1The case of Nourredine shows us the life path of an immigrant descendant who grew up in France. He failed to realize upward social mobility, but he did not become a thief, a robber, or a drug dealer on the fringes of society. After many rounds of vocational education and vocational training, he seemed to continue on his father’s career path. However, through Nourredine’s narratives it can be found that even if he maintained a career path similar to that of his parents, he was confronted with frustrations in accessing education and finding jobs. Unlike the structural obstacles in education faced by migrant children in China, the barriers faced by the descendants of immigrants in France seem to come more from physical and verbal abuse in daily interaction. In this article, we will discuss the inequality faced by Nourredine in his schooling, internship, and vocational training.

School Life and Low Standards of Education

2The descendants of French immigrants do not face institutional barriers in terms of school entry and further education, which is different from the education system for migrant children in Shanghai. In France, children of immigrants born in France can obtain French citizenship if they live in France until adulthood (Kirszbaum et al. 2009). Scholars call it the “French model of integration,” which eliminates all cultural, racial, and identity issues from the public domain and demotes them to the private domain (Schnapper 1994). This system of “hiding” immigration status is considered to offer opportunities of social mobility to immigrants’ descendants in the public and political sectors (Simon 2003). The descendants of immigrants with French citizenship are equally protected by law and enjoy all the rights of citizens. According to the design of the above system, Nourredine, with his French citizenship, only needs to study hard and achieve good results to get a better education. In the social mobility theories, higher education has been a help for upward social mobility in modern society (Blau and Duncan 1967). In any case, Nourredine could indeed study at the local primary school, junior high school, and vocational school; he could also go to the “Local Mission,” which provide vocational training for young people, and obtain the vocational certificates required in job-hunting. However, the actual process of his academic career was not smooth.

3It has been pointed out that the educational inequality faced by the descendants of immigrants in France is related to residential segregation (Portes and Hao 2004). Most immigrant families from North Africa live on the outskirts or in the poorest areas of European cities, where the educational environment and teaching quality are worrisome (Weekes-Bernard 2007). Teachers tend to lower their teaching standards, resulting in what some scholars call “education slums” (Farris and de Jong 2014). In this case, Vénissieux, where Nourredine lives, is an immigrant settlement located in southeast Lyon. In Nourredine’s narratives, it is also revealed that the local teachers pass on some negative emotions to the students and belittle the things the students care about, even saying things like, “You’re doomed to fail.” (“Here are the teachers, when they have nothing else to say to the student, they will directly say: ‘Yeah you’re doomed to failure, you’re doomed to fail.’”) For Nourredine, a teenage boy who had a strong disgust with learning, it seems that his teachers never adopted measures to persuade him to learn; instead, they took a “laissez-faire” attitude. In this way, young people like Nourredine easily give up on the opportunity to receive an education before they come to realize the significance of education for them. Together with the negative evaluation from teachers, it is easy to further reinforce the concept of “futility of education” or self-abandonment. This is in line with Paul Willis’ “anti-school culture” in Learning to Labor (Willis 1981).

4In Chinese middle schools there are also students who are reluctant to go to school. But most of the time, teachers try their best to dissuade students from giving up their studies by speaking with them one-on-one or by communicating with their parents. The reason for this is that in China’s public schools, student enrollment rate is an important indicator to assess teachers’ teaching level and salary; it is also the driving force for teachers not to lower teaching standards based on the poor quality of the students. In China, although there is not an evaluation system in schools for migrant children as there is in public schools, parents can “vote with their feet” to choose high-quality education, because of the market-oriented operation logic. In China, most parents (especially the younger ones) have realized the importance of education in class mobility, so they hope to provide a better education environment for their children within the scope of their abilities, so they will try to choose better schools for their children. Some schools of poor educational quality will be eliminated in this process. In Nourredine’s case, there is only a brief description of students’ life, so we cannot further analyze the existence of a low standard of education.

Language Violence in the Vocational Education and Internship

5Many existing studies have discussed the educational achievements of the descendants of immigrants. Some studies have found that migrant children are twice as likely to drop out of secondary education than their French counterparts and are less likely to complete a bachelor’s degree (Brinbaum and Kieffer 2009). In terms of educational choice, some scholars have found that the vast majority of young people with an immigrant background either drop out of school or enter vocational schools, training programs (VET), and technical schools; few people enter higher education through a general education path (Alba, Sloan and Sperling 2011). At the same time, scholars also point out that family and school environment are the reasons why students of North African origin encountered more difficulties in their school life, making them suffer more failures in their career (Brinbaum and Kieffer 2009).

6In the case of Nourredine, we find that the discrimination and violence encountered by the descendants of immigrants in internships during vocational education is another reason they drop out of school. In Nourredine’s first vocational education experience, one necessary step was to finish three internships. In his search for internships, Nourredine found that the community in which he lived became a label from which he could never escape. When he was looking for a job, full of hope, he received no response for any of the resumes he sent out. He found the yellow pages and inquired about all the car repair shops in Lyon. After some failures, at last a car repair shop offered an opportunity for him to work as an intern. Although finding an internship increased his confidence, his subsequent work experience frustrated him. In Nourredine’s description, he started the internship with great enthusiasm. At the beginning, everything seemed to go smoothly, but over time, his colleagues and boss began to speak to him with a bad attitude.

So I do it enthusiastically and just like never before, I go, I prepare myself, etc., we go. Yeah so I get there first day. At first, frankly they give me confidence and everything, patati patata … And then after … Day 2, 3rd day … there are some weird phrases coming out of their mouths and … and really that hurt my heart!
What it is … for example I ask for the broom, the chef (foreman) he says “put it in your ass,” something like that. Sentences like that. Really, like I’m a dog! So here we go… It’s really hard things like that, to get over it.

7Despite daily verbal violence and isolation, Nourredine completed his first one-month internship. However, it is necessary to complete three such internships to obtain the qualification certificate. In the second internship, he returned to the car repair shop, and his relationship with his colleagues did not improve with the increase in work hours. At the end of the second internship, his teacher asked about his internship experience and found out how he suffered miserably in the internship. However, when reporting to the principal, the principal did not pay attention to it. Due to a leg injury, Nourreddine failed to complete the third internship, which meant that he lost the opportunity for further education.

8From the perspective of how the system is designed, with an internship in vocational education as a link between school education and formal work, its purpose is to increase students’ ability to integrate theory with practice, and enable them to better adapt to future work environments. But in Nourredine’s case, it turned out that the internship experience had the opposite effect, making him lose the aspiration to continue education or work. In the practical operation of the internship system, unfair treatment is meted out to the descendants of immigrants who are still students, breaking their fantasy regarding work. It sends negative signals from the labor market to the descendants of immigrants, reducing their confidence and expectations of work, and even destroying their work aspirations. At the same time, when the school learned about the students’ bad internship experience, it did not consider it to be a serious case. Although the school teachers communicated with the employer, they have not taken further measures to help Nourredine. Institutional equality did not transform the real, unequal environment of the descendants of immigrants in daily life, but got them deeply embedded in a kind of contradictory psychology: on the one hand, they equally enjoy the Fair Rights in the national discourse; on the other hand, they have to face in daily life the real discrimination brought about by their stigmatized community, color, and name.

Peer Support and Continuous Vocational Training

9After that, Nourredine spent three years “on the street” as a NEET, not going to school, not working, and not training. Confusion about the future and an inability to fully understand the significance of education are probably common problems faced by teenagers. In the case of China, Li also faced similar problems in his teens, which undermined his desire for a promotion and academic qualifications in his work experience. In the case of Nourredine, what made him change was the support and help from his friends. Over the three years, in Nourredine’s own words, he felt like he was lying there like a stone, doing nothing.

Real life, normal. And then I was there, I was looking out the window, and I wasn’t actually doing anything. I wasn’t doing anything, I was in quotes “there, laid like a stone.” I was watching. And at one point I thought, “Well, I’m not going to keep doing nothing; or I stop on that, on what happened to me, ….”

10His experience in the car repair shop almost brought him down. But at the same time, he was clear that he needed to make some changes. Through chatting with friends, he learned that a friend’s little brother was engaged in security work, and the friend suggested and encouraged him to try it out. Therefore, he went to Local Mission to sign up for security training, and this time he successfully got the qualification certificate. However, he still yearned to become a garageman. Besides, obtaining the security qualification certificate also increased his confidence. He thought that he had the ability and the need to learn more, and to continue and complete the craft of vehicle repair that he had quit before.

11Local Missions is an organization by the French government that provides vocational training and certification for young people, hoping to help them find jobs. From Nourredine’s case, it is apparent that Local Mission can really provide effective help to young people in the field of vocational training. Through several months of training they can obtain the qualification certificates required to be a technical engineer. But this institution is similar to a school that provides training to young people, improves their technical level, and makes them qualified to work in a certain trade; in addition, it also provides skills in improving resumes for work. However, it cannot eliminate the employer discrimination against the descendants of immigrants in the actual recruitment and work process. In the interview, Nourredine also mentioned that although Local Missions said they had trained young people, they did not track the work status of the young people they had trained that will lead to a consequence that if the discrimination against descendants of immigrants in the labor market cannot be reduced or eliminated, even if they have a higher education background or more training certifications, it will be difficult for them to obtain a satisfactory job in the labor market. The key to this problem does not lie in the number of skills they have, but in society’s stigmatization of the areas they live in and the stereotype of linking their skin color to their race.

12In this case, although Nourredine obtained the professional qualification certificate, the job-hunting process was still not smooth, and he received no responses after sending out a large number of resumes. However, he discovered the importance of diplomas for personal development in training, so he decided to get as many diplomas as possible while he was still in the age range served by the Local Missions. However, from his statement, it is unknown whether these diplomas are progressive or paralleled. At the same time, he is also considering whether to start his own business in the future and run his own car repair shop. Becoming his own boss seems to be a feasible way to get rid of discrimination in the work field. From Nourredine’s point of view, he found that the negative stereotypes and labels brought on by his place of residence made him face many obstacles in job hunting. In order to overcome the obstacles, he chose to constantly increase his human capital, that is, to participate in more training and obtain more diplomas.

13Through looking at Nourredine’s case, we find that the unequal treatment faced by the descendants of immigrants in France does not only come from the macro structure but exists in daily communication, as a more complex and changeable unequal situation. From the negative evaluations and negligence by teachers at the school stage to the verbal violence from employers in internships, as well as the failure to receive responses after sending resumes during job-hunting, trivial life experiences push them into very difficult situations. The regulation of equality at the systematic level cannot change modes of getting along with people in daily life, and the discrimination and unequal treatment received in daily communication will engender a stronger sense of unfairness among descendants of immigrants, resulting in double pressure on their behavior and mental status. At the same time, it is also found that in this process the support from peer groups and family members is of great importance for individuals to rebuild confidence and resist unfair treatment.