Description
Book SynopsisIn the familiar tale of mass migration to France from 1880 onward, we know very little about the hundreds of thousands of women who formed a critical part of those migration waves. In Reproductive Citizens, Nimisha Barton argues that their relative absence in the historical record hints at a larger and more problematic oversightthe role of sex and gender in shaping the experiences of migrants to France before the Second World War.
Barton''s compelling history of social citizenship demonstrates how, through the routine application of social policies, state and social actors worked separately toward a shared goal: repopulating France with immigrant families. Filled with voices gleaned from census reports, municipal statistics, naturalization dossiers, court cases, police files, and social worker registers, Reproductive Citizens shows how France welcomed foreign-born men and womenmobilizing naturalization, family law, social policy, and welfare assistance to
Trade Review
This book will therefore appeal to a wide readership. The strength of this book lies in its attention to details and relatability. By offering personal accounts to illustrate the effects of these populationist policies, Barton has made History accessible, and maybe more importantly, real: These are people's stories, lives lived.
* The French Review *
Barton's attention to solidarity and the forces that shaped immigrants' opportunities and everyday experiences provides an enormously valuable contribution to a literature that has tended to stress exclusion and discrimination.
* H-France *
Barton shows, without whitewashing the racist and genocidal policies of the French state under Vichy, that populationism could also have a different face: namely, one that gave immigrants a place in a society at risk of depopulation caused by a combination of political and economic crises.
* Law and History Review *
Barton has done a remarkable job of resurrecting the voices of people at the margins of social and political life in France, and she strikes the perfect balance between the inner lives of her protagonists and their forgotten role in shaping the French state's policies toward immigration, the family, and the meaning of the nation.
* American Historical Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. The Forces that Push and Pull
2. Bachelors, Bureaucrats, and Marrying into the Nation
3. Wives, Wages, and Regulating Breadwinners
4. Mothers, Welfare Organizations, and Reproducing for the Nation
5. Neighborhood, Street Culture, and Melting-Pot Mixité
6. Motherhood, Neighborhood, and Nationhood
7. Neighborly Networks and Welfare Work under Vichy
Conclusion
