial thought, determines power relations and knowledge production to this day (Colin and Quiroz 2023).

29This decolonial analysis of race and ethnicity raises broader questions. Do racial dynamics only make sense in relation to colonial histories and how they have permanently established the equivalency of origin, phenotype, blood, and status as absolutes? Or, despite the undeniable impact of Western imperialism, can the dynamics behind the naturalization of differences in other eras and in non-Western contexts be characterized as racial? Authors claiming to represent a new imperial history have strongly challenged the general, somewhat caricatural, and ultimately, Eurocentric nature of the notion of colonial racism. According to Emmanuelle Sibeud, it mainly perpetuates the misconception that the fight against racism, like racism itself, primarily concerns Westerners, who are viewed as the only ones capable of combating racism after having invented it. These authors reject what they see as a Western-centered perspective and defend a global and multi-site vision of racism and anti-racism that emphasizes the connections between colonial logics and practices and those manifest in other contexts (Sibeud 2020). Furthermore, decolonial studies tend to prioritize race over ethnicity. However, while based on the premise that the colonization of South America is the main starting point for the West’s material and epistemic domination, it is interesting to note that studies in various languages about this region of the world mobilize both the notions of ethnicity and race to describe dynamics of categorization and self-identification. Even in postcolonial contexts, or those directly affected by coloniality, the use of ethnicity as a category proves to be highly heuristic.

30Conversely, can we assume that, unlike race, ethnicity concerns timeless phenomena, insofar as they are not determined by a context as clearly defined and recent—in terms of human history—as European colonization? When conceived as a transcultural fact, the notion of ethnicity is close to that of ethnocentrism, which is defined as the tendency of all peoples to draw a line between their own group and others and to value their own culture as superior (Sumner 1906). However, the universal nature of ethnicity or ethnocentrism can only be confirmed by speculative constructions regarding an innate disposition transmitted during evolution. Lévi-Strauss thus sees ethnocentrism as “the attitude of longest standing, which no doubt has a firm psychological foundation” (Lévi-Strauss 1952: 11). Naturalist or cognitivist theories are based on the assumption that cognitive mechanisms predispose people to distinguish presumed essential differences between humans and classify them into groups such as ethnic groups (Gil White 2001).

31Neither the focus on the consequences of colonialism in current racialization phenomena nor the supposed universal nature of ethnic differentiation allows us to understand the interconnections between race and ethnicity. Even in societies directly descended from slavery and colonization, it can be observed that the manifestations of the processes for defining “us” in relation to one or more “them” vary widely, and these processes find social relevance in situations that need to be investigated.

4. How do external categorizations and self-identifications relate to each other?

32Once objectivist conceptions of race and ethnicity gave way to an emphasis on social construction, the processes of classification, categorization, and identification became the primary objects of study.

33In the literature on race and ethnicity, identification most often refers to the representation of oneself as a member of a community, while categorization is understood as an externally ascribed identity within a power relationship (of which the racist relationship is the typical example). This distinction can also be described as a dichotomy between choice and constraint, ranging from a horizontal process of freely chosen self-identification to an ascription imposed from above within the framework of hierarchical social relations. The model proposed by Loïc Wacquant clearly distinguishes pure categorization (other-attributed identity) from pure identification (self-attributed identity). However, it is based on two principles that are difficult to reconcile: inclusion (ethnicity as an umbrella category) and the continuum between two extremes: a “thin” one (horizontal and voluntary) and a “thick” one (vertical and imposed), exemplified by race and caste systems.

34Furthermore, this analytical framework does not account for dialectical links between the vertical and horizontal movements it opposes. To understand race and ethnic identity, it is essential to include a dynamic and interactive dimension. As Brubaker (2001: 75) claims, “people identify and categorize others, just as they identify and categorize themselves.” The two processes of categorization and identification should not be opposed too rigidly. Categorizing others to mark their inferiority (racializing them) serves as a means of self-identification. Even if this self-understanding is implicit and not publicly claimed, it is always present and likely to become salient, as reflected in accusations of “anti-white racism.” Furthermore, internal definitions of collective identities are transformed through interactions with external definitions (Lamont and Mizrachi 2012). In some cases, an ascribed racial category can be accepted as a self-understanding and become the basis for a claimed common identity. In the North American context, the race signifier associated with the stigma of slavery can be reframed as an expression of ethnicity constructed in resistance to this stigmatization (“Black is beautiful”). In other cases, a group may construct “its own version of its identity” (Cornell and Hartmann 2006: 32) by freeing itself from the categories that had been imposed on its members to signify their inferiority.

From theory to empiricism: comparison based on diversity of uses

35The authors of this issue chose to abandon a stable and unified definition of the concepts of race and ethnicity. Rather than selecting a model for differentiating between the two concepts or proposing a new one by determining in each case whether it pertains to race or ethnicity, or even lamenting the ambivalence and blurred boundaries between the two, they decided to place this ambiguity at the heart of the analysis. This approach emphasizes the flexibility and re-semantization of categorizations of oneself and others in social and historical situations where these ascriptions and distinctions are socially relevant. This resolutely empirical approach does not lead to a relativism of notions where they would only be considered in their situated occurrences, devoid of any possibility of comparison. It prevents these notions from being fixed within essential characteristics (physical markers or the relationship to coloniality in the case of race, and shared culture or language in the case of ethnicity) and allows for the examination of the relationships between categories of othering and identification in different contexts where groups identified by their origin interact. The articles in this issue illustrate practical and discursive effects at the local level of categorizations behind ascriptions to subordinate positions and claims of significant differences between “us” and “them.”

36In practical uses, the categories and designations that individuals use to identify and differentiate themselves are not inherently ethnic or racial. Whether or not they are labeled as such by the established powers, their meaning depends on the situations in which they are used and the purpose for which individuals mobilize them. In the Tunisian context studied by Inès Mrad Dali, the same term is used for both race and ethnicity, allowing for flexibility in designations that are politically manipulated as signifiers of ethnic diversity or racial markers. In the case of Amazonian Brazil, the terms race and ethnic group are recognized and mentioned, but other, more specific terms are used to define identities and otherness. Véronique Boyer shows how a category as deeply rooted in biology as that of “blood” is not associated with racial identity but acts as a “revealer of truth” about ethnic belonging when confronted with a “mixture” in the local context. In Japan, where in the 19th century, the term ethnicity replaced race as part of a national unification project, Caroline Taïeb demonstrates that the concept of race remains salient in the othering of the Burakumin, whose “true” nature is sometimes “revealed” by DNA.

37The various contributions reveal the great diversity of categories and criteria used to assimilate or differentiate oneself, as well as the fluctuating interplay between ethnic, phenotypic, genealogical, national, and residential terms. In Tunisia, the semantic evolution of ethnic identifiers such as Abīd, Waṣīf, and Shuāshīn shifted over time toward phenotypic categorizations for the descendants of slaves and Black people in general, as described by Inès Mrad Dali. In Japan, the discrimination faced by Burakumin is based on the ambiguity of genealogical and residential criteria. In the Colombian Caribbean islands, Raizal ethnicity was constructed at the international, national, and local levels through differentiation from others based on various attributes (color, nationality, and migratory status), as explained by Morgane Le Guyader.

38From the minority’s point of view, resistance to imposed identities is expressed by a complex mixture of identification and differentiation, depending on the specific issues of each situation. For the Amazonian indigenous peoples in Brazil, identification as a single group is a means of positioning themselves as distinct, being recognized as a minority, and thus gaining access to a status that entitles them to rights. For the Burakumin of Japan, the aim is to abolish the difference that ascribes them to a stigmatized minority status. In their case, the absence of phenotypic markers opens the possibility of passing as non-Burakumin as an alternative to claiming their ethnic identity. In Tunisia, anti-Black racism is resisted by positively redefining a stigmatizing label from the slave-owning past (Black) and reclaiming it in the context of a modern feminist struggle and a pluralistic national society. The common thread in these attempts to construct or redefine a “we” is to assert the right to be treated as people worthy of being partners in social relations at various levels, whether civic, territorial, or matrimonial.

39The contributions of Christian Bromberger and Bernard Formoso take a step back from notions largely derived from Western academic history by examining their lexical and conceptual correspondences in other cultures. Christian Bromberger shows that the notion of race is rarely used in Iran except for the major distinction between Persians and Arabs, which is based on religious (Shiism/Sunnism) and linguistic (Persian/Arabic) attributes, unlike ethnic categories, which are widely used to differentiate between the various groups within the country. He considers this a useful framework for analyzing the Iranian reality and its territorial (center/periphery) and cultural basis, where ethnicity is defined, according to him, by a number of stereotypical markers and cross-ascriptions. Bernard Formoso’s contribution draws on both ethnolinguistics and the historical anthropology of ideas. It compares the emic categories used by different Asian populations to self-identify, categorize, or distinguish themselves from foreigners. One of the major interests of comparing these analytical frameworks lies in the apparent absence of an exact equivalent to the idea of race, even if ancestry and biology are more or less directly mobilized depending on the context. Although there is no precise correspondence with the term “ethnic group” either, certain notions seem to come close. Other principles (namely spiritual ones) are used to attempt to distinguish between “them” and one or more “us.”

40Nationalism represents a third dynamic of identification that is not directly addressed in the contributions to this issue, yet its presence can be discerned in various forms. The exclusion of the Burakumin calls into question the ethnic and racial criteria underlying the definition of the Japanese nation. The strategies used by the populations of the Brazilian Amazon to conform to the ethno-legal categories established by the Brazilian State for the redistribution of wealth to indigenous populations reflect the evolution of debates on the racially and ethnically mixed character of the Brazilian nation. The different ways of viewing belonging and otherness in various Asian countries and in Iran also raise questions about the legitimacy of national borders and the recognition of diversity within them. In Tunisia, the stigmatization of both migrants and citizens identified as Black illustrates a form of exclusion that is both symbolic and sociologically effective, targeting an ethno-racial minority that is maintained in an ambiguous internal and external relationship with the national community.

41Since the connections between race and ethnicity already represent a significant theoretical and methodological challenge, we have chosen not to focus on how each interacts, alternately or simultaneously, with nationalism (Smith 1986). The historical link between ethnicity and nationalism has long been debated, notably around the question of whether nationalism is a particularly elaborate form of ethnicity. Recent history and current events have demonstrated the extent to which race tends to be very easily mobilized to ideologically reinforce nationalism, whether to overemphasize the national community or to inferiorize foreigners or colonized peoples (Césaire 1950 [1989], Balibar and Wallerstein 2018 [1988]). Colonized peoples themselves have drawn on the national paradigm to assert their specificity and restore their value as human entities rendered inferior, or even denied, by colonial powers. After ethnic boundaries established in the precolonial period were completely redrawn by European expansionism, a major challenge arose: how to transpose the Western nation-State model to national liberation struggles (Gordien 2025). Because colonization is so closely tied to the racialization of colonized subjects, anti-colonialist nationalism also tends to mobilize racial tropes to reassert itself. Awareness of past oppression and its contemporary manifestations thus serves as the basis for redrawing ethnic boundaries and developing a (pan-)national project, such as Pan-Africanism (Nakao 2023). In each of these contexts, the interference of nationalism in the relationship between race and ethnicity will require careful study in the future.

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Notes

1 The choice of De Rudder, Poiret and Vourch (2006) to refer to “racist” rather than racial inequalities can also be understood as a determined attempt to resolve this ambiguity.

2 For more on these aspects, see the introduction to the issue on “race and biology” published in this journal: Bonniol, Edwards Grossi, and Wang (2021).

3 Until the early 20th century, it was believed that both physical characteristics and collective temperaments were transmitted through blood. Europeans were thus considered as distinct races, whose interbreeding produced consistent results in terms of national character (Mauss 2013).

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Jean-Luc Bonniol, Ary Gordien et Jocelyne Streiff-Fénart, « Introduction »Appartenances & Altérités [En ligne], 7 | 2025, mis en ligne le 01 novembre 2025, consulté le 09 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/alterites/3095 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/156m2

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Jean-Luc Bonniol

Aix-Marseille Université

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Ary Gordien

CNRS

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Jocelyne Streiff-Fénart

CNRS

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