Immigrant Assimilation & Transnationalism: The French Case

Cris Beauchemin, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Hugues Lagrange, CNRS/OSC-Sciences Po
Safi Mirna, OSC-Sciences Po and CREST-INSEE

This article explores the links between transnationalism and immigrant assimilation in France. We use the TeO (“Trajectoire et Origines”) survey, a new dataset that provides extensive information on a large range of links (social, economic, political and symbolic) that people living in metropolitan France have with other regions of the world. The sample (around 22 000 interviewees) includes immigrants of first and second generation, as well as people of French ascendance who were born out of metropolitan France. This offers a unique opportunity to compare immigrants’ transnational attitudes with those of the others groups. We test the hypothesis of an inter-generational process of assimilation and explore the role of family transmission in the maintenance of transnationalism across generations. Furthermore, we study to what extent transnational practices are associated with economic success and/or the experience of racism, discrimination or stigmatisation in France.