New Books In French Studies

What does it mean to be a citizen? Every country has its own legal codes that confer a set of rights on official members. But full citizenship is often more than what the law says. A better question is: what does it mean to be an accepted member of one’s society? According to France’s Republicanism, national and civic terms determine identity, and basic citizenship, “being French,” trumps all other group affiliations. Race, ethnicity—those common and powerful sources of identity and symbols of belonging—simply do not exist within this model. Not so for everyone in France, according to sociologist Jean Beaman in her new book Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France (University of California Press, 2017). In this work, Beaman focuses on a group of people in France who have ostensibly “made it”—children of maghrebin immigrants who have obtained university (and sometimes post-graduate) degrees, work professional jobs, and entered the mi