Intra-Group Boundary-Making in Online Discussions Between Newcomers and Descendants of North African Immigrants in France
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Intra-Group Boundary-Making in Online Discussions Between Newcomers and Descendants of North African Immigrants in France by Claire Schiff (Bordeaux University) Abstract This paper addresses the issue of intra-group differences and relations among long standing post-colonial immigrant communities. Through an analysis of sub-ethnic categories used by North Africans in France for naming newcomers, this article contributes to the emerging literature on ‘ethnoheterogenesis’ and diversification within immigrant minority groups by adopting the framework of symbolic boundary-making and Norbert Elias’s established- outsider configuration. Using material gathered from online discussion forums serving the Maghrebi community, the author analyses how stigmatization and counter-stigmatization processes between new arrivals (les Blédards) and native-born minorities (les Beurs) are influenced by the colonial heritage, changes in the profiles of migrants entering France and evolving transnational ties. The study reveals how intra-group boundary making processes are structured around moral discourses and debates about three different but closely articulated themes: cultural and personal (in)authenticity, social (il)legitimacy and individual merit and the instrumentalization of gender relations in the transnational marriage market. Keywords: intergroup relations; transnational immigrant communities; North-African minority in France; symbolic boundary-making; established/outsider configuration; ethnoheterogenesis; online ethnography, ethnic labelling, immigrant replenishment Introduction Immigrant or ethnic ‘replenishment’ refers to today (Vertovec 2019). In addition to becoming the continuous flow over long periods of time of more internally segmented, these groups have migrants from countries such as Mexico to the also become more externally connected. This United States, Pakistan to England, or Algeria is largely due to the widespread use of internet to France. This process questions assumptions communication technologies, which have con- about the homogeneity and collective identi- tributed to the consolidation of transnational ties of minority groups who are presently made communities, further complicating ‘the con- up of a mix of new arrivals, long-term settled struction, negotiation and reproduction of social migrants, children of migrants, and later genera- identities’ (Vertovec 2001:578). tions (Jimenez 2008). The internal diversification This paper addresses the effects of immi- of immigrant minorities through replenishment grant replenishment, internal diversification can be seen as a particular form of ‘super-diver- and transnational ties on intra-group boundar- sity’, one which calls for moving beyond tradi- ies among North Africans of various immigrant tional ethnic distinctions in order to grasp the generations living in France. The empirical basis more complex generational and social lines of for the study is an online ethnography of inter- differentiation within immigrant communities net forum discussions that serve the Maghrebi NEW DIVERSITIES Vol. 23, No. 1, 2021 ISSN-Print 2199-8108 ▪ ISSN-Internet 2199-8116 NEW DIVERSITIES 23 (1), 2021 Claire Schiff diaspora; the study focuses particularly on the tion made famous by Elias and Scotson’s classical issue of relations between the descendants of study of the working class community of Win- North African migrants, commonly referred to in ston Parva in northern England. According to an France as Beurs, and their contemporaries who advocate of the application of this framework to have recently migrated or are seeking to migrate, the study of new migrants, this theory “needs called Blédards by their second and third gen- actualization and adaptation to the globalized eration peers. These relations will be examined realities, with often blurry community boundar- using the theoretical framework of symbolic ies where people retain multiple identities in -var boundary-making, developed by Michele Lamont ious situations and might be considered estab- (Lamont and Molnar 2002) and proposed by lished in one situation and outsider in another” Andreas Wimmer as an approach to ethnicity in (Petintseva 2015). Indeed, while in relation to immigrant societies which does not take ethnic newcomers the native born descendants of groups as self-evident but rather as products migrants are ‘established’, re the majority group, of particular institutional configurations, socio- or from the perspective of the ‘homeland’, they economic inequalities or other non-ethnic deter- may be viewed as ‘outsiders’. Taking these mul- minants (Wimmer 2009). How is newcomer/ tiple frames of reference into consideration, we old-timer status perceived when the distinction shall attempt to understand how the processes concerns co-ethnics, and what are the histori- of mutual categorization between the two par- cal and present-day realities which contribute to ties are affected by representations and social making such a distinctions significant? By explor- realities stemming from the sending society, on ing the significance of intra-ethnic labeling and the one hand, and by the fact that they belong categorizations of new arrivals and native-born to a historically stigmatized group within French minorities by ethnic group members themselves, society on the other. Are the axes of differentia- we seek to contribute to the emerging literature tion between newcomers and the descendants of on the concept of ‘ethnoheterogenesis’ and pro- migrants constructed mainly in reference to the cesses of diversification within immigrant minor- norms and hierarchies of the host society or are ity groups (Tiesler 2018). they also affected by a backlash (choc en retour)1 Intra-group distinctions, according to migrant of perspectives from the society of emigration? generation or duration of residency, have tended to be overshadowed by racial and ethnic factors Stigmatization Between Newcomers and Their in the literature on assimilation and multicultur- Settled Co-Ethnics: A Universal and Context- alism. Despite some unexpected findings about Dependent Phenomenon the importance of newcomer status as a factor of The few studies which have examined the sym- stigmatization by more established groups (Elias bolic and social distance separating new arrivals and Scotson 1994 ; Wimmer 2004) these distinc- from their more assimilated co-ethnics reveal tions have seldom been explored as such in the the existence of derogatory stereotypes and literature on transnational communities or on ambivalent sentiments on the part of each party boundary-making in ethnically diverse contexts. towards the other, which suggest that the phe- Our study of online discourses of stigmatization nomenon is both a universal feature of the pro- and counter-stigmatization between Franco- cess of immigrant incorporation and one which Maghrebi youth (Beurs) and recent migrants is influenced by the particular context within from North Africa (Blédards) aims to contribute to the understudied reality of boundary-making 1 To paraphrase Abdelmalek Sayad’s study of the processes within immigrant communities. ways in which the first generations of Algerian emi- grants were perceived by those who remained in The case examined can be viewed as a particu- the homeland (Sayad 1999 (1984)). See chapter 5: lar form of the established-outsider configura- ”Le choc en retour sur la société d’origine”. 12 Intra-Group Boundary-Making in Online Discussions NEW DIVERSITIES 23 (1), 2021 which it takes place. The most developed body each face pressures in favor of assimilation and of work addressing how intra-group relations are ethnic retention, yet these appear much less configured in reference to migrant generation intense and contradictory than in the Mexican concerns the Mexican origin population living in case. the United States (Hurtado, Gurin and Peng 1994 In a study of the stereotypes that second- ; Gutiérrez 1995; Ochoa 2000 ; Telles and Ortiz generation Asian-Americans develop regarding 2008 ; Jimenez 2008). These studies reveal that recent immigrants (called ‘FOBs’ or Fresh Off blocked opportunity, institutional racism and the Boat) and those who appear too assimilated discrimination all have a role to play in defining (‘Whitewashed’), the phenomenon of ‘co-ethnic the social identity of the various sub-categories othering’ is interpreted essentially as a result of of Chicanos, Mexicans, Mexican-Americans. internalized racism (Pyke and Dang 2003). This Continued migration tends to perpetrate these analysis focused mainly on the racialization of racial and cultural enforces between majority immigrant minorities in the host country ignores and minority groups and enforce stigmatization, the manner in which broader transnational rela- since whenever migration is a highly publicized tions between immigrants and their home soci- and controversial issue even those belonging to eties might also impact how new arrivals and the third generation may be viewed as ‘aliens’ by later generations regard each other. The issue of the majority group (Jimenez 2008). Yet it is also the effects of transnational ties on perceptions interesting to note that, within the multicultural of newly arrived migrants by their second and framework of North American society, later gen- third generation peers is addressed in a study of erations of Mexican-Americans feel pressure the figure of the ‘Freshie’ or ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ from more recent arrivals to conform to expecta- migrant as it appears in internet comedy