Suporters insupportables : analyse sociologique d’une pratique transgressive

The aim of this thesis is to study the social pathways of descendants of Malian immigrants in France. At the crossroads of a sociology of socialization, family and immigration, this study compares different (spheres of) socialization in order to understand, in a longitudinal and biographical approach, the dialectical relationship between the social paths of descendants of Malian immigrants and their relationship to “Africanness”. The latter is understood as a social construct, referring syncretically to 1) ethno-racial stereotypes (and the ways in which individuals become aware of them and deal with them); 2) a family migration history (viewed through the prism of transmissions/appropriations); and 3) a space, the parents’ country of origin (referring to goods and links, and which can be the subject of varied practices and representations). The first line of research studies the social trajectories of descendants of Malian immigrants. By “social trajectory”, we mean more precisely educational, socio-professional and residential trajectories, insofar as they preside over the constitution of habitus (cultural dispositions and practices formed by specific socializations – family, school, neighborhood, friendly, amorous and possibly professional sociabilities). This line of research will also study parental career paths, in order to reintegrate children’s social destinies into a family and migratory history, and assess forms of social reproduction or mobility. A second axis explores the transnational practices and relationship to “Africanness” of the children of Malian immigrants. In connection with the first axis, the aim is to analyze these practices and representations of “Africanness” as constituting a practical sense at the service of the “duty to succeed”. It will also examine the idea of family transmission of interest in “origins” (migratory history, parents’ country of origin, language, etc.), as an educational strategy. Finally, a third line of research aims to account for the minority experience, and the quest for respectability that stems from it. Rather than highlighting the invariants of a “black condition”, the aim is to shed light on the social conditions under which a certain “racialized consciousness” emerges, depending on individual social characteristics and family socialization (parental and family discourse on the migratory and minority experience, parental and family discourse on racism, etc.). To answer such questions, I’m conducting a dozen family ethnographies, through repeated interviews and observations, with Franco-Malian families living in the Paris region. This qualitative work will be complemented by the mobilization and exploitation of quantitative data (TeO survey, data from the Permanent Demographic Sample, and the 2010 Employment survey, which integrates the variables “immigrants” and “descendants of immigrants”), in order to measure the social destinies of the children of sub-Saharan immigrants.