One of the most innovative scholars on race and racialisation in France, Sarah Mazouz brilliantly revisits the recent history of its politics against discrimination, between official recognition and insidious denial, and analyses through acute ethnographic lenses French naturalisation practices, with their achievements and ambiguities.

Didier Fassin, Collège de France in Paris and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton

This book analyzes the paradox of a French universalism that works through particularizing, essentializing the other, and creating an interiorizing ‘racializing ascription’—a color blind ideology that produces the very racism that it denies. Full of rich ethnographic detail and powerful vignettes, Sarah Mazouz brilliantly lays bare the mechanisms of contemporary French racisms. I am delighted to see this English translation bringing the book to a wider audience and recommend it very highly to all those interested in race and racism.

Karim Murji, co-editor of Racialisation: Studies in Theory and Practice and Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives

The Politics of Alterity is a fascinating, subtle, and astute exploration of how ‘otherness’ is produced. Its well-researched and careful analysis of such dynamics in France will resonate in many other settings and be of real use to students of the play of difference everywhere.

Ann Morning, New York University; coauthor of An Ugly Word: Rethinking Race in Italy and the United States