The minority culture of mobility of France's upwardly mobile descendants of North African immigrants

Abstract

This article examines the challenges associated with the experience of upward educational mobility among descendants of North African immigrants in France. Drawing on in-depth, open-ended interviews with students and graduates of the prestigious grandes écoles, it sheds light on three specific ways in which class-based and ethno-racial inequalities intersect to shape the mobility costs that our respondents outline: (1) feelings of isolation resulting from being one of the only bursar recipients and ethno-racial minorities of their schools; (2) perceived conflation of their minority background with counter-elite dispositions; and (3) difficulties of adjusting to a student life reflecting the cultural styles of the predominantly white, upper-middle-class group. The article suggests that our respondents deploy a minority culture of mobility rooted in class and ethno-racial processes to overcome these challenges. It finally discusses implications for future research, stressing the need to examine the intersecting effect of multiple social categories in informing complex mobility experiences.

Keywords:

• mobility
• class
• ethno-racial minorities
• descendants of North African immigrants
• France
• grandes écoles

Notes

1. Some exceptions: Horvat and Antonio (1999); Bettie (2003); Torres (2009).

2. Some exceptions: Geisser (1997); Santelli (2001).

3. The notion that minorities originating from North Africa fail to ‘integrate’ because of sharply divergent cultural values has been commonplace since the 1980s. It has been advanced by the extreme-right party (the National Front), but also by mainstream politicians on both the left and the right (Hargreaves 2007). As successive polls reveal, this representation has further gained consensus among the general public (Silverman 1992; Lamont, Morning, and Mooney 2002; Hargreaves 2007).

4. Lorcerie (2003, 24–25) suggests that ‘minority… [designates] … groups exposed to disadvantages within the web of social exchanges as a result of their supposed origin’.

5. We use the acronyms in the paper, the names of these institutions being generally long. Details of the educational institutions of our respondents have been slightly altered to preserve anonymity.

6. Bourdieu and Passeron (1964, 1977) show that class-based cultural inequalities transmitted by the family are particularly salient in these subjects.

7. This phrase comes from one of our respondents, who alluded to his being one of the few students of a socially disadvantaged North African immigrant background.

8. Fac is the abbreviation of ‘faculté’. It is commonly used to refer to ‘university’.

9. We use pseudonyms to protect our respondents’ anonymity.

10. Zones urbaines sensibles (ZUS) designate marginalized neighbourhoods of the French suburbs (banlieues). As Body-Gendrot (2010, 659) writes:

‘[In 2008] the rate of unemployment is… 18 per cent …; in some zones it can reach as high as 40 per cent…. Meanwhile, the average unemployment rate in France in 2008 was around 9 per cent…. Overall, 27 per cent of the ZUS population… is poor, a rate three times higher than elsewhere.’

11. Most of our respondents refer to the majority population using such formulations as ‘Franco-Français’ or ‘Français de souche’, revealing the internalization of ethno-racial processes denied by the Republic-based colour-blind rhetoric (Simon 2008).

12. Horvat and Antonio (1999, 320) defines organizational habitus as ‘a set of class-based dispositions, perceptions and appreciations transmitted to individuals in a common organizational culture’.

13. ‘Hidden transcript’ refers to a ‘critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant’ (Scott 1990, xii).

14. These modes of associative engagement are not mutually exclusive. Their prevalence depends on the range of repertoires of action at the disposal of our respondents.

15. This is a non-profit association founded in 1945, whose aim is to fight poverty and exclusion.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shirin Shahrokni

SHIRIN SHAHROKNI is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques (INED) in Paris.