Cultural citizenship in France and le Bled among teens of pan-southern immigrant heritage

• In French cités (low-income housing) teens evoke the spatial concept called le bled.
• Teens evoke le bled in diverging discourses, linking citizenship, modernity and race.
• The first discourse posits racially exclusive French citizenship and le bled as inferior.
• The second discourse posits France as a modern and racially inclusive place.
• Le bled discourses evoke tensions between inclusive and exclusive French citizenship.

This article addresses discourse among French teenagers of pan-immigrant, peripheral, and specifically southern descent that evokes the widely circulating spatial concept called le bled, a French word of Arabic origin. Drawing upon theories of cultural citizenship, this paper explores the connections that teens broker through le bled in two, divergent discourses that link French citizenship with modernity and race. The first discourse is one that conceptualizes le bled as less modern than France, which is ultimately a racially exclusive model of French citizenship because it typically treats le bled as a racialized and inferior place. The second discourse involves the conceptualization of France as a modern and racially inclusive place, seeking to assimilate people from various places (even though in reality, many of these policies that claim inclusiveness are exclusive).