A free ebook version of this title will be available
through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open
Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
While portrayals of immigrants and their descendants in France and
throughout Europe often center on burning cars and radical
Islam, Citizen Outsider: Children of North African
Immigrants in France paints a different picture. Through
fieldwork and interviews in Paris and its banlieues,
Jean Beaman examines middle-class and upwardly mobile children of
Maghrébin, or North African immigrants. By showing how these
individuals are denied cultural citizenship because of their North
African origin, she puts to rest the notion of a French
exceptionalism regarding cultural difference, race, and ethnicity
and further centers race and ethnicity as crucial for understanding
marginalization in French society.