Françoise Lestage

francoise.lestage@univ-paris-diderot.fr

Françoise Lestage is an Anthropologist. She teaches at Paris 7 University in the Social science Department of Research and Training where she has been Director since January 2007. Her current courses deal with the social and cultural reconstructions produced by the geographic mobility of people (M2 Migrations and interethnic relationships), ethnic mobilisations (M2 Migrations and interethnic relationships) and conventions of political representation (M1 Sociology and Anthropology).

Up to 1992 her research fell within the field of the anthropology of early childhood. Since then they have continued along three themes:

 The effects of migration on practices, beliefs and rites, on social hierarchies, family, social and political memberships; since 2005, these effects have been studied through the link to death and social uses of the death of migrants and their family entourage.

 Interethnic relationships in a migrant environment, in particular the analysis of the development of family and village links and work and neighbourly connections established or maintained by migrants during their displacement;

 The family connection and the life cycle: study of shared parenting in migration situations and rites relating to the life cycle.

Current research projects

 Individual research: “Migrants and death (Mexico- United States)

 ECOS-Nord collective project (project holder in France) “Interfamily mobility of children in Mexican families: a comparative study of shared parentship

 Participation in the ANR project (holder: Elizabeth Cunin) “Afro descendants and slavery: influence, identification and inheritance in the Americas (15th -21st centuries)” focus “Scientific and political construction of otherness: black and Indian populations” (Mexico).

Main publications

See french version of this page.