Description
Book SynopsisParis's Gare du Nord is one of the busiest international transit centers in the world. In the past three decades, it has become an important hub for West African migrantsself-fashioned adventurersnavigating life in the city. In this groundbreaking work, Julie Kleinman chronicles how West Africans use the Gare du Nord to create economic opportunities, confront police harassment, and forge connections to people outside of their communities. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic research, including an internship at the French national railway company, Kleinman reveals how racial inequality is ingrained in the order of Parisian public space. She vividly describes the extraordinary ways that African migrants retool French transit infrastructure to build alternative pathways toward social and economic integration where state institutions have failed. In doing so, these adventurers defy boundariesbetween migrant and citizen, center and periphery, neighbor and strangerthat have shaped urban planning and immigration policy. Adventure Capital offers a new understanding of contemporary migration and belonging, capturing the central role that West African migrants play in revitalizing French urban life.
Trade Review"
Adventure Capital demonstrates beautifully how the drive for continued mobility arises as much from a position of precariousness as it does from a 'trader’s logic' that extols difference and enables connection." * Antipode *
"[S]cholars in the social sciences and humanities will find Kleinman’s book extremely valuable. It is beautifully written, engaging, and powerful in delivering its message and argument." * International Migration *
"Reframes the way we tend to think about migration, French public space, and about living together and valuable encounters across difference." * Journal of Economic and Social Geography *
"A vivid reminder that urban planning and programming is inherently political with far-reaching repercussions on social life. . . . The book is beautifully written and a definite page-turner." * Journal of Urban Affairs *
"Theoretically sophisticated, accessibly written, and ethnographically engaged,
Adventure Capital makes an important and timely intervention into the study of migration. . . . The book makes for essential reading for scholars of mobility and contemporary urban life." * Political and Legal Anthropology Review *
"[A] fantastic ethnography" * Sociological Review *
"bishops in flight" * Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees *
