Growing Up French? Education, Upward Mobility, and Connections across Generations

This chapter discusses respondents’ childhood experiences growing up in France to immigrant parents and how they learn to navigate the different cultural worlds of home and school, Maghrébin and French. The chapter’s title—“Growing up French?”—is situated as a question because respondents relay how their place within France was questioned by others even when they were young. This chapter then discusses the messages children of North African immigrants received from their parents about being French and of Maghrébin origin. Next, this chapter discusses the cultural capital this generation inherited from their parents, how their parents explicitly and implicitly helped them understand their place in France, and how this set the stage for their later upward mobility.