Biography

I earned my Ph.D. in Sociology in 2010 from Northwestern University (USA), where I also earned my B.A. and M.A. degrees.
My research pursuits focus squarely on examining and analyzing the relationship between culture and inequality, particularly for minorities in the United States and France.
Based on interviews and participant observation in the Paris metropolitan area, my dissertation, Liberté, Égalité, et Fraternité: Identity, Marginalization, and Second-generation North African Immigrants in France, focuses on how children of immigrants from former French colonies in North Africa negotiate their cultural and ethnic identities in a society where identity politics and group categorization are untenable.
I am currently preparing a book manuscript, tentatively entitled Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in the French Republic, which extends this research.
I focus on the middle-class segment of this 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, ethnicity remains a constitutive element of French identity and race continues to be significant in French society.
My other research and teaching interests include cultural sociology; HIV/AIDS; immigration; race/ethnicity; race, class, and gender; urban sociology; and qualitative methods.
Prior to joining the European University Institute as a Max Weber Fellow, I was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research working with the Health, Hardship, and Renewal Study, which examines the economic strategies of women living with HIV/AIDS in Chicago.