1For several decades, the descendants of migrants from the former French colonies have repeatedly been at the center of debates on acculturation, integration, delinquency, and, more recently, secularism and Islamic radicalization. The fate of the descendants of migrants from North African countries is strongly related to historical and structural processes that shape interethnic/racial relations in France and to their pathways through school. The school system was long considered by French governments as the means of becoming a citizen; compared, for example, with the German school system, the French one, with its relatively late tracking into upper secondary school, enables a large proportion of working-class youth to achieve intergenerational upward social mobility and access to higher education. In parallel, the differentiation between general, technological, and professional secondary tracks correlates with a hierarchy between diplomas, signalling different abilities to succeed in school and to reach high levels of education. It is impossible not to conclude that the French school system does not fully fulfil its promise of equality for migrants’ descendants: on the one hand, controlling for social origin, the children of North African migrants have a lower probability than children without a migration background of being tracked into the higher-valued general track of higher secondary education and reaching university (Tucci 2015). On the other hand, research shows that the lower social origin of students with a migrant background, on average, fully explains their overrepresentation in the lower-valued vocational tracks, but that they often perceive this assignment as an injustice (Brinbaum and Cebolla-Boado 2007; Brinbaum and Primon 2013). This feeling of unjust treatment continues for many—but not all—of these youth in their job search, due to continuing discrimination (Petit et al. 2015), among other factors.

2The study of the pathways of migrants’ descendants through school is interesting because it sheds light on processes at the structural and individual levels, on the role played by contexts and individuals’ agency at different (and sometimes crucial) moments. How do young people living in segregated neighborhoods navigate through the school system and manage their labor market entry? In a study on the school-to-work trajectory of migrants’ descendants in disadvantaged neighborhoods in France and Germany (Tucci et al. 2013), we elaborated a typology of trajectories based on a qualitative field study (140 interviews). One typical trajectory among young migrants’ descendants in the neighborhood studied on the French side was that of “precariousness characterized by a double turning point.” Nourredine’s early life course has this shape and will be used in the analysis that follows to highlight how such pathways unfold and what the drivers and interdependencies are (Bidart, Longo, and Mendez 2013) of this kind of biographical turning point in early life.

School Trajectories and Turning Points in Early Adulthood

3At the time of the interview, Nourredine was 21 years old. He is the second of seven children, with five brothers and one sister. His mother stayed home and his father had worked as a mechanic until he had a work accident that disabled him for the rest of his life. With the father having been out of the labor market since 1980, the family is barely able to make ends meet. The whole family, which is of Tunisian origin, has been living for generations in a disadvantaged neighborhood of one of the biggest French cities. This neighborhood is well known in France for the riots that have taken place since the 1980s in reaction to social exclusion and police violence towards young, marginalized descendants of migrants. It was in this neighborhood that the March for Equality and against Racism began between October and December 1983.

4Nourredine did not like school when he was younger, and he had a somewhat turbulent entry into the secondary level; he lacked any concrete aspirations in terms of occupation. Like many young people living in socially deprived neighborhoods, Nourredine was tracked into short vocational training to become a coachbuilder. His orientation into the vocational track was not unwanted and did not lead to frustration: while passionate about car tuning, he was interested in becoming a coachbuilder. But negative experiences during his training led to a radical change in his school trajectory and occupational aspirations. This experience, at a relatively young age (16), was decisive for the next stages of his life.

5Turning points are not only characterized by a radical objective change—they also have a subjective dimension and tend to encompass different life domains. Consequently, the elements leading to and accompanying this critical moment (Thomson et al. 2002) are manifold. If institutions (school) and the market (employer) can engender radical changes in young people’s lives, it is important to understand the complexity of what causes the turning points in the lives of the children of immigrants living in such neighborhoods. Some experiences during schooling are triggers that act as the first domino leading to turbulence and enduring instability in life domains that are important for adolescent development.

6Being bullied by his employer during his training, encountering microinsults and even blows, Nourredine was affected both “physically” and “emotionally”, as he declares. We know from research that experiences of discrimination and racism negatively influence heath, self-confidence, and self-esteem (Schunck, Reiss and Razum 2015; Kauff, Wölfer and Hewstone 2017). The violence of the experience itself and the psychological consequences influence the shape of trajectories in that they alter motivation and engagement. Nourredine’s repeated experiences of assaults on his dignity (Lamont et al. 2016) from his employer, as well as the moderate support provided by his school as he faced this problem, led him to drop out of school for a three-year period; he was relatively depressed by his situation, obliged by his parents to partly leave the parental home, lived on his own, and regularly had to sleep at his friends’ houses.

7The feeling of being left aside by institutions is widespread among young adults who grew up in socially deprived neighborhoods in France and had negative experiences during schooling. It sometimes ends in a radical social distancing from school, which is seen as being discouraging and offering too few opportunities for upward social mobility. Institutions, their functioning, and also the agents working for the institution are considered in some cases to be setting up barriers rather than helping to overcome obstacles.

8School trajectories are structured by institutions, and this is also the case for turning points. The difficulties encountered by young people in segregated neighborhoods are rooted in the functioning of the school system, which tends in France (as opposed to Germany, for example) to make dropping out of school irreversible (Tucci et al. 2011). The promise of equality held out by the French republican principles remains unfulfilled and leads to frustration (Tucci 2010). But beyond the school system, the descendants of migrants also tend to accumulate disadvantages: a lack of familial cultural and financial resources, othering processes in everyday life, a lack of infrastructure in the neighborhood, and the limited presence of positive role models.

9Agency is also an important principle of the life course perspective. Individuals’ logic of action can change over time, due to changes in context, circumstances, social relationships, priorities, and aspirations. In double turning points-trajectories such as Nourredine’s, the first critical moment can be accompanied by a change in social frequentation: “bad friends” lead you to do illicit jobs, or engage in drug dealing or other activities linked to street culture (Portes and Rumbaut 2006, 262). Economic poverty is clearly another driver in the sequence announcing a turning point in young people’s lives. In that period of time, the present situation becomes more important: Distancing from school is often synonymous with distancing from the future. Friends in the same situation are the only ones who can reach out when institutions do not fulfil young people’s expectations. “Fast money” can be attractive, and for some of them it can also be a means to meet the needs of the family. For Nourredine, this was clearly not an option, even if he had ever had the opportunity.

10Reconstructing the course of their life during interviews, young adults who later experienced a second turning point underline the importance of relations in certain phases of life but also of what we call “agency.” Significant others—be they teachers, neighbours, or family members—help to rebuild self-confidence and open new spaces of possibility. Agency intervenes, for example, in the form of renouncing membership of a clique or declining to perform some illicit activities because they are not considered viable in the long term. Distancing from “bad friends” and engaging in a romantic relationship can also be drivers in the second turning point that occurs in the trajectories of such young adults. Nourredine’s situation of distancing from school due to his experience of racism lasted three years until he realized that he could not continue that way. The change in Nourredine’s strategy of action appears very clearly, recognizing the role played by qualifications for the next stages of life. He was able to find the resources needed to undertake new training, with the aspiration of using the training programs offered by the Mission Locale as much as possible in order to get the qualifications to which he aspires. Nevertheless, this kind of change in logic of action which emanates from the individual is not context dependent and requires certain resources that not all young people possess. Last but not least, the problem of not making use of social entitlements in working-class neighborhoods, e.g. not approaching the counsellors of the neighborhood’s Mission Locale to find a way out of a predicament, is also a sign that such public assistance units miss their target.

Imbrications of Ethno-Racial Categories and The Neighborhood: “Go to a Place That Enables You to Progress”

11If one analyzes the fate of descendants of migrants of North African origin who grew up in socially marginalized neighborhoods, it is difficult to leave othering and ethnic boundary-making processes aside. These processes, which shape part of their experience of the society they live in, can best be studied by looking at their experiences of discrimination. At least two types of discrimination exist and are connected to each other: the first one, which we could call systemic (or institutional) discrimination (Felouzis, Fouquet-Chauprade and Charmillot 2015; Gomolla and Radtke 2009), is a type of discrimination that arises from the functioning of organizations, e.g. the school system, the labor market, the police. The second type of discrimination is that of isolate discrimination (Feagin and Eckberg 1980), i.e. a punctual or repeated experience of racism in the respondents’ lives due to verbal or physical aggressions or acts of inferiorization by persons of the dominant group.

12Many young descendants of migrants, like Nourredine, relate this kind of “microinteractional level of racism” (Broman et al. 2000, 179), and when they talk about experiences of isolate discrimination, they do not always express it only in terms of ethnic or racial discrimination. Ethno-racial categories and territorial categories (i.e. the neighborhood) are strongly imbricated in France in the stories told by migrants’ descendants living in those neighborhoods (Tucci and Keller 2019). Very often, they link these discriminations not only to their ethnic identity as young people with a particular migration background, but also to the working-class and socially marginalized neighborhoods in which they live. Pupils might experience different treatment at school or during their training, and, interestingly, when this is the case, they often avoid saying that this experience is linked to racism and ethno-racial prejudice, while the examples they give clearly indicate a verbal racist attack, as this quotation from Nourredine’s interview highlights: “Because I had an employer who … who saw that I came from this neighborhood, he used to say strange things like … like ‘dirty Arab.’” This resonates with other findings from a mixed-methods study dealing with the interplay between residential and ethnic stigma in the housing market in France (Bonnet et al. 2016). This study indeed concluded that place of residence is a substitute, i.e. a proxy, for ethnic origin rather than an added discriminatory factor. Our research among descendants of migrants (Tucci and Keller 2019) indicates an ambiguity in the naming of discriminatory factors by interviewees. One possible explanation might be that addressing the issue of discrimination on the grounds of residential criteria enables dignity to be maintained and offers a perspective of possible change, e.g. moving to “a place that enables you to progress,” while ethnic stigma leads to enduring inequalities. Finally, Nourredine experienced stigma and discrimination very early in life, as is the case for many young people of North African origin, and this led to crucial changes in his trajectory; his story shows that overcoming such obstacles necessitates time and (individual and structural) resources so that new horizons of possibility can be opened up.