I would not be surprised if the issue of accents being a discriminant (positive or negative) was common everywhere. In France we have a "standard" accent (the

I would not be surprised if the issue of accents being a discriminant (positive or negative) was common everywhere. In France we have a "standard" accent (the one you hear on TV or on the national radio) which corresponds more or less to Paris and the surrounding regions. Someone speaking with this accent is "neutral". We then have an accent that is not related to a region but to the kind of neighborhood called "cité" with large buildings with working class inhabitants (and immigrants). It puts you either in the "homies" category, or in the "touch luck to find a better job" one. People who come from these places, when they want to move up with jobs, will aggressively work on loosing this accent. Finally, there are the regional accents that are not very visible outside of the region. The southern one is very distinctive and a northern one has been made famous by the movie "Welcome to the Sticks". They tend to vanish if you come from these regions but live/work away from it because there is a gradual move towards the "neutral" accent. people who use it, however, are not really discriminated (this is rather a folklori accent), but you do not hear it much. there are exceptions such as one of our prime ministers. Then there is a specific posh accent which has strongly fallen out of fashion and people who were raised with it actively try to use the "neutral" one as well.