Jean Beaman

My research pursuits focus squarely on examining and analyzing the relationship between race/ethnicity, culture and inequality, particularly for minorities in the United States and France.

My first book, Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France (University of California Press, September 2017), is an ethnographic examination in which I focus on the middle-class segment of France's North African second-generation population and show how, despite their upward mobility, being incorporated into French society and being accepted as French by others is not a question of professional success, educational attainment, or adherence to French republican ideology. Rather, these individuals are denied cultural citizenship as race and ethnicity remain a constitutive element of French identity and continue to be significant in French society.

My current book project focuses on police violence as a social problem and anti-racist mobilization in France and how that compares to other societies.

My other research and teaching interests include cultural sociology; international migration; race/ethnicity; race, class, and gender; urban sociology; and qualitative methods.