In this book, immigration provides an extended case study through which to examine the workings of the institutions and ideologies that characterize contemporary France. This chapter explores certain features of the ideological framework. It begins with two meetings. Event I took place at an international hotel in Lyon under the auspices of a club that supported the then president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, and was addressed by the minister responsible for immigrant affairs. Event 2 was a meeting of trade unionists held at the Bourse du Travail.

There is a threefold purpose in presenting these meetings and others (Events 3, 4, 5, and 9) in some detail: They illustrate one type of data collected during fieldwork; they enable some of those who became “informants” to be seen speaking directly, as it were, and in context; and they provide abundant evidence for the various ideas that informants held, the topics that exercised them, and the institutions in which they operated. These scenes will also, I hope, convey to the reader part of the complex “reality” with which the fieldworker is confronted and which analysis works over in a more discursive way.