On April 8th, 2026, IES’ Center of Excellence in French and Francophone Studies welcomed Felicien Faury for a conversation on the rise of the far-right in contemporary France. The conversation was sponsored by the France-Berkeley Fund, with the help of the French Department, the French Embassy in the US, and moderated by Debarati Sanyal, Professor of French and Director of Berkeley's Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry. Felicien Faury is a sociologist and researcher at the Center for Sociological Research on Law and Penal Institutions (CESDIP). His research took place in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (PACA) region of France, where the Rassemblement National (RN) enjoys sustained political support, combined in-depth interviews and immersive fieldwork, later published in his most recent work, Des électeurs ordinaires: Enquête sur la normalisation de l’extrême droite (Seuil, 2024). In his lecture, entitled “Why Do Voters Support the Far Right in France? A Sociological Perspective,” Faury presented his book analyzing the effects of sociological factors on political attitudes.
The central argument of his presentation challenged the idea that far-right voting is either class-based or race-based. Faury demonstrates that economic marginalization, when coupled with racial prejudice, frames the basis for the RN’s support. His findings suggest that racism is not only a matter of individual attitudes, but also shapes how people see their position within society. Viewed together, support for the RN does not come from concerns of purchasing power, housing, and access to public services alone. These only become concerns when they are racialized and seen as “corrupted” by immigrants.
This is precisely what Faury describes as “reproductive protectionism.” When interviewed, many respondents expressed the misconstrued belief that immigrant populations disproportionally benefited from a zero-sum social welfare system. The fear here was not one of losing benefits or jobs, as RN voters represented a stable middle and working-class, but it was in the perception that immigrants did nothing yet still received benefits. This logic is precisely what RN politicians capitalized on to reproduce forms of welfare chauvinism that sought to safeguard the welfare state by limiting access to those considered as legitimately “French.”
More broadly, Faury emphasizes that far-right support in France should be understood as a function of both material concerns and a defense of a social position. The appeal of the RN, therefore, lies in the party’s ability to connect economic anxieties with identity-based fears, while promising to preserve the existing social order. Faury then concluded that far-right voting emerges as means to defend one’s place within an evolving social order and demographic change.
The presentation concluded with a discussion on the competing conceptualizations of “Frenchness,” and what it means to be a “good immigrant.” The example of Rachida Dati, the former French Minister of Culture, was brought up as an example of a “good immigrant.” Faury explained that the RN has adopted a strategy of de-demonization, as the party attempts to distance itself from claims of racism, anti-semitism, and homophobia. In this context, Dati, of Moroccan-descent, becomes the perfect example, who first and foremost describes herself as a "daughter of France,” while strategically renouncing her North African origins.