Integration, Collective Identity, and Assimilation in the French Foreign Legion
Abstract
While the integration process in the French Foreign Legion does not aim to deny individualities, it is a prerequisite to ensure the efficiency and cohesive feature of a troop made up with almost 150 nationalities. Moreover, building a strong collective identity, through artifacts and espoused values, is the best way for the Foreign Legion, as a cultural organization, to enable what can hardly be achieved only through institutional leverages: assimilation. While making legionnaires is a dynamic and time-based process, its drivers are certainly taught and enforced, but also culturally inherited and voluntarily endorsed. Therefore, to well understand this process, these goals and drivers need to be analyzed. Indeed, it is argued in this paper that while integration is the first and primary step of this process, with the end state to enable organizational and tactical efficiency, the structuration of a collective identity appears as the Gordian knot and the institutional desired objective since it opens the door to assimilation. The training as well as the daily life are designed to facilitate this identification. Albeit this process can have different results, depending on time and legionnaires expectations and temperaments, the artifacts and espoused values developed throughout this process are its main guarantees of success.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 27, 2015
- Accession Number
- AD1176008
Entities
People
- Thomas Riou
Organizations
- Marine Corps University