Resumen de Race in French “republican” law: The case of gens du voyage and Roma
This article discusses the racial and racist dimensions of the legal framework regulating nomadic people(s) in France, who have become known as gens du voyage, which was introduced in 1912 and later modified and complemented by additional statutes and regulations. It goes on to analyze the fundamental rights challenges that have been brought against this framework at the internal and international human rights level. While certain violations of this framework have thus been addressed or eliminated over time, this article argues that the reluctance of the French legal system and, to a lesser extent, of the international human rights system to adopt race as an analytical category, has prevented the acknowledgement of the continued race discrimination to which these populations are exposed. This continues to pose a problem today, also with regard to the treatment of Roma in France to whom this framework also partly applies, despite the arguable elimination or invisibilization of an outright racism in the legal system.
