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This landmark study follows the Nour family – a Moroccan immigrant couple and their eight French-born children – for more than a decade, offering an intimate and unflinching portrait of migration, resilience and inequality.
Through sustained ethnographic observation and life-story interviews with family members, neighbours, teachers, magistrates and social workers, Catherine Delcroix demonstrates the extraordinary analytical power of the in-depth case study. Drawing on Norbert Elias’ concept of configuration, she illuminates intergenerational and gender dynamics within the family, while revealing how public policy shapes – and often distorts – the lives of those it purports to serve.
A classic text, this book has been translated in several languages but never made available in English until now. It will appeal to anyone who seeks a richer understanding of the immigrant experience – and makes a compelling case for life-story narratives as an indispensable tool in qualitative social research.
"This book is an almost literary socio-anthropological ‘novel’ taken from real life. It is both complex and accessible to a broad interdisciplinary audience with an interest in migration issues, including sociologists, anthropologists, legal scholars, psychologists, teachers, social workers and decision-makers. It tells and analyses the story of the Nour family: of Djamila and Amin who emigrated from Morocco to France in 1974 and over time raised eight children, one of whom, Djamel, died tragically in adulthood.
It has become a classic in France because of the valuable lessons it has to offer society, and for its insight into the forms of mutual assistance and resistance used by the members of the Nour family, the capital of subjective resources and life experiences on which the children draw, their sources of support and their agency in situations where they find themselves discredited."
François Héran, Professor, Collège de France, ‘Migrations et sociétés’ research chair
Foreword: Ann Phoenix
Introduction
Part 1: Memories of childhood
Chapter 1: From one generation to the next
Chapter 2: Childhood from different perspectives
Chapter 3: Building children’s self-esteem
Part 2: Married life and balancing the budget
Chapter 4: The end of Amin’s career
Chapter 5: Marital strife
Part 3: Entering adulthood
Chapter 6: Rachid’s battle with psychosis
Chapter 7: Djamel: the path to offending and life in prison
Chapter 8: Leïla finds fulfilment in education
Chapter 9: Driss’s search for a job
Chapter 10: An urgent situation for both young people and society
Chapter 11: The interactive nature of racism
Conclusion
Letter from Leïla
Epilogue: Taking action in a discredited situation
Postscript: An update on the family ten years on (2013)
Afterword to the 2013 French edition by Françoise Lorcerie – The Nour family: a sociological ‘novel’ taken from real life
Appendix: Methodological Note