Intra-Group Boundary-Making in Online Discussions Between Newcomers and Descendants of North African Immigrants in France

Résumé :

This paper addresses the issue of intra-group differences and relations among long standing post-colonial immigrant communities. Through an analysis of sub-ethnic categories used by North Africans in France for naming newcomers, this article contributes to the emerging literature on ‘ethnoheterogenesis’ and diversification within immigrant minority groups by adopting the framework of symbolic boundary-making and Norbert Elias’s established-outsider configuration. Using material gathered from online discussion forums serving the Maghrebi community, the author analyses how stigmatization and counter-stigmatization processes between new arrivals (les Blédards) and native-born minorities (les Beurs) are influenced by the colonial heritage, changes in the profiles of migrants entering France and evolving transnational ties. The study reveals how intra-group boundary making processes are structured around moral discourses and debates about three different but closely articulated themes: cultural and personal (in)authenticity, social (il)legitimacy and individual merit and the instrumentalization of gender relations in the transnational marriage market.