In France, due to the Roma’s collective immigration ( Wolpert, 1968) methods including their extended families and their difficulties to access formal housing, the Roma generally live in informal habitats such as slums and squats. These segregated spaces, remote from urban areas and public transportation, are stricken by squalor and a general lack of squalor. This is evidently the main alleged reason for the removal policies the authorities implement, meaning evacuations and expulsions. Thus, the forced geographical mobility becomes a barrier to education, labour and formal habitat, hence, ultimately to integration and adaptation (Niessen & Huddleston, 2009) to the social spheres and structures of the immigration country (Massey, 1990) due to the marginalisation, discrimination and segregation (Murie & Musterd, 2004) it engenders. In 2013, less than half of the school aged Roma children were enrolled in academic institutions (about 2000 children according to RomEurope), generally stuck in the enrolment stage due to the local authorities discriminatory decisions to refuse schooling to Roma children. In this socio-geographical instability context in France, the Roma immigrant children’s education is problematic at best in term of the schooling process, but also due to the successive de-schooling and re-schooling phenomena (Esterle-Hendibel, 2006). Based on these observations, the issues to be studied are linked to the effects of this socio-geographical instability generated by the forced geographical mobility and the conditions of gross inequality on the Roma children’s academic trajectories in France. How do the social inequalities the Roma families face influence their children’s academic trajectories? Hence, this study highlights the way these social inequalities become academic inequalities and their long-term impact considering the endlessly repeated schooling - de-schooling - re-schooling process.

As a socialisation space and integration factor, the school contributes to the individual’s (Fabrizio & Neill, 2005) to the norms and values of the society. Also, through its functions, the school provides a basic cultural training (Oberg, 1960) and ensures the individual’s professional and social integration. Yet, the school represents a space of restrictions, control and surveillance. It demands not merely a cultural code to which the children must abide to (Boimare, 1999), but also a certain type of behaviour that leads to a certain lack of freedom (Fumat, 1997). Thus, the Roma children who are used to a lifestyle without any restrictions and rules imposed by their extended family, must adapt to the constraints and the tension such restrictions engender. Due to their unconventional behaviour, for example their posture during class and moving around for no apparent reason, speaking whenever they want, their difficulties with speaking and writing French, the Roma children become the victims of stigmatisation and marginalisation (Tarrius & Bernet, 2010). Consequently, their lack of attention during classes, their difficulties in understanding the teachings and imposition of the academic norms engender a conflict between the Roma child and the school system and environment. This leads to a connection between the social inequalities the Roma face and the academic inequalities the children face. The absence of adaptation to the academic structures reinforces the already existing conflicts between the Roma child and the school and increases the loss of social marks as a consequence of the loss of social ties. Thus, the difficulty to adapt to social change (Boudon & Cherkaoui, 2001) and the apparition of conflicts is strengthened be the reproduction of the same mechanism and the development of a vicious circle (Modoon, 2004) in which the Roma immigrant families in France find themselves.

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