“The origins” The tension between family belonging and individual identity

Abstract

The individualism which characterizes the contemporary French society produces some tensions as the one that takes place in the construction of the family memberships and the individual history. This tension is the subject of our study which bases itself on a research led in a perspective of comprehensive sociology concerning the residential mobility of the provincials who settle down in Paris and its suburbs. The notion of roots and “original home” is the point of discussion of our comment. To understand how, in the migration, individuals preserve or not links with family places and what these links reveal about their definition of the family as well as about their definition of themselves, this is our objective. Though the individual tends to look for a balance between “to bind to” and “to free himself from “, he is not in search of a family without consistency nor of breaking the links.