Description
Book SynopsisMelissa Byrnes explores the ways local communities in the French suburbs reacted to the growing presence of North African migrants in the decades after World War II and the decolonization of Algeria.
Trade Review“
Making Space is a nuanced, deeply researched, and highly original account of how French modernization projects, migration policy, and local politics interacted in the era of decolonization. Melissa Byrnes carefully compares four distinct suburban municipalities to demonstrate the connections between urban renewal and the treatment of North African migrants, powerfully exposing the imperialist and racist blind spots of a supposedly colorblind French Republic, while at the same time demonstrating that local politics of social solidarity matter.”—Mary D. Lewis, Robert Walton Goelet Professor of French History at Harvard University
“In this well-crafted book Melissa Byrnes marshals an array of archival materials to examine four suburban communities near Paris and Lyon during long decolonization—in the final decades of French colonial rule and the decades following the collapse of the empire. In so doing she reveals white local officials’ complex and evolving efforts to make and deny space for citizens of North African descent. Moreover, Byrnes shows us that there are alternative French identities and eviscerates mythologies that France has a unified, universal, singular, white national identity.”—Amelia H. Lyons, author of
The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole: Algerian Families and the French Welfare State during Decolonization“Byrnes’s meticulously researched and thoughtfully written text addresses pertinent questions of migration through a focus on the local. How was migrant ‘integration’ experienced at a local level, and how did white French actors manage it? Byrnes demonstrates how migration is not just a question of nation-state policies and practices but rather a deeply local and microlevel phenomenon. By focusing on North African migrants to France she deftly contributes to unpacking how racism and Republicanism structures what it actually can mean to be French.”—Jean Beaman, author of
Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in FranceTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations and French Terms
Acknowledgements
Introduction: A View from the Field
Chapter 1. The Mission to Modernize
Chapter 2. Politics
Chapter 3. In Defense of Empire
Chapter 4. Anti-Imperialism
Chapter 5. Profit
Chapter 6. Solidarity
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
