‘I’d like to thank the academy’ – Social mobility, education and literary form

This article analyses the entanglements of sociological research on social mobility and autosociobiographies (class-transition narratives) in France. This emerging and very successful genre has, since Didier Eribon’s Returning to Reims , established itself as a literary form. Drawing on recent autosociobiographies from sociologists, I discuss the critical contribution made by those that came in the wake of Eribon to the ongoing debate on upwards mobility via education and ‘widening participation’ campaigns within elite French universities. The article demonstrates that central elements of the debate, such as the figure of the ‘scholarship boy/girl’ and the costs of such efforts – most notably, psychosocial uprooting – are shaped both by sociology and literature. While literature’s renewed interest in class and social inequality demonstrates the critical potential and impact of the genre, my study also interrogates the consequences and risks of the boom in autosociobiography: namely the showcasing of individual success-through-education and the danger of the genre being perceived as an academic one, since it is mainly academics (sociologists inclusive) who feel such a narrative ‘transclass’ desire.