ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 pursues this investigation through an analysis of the respondents’ social, professional, and for some political aspirations. For most of them, the achievement of nationally sanctioned ‘titles of nobility’ does not represent a one-way ticket into the French middle class. It does not effortlessly lead to desirable professional status and social recognition. Rather the threat of ethno-racial discrimination looms large in the narrative of the respondents. The assimilative pressure is further viewed as a salient reality, a constantly renewed condition constraining their hope to attain their desired mobility dreams. Three envisioned routes, informed by distinctive educational trajectories and subjectivities are expressed by the respondents: the republican success, the cosmopolitan dream, and the asserted position of ‘in-betweeness’. Through these, the respondents formulate a definition of success which goes beyond the economic realm: success is not just movement between classes and entry into the middle class; it is about achieving simultaneously ‘redistribution and recognition’. It is about securing dignified identities.
