Children of workers or cleaning women, they became prominent writers, intellectuals or politicians. France is distinguished by its educational inequalities, but “class defectors”, or “transclasses”, are in vogue in publishing. With And your parents, what do they do? Adrien Naselli, son of a secretary and a bus driver, interviewed social nomads (Rokhaya Diallo, Aurélie Filippetti…). In Stay in your place… ! Sébastien Le Fol has also met personalities confronted with class contempt, from Michel Onfray to François Pinault. Last year, the Nobel Prize for Literature rewarded Annie Ernaux, a true saint of “transclasses”. As if going from parents of small Norman traders to teaching French was equivalent to a way of the cross…
In The origins, Gérald Bronner in turn returns to his modest extraction. But, far from a miserable coming out, his story, which mixes personal experience and sociological reflections, questions the pain that often accompanies the books of these transclasses. Why must upward social mobility inevitably be painful? The sociologist grew up in an HLM suburb of Nancy which today would be described as “sensitive”. For a long time, he thought he came from a wealthy background. Until the clothes worn by his comrades, their vacation destinations or the professions of their parents opened his eyes: “At one point, I understood: my family and I, we were poor.” Who knows a little the university can certify that there is no coquetry there consisting in overplaying popular origins. A caricature of this inverted snobbery, the singer once known as Christine and the Queens had invoked “a memory of working-class muscles”, when her parents were teachers in secondary and higher education…
First of his family (“all lines combined”) to win the baccalaureate, Gérald Bronner is today filled with honors: professor at the Sorbonne, successful essayist, president of a commission against fake news at the request of Emmanuel Macron, to which we can add a bimonthly column in L’Express. At home, he swears, there is no shame, unlike other transclasses steeped in sociology. From Pierre Bourdieu to Annie Ernaux via Didier Eribon, many have recounted their embarrassment at not having had the codes of the dominant classes in the way they dress, speak or eat, but also their guilt of having betrayed their original social background.
“Let me say that it is not shame that seems to me – even initially – to characterize my journey and that of many of my childhood friends whom I have kept and who, for some, have become , they too, transclasses, assures Gérald Bronner. It is not that the feeling of shame is absent from our lives. Of course, it sometimes happens that we do not have the codes of a dinner or a cultural practice (when exactly should one applaud at the opera?), but neither more nor less than any other individual who crosses a cultural universe which is not his own. Of course, I have sometimes felt a certain embarrassment like the Camus of first man, unfinished autobiographical novel, which realizes that his mother’s job is domestic, when I had to fill in, like him, the section ‘parents’ profession’ in my school career, especially in high school. I had to mention ‘housekeeper’ when the others wrote without even thinking about it ‘doctor’ or ‘engineer’. Of course again, when the age of love came, my out-of-fashion clothes did me a bit of a disservice, and everything that anyone wants to say or write about this is somewhat true. But only a little, I think. It is the pain story that transforms this ‘a little’ into ‘a lot’. It transmutes tiny embarrassments into uncontrollable bitterness.”
For the sociologist, the attractiveness of the bourgeois habitus is often overestimated. He met ministers and Presidents of the Republic, and could not help thinking that, when young, in a playground, he and his comrades would undoubtedly have mistreated these offspring of good families, considered as dominators. “Often, when we meet bourgeois, big or small, we cannot always see them other than as weak beings. It is far-fetched to imagine that we deeply want to resemble them,” he quips. If the rich despise the tastes of the poor, the converse may also be true.
Gérald Bronner concedes that he grew up at a time, the 1970s and 1980s, when the material wealth of others was less visible. Social networks, on which influencers show off their flashy lifestyle, are now increasing egalitarian passions. But, he says, coming from a humble background can also have its perks and rewards. The baccalaureate, for a doctor’s son, is a non-event. For a worker’s son, it’s a pride, a dawn promise that can convince you of a destiny. As our colleague Emilie Lanez told us in Even the politicians have a father, Pierre Moscovici, when he had just graduated sixth from the ENA, was only entitled to the taunts of his father Serge, a university mandarin: “Sixth in your plumbing school? You could have worked.” By picking up his baccalaureate, Gérald Bronner was celebrated by a mother in heaven.
Of course, there is the lack of cultural capital, the self-censorship consisting in not aiming too high in terms of studies, or the injunction to remain in one’s social place. The Grandes Ecoles mainly take in children from well-to-do classes (64% of the workforce), whereas children from lower classes represent only 9% of students. France is one of the OECD countries most prone to intergenerational inequality, a scandal that fuels criticism of meritocracy. But, for Gérald Bronner, we must escape the trap of sociological determinism and social fatalism, conducive to self-fulfilling prophecies. Not everything is governed by economic or social variables, self-narrative also matters. The researcher cites children from Southeast Asia: “In their social environment, we profess – more than elsewhere – that at school excellence is possible, but that we do not achieve it. without effort. Their success owes much, it seems, to the meritocratic convictions of their educators, for whom the doors of the school are those of the social elevator. In short, they have chances of success that do not have not those who start life convinced that as far as they are concerned the game is over, since everything in the ‘system’ conspires to make it so.These Asian children leave with the same social disadvantages as other children of immigrants, but they have a very different story of success and of themselves.”
The majority of stories of transclasses also hide genetics, this lottery which allows to reshuffle (a little) the social cards. Academic “success” is multifactorial. It has socio-economic origins, but is also partly played out in the DNA. As the great geneticist Robert Plomin explains, research on twins shows that approximately 50% of our intellectual abilities are linked to our biological heritage. Innate and acquired mingle. For the sociologist, those who want to explain everything by the social are as at fault as those who had wrongly promoted biological determinism.
Furthermore, psychoanalysis, sociology or genetics focus on parents, but neglect the role of “peers”, that is to say the friends and people we frequent. A young person will begin to smoke less under the influence of his parents than of his friends, whom he will want to imitate. Looks, music, school orientations are spurred on by the interactions we have while we are still in full training. Anyone who has attended popular establishments knows that academic success must often be concealed there rather than claimed, unlike more elitist schools.
Why do we become who we are? The vertiginous question deserves better than a simplistic and Manichean vision. This is the strength of this book, which is as stimulating as it is moving, inviting you to draw on several scientific disciplines. “Trying to remain open to the complexity of the world is the finest tribute I can pay to the heritage of my origins”, concludes Gérald Bronner, who considers that his social background left him with a much greater concern for dignity. just a feeling of shame. But the sociologist, of Boudonian obedience, joins the Bourdieusians on one point: France needs more social diversity, so that everyone can become what they want. Our origins should not be destinations.
“The Origins”, by Gérald Bronner. Otherwise, 186 p., €19. Released January 25.
