Calogero's parents fled the war in Italy and found refuge in Échirolles, near Grenoble. The latter, who arrived from Sicily in the 1950s, have still not been naturalized French.

"Being French is people who dream and who enter, It's the hope of my father in the 50s. It's a kid learning on a bench in a room, another waiting on a sandbar," he sings in his song "By choice or by chance".