Interview by Alyssa Algu
Many of your articles and books, including The minority culture of mobility of France's upwardly mobile descendants of North African immigrants1, The collective roots and rewards of upward educational mobility2, and Higher Education and Social Mobility in France: Challenges and Possibilities Among Descendants of North African Immigrants3 pertain to the higher-educational experiences of immigrants and second-generation immigrants. What are the reasons you became interested in researching the educational experiences of people of colour in higher-education institutions in particular?
In France, immigration has been, and continues to be, depicted as a “social problem” to be fixed: media representations of, but also sociological studies on, immigrants and their children, primarily those of post-colonial migrant background, constantly reinforce the idea that they fail to “integrate”, that they represent the greatest bulk of the country’s schools’ drop-outs, the unemployed, and the urban quote unquote delinquents.
"In France, immigration has been, and continues to be, depicted as a “social problem” to be fixed."
Dr. Shirin Shahrokni
Two interrelated hegemonic narratives are deployed to sustain this claim : 1. They are too different from us; their cultural worldviews, their religious identity – and here, Islam is viewed as the culprit, are central barriers to a successful ‘integration’; 2. They do not want to play the rules of the game of a universalist, egalitarian, and meritocratic French society – they are perpetually hostile to our values, and institutions.
Not only are these dominant narratives creating a widespread distorted image of France’s youths of Muslim, North and West African migrant backgrounds, invisibilizing highly heterogeneous structural realities among members of these groups and particularly, the middle-class and upward intergenerational mobility pathways many of them experience, but also, these serve to construe “integration” as a process exclusively depending on immigrants and their children’s cultural dispositions and moral values.
"Dominant narratives creat[e] a…distorted image of France’s youths of Muslim, North and West African migrant backgrounds."
Dr. Shirin Shahrokni
Those who “make it”, in other words, are those who are culturally “fit”, who adhere to our societal ideals and worldviews and thus those who deserve the rewards of the French Republic. Integration, as Algerian sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad argued, is thus de-politicized and the structural barriers that France’s Black, Arab, and Muslim citizens encounter across all spheres of social life, including in education and work, are safely dismissed in public, political, and even commonly in scholarly conversations. Instead, a discursive divide between “us” and “them”, and between the “good” and the “bad” migrants, the “good” and the “bad” Muslims is constantly renewed.
"The structural barriers that France’s Black, Arab, and Muslim citizens encounter across all spheres of social life, including in education and work, are…dismissed in public, political, and even…in scholarly conversations."
Dr. Shirin Shahrokni
When I started thinking about my doctoral project, I knew that it had to serve to debunk these deep-seated national mythologies around integration and that it had to tackle the underlying deep-seated racial system, knowledge-making around which continues to be discredited as pseudoscience, a reflection of dangerous “identity politics” and of the rise of “Islamogauchiste” presence putting the French university into perils, etc.
The scientific rationale behind my doctoral project was to document mobility stories and educational journeys that scrutinized the above mentioned national myths. It documented trajectories that had never received any scholarly attention, namely upward mobility pathways via the country’s most prestigious higher education institutions among young adults of Muslim, North African working-class backgrounds, groups that have been commonly associated with “difficulties of integration”.
Through in-depth interviewing, it also showed that in contrast to the pervasive conflation between mobility, structural integration and a cultural assimilation, many of the young adults I interviewed expressed strong ties to their religious and cultural backgrounds, and that their familial story of migration had shaped their own educational aspirations in important ways, providing affective, moral, and social resources key to their educational pathways.
"Th[e] familial story of migration…shaped…educational aspirations in important ways, providing affective, moral and social resources."
Dr. Shirin Shahrokni
Thirdly, the doctoral project revealed that racism and discriminatory treatment are not just accidental occurrences, unfortunate but rare incidents in the educational trajectories of Black, Arab, and Muslim youths in France. Rather, race hierarchies, manifested through poor and ill-adapted academic orientation, institutional neglect, overt instances of racism in the classroom etc., structure educational pathways that are at times used in the French media and political discourse as proof that the French universalist model of integration and its associated colour-blind rhetoric is working. Racism is a defining feature of even those trajectories that are depicted as “successful integration” because it is a defining feature of French society.
On a more personal level, education is the primary site in which growing up, I, along with many friends, relatives, and classmates, experienced the workings of a racially deeply unequal French society without having a language to name and understand these injustices. So I guess my interest in documenting the educational experiences of racialized youth in France, and particularly those of descendants of Muslim, North African migrants, grew out of this initial encounter with race in the classroom, the school yard, in spaces that have been traditionally depicted as the epicenter of the French Republican ideal of universalism and the haven of meritocracy.
"[M]y interest in documenting the educational experiences of racialized youth in France, and particularly those of descendants of Muslim, North African migrants, grew out of this initial encounter with race in the classroom, the school yard…"
Dr. Shirin Shahrokni
If conversations on race are largely dismissed in France as ‘imports’ from US-centric analyses of social issues and misreading of the ‘real thing’, class inequalities, these are indeed particularly frown down upon when applied to the study of the French educational system, regarded as the emblem of its Republican ethos.
Lastly, a lot has been written in French sociology but also in novels on the lived experience of upward intergenerational mobility. Departing from the celebratory narrative on social ascension, often viewed as the sign of a healthy and strong nation, scholars, from Pierre Bourdieu to Didier Eribon, but also famous French novelists like the literature Nobel Prize winner, Annie Ernaux, have extensively written about the emotional and psychological tensions that accompany and complicate this movement across the class structure and translate into feelings of guilt, shame, and loss, and the sense of having “betrayed” those, family members, neighbours, and friends, who “stay behind”.
"Novels on the lived experience of upward intergenerational mobility…[by] famous French novelists like the literature Nobel Prize winner, Annie Ernaux…contributed to universalizing a very white experience of social mobility."
Dr. Shirin Shahrokni
While I have gained important takeaways from these texts, I could not help but think that they contributed to universalizing a very white experience of social mobility. My very first interviews confirmed that moving up a highly unequal educational structure, going through the selection and admission processes of France’s prestigious Grandes Ecoles, and being among the latter’s few racialized students are deeply raced processes, leading to unique experiences, unique hardships, ordinary humiliations, and in turn resistance strategies among those who experience inseparable gendered class and race-based forms of oppression.
In your articles “Another university is possible?”: A Study of Indigenizing and Internationalizing Initiatives in two Canadian Postsecondary Institutions4 and Towards a Critical Study of the Inequitable Treatment Experienced by “International Students from Asia” and the Roadblocks Encountered within Canadian Postsecondary Institutions5 you address key issues that Indigenous and International students face in Canada. How do you propose universities address these inequities in a way that does not hold these students responsible to be “diversity informants” as you noted?
In these texts, my colleagues and I wanted to discuss some of the gaps and contradictions between institutional discourse and practice in respect with decolonization, equity, diversity, and inclusion programs, and the idea that one finds across official documents produced by two Canadian universities’ administrative bodies that a fair and equitable process of internationalization is being carried out. We suggested that the institutional language around these trends serve to obscure, and thus deflect from, the underlying South-North inequities and the imperial logics that in many ways currently accompany these processes described as equity-driven and transformative.
Welcoming difference in thoughts and practices without commodifying diversity and without holding certain bodies responsible for its existence and spread would be possible only if universities radically departed from an extractive mode of knowledge production rooted in their colonial foundations and reinforced by neoliberal imperatives. This would need to begin by changing the terms of the conversation and collectively asking ourselves key questions about some central issues of equity such as access to higher education: who can afford it? Who is oriented towards postsecondary pathways? Who stays in higher education? In other words, who is our university designed for? Celebratory statements on DEDI are illusory when access is heavily constrained by intersecting inequalities. What does diversity really mean when systemic barriers render postsecondary pathways unfeasible to so many?
"Who can afford [higher education]? Who is oriented towards postsecondary pathways? Who stays in higher education?…Who is our university designed for?"
Dr. Shirin Shahrokni
Similarly, conversations on DEDI need to foreground the material, financial and social conditions under which universities create and disseminate knowledge: issues of fair wages, of working and studying conditions, distribution of symbolic and financial rewards, all these determine both who can define, embody, and speak about difference in our institutions and so, our discussion about the bodies serving as “diversity informants” cannot be separated from these underlying power struggles shaping the university today.
Relatedly, recruitment practices and the curriculum are critical in this conversation: which bodies, pathways, which collective histories and epistemologies are present in the university? Do students engage with epistemologies that decenter Eurocentric knowledges and perspectives? If universities are serious about defending and celebrating “diversity”, these are some of the pressing questions they should ask.
"Which bodies, pathways, which collective histories…are present in the university? Do students engage with epistemologies that decenter Eurocentric knowledges and perspectives?"
Dr. Shirin Shahrokni
These would further lead to revisiting the very narrative on “diversity”, away from the notion that it is “something” to be found in Indigenous, Black and brown bodies or “cultures”, and defined against an atemporal and ahistorical norm – whiteness
A very important aspect of your research is that you go beyond the experiences of immigrants and descendants of immigrants to consider how these experiences can form one’s identity. In your article Identification transnationale chez les jeunes adultes iraniens de ‘seconde génération’ vivant à Montréal6, you address the impact of both relational and socio-political factors on the identities of second-generation immigrants. Why do you believe it is important to consider the transnational identity of immigrants and their descendants, especially in order to understand and combat systemic issues they face, such as racism?
I wrote this article when I was an MA student in Montreal, during a time when I had many questions related to my own identity, my familial history of migration, and a vague, inherited yet emotionally deeply charged notion of a “homeland”. I guess my reflections in this paper initially grew out of a feeling of frustration: the sentiment that we, children of immigrants and refugees, were always “discussed”, our trajectories explored and analyzed, our identities measured against the “host society’s” sets of social, cultural, and economic expectations they had established for “us”.
"[W]e, children of immigrants and refugees, were always “discussed”, our trajectories explored and analyzed, our identities measures against the “host society’s” sets of social, cultural and economic expectations."
Dr. Shirin Shahrokni
There is something deeply dehumanizing in this epistemological starting-point, in the idea that what had happened before we, or before our parents came here, did not really matter unless it could reveal something about our ability or lack thereof to integrate to the “host society’s” institutions. This was the impression I had when I started reading sociological literature on “the second generation”, some of it was, to be sure, critical, not least to understand how processes of racialization play out in the lives of immigrants and their children and what class- and gender-based strategies of resistance they deploy to combat these. And this echoes again Sayad's critique of 'integration'.
But I found some of the first works I came across on the transnational lives of “the second generation”, such as Peggy Levitt’s and Mary C. Waters’ The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation7, liberating and they spoke to me on a personal level.
Delving into the complex, multi-layered identity negotiations of children of immigrants and appreciating that these cannot be easily placed into neatly designed categories is already in my view a response to racism one finds in scholarly and media investigations. Many activities and relations exist in the lives of immigrants and their descendants, even among those born and raised in their societies of residence, that may not be captured through dominant approaches in migration and integration studies, which again orient the conversation towards the questions, needs and interests of “receiving end” and the biases that these lead to have been designated by some scholars as methodological nationalism.
"Delving into the complex, multi-layered identity negotiations of children of immigrants and appreciating that these cannot be easily placed into neatly designed categories is already…a response to racism"
Dr. Shirin Shahrokni
Now, on your question about the relationship between transnational connections and identity making among immigrants and their descendants and racism, studies have showed that strengthening ties with diasporic connections and with a “homeland” one may never have been to may also constitute responses to the racism one experiences in their societies of residence. Racism and differential treatment may reinforce a pre-existing sense of attachment to a culture, a religion, or/and a place of origin or it, or even push members of racialized communities to invent ties that did not exist.
In different ways, my work seeks to take up these questions of homeland, transnationalism, and identity to challenge the dehumanization of racisms, whether in higher education or in broader society. This demands that we take seriously the knowledges and experiences of Indigenous, Black and brown people, to bring about universities and societies that support more equitable and free relationships.
1 Shahrokni, S. (2014). The minority culture of mobility of France’s upwardly mobile descendants of North African immigrants. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(7), 1050–1066. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2014.964280
2 Shahrokni, S. (2018). The collective roots and rewards of upward educational mobility. The British Journal of Sociology, 69(4), 1175–1193. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12349
3 Shahrokni, S. (2020). Higher Education and Social Mobility in France: Challenges and possibilities among descendants of North African immigrants. Routledge.
4 Shahrokni, S., Chatterjee, S., Gomez, B., & Poojary, M. (2022). Another university is possible? A Study of Indigenizing and Internationalizing Initiatives in Two Canadian Postsecondary Institutions. Comparative and International Education, 51(1). https://doi.org/10.5206/cieeci.v51i1.14829
5 Shahrokni, S., Magnan, M. -O., & Montsion, J. M. (2022). Conclusion: Towards a Critical Study of the Inequitable Treatment Experienced by ‘International Students from Asia’ and the Roadblocks Encountered within Canadian Postsecondary Institutions. Comparative and International Education, 51(1). https://doi.org/10.5206/cieeci.v51i1.15483
6 Shahrokni, S. (2007). Identification transnationale chez les jeunes adultes iraniens de ‘seconde génération’ vivant à Montréal. Diversité Urbaine, 7(1), 69–84. https://doi.org/10.7202/016270ar
7 Levitt, P., & Waters, M. C. (2002). The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation. Russell Sage Foundation.
Dr. Shahrokni’s research is at the intersection of race and migration politics across various geopolitical locales, specifically in France and Canada. Her first book, Higher Education and Social Mobility: Challenges and Possibilities among Descendants of North African Immigrants in France3 applies intersectional and critical race frameworks to the study of upward intergenerational mobility and to the higher education experiences of descendants of France’s post-colonial migrants. Her current Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded project is a multi-sited research on francophone migration in Canada outside of Quebec. She is also involved in collaborative projects on the higher education trajectories and experiences of Asian international students – the Racialization of Asian International Students (RAIS) project – and students with precarious migration status in Canada.
Alyssa Algu is a student in the Concurrent Bachelor of Education program at York University’s Glendon Campus, double majoring in Sociology and French Studies