The Bastille Day terror attack is a symptom of the social fracture being felt across France, experts say.
At least 84 people died when a truck ploughed into the crowd in Nice in the third deadly terrorist attack on French soil in 18 months.
The male driver, killed by police at the scene, is believed to be a French Tunisian.
France has the largest Islamic community in Europe, with 7.5 per cent of the population Muslim, many of north African heritage who feel they are not treated equally.
"It (France) is the largest contributing country for foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq out of western Europe, so there is a groundswell of support," says ANU Islam expert Rodger Shanahan.
Dr Shanahan says extremist groups like Islamic State target people who feel persecuted and lacking in national identity, including French Muslims.
"Those kinds of people are going to be more prone to a message that explains why they're in the situation they are," he said.
Professor Philomena Murray from the University of Melbourne says there is an ongoing "sense of social fracture" across France felt by many north African immigrants.
She says despite a number of these immigrants gaining French citizenship, they became ghettoised in 2005 and many feel "they are not really treated as equals".
"They developed a sense of identity that wasn't completely French in a traditional sense," she told AAP.
"The French approach to immigration is very much based on `being like us' rather than celebrating multiculturalism. The principal of equality in France is one that has to be questioned."
The incident in Nice follows a spate of attacks including in November last year when Islamic State-linked extremists killed 130 people in the Bataclan theatre and other sites across Paris.
Twelve people were killed in January, 2015, when Islamic terrorists attacked the Paris office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
