THE FRANCE OF THE BELHOUMI: FAMILY PORTRAITS (1977-2017)

Stéphane Beaud

(La Découverte, 352 pages, 2018)

***A RECIPIENT OF THE FRENCH VOICES TRANSLATION GRANT AWARD 2020***

From 2012 to 2017, the sociologist Stéphane Beaud followed the lives of the eight children of the Belhoumi family, Algerian immigrants who arrived in France in 1977. What emerges from their stories and recollections is a compelling portrait of an immigrant family, who over four decades found their way into French society. The France of the Belhoumi is a multivoiced ethnography, in which each family member shares his or her own distinct experiences, shedding light on the mechanisms of social mobility and the complexities of integration in France.

 The eight siblings (five girls and three boys) evoke their childhood spent in low-income housing in a small provincial French town. They recount the story of their father’s exile, their mother’s often confusing attempts to reconcile conflicting cultural standards, their professional and marital trajectories, their family dynamics marked by solidarity but also tension, and their diverging attitudes toward politics and religion. Beaud’s findings confirm the necessity of education from early childhood as well as reveal the supportive role played by the elder sisters as they share their cultural, professional, and financial resources with their younger siblings.

Beaud addresses themes prevalent in many discussions on immigration, such as the gender gap that affects daughters and sons of immigrant parents, as girls are typically more successfully “integrated” than boys. In addition to cultural considerations, Beaud’s investigation affirms that this gap cannot be understood without recognizing how racism weighs most heavily on boys. Beaud is well aware of the political and social urgency to tackle discrimination. We learn firsthand how the Belhoumi children responded differently to the 2015 terrorist attack that led to a recrudescence of prejudices against the French Muslim population. But Beaud also focuses on underresearched topics, such as work and what it means to be both a descendant of postcolonial immigrants and a member of the French working class. In this regard, one of the brothers’ experience as a bus driver for the traditionally unionized RATP (the Parisian public transport administration) is particularly insightful, a real-life story that is not often heard.

The originality of this in-depth study stems from both the collective and individual characters of each account. Rather than offering another story of immigrant youth in a dangerous Parisian suburb, this immersion into the life of the Belhoumi family helps us understand immigration in France from a richly nuanced and multifaceted perspective.

Stéphane Beaud is a sociologist currently teaching at Sciences Po. Aside from his regular contributions to the French media, he has co-edited a series of books published or re-edited by La Découverte: Violences urbaines, violence sociale: genèse des nouvelles classes dangereuses (Fayard, 2003; La Découverte 2012), Retour sur la condition ouvrière (Fayard 1999, 2012), Traîtres à la nation? Un autre regard sur la grève des Bleus en Afrique du Sud (La Découverte, 2011), and Pays de malheur! Un jeune de cité écrit à un sociologue with Younès Amrani (La Découverte, 2004.)