Universitaires et artistes en situation d’ exil

Abstract

This article aims to capture the particularities of highly skilled migrants in situations of forced exile through an ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a period of 10 months, and composed of interviews with 36 scientists and artists exiled from Turkey, Syria and Iraq, residing in France. It highlights how these individuals often experience a new form of identity, that of an exile, while facing forms of downwards social mobility. In a situation where timing, resources and opportunities of mobility vary from one individual to another, this article tries to outline the strategies that they put in place in order to withstand their decline in status.

Keywords

• skilled migrants; cultural capital; scholars/artists at risk; symbolic valorization; inequalities; labour market; exile