The subject of this thesis is the contemporary literature written by the sons and daughters of North African immigrant families in France. Its main area of investigation is the place of this literature in the French literary field, in the Bourdieusian sense of the term, and the discursive features which motivate the ethnic based label of “Beur literature”. The study has a double approach in investigating both the argument for the socio-ethnic categorisation, and the reception of this literature in the French press. The literary corpus consists of twenty works from 2005 and 2006 by eighteen Beur writers. Thirteen of these works are subject to literary analysis. These are novels by Akli Tadjer, Zahia Rahmani, Faïza Guène, Mabrouck Rachedi, El Driss, Mohamed Razane, Houda Rouane, Nora Hamdi, Nor Eddine Boudjedia and Touhami Moualek, and three autobiographical narratives written by Razika Zitouni, Abel El Quandili and Aziz Senni. The press corpus from the corresponding period covers 14 titles of French national and regional daily papers, 8 titles of weekly general press and 6 titles of periodicals of literary and social debate. According to my hypothesis, the Beur fiction and the autobiographical narratives of my corpus are based on a common discourse that is expressed through certain literary means. A frequent strategy found in the novels is the subversion of French classics. Another feature is the constant referral to the French republican values. The novels share the latter of these two strategies with the autobiographical stories. This can be interpreted as resulting from a communication between a literary discourse and a social discourse which points toward a common ideological foundation. It also reveals the specific “Frenchness” of a literature that is often classified as “francophone” rather than “French” literature. The study of the journalistic reception confirms this aspect by the frequent referral of its authors to their ethnic and social origins.