• Image Darren Brode (via Shutterstock)
  
• Bulletin individuel du recensement, INSEE
  

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, September 8th 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, 1 place St-Thomas, room K008

Moving up the civic stratification ladder: inconsistency in citizenship declarations
in French longitudinal data

Mirna Safi, with Louise Caron (Ined) and Haley McAvay (University of York)

Drawing on longitudinal data, this work tracks individual changes in self-reported citizenship over 30 years in France.
Census respondents tick one of three categories: “French by birth,” “Became French,” or “Foreigner”.
The first category should be stable over the life course: one is born, but cannot become, “French by birth”. Yet, our findings indicate that about 19% of foreign-origin respondents observed in a given census switch to “French by birth” declarations at the next census, in a process we call reclassification.
Key immigrant assimilation variables, such as nativity and migrant length of stay, as well as events such as intermarriage, naturalization, and residential mobility, trigger reclassification. Yet we also show that reclassification is higher among individuals with lower socioeconomic status and respondents of African and Southeast Asian origin, as well as those with origins in former French colonies. These findings suggest that reclassification is a byproduct of immigrant assimilation, which triggers feelings of national identity, and that it also possibly stems from status upgrading, whereby disadvantaged and discriminated groups change their citizenship declaration to compensate for low social status.
Empirically novel, these findings offer original theoretical insights into the meanings of citizenship, civic stratification, and boundary-crossing.

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