24

In France, from the turn of the 1980s until the beginning of the 1990s – in a socio-political context strongly marked by the prominence taken by the perceived problem of postcolonial migration, specifically from Algeria ‒ a literary genre started being promoted as “beur” on the public scene ‒ a colloquial term to designate French-born people whose parents are immigrants from North Africa – despite their authors not claiming this status. This article purports to identify and trace the professional, symbolic and material practices at play in this literary form of social assignation. It uses the concept of identification – understood as any form of social action wherein identity is effectively attributed externally to classify an individual through the operations of a social institution. It underscores the core role played by class determinants, combined with categories of classification, based on origin, which contribute to reinforcing essentialist categories of knowledge.