I would like to thank Claire Cosquer, Kévin Mary, Pauline Vallot and Gaspard Sénéchal, as well as the anonymous reviewers of the journal, for their feedback and suggested changes, which significantly contributed to improving this article.
1Originally developed to analyse the lifestyle mobility of sub-populations such as retired people or young seasonal workers moving from North to South (Croucher, 2012), the notion of privileged migration is used in particular to describe the comparative advantages enjoyed by certain emigrant-immigrants in controlling their migratory trajectory and its content. It is therefore a starting point for examining the reasons for the decision to leave one space to travel to another (Amit, 2007). In contrast to migration defined as “economic” or “family”, depending on the residence permit obtained and the social characteristics of immigrants, privileged migration is associated with a dominant position in one or more power relationships providing forms of autonomy, particularly regarding the institutional constraints that govern international travel. Yet the privileges linked to a specific nationality (Le Renard, 2019; Le Bigot, 2021), a significant level of resources (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009) or a qualification (Wagner, 1998) can be either reinforced or undermined by asymmetrical relations between countries of departure and arrival. The aim of this article is to contribute to the study of the relationship between inequalities and social hierarchies in migration by introducing the temporal dimension, allowing for an examination of how migratory privilege is established and sustained over time.
2The recognition of the plurality of social relations within which migration takes place has shed light on the ambivalent nature of privileged migration and prompted a re-examination of positions of domination (Pease, 2010; Lundström, 2014). For example, being an expatriate woman in a heterosexual couple in Abu Dhabi can lead to being re-ascribed to the domestic sphere (Cosquer, 2020). Similarly, the hopes of French expatriates in Dubai to escape forms of racial minoritisation and discrimination may be thwarted by new categorisations based on passport or other racial hierarchies (Le Renard, 2019). This article builds on this line of work, exploring the conditions that shape access to structural advantages when crossing national and social borders. To do so, it employs a temporary inversion of the terms commonly used in the literature, preferring the concept of migratory privilege to that of privileged migration. This reversal of the adjectival construction has several advantages. By moving away from a binary approach that contrasts privileged migration with “unprivileged” migration, which leads to reification of the types and quantities of resources available, the notion of migratory privilege focuses on the process of establishing and transforming migratory advantages through and during migration. The diachronic perspective shows that while migratory privilege is, at least initially, marked by a lack of concern about the conditions for accumulating and converting resources in a transnational context, it gradually becomes the focus of consolidation efforts, particularly as settlement abroad becomes almost permanent and involves a risk of downgrading. The resources and configurations that are key in facilitating emigration are not always those that enable the preservation of a privileged status in the country of arrival. The concept of migratory privilege can be used to broaden the scope of analysis in the study of South-North migration, while also considering the basic asymmetry between national spaces. Finally, it avoids homogenisation within advantaged groups and instead looks at the way in which privilege operates based on social relations of gender or race, reintegrating migration into a general sociology of stratification.
3To capture the complexity of how migratory privilege is developed and sustained over time, this article looks at the trajectories of Nour, born in 1960 in Algeria, and Yasmine, born in 1964 in Morocco. Both were from families with significant economic, social and cultural capital, and both settled in metropolitan France in the second half of the 20th century. The comparison of cases that appear to be typical examples of social reproduction in a transnational context for members of the upper social strata in their countries of origin, while atypical of North African immigrants in France (Sayad, 1999), allows for an exploration of the dynamic and relative nature of migratory advantage according to social relationships and spheres of social life (Bidet, 2018). The reconstruction of social trajectories over the long-term—rather than a mere comparison between the point of departure and the point of arrival—shows the evolution and hybridisation of motivations (quality of life, leisure, studies, work, sociability), benefits (economic, cultural, social, administrative) and effects of migration on the initial social position (maintenance, ascent, downgrading). Behind long-term settlement in France that has the appearance of successful economic and cultural integration (Bonjour and Duyvendak, 2018), the article reveals the variation in the strategies used to preserve migratory privilege.
Box 1: Methodology and study
This article draws on doctoral research into the migratory and professional trajectories of immigrant women from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, who settled in metropolitan France during the second half of the 20th century. The research combines qualitative and quantitative methods, using statistical and ethnographic reasoning. One dataset stems from a study carried out between 2018 and 2022, which involved long and, where possible, repeated interviews with twenty-six women from various social backgrounds, all of whom had settled in southeast France between 1950 and 2000. These interviews were supplemented by more informal discussions and observations within families or at social events. In addition, the Trajectories and Origins 1 (TeO) statistical survey, administered by INED (French Institute for Demographic Studies) and INSEE (French Statistics Authority) in 2008-2009, was used extensively to objectivise the migration and professional situations of immigrant women from the Maghreb.
The TeO survey confirms the exceptional nature of Nour and Yasmine’s social background: among all immigrant women respondents from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia (N = 985), 7% had fathers in managerial or higher intellectual profession, while 53% had fathers who were blue-collar workers. The aim of the case study in this article is to examine, from the margins, the heuristic value of the notion of migratory privilege, in order to clarify the conditions of its validity (Hamidi, 2012) in relation to women from the elite in French former colonies. Both Nour and Yasmine came from a privileged social background and the similarity between their pre-migratory and post-migratory social positions allows us to focus on the key differences that distinguish them from their migrant counterparts, who typically move to France with fewer resources. While many aspects of their migratory paths (Martiniello and Rea, 2011) seem similar, this comparison highlights small differences (Burawoy, 1998) in terms of opportunity structure, individual characteristics (such as the size of the sibling group and position within it, national and local contexts of origin, initial reasons for departure and marital status) or relationship networks. These factors may produce, perpetuate or undermine the initial hierarchies and the success of the migratory project.
As the qualitative data was not collected through random sampling, statistical representativeness cannot be used as a basis for generalisation (Passeron and Revel, 2005). However, the case study offers the dual advantage of parsimony and detailed contextualisation (Gros, 2017), enabling reflection on the general applicability of the processes studied (Passeron, 1995; Weber, 1995), i.e. the constitution and maintenance of migratory privilege.
4Beyond the commemorative aspect, transmitted through storytelling or photographs that the women interviewed were in turn eager to share during the study, respondents were socialised to travel from a very early age, through domestic and international trips. These experiences enabled them to acquire not only knowledge and practices, but also “a whole new relationship to the world” (Lahire, 2019: 894), based on familiarity with language, spaces and travel itself (Authier et al., 2022). The preparatory guidance provided by parents enabled girls to develop their autonomy (under parental supervision) within a broader space that cannot be reduced to the local space (Rivière, 2017: 77).
5Travelling around the country at an early age forges a particularly positive relationship with national history and culture. It not only develops a taste for mobility, but also provides an opportunity to learn about it in a practical way.
6Nour spent the first six years of her life with her grandmother in Constantine before joining her parents on the coast in Annaba, located 150 kilometres away. She considered the annual visits to her grandparents as an opportunity to learn more about her family and her country. On her mother’s side, she came from a farming family in Kabylia. Her grandfather, who was born in Guelma, a farming town near the Tunisian border, was educated up to secondary level, in French, and worked as a translator-interpreter for several courts in the country. Nour’s mother was born in Constantine. After finishing primary education, she married and took on domestic responsibilities. Her father, from an upper-class family in Batna, held various salaried positions, before starting a transportation company in Annaba, where Nour’s family settled permanently. As a young student, Nour continued her socialisation to geographical mobility by taking part in the student movements that took place between 1978 and 1980: she travelled around the Algerian countryside with fellow university students to explain and promote the transformation of agricultural production to farmers. These initial travels were supplemented by trips to France with her parents to visit family members and friends who had already settled there. Through these experiences, Nour developed a cultured relationship to travel.
7In Yasmine’s case, visits to her maternal grandparents were international from the outset, as her mother’s parents lived in the UK. However, these trips also gave her parents the opportunity to instil other educational practices, the effects of which were clearest when completely erased by their children, to whom the crossing of borders seemed natural. When asked if she was apprehensive about going to France for her studies, Yasmine said:
“Every time we went to the UK, I forgot to tell you, we’d go by car. So we’d do Europe for a week and we used to visit all the European countries, and each time we’d take a different route. We’d spend a week in Paris because my parents think Paris is the capital of the world, so my father... My father is a Parisian at heart, he knows all the streets of Paris, the different neighbourhoods, it’s crazy! His memory. You’re thinking ‘but how on earth does he remember...’ All the neighbourhoods, all the things, all the... The neighbourhoods he lived in, it’s crazy. So Paris was... Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain-des-Prés was our ‘headquarters’ for a week each year. And so, I loved Paris, obviously, I was looking at Paris from the point of view of my parents, my parents’ friends.”
8Besides stories about her parents’ past (meeting and living in Paris), Yasmine regularly spent time in the French capital with her parents. During these trips, they maintained a sociability rooted in the Parisian cultured and activist fringes, and took part in a wide range of cultural activities. She developed a material and cultural familiarity with—and a taste for—certain places, referring to the trips as “pilgrimages” to what her parents called “the capital of the world”. A symbolic geography of France and the world emerged, with Paris at its centre. Within this framework, she identified specific places, such as the café where her parents met, or the Saint-Germain neighbourhood, the family’s “headquarters”, where they would go for a week each year, associating it with reunions with her parents’ friends. There was also the journey by car from Morocco to the UK, which provided an opportunity to visit different parts of Europe. Beyond the recreational dimension, these trips can be seen as a means for Yasmine’s parents to transmit cultural capital in alignment with their strategies for international education, specifically in France, coinciding with her enrolment at the French lycée (sixth-form college) in Casablanca.
9The women interviewed were educated in private, fee-paying French-language schools at a time when the Arabisation of education was being promoted at the national level (Chariet, 2014). Enrolment in these schools, often reserved for members of the local and international upper classes, was part of an investment strategy by their parents. The interviewees attended these schools alongside privileged young people, with whom they socialised outside school through their parents, and in many cases, through emigration. For Yasmine, it was the choice of higher education course rather than emigration itself that was the major issue:
“All my cousins were... they all studied at the French lycée, so it was natural to continue their studies in France and then afterwards they would come back.”
10Education was a means of promoting foreign countries, particularly France: courses were taught in French, history and geography focused on France, and students took part in the national schools competition (concours général des lycées). In addition, at that time, enrolment in these schools made it easier to gain admission to higher education courses in metropolitan France: French lycées abroad were affiliated with the Bordeaux Regional Education Authority, providing direct access to enrolment in French higher education institutions. In these circumstances, a detour abroad for higher education before settling in the country of departure to work was seen as an almost obligatory rite of passage, shared by all the generation of interviewees with equivalent social status. In their discourse about their experiences, this reduced the impression of crossing borders.
11In many cases, women from the Algerian and Moroccan upper classes have detailed, a priori knowledge of what emigration to France represents. The journeys previously undertaken by other members of their families are the subject of stories and transmission, aimed at shaping the desired content of migration, i.e. cultural emigration, and imposing its ultimate goal, i.e. return, regardless of how long the emigration lasts. Relationship networks contribute to the migration imaginary (Debonneville, 2019) by reducing the sense of otherness associated with foreign countries and fuelling high hopes for migration.
12The women interviewed followed in the footsteps of their fathers and uncles—mostly the men in their families—who had moved to France for part of their studies. For interviewees from the upper classes in the cultural sphere, available examples of migration combined political and cultural motives (Karady, 2002; Geisser, 2013). Yasmine was born in Casablanca in 1964 into a bourgeois Moroccan family. The official administrative reason for her move to France in 1982 was student migration, as she entered the country to enrol at university. In practice, her departure from Morocco during her higher education can be explained by her parents’ relationship with France. Her father, now retired, came from a prominent Rabat dynasty that played an active role in the fight for independence. Three years before independence, he moved to the Paris region to attend sixth-form college. He then studied law in Paris, where he met his wife, an Englishwoman who was living and working in Paris. Shortly afterwards, they moved to Morocco together. Through her mother, Yasmine has an English passport, which is a documentary resource that is particularly conducive to mobility and characteristic of elites, particularly in Europe and North America (Pinçon and Pinçon-Charlot, 2007). The career path of Yasmine’s father reflects the reproduction strategies of a bourgeois class for whom studies abroad serve to accumulate educational capital that is highly beneficial on the labour market in the country of departure (Wagner, 2010). When he returned to Morocco, his qualifications enabled him to obtain a managerial position in a large international company. At the same time, it was also a strategy to challenge the political order by members of a bourgeoisie opposed to the political power in place, colonial power in the case of Yasmine’s paternal grandparents and the monarchy in the case of her father. For these activists, France’s status is ambivalent: while they oppose France’s political interference in their country, the French national territory provides places for education, leisure, socialisation and activism, and sometimes political refuge.
- 1 During the war of independence, the French authorities gradually set up regroupment camps throughou (...)
13In the case of Algeria, the status of metropolitan France is even more ambivalent. From the start of the Algerian War of Independence in 1954, the repression of activists was so severe that mobility—whether national or international—was often a necessity to escape the impact of military operations. As a result, emigration to metropolitan France gradually became a “second front”, of varying social composition, in opposition to the war. Moving to mainland France, at a time when the French presence was precisely what Algerians were protesting against, enabled them to protect their lives (and those of family members), to take time out to rest, to join a place of struggle, and to maintain and create links between activist networks to ensure their coordination (Stora, 2005). For many emigrants, particularly those from rural areas disrupted by the displacement and regrouping of populations by the colonial state,1 departure was also a way of enabling them to continue to work. Nour’s parents were affected by this mobility. Born in Constantine, Algeria in 1960, the fourth of six siblings, Nour was raised by her maternal grandmother, away from her parents, until the age of six. Nour’s father, whose brother had gone underground, and who was himself involved in the war of independence alongside the National Liberation Front, was forced to leave Algeria to flee the repression, while the children were split up among the family that stayed behind—who were unable or unwilling to leave.
14In these national contexts, Yasmine and Nour’s emigration to France as students must be understood in the light of the family history that they inherited. For all the women interviewed with equivalent social status, emigration served a cultural and political purpose, with the ultimate goal situated in the country of origin: they were not leaving the country permanently, but following the example of previous generations who had made a detour abroad before settling back in their home country.
15The imperative of return was a recurring theme in the accounts of the women interviewed, revealing another version of the myth of return that has been studied among the working classes (Sayad, 1977; Bidet, 2021). Student emigration, even when extended over many years due to lengthy studies, is seen as temporary. This can be explained, on the one hand, by gains associated with return and, on the other hand, by reinforcing family and political socialisation (Darmon, 2006), which seeks explicitly or otherwise to establish the desire for return, a desire that is implemented in different ways depending on gender.
16Nour and Yasmine’s elite emigration can be compared to the experiences abroad of privileged French youth, combining study, work and leisure (Wagner, 2007). However, this apparent ease should not obscure the fact that emigration to France benefits from comprehensive guidance for the settlement of temporary immigrants. Indeed, migrants do not leave for a random destination in mainland France, they go to family members who can support them and alleviate the difficulties of being far away. This guidance also helps to ensure that the objectives of migration are achieved, i.e. the reproduction of a skilled social position in the country of origin.
17When she moved to France, Yasmine travelled by plane, with two members of her family, and met one of her father’s friends who was on the same flight and offered to help:
“I’d never been there before [to the town where she was about to start higher education]. It was organised so that we weren’t travelling alone. My aunt took me and a cousin, who was also starting her studies in France, and the three of us went together. We flew from Casablanca to Geneva. We landed in Geneva and then we took the train, the... Then there was supposed to be a bus to take us there. Except that we got on the plane, and then I saw a man, who was on his way back, who was in first class. He came over and looked around and then he introduced himself to me: ‘I’m a friend of your dad.’ He’d met my dad [at the airport] who’d said to him, ‘My daughter’s on the flight, she’s going to study in France.’ And he said, ‘Oh, she’s on the plane, so don’t worry, I’ll recognise her if she looks like you.’ So this guy was living in Geneva, he’s a businessman. He was living in Geneva and he said to me, ‘I’ll take you to the station.’ The taxi was waiting and took [our] six suitcases [laughs]. We got into the Rolls-Royce. We didn’t carry a single piece of luggage [laughs again]. Well, he took us to the station, bought the train tickets, didn’t want us to pay for them. He told the guy in the taxi, ‘You carry their suitcases onto the train.’ And we left. We were stunned [laughs], you know, going to France and find ourselves in a Rolls-Royce. I called my dad that evening and said, ‘Who on earth is this guy?’ [laughs]. ‘Who is this guy?’ He told me [in a very calm voice]: ‘Well, you know, it’s that guy, he’s the brother of what’s-her-name’, a woman I know, whose place I’d stayed at in Amsterdam for two weeks’ holiday.”
18The distance was made easier by the presence of her aunt, who knew the town where Yasmine was studying. She was also sharing a flat with her cousin. But at the time of her departure, she measured the effectiveness of her social capital above all by the encounter with a distant acquaintance, one who could be mobilised and indeed was mobilised to support her emigration (Granovetter, 1973). Although she presented it as a chance encounter, this event reveals the extent of the relationship network available to Yasmine (Bourdieu, 1980; Massey, 1999). It confirms her membership of a supportive group, which gives (her) an enhanced image, both objectively and symbolically, of her emigration. At the time of settlement, the preparatory guidance given by her parents, which made emigration seem natural, was reinforced by a protective logic that relies on mobilising intermediaries in the management of children’s movements (Rivière, 2017: 77-78).
19In the case of South-North migration by members of the elite in the country of origin, transnational activities are nonetheless affected by the economic asymmetry between national spaces, as is the case for less well-off social fractions. Nour was twenty-five when she moved to Paris, where she joined her older sister, who was already living there. The trip, undertaken without any specific plan, showed her lack of need and the resources at her disposal—social, through her sister, and economic and in terms of her cultural knowledge, through her parents. On her arrival, however, she had to work for a year because her parents’ substantial financial resources in Algeria were not enough to provide an equivalent lifestyle in France. Following a year of odd jobs as a cashier at a service station, a waitress and a temporary worker, she began a postgraduate degree at a business school. However, after four years in France, Nour returned to Algiers, where she had maintained her social network of friends—friends with whom she partied and went on holiday in other parts of Algeria—who were also useful intermediaries when it came to finding work. Thanks to her educational capital from a French establishment, she quickly found a job in a consultancy firm, then taught in a higher education college and worked as a consultant for the Bank of Algeria. As well as gaining access to positions with elevated status, return migration is a way of maintaining a high standard of living compared to that available in France.
20The privilege associated with return is explained by an advantage linked to autochthony. This applies to internationalised elites, but first and foremost national elites, i.e. elites defined as such based on criteria whose social value is tested in a national context. It is above all in their country of origin that they have long been part of networks of inter-knowledge and inter-recognition which can be professionally useful (Wagner, 2010). During their studies in France, both Nour and Yasmine took it for granted that their university holidays would be spent back home. Time spent “away” from the local space is defined as good practice and a legitimate membership criterion that confirms the social positions of group members on their return, but this exit remains partial (Andreotti et al., 2016). Since they can stretch over several years, these periods nonetheless involve “showing up”, on the one hand to respond to family injunctions to remain loyal to the group of origin (Grysole, 2020) and, on the other, to accumulate and maintain more distant social resources that will be useful when the time comes to return home.
21The years spent in France bring forms of disruption that reflect the difficulties experienced by the women interviewed in taking on a masculine legacy, written by the men around them. The success of return mobility relies on a particular alignment of the personal, professional and political spheres.
22Conjugality can undermine the initial plan to return to the country of origin and lead to more permanent settlement in France. During her studies, Yasmine met her husband, who was also Moroccan. A few years older than her, he preceded her down a university path, that she then followed. Familiar with the world of research through her family, she began a PhD while her husband, who was about to finish his thesis, decided to apply for a teaching and research position in France. In Yasmine’s case, being in a couple led to a form of sedentarisation.
23Daughters’ advantage in terms of international mobility, compared to their mothers’ generation, should not obscure the extent to which the process of deciding to migrate disadvantages women. In the same way that Yasmine’s mother followed her father when he relocated to Morocco, Yasmine’s return was thwarted by her husband’s professional career. Conflicts of loyalty between ties to ascendants and marital ties can be reduced by marrying someone with the same social origin, but also the same national origin (Bastos, 2005). This gave the women interviewed a better chance of making their long-term settlement in France understandable and facilitating regular returns to their country of origin, where both members of the couple continued to maintain emotional and material relationships. More prosaically, this means that they do not definitively abandon the plan to return, but that it is conditional on the marital relationship.
24Although Yasmine stayed in France to support her husband’s career plans, he faced significant difficulties getting work. He was unemployed for several years and when Yasmine was recruited as a researcher in a French research institute, the couple and their daughter returned to Morocco. Unlike the heterosexual expatriate couples in Abu Dhabi interviewed by Claire Cosquer (2020), the couple’s decision to move was based on Yasmine’s comparative advantage over her husband: she had opportunities in France and Morocco, while her husband was only able to find work in Morocco. The return migration remained a professional compromise to her husband’s advantage, and the marital constraint on mobility became all the more apparent when Yasmine’s marital situation deteriorated. While she was separating from her husband, Yasmine could no longer legally leave Moroccan territory with her daughter without her husband’s agreement, who refused each time she tried to organise a trip abroad. Under the Moroccan Family Code, this requirement applies to both parents, but in practice Yasmine’s authorisation was not sought from her daughter’s father when the two left the country together. During this time, any trips organised for her and her daughter depended on the goodwill of her ex-husband, who constantly changed his mind, forcing her to repeatedly cancel her plans. Although Yasmine was able to continue travelling abroad individually, the difficulties of crossing borders were compounded in her role as a mother. Approximately fifteen years after her return to Morocco, when her daughter began higher education in France, and because her new partner was also living there, Yasmine moved back.
25One of the key findings in the literature is evident here: even in the case of skilled migration, migratory and professional heteronormativity exists (Yeoh and Khoo, 1998). This persists even in situations of strict professional homogamy, where women’s professional careers are equivalent or even superior to those of their husbands (Marry, 2014). The couple formed during migration and motherhood both involve a high degree of constraint for women, to the extent that, for many years, Yasmine’s mobility and immobility were dictated from outside. From this perspective, the family guidance supporting migration is a major advantage for women crossing borders, but is not without ambivalence.
26At the time of Nour and Yasmine’s mobility, the political context, particularly the legal and social position of women in Algeria and Morocco, affected the perceived opportunity structure in migration. In both countries, the focus on national independence overshadowed the issue of women’s emancipation for a long time. In Morocco, King Hassan II held power from 1961 to 1999. His reign was marked by strong repression of left-wing movements and supporters (Perrault, 1992). In terms of equality, the Moroccan state encouraged women’s education and work while maintaining a strict legal gender hierarchy. It was not until the 1980s that a reformist feminism emerged to defend women’s rights and freedoms in religion, employment and the family (Naciri, 2014). In Algeria, the policies of the National Liberation Front (FLN), which came to power upon independence, were marked by a gradual and significant reduction in the rights of women, who had put aside their demands in favour of the struggle against the colonial power (Knauss, 1987). Despite the significant development of public services in Algeria that benefited women, particularly in education, the introduction of the Family Code in 1984, based on Sharia law, reduced their legal status to that of second-class citizens and considerably affected their freedoms (Lalami, 2012). The rise of Islamist movements, including the victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the country’s first legislative elections in 1991, further exacerbated the situation of women. The elections were annulled in 1992 by the FLN, leading to armed conflict between government forces and the Islamic Salvation Army and their respective allies. During this war, women were particularly targeted from all sides, whether by partisan propaganda which dissuaded women from taking their place in the public space (and thus from having a job or leisure activities) or by direct attacks (murders, kidnappings, rapes) (Moghadam, 1994). The black decade (1992-2002), also described as the “decade against women” (Guemar, 2023: 51), was marked by a feminisation of Algerian emigration, particularly to France and Quebec (Hachimi-Alaoui, 2001). The case of Algeria differs from that of Morocco in terms of the violence of attacks on women.
27Nour, who had begun the process of remigrating to Algeria, returned to France during the Algerian black decade, which affected her living conditions. Two events led her to organise her departure and put an end to her plans, particularly her professional plans, in Algeria: firstly, the assassination of Algerian intellectuals opposed to FIS and, secondly, her arrest at a military checkpoint. As a passenger in a car driven by a chauffeur, Nour and a friend were stopped at a police roadblock during a weekend holiday. The military intervention was heavy-handed: they were questioned and criticised for their practices (travelling unescorted by men, drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes), which contravened gender norms and representations. Nour faced difficulties on several levels. Firstly, beyond the fear of terrorist attacks, characterised by their unpredictability and brutality, the experience of arrest meant that she was also afraid of the behaviour of regular forces, exacerbating uncertainty in going about her daily life. In particular, and this is the second point, this arrest directly called into question Nour’s mobility privilege, a feature of her privileged lifestyle, leading her, like other Algerian women with qualifications (Guemar, 2023), to leave the country.
- 2 In the 19th century, her great-grandfather, who owned a farm in Algeria under French colonial rule, (...)
28The haste with which she left the country reflected her lack of material difficulties. She had the economic capital to buy a plane ticket to Paris, a destination which was familiar to her and where she had ties. She was able to find accommodation in her older sister’s flat. She also had the social capital: before her departure she contacted a friend living in Paris, who offered to “help her out” for a few months by employing her remotely in his advertising and publishing agency. Only one procedure to organise her departure was more time-consuming: obtaining administrative documents, which took several months. Nour, who was born in Algeria as an Algerian, had the option of applying for French nationality, which she inherited from her paternal great-grandfather.2 She was an Algerian national until the age of thirty-two, when she took the necessary steps at the embassy and consulate to obtain dual nationality, reflecting the more permanent nature of her migration. When plans and opportunities are disrupted by political upheaval, permanent emigration ensures a stabilisation of the socio-professional position while at the same time revealing the social and economic resources available to escape a sudden deterioration in the situation.
29Settling almost permanently in France entails a reorientation of the initial migration project and introduces a degree of uncertainty as to how to maintain a privileged position in a transnational context. Nour and Yasmine continually struggled against the risk of social downgrading (in terms of class, race and gender) in France, caused by the tensions between the hopes placed in migration, the realities experienced and the comparison with those who returned.
30For a long time, joining the “low-ranking” civil service was—and to some extent still is (Cayouette-Remblière, 2015)—a gateway to upward social mobility for working classes. It is also a professional sector that is particularly popular with the descendants of immigrants, especially those with parents who immigrated from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia (Baradji et al., 2012; Beaud, 2018). The access of immigrants to the civil service is less well documented. Yasmine and Nour’s cases suggest that immigrants’ social position plays a significant role in their access to the civil service, not the “low-ranking civil service” but the intellectual civil service, which is accessible regardless of nationality. Yasmine and Nour worked in the category A civil service, which includes managers and intellectual professions with an elevated status, requiring a high level of qualifications.
31In Yasmine’s case, joining the civil service was a continuation of the studies she began on her arrival in France. As research positions are not subject to nationality requirements, access to the intellectual civil service, via a PhD thesis, only depends on capital that is mainly available to immigrants from the upper classes in their country of origin. The first of these is cultural capital which is useful on the French educational market. Yasmine completed her studies, a doctoral thesis, a post-doctorate qualification and obtained a job in a research institute in France and then in Morocco. For Nour, it was the cultural and social capital accumulated during her migration that helped her enter the civil service. She did not “dream of becoming a civil servant”: her school and student career was not geared towards this career path and she said that she initially “dithered” because she was not aware of the possibilities. After temporary jobs, she entered the competitive exams, which she passed the following year. Her colleagues supported her in her application and her preparation for written and oral exams. When I met her, she was a category A civil servant in a higher education establishment, which enabled her to avoid the social and, above all, economic downgrading that comes with settling permanently in France.
32A comparison of their trajectories with those of returnees from the same generation reveals that the gains linked to migration are very significant. Nour saw her permanent emigration, and that of her friends (to France, the United States or Canada), as a way to stabilise her socio-professional position compared with the prospects in Algeria today. She compared her situation to that of Algerian graduates who face high levels of unemployment and inactivity, or political inertia, despite strong protests which were taking place in Algeria at the time of the study. From this perspective, and because her reference group was quite different, Yasmine more than Nour saw her position weakened by her successive experiences of mobility. Reflecting on the trajectories of members of her group of student-friends met during her studies in France, Yasmine underlined the differences in the gains made by each of them from migration. This reveals the extent to which, although many of them chose to study in France, this is an intermediate stage in a more complex migratory trajectory. For example, Omar, a Moroccan friend she met in France, was the son of a doctor and a member of the Moroccan bourgeois class. Through him, Yasmine found a familiar social environment outside Morocco: their parents were friends and were part of the same circles. They spent their first years of higher education together. But after obtaining a degree in France, Omar left for the United States to study law and finance. He then returned to work as a partner in a major Moroccan law firm, living abroad for a large part of the year.
33Compared to Omar, Yasmine’s multiple comings and goings had a negative impact on her professional and economic situation. When she returned to Morocco, at the instigation of her first husband, Yasmine found out that her doctorate, obtained in France, was not recognised by the Moroccan authorities, which meant that her salary was lower than she had reasonably expected, compared to members of her family and friends with equivalent qualifications. To compensate for this reduction in anticipated income, Yasmine spent three years working on a new thesis, this time in Morocco. Resettling in her country of origin therefore meant a more significant professional adjustment in order to regain the situation (status and income) she had in France, even though she had a better position than her ex-spouse when she left France. Fifteen years later, when she returned to France, due to the maternal bond and her relationship with her second husband, Yasmine again found employment in French public research, but was unable to gain recognition of her level of qualification, seniority and salary progression in Morocco. Her return migration to Morocco effectively paused her professional career, and she returned to France in the same situation as when she had left the country to follow her ex-spouse. When its direction and form are dictated by strong relational constraints, complex geographical mobility is unlikely to go along with better professional opportunities and a more favourable social position in the long term for all immigrants (Caron, 2022).
34The socialisation to international migration of members of the international elite is partly contradictory. While they are strongly encouraged to value links with the outside world, their parents see an implicit hierarchy of national spaces in which the country of origin must be at the top, a hierarchy that continues to affect the interviewees’ subjective perception of their migration in the long term. Speaking Arabic and permanently settling in the country are interpreted as signs of allegiance by members of the elite to their country (Dugonjic-Rodwin, 2022). To manage their absence and negotiate a position within the group of origin, the women interviewed take on a large part of the domestic and emotional burden of their household of origin. The contribution made by women is characterised by emotional work and economic management. This involvement enables them to maintain their position in the social hierarchy of their country of origin and avoid the risks of minorisation in immigration.
35Yasmine and Nour’s cases revealed the way in which family histories become, or seek to become, objects of knowledge outside the family group. Yasmine seized the opportunity of the study to involve me in a project of interviews with her father about his political involvement:
“I tried to see if I could find someone in Morocco who could help me do what you’re doing now. Meet my father, my aunts, record them and even film them, because I want there to be images to remain because, well, that’s it. I didn’t really find anyone, so when I went back at Christmas, I bought myself a little camera and every day I filmed my aunts and my father. I interviewed them.”
- 3 I have no details of the arrangements. Nour’s active participation in organising them reveals nothi (...)
36This symbolic work goes alongside long-term organisational efforts in relation to management of family assets and budgets. When I met Nour, she was travelling back and forth to Algeria several times a year. These trips were expressly focused on administrative procedures concerning the family assets. Her mother was elderly and her father deceased, prompting the group to put in place strategies to maximise the transfer of assets.3 As for Yasmine, during one of our meetings when we discussed the management of our respective budgets, she explained to me in detail how she and her mother managed the income of the people to whom her parents and extended family delegated domestic work (domestic help, driver). There were several types of income: pay directly linked to the employee’s work or additional expenses for the employee’s family, paid for by Yasmine and her mother. For example, Yasmine was paying the school fees for the son of Mansoud, the household’s driver. In the summer of 2021, while I was in Morocco, Mansoud’s wife needed to undergo expensive medical examinations, which were paid for by Yasmine’s father. The family also paid a pension to the daughter of Baya, their former domestic worker who died a few years previously. Yasmine directly contributed to the payment of some of these expenses, which were sometimes advanced by her mother. To ensure that salary payments and reimbursements were correct, Yasmine (using a spreadsheet) and her mother (using a notebook) set out and managed the family group’s accounts together, at a distance.
37To enhance the value of settling in France, it is necessary to maintain a position in the country of origin, which appears to be a way of mitigating the symbolic losses associated with the almost permanent nature of migration. The assertion of multi-positionality by the women interviewed can be linked to an effort to dignify a migratory destiny that is partly endured and that exposes them to symbolic downgrading. Being “here” and “there” at the same time allowed respondents to distance themselves from stigmatised representations of immigrants associated with subordinate positions (Spire, 1999) and to lessen the racial minorisation paradoxically experienced by upper classes who perceive themselves as international. Long-term migration often leads to exposure to forms of racism, experienced either directly in interactions, or more subtly. In Nour’s case, for example, this became evident as soon as she settled permanently in France. Before taking competitive exams to join the civil service, she secured a job through personal contacts, but this situation was intended to be temporary from the outset, and she soon found herself unemployed, struggling to stabilise her professional situation. She then undertook a skill assessment to help guide her career path. The assessment did not lead to any career prospects, but Nour remembers that during her interview, the trainer, visibly embarrassed, advised her to change her first name to increase her chances of finding a job:
“A skill assessment, that takes time, it takes a month or something. He said to me: ‘I have to tell you something. You’ve got a good profile, or whatever. It could work. I don’t know how to say this, but I have to say it.’ And he said, ‘Well, the surname’s fine, it’ll do.’ So, he took all the precautions, saying: ‘You know, it’s not me, it’s the market’, blah, blah, blah, honestly, he was otherwise a reasonable guy. But he said to me: ‘You need to know, I have to tell you, never mind, it doesn’t matter.’ Then he went for it and he said to me: ‘The surname’s fine, it’s okay. You’re fine too.’ Shit [laughs], you hear that, you want to... ‘You’re fine too.’ I’m fine too! It’s OK, I don’t have frizzy hair or whatever. ‘You’re fine! You’re fine too. But... but...’ Hang on, I knew what he was getting at. ‘But the first name on... the first name on the CV, ntt. I don’t know, would something like Ro...’ I swear, I’ll remember it my whole life: ‘Rosa for example, I don’t know... I don’t know, just on the CV.’ You see? I said no, no, it’s not possible, ntt, ntt. He said, ‘Well, I knew you’d say no [laughs], but I had to tell you.’”
38Privileged social status did not protect Nour from stigmatisation, which she experienced from the very first sign of professional vulnerability in France. In anticipation, the adviser she met prepared her for the racial discrimination he thought she was likely to encounter in her job search, despite her French nationality and phenotypic characteristics that did not explicitly discredit her (Goffman, 1975). This memory affected her particularly as she felt that, because of her class position and level of education, she was likely to be protected from racism (Blassel, 2021).
39Three conclusions emerge from this case study on the notion of “migratory privilege”, particularly with a view to regulating its use. First, migratory privilege must be studied as both ideal and material: the resources available and their mobilisation in a given context structure both the space for possible actions, and the system of representations. In other words, examining the collective effort of privilege must be combined with the study of its erasure and its naturalisation. Applied to the immigration of Moroccan and Algerian upper-class women in France, this analysis shows that migratory privilege fulfils a function: it is subjectively mobilised to re-establish moral and symbolic boundaries, thereby asserting a dominant class position and resisting assignment to minority and stigmatised class and racial positions in the French context.
40The second conclusion is that migratory privilege is not established, mobilised or effective on an individual level. It emerges and is sustained through a significant and long-term collective effort. This article highlighted the active role played by the family group in the development and maintenance of migratory privilege, showing that while family ties are an important factor, they can over time constrain and weaken this privilege. From this perspective, examining the plurality of social relationships reveals that family arrangements in transnational situations disadvantage women, even those with substantial economic and cultural capital.
41Finally, migratory privilege must be analysed over the long term. Sustaining it requires significant adjustments. To grasp these, social science research must focus on the mechanisms and impact on social position of geographical mobility, in addition to geographical immobility. Moreover, migratory privilege is not ahistorical: favourable social relations are shaped by an economic, political and social context, and research must reconstruct the sequence of events to identify their variable effects. In this respect, the continuation of gender domination through emotional and management work carried out at a distance appears to be an effective means of being multi-situated and maintaining a distance from the negative figures of immigration.
