The collective roots and rewards of upward educational mobility

Drawing on in-depth interviews with descendants of North African working-class immigrants admitted to elite higher institutions in France, this paper investigates the under-researched role of family dynamics in facilitating upward educational mobility and informing the experience of social ascension. It shows that concrete mobility strategies, such as authoritative parenting and close mentorship from older siblings, have been deployed to enable the respondents' educational attainment. Moreover, a set of moral resources transmitted through stories about family-rooted aspirations and stories about post-migration hardships and sacrifices have contributed to forging strong motivational dispositions that have facilitated school success among the respondents. These resources have further shaped the symbolic significance the interviewees associate with mobility. In contrast with the dominant individual-centred narrative of success, for second-generation North African immigrants, mobility represents a powerful way of 'giving back' to former-generation migrants whose mobility dreams often had to be relinquished. The respondents also position themselves as role-models for other youths of racially and socially disadvantaged backgrounds: their mobility pathways are described as vital for collective advancements particularly through the sense of minority empowerment these generate.