France’s 2025 census has ignited a predictable but exhausting row. The controversy centres on a seemingly innocuous question: ‘Where were your parents born?’ Cue outrage from the French left, who have called for a boycott of the question, declaring it racist and a dangerous gateway to discrimination.
The fact is that many on the left in France don’t want any data on immigration
The government has for the first time included the question in this year’s national census. Left wing NGOs and unions say that ‘recording this information is a step toward potential inequality of treatment by the state’ and that ‘no public policy justifies the collection of our parents’ immigrant origins in individual census forms – this question presents many dangers.’
This reaction from the left is as revealing as it is entirely misplaced. In a country where until now it has been illegal to compile statistics on ethnicity, the debate has exposed a national hypocrisy: how it is possible to address inequality, if society is too squeamish to even gather the data needed to identify it? How is it possible that France has almost no statistics whatsoever on the ethnicity of its population?
At the heart of this debate lies a uniquely French paradox.
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