CRIS Scientific Seminar 2024-2025

Friday, November 22th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K011 (1, St-Thomas)

In the name of mixedness.
First name choices in France for children of mixed-race marriages
and internationally adopted children

Solène Brun

Associate Scientist CNRS, Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux (IRIS)

This article, based on a survey of international adoptive parents and mixed-race couples conducted between 2015 and 2017, looks at the considerations involved in naming children in these two types of mixed families in France. Parents in these families have to negotiate multiple affiliations and origins, meaning that choice of child’s first name has particular symbolic implications. These in turn are reflected in parents’ approaches and strategies for integrating the child into the different family lines; they also involve defining identities at both a national and racialized level. In this respect, the article explores an understudied dimension of the sociology of first names in France, with particular attention to the racialized dimension of the naming process.

Open seminar. Please register here to join us.

• Paper, published by the Revue Française de Sociologie (FR) | English version
• To fing out more about Solène Brun