The paper looks into the integration debate among French sociologists and politists in the beginning of the 1990s, in the aftermath of the first "veil affair" at school. It shows that the authors, of various political and methodological tendencies (Schnapper, Noiriel, Taguieff, etc.) have taken a stand on French national identity. So doing, they have helped to make up the French national identity and to introduce in public opinion the "nationalist-republican" stance, which refers inconsiderately to the French statist tradition.
