Assimilationism and the racial politics of national belonging
In this research, I focus on people’s lived experiences of assimilationism—racialized pressures to conform with dominant cultural norms. I investigate immigrants’ experiences with cultural transmission (how foreign-born parents pass on cultural markers and practices, how children receive them), and how they are shaped by race in the United States and France. This project uses in-depth interviews with immigrant parents, their teenage children, and their teachers in the Chicago and Paris metropolitan areas.
My book project, provisionally entitled The False Promises of Assimilation: Immigrant Families and the Impossible Task of Belonging, takes a critical look at commonplace notions of “assimilation”—starting from immigrant families’ perspectives—to understand how they contribute to the everyday politics of race.
In an article published recently in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Yannick Coenders and I use my interview data to analyze how assimilationism leads to the denial of everyday racism. We argue that processes of 1) responsibilization for nonwhites’ own marginalization and 2) pedagogy of disavowal characterize racialized assimilationism—from the Netherlands and France to the United States.
Cultural capital and education in France
Recent scholarship on cultural capital and education has incorporated more attention to race and gender, but mainly focusing on the U.S. With a quantitative analysis of French Education Ministry data, I turn back to the context that gave birth to this academic tradition, and investigate the racialized and gendered dimensions of cultural capital in France.
This work is published in Sociology of Education and Poetics.
Postcolonial citizenship
Another line of research approaches postcolonial citizenship through a life course lens, asking how its meaning changes as migrants age and across generations. I previously researched naturalization among older immigrants in France. Using mixed methods and a case study of a recent French citizenship law designed for older, longtime residents, I have studied both state- and individual-level aspects of naturalization. This preliminary case study highlights the state’s attempt to resanctify citizenship, notably by defining the ideal assimilated immigrant based on generational, time, and blood criteria. Statistical analysis of census and other survey data shows the role of colonial history in immigrants’ relationship to naturalization, and ethnographic work and interviews allowed me to explore the different motives and obstacles to naturalization and propose an ideal-typical classification of reasons and determinants for late naturalizations. I have revised and resubmitted part of this work for publication in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.