The interview schedule (see Appendix A) is broad, 16 questions in total, which are structured into four sections, or frames in accordance with the model of school choice I build from Ball (2003). The first two frames address parental processes and criteria in school choice. The third frame appraises the influence of global risk on the middle-class parents, as theorized in Beck (1992). Finally, the fourth frame, addresses the perceived effects of race in a comparison between U.S. and French society. Though broad in topics, the interview guide is compact, anticipating that the respondents would be short on time, which they were, and that I as the
interviewer also did not have the luxury of time, limited to two periods I would be in the field. The first frame has five questions regarding parents and schooling. Parental roles are less well researched in France than in the United States because of French norms on family privacy (Le Pape and van Zanten 2009). This study extends present research by tracing parental sources of information, more extensively studied in the United States (Holme 2002; Lareau 2014; Posey- Maddox, Kimelberg and Cucchiara 2014). I delve into the role of social networks, major sources of information sources in school choice (Felouzis et al. 2013).
The second frame consists of three questions. They ask the respondent to assess on a rising scale of 1 to 10 the general importance of social, cultural, and ethnic mix, student conduct, and teacher and pedagogical quality in schools and then probe why the parent assigns that
numeric level of importance. The purpose of the questions is to understand the importance of key criteria and their relative value in relative to each other. The U.S. and French literature indicate that these three criteria vary in importance according to parental social class and values (Ball 1993; Oberti 2007; Mickelson et al. 2008; Sikkink and Emerson 2008; van Zanten 2009; Kimelberg 2014; Lewis and Diamond 2015).
The third frame assesses the effect of global risk on the parents, their lives, and schooling plans. Global risk is an amorphous concept that is difficult to qualify on the individual level. As Beck (1992) describes it, this form of modern risk often requires consciousness of hidden or nonspecific harms rather than direct physical injury as was usually the case with famine in previous epochs. The first question is open ended, asking about news events that distress respondents. The next questions ask how events affect daily life, or sense of security, and then how they affect schooling plans for their children. The questions first assess if risk is felt, second if it affects parents personally, and third, if affects schooling plans.
The fourth frame has three questions that ask respondents to compare France to the United States on racial attitudes, and on place and school segregation. The purpose of these questions is to elicit from the parental discourse how race is perceived, racial language is used, and social differences are explained in line with Bonilla-Silva (2013). The questions are
structured, too, to give parents the opportunity to say if the countries have come together on race and segregation through the cross-national diffusion of social ideas in line with Omi and Winant (2015). The construction of the questions requires explanation. First, comparing the two
countries is plausible among these parents. Much of the French middle class is knowledgeable about the United States. U.S. news appears regularly on television and in newspapers. The interviews confirm that level of awareness. Some parents have visited the United States; two have lived there. Few parents hesitated because they did not know enough.
Second, the wording of the questions is intentional. Direct personal questions about race are not socially desirable because race is not understood as a legitimate social category. The question wording is designed to draw the greatest response on how race may arise in France yet adhere to cultural norms. Questions allow respondents to respond generally about French society rather than about themselves, as is the custom in France. The parents act as informants on French society, in the classical sociological sense, without informing on, or accusing, their family and neighbors, a cultural redline.
Third, the questions are designed to make valid measurements between the United States and France. The first question uses the phrase couleur de peau, “color of the skin,” instead of the French word race. The phrase has been used in official French surveys (Simon 2018), and appears in French academic work on discrimination (see for example, Carde 2007). The phrase couleur de peau is not euphemistic. It is valid measurement. Appiah (2015) maintains it is
necessary to distinguish between racial identity as in populations, that is, persons of places with recognized cultures, and racial identity as in physical characteristics, that is, such as skin color, the texture of the hair, and so forth, to which social ideas about an assumed culture or group qualities are attached. In the etymology of the French word race, one encounters the former, peoples, not usually the latter, appearance (Taguieff 2001). The phrase induces respondents to think about race more as Americans would, as a physically based category.
Finally, this question and the next two are meant to capture what similarities exist in the respondents’ minds between France and the United States. Partly the reason is that the diffusion of claims transnationally about social problems requires people in the recipient society
perceiving conditions there as similar to the society from which the claims originated, as Best (2001) claims. The question thus contributes to understanding how conditions between the countries may be similar. On the other hand, the question’s limitation is that it records not if race, racism, or segregation exist in France, but if they exist to the same extent as in the United States. But this study is not about whether racism exists in France, only if race affects school choice.
After first several interviews, I introduced probes about specific events that may cause anxiety. Some respondents had brushed aside the question despite the many events that had taken place in France. The probes asked directly about terrorism, the economy and unemployment, immigration, the political situation, and the environment, all salient as risks in France. Another change after several interviews is that I announced transitions between frames because the switch in frames confused some parents in the first interviews.