Problems in defining "French" culture"Culture is the learned set of beliefs, values, norms and material goods shared by group

members. Culture consists of everything we learn in groups during the life course-from infancy to old age.Today's France remains a nation of numerous indigenous and foreign languages, of multiple ethnicities and religions, and of regional diversity.The creation of some sort of typical or shared French culture or "cultural identity", despite this vast heterogeneity, is the result of powerful internal forces — such as the French educational system, mandatory military service, state linguistic and cultural policies — and by profound historic events — such as the two World Wars. However, despite these unifying forces, France today still remains marked by social class and by important regional differences in culture (cuisine, dialect/accent, local traditions) that many fear will be unable to withstand contemporary social forces (depopulation of the countryside, immigration, centralization, market forces and the world economy).In recent years, to fight the loss of regional diversity, many in France have promoted forms of multiculturalism and encouraged cultural enclaves (communautarisme), including reforms on the preservation of regional languages and the decentralization of certain government functions, but French multiculturalism has had a harder time of accepting, or of integrating into the collective identity, the large non-Christian and immigrant communities and groups that have come to France since the 1960s.The last 70 years has also seen French cultural identity "threatened" by global market forces and by American "cultural hegemony"

The immigration situation in France has been strongly influenced to the present day by the legacy of colonialism of earlier centuries as well as the long tradition of recruiting foreign workers. Overall, there has been a steady increase in immigration over the last century, and this has had a strong impact on the nature of French society. Although immigration has been regarded as a success story in economic terms, in the past three decades it has increasingly been perceived as the root of social problems. The success of extreme right-wing parties in elections makes this as readily apparent as the unrest that flares up time and again in the suburbs. As a result, integration policy in recent years has moved towards the centre of public attention.Moreover, immigration policy has simultaneously taken an increasingly restrictive course in France. As in other European countries, there is an effort to manage immigration with a view to maximising benefits to the economy. Consequently, increased control of admissions and the integration of second- and third-generation descendants of immigrants represent the most important challenges for immigration policy-making in France in the near future.France has a long history of immigration. Immigrants were brought in as early as the 18th and 19th century because the process of industrialisation in conjunction with the fall in the birth rate had resulted in a labour shortage.

ReligionFrance is a country where freedom of religion and freedom of thought are guaranteed by virtue of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.Major religions in France include the Catholic Church, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Russian Orthodoxy, Armenian Christianity, and Sikhism amongst others, making it a multi confessional

country. While millions in France continue to attend religious services regularly, the overall level of observance is considerably lower than in the past.