How biographical studies and social experience of migration are still inspired by The Polish Peasant in Europe and America

Abstract

Thomas and Znaniecki have shown us how to use human documents to explore the relations between individuals and ‘their’ society. Their inspiring approach allows us to consider migrants as subjects: a whole change of perspective. Working for many years on families of migrants who came from Maghreb countries (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) to France, I have studied how such parents try to educate their children to face the difficulties linked to economic instability: unemployment, chronic shortages of money, and (social and ethnic) discrimination. Collecting life stories from parents and children allows an in-depth examination of educational strategies and the dynamics of intergenerational transmissions. These life stories give us evidence of parents’ educational practices and how they organise themselves to try to give their children resources, values and principles. Reciprocally, it is to capture, in the children’s discourses, what they retain from the education provided by parents and, more widely, from the family history as it is related. This method not only gives information about feelings of affiliation – with their fluctuations – but also allows to know how family members interact with each other, and to compare how their affiliations are explained or justified by the different family members. Thus, we can study both the weight of external factors and the personal experiences that take part in shaping these claimed affiliations and how they are individually constructed for each family member, based on the family heritage and the life courses and experiences of each person.