Nations by the Numbers: Ethnoracial Data Collection and National Identity in the United States and France

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: The question of how large, multicultural democracies balance diversity and national identity is crucial in an age in which these countries are both continuously diversifying and witnessing a surge in xenophobic nationalism. The politics of data collection exists at the heart of this tension, as quantifying people based on race, ethnicity, or religion can imply government legitimation of social divisions. In the United States, counting citizens by race and ethnicity is extremely common, yet this same practice is forbidden by law in France. From the French perspective, ethnoracial census categories serve to advance group-oriented rhetoric and undermine a unified French national identity. The motivation for my research is to test this claim — does government collection of ethnoracial data have adverse effects on the coherence and strength of national identity? In addition to analyzing the history of ethnoracial data collection in the United States and France, I conduct a national survey experiment of Americans assessing how ethnoracial categorization impacts respondents’ feelings of national identity. Ultimately, I find that ethnoracial categorization influences the national identification of white and black Americans, an effect that I posit stems from a relationship between Americanness and whiteness.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 20, 2020

Author	Scott, Erica
Primary advisor	Davenport, Lauren

Subject	Program in International Relations
Subject	race
Subject	census
Subject	social identity
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/fk890xc1814

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Scott, Erica. (2020). Nations by the Numbers: Ethnoracial Data Collection and National Identity in the United States and France. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/fk890xc1814

Stanford University, Program in International Relations, Honors Theses

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