Minorities In, Minorities Out: Cemeteries, Religious Diversity and the French Body Politic in Contemporary and Historical Perspective

Abstract

This chapter focuses on religious diversity and cemeteries in France, comparing historical practice with the contemporary management of death in diversity. Its starting point is the present-day intransigence of local authorities in creating space for Muslims in French municipal cemeteries. The chapter proceeds to link these contemporary manifestations with historical perspectives. In earlier times, Jews, Protestants and free-thinkers were regularly denied burial as equals in French cemeteries, and sometimes expelled entirely from cemeteries (refus de sépulture). The laicising state of the nineteenth century intervened to ensure equality of burial and by extension full membership of the French body politic. The second part of the paper argues that today’s refusal to create Muslim sections in French municipal cemeteries constitutes a modern-day refus de sépulture which harms social harmony and cohesion. Nonetheless, the scale at which this rejection takes place is of a different magnitude: not removal from the consecrated part of the cemetery, but potentially complete ejection from the national territory, with perverse effects for the integration of migrant-origin communities. The chapter is based on qualitative fieldwork undertaken in France in 2016, drawing from semi-structured interviews with religious representatives, funerary professionals and politicians, combined with an analysis of secondary sources for the presentation of historical perspectives.