Description
Book SynopsisIn this first comprehensive history of immigrant inequality in France, Mary D. Lewis chronicles the conflicts arising from mass immigration between the First and Second World Wars, the uneven rights arrangements that emerged during this time, and their legacy for contemporary France.
Trade Review"Lewis has written a fine book about France's conflicted dealings with its own history of immigration, and has shown how and why the issue is so central to any understanding of that nation's history as a whole." --
American Historical Review"Lewis...has written a still richer, more complex work, [and] has caught the intricate interplay that influenced immigration (and refugee) experiences throughout the 1930s." --
Journal of Social History"
The Boundaries of the Republic is a brilliant corrective to a standard view that contrasts Republican and assimilationist France with, say, Germany of the past century and its ethno-cultural regime of rights. The book demonstrates the complex fault lines and intricate administrative machinery on the basis of which French authorities went about deciding who was a temporary migrant and who was potentially an immigrant who could contribute to the national population." --
Ethnic and Racial Studies"Mary Dewhurst Lewis's
Boundaries of the Republic is a book with many virtues. It will surely be seen as a major contribution to the history of French immigration and therefore to the making of modern France." -- Gregory Mann * Columbia University,
French Politics, Culture and Society *
"The greatest strength of Lewis's book is the way she tells the story of immigrants from a local and often individual perspective, challenging in the process not only the French republican myth of inclusivity, but also the traditional representation of the French state as 'Jacobin': it provides a valuable reminder that even the most centralized state cannot entirely control its population." -- Times Literary Supplement
"This is a very sophisticated project. Rarely has the interplay between state and society, with vector lines running up and down, and with deflection coming in at all angles, been so deftly handled." -- Michael Miller * Journal of Social History *
"This is a very good book. Mary Dewhurst Lewis... brings balance and outstanding scholarship to discussions of migrant rights which, although focusing on the interwar years in France, have a contemporary ring." -- Modern and Contemporary France
"Lewis makes an impressive contribution to the study of both French immigration and the French state itself." -- Social History
"The Boundaries of the Republic is a sophisticated analysis that makes a major contribution to the field of immigrant history, urban history, and the history of international human rights policy. This is an extremely important book." -- Vicki Caron
"In this meticulously researched account, Mary Dewhurst Lewis documents the contingent nature of migrant rights in interwar Lyon and Marseille, the largest French cities outside of Paris....Lewis skillfully weaves these narratives together to demonstrate how a liberal republic like France reconciled its purported egalitarianism with restrictions on immigration and residency rights." -- Law and History Review
"Lewis's book is a major contribution to the existing scholarship on French and European immigration, the history of the French Third Republic 'in the provinces,' and the history of the republican ideology of universal rights more generally. The book is deeply researched and highly innovative in its particular focus on migrant practices and interactions with the "state" and employers." -- Alice Conklin * The Ohio State University *
"The Boundaries of the Republic is an extraordinary accomplishment. It is brilliantly conceived at a time when it is important to disseminate the highest quality histories of immigration." -- Leslie Page Moch * Michigan State University *
Table of Contents
[toc] @fmct: Contents @toc4: List of Illustrations List of Tables Preface Sources and Acknowledgments @toc2: Introduction Chapter 1: Workers of the World Claim Rights: The Origins and Limitations of France's Guest-Worker Regime Chapter 2: From Labor Contract to Social Contract: The Impact of the Depression on Migrant Rights in Lyon Chapter 3: Working the "Marseille System": The Politics of Survival in the Port City Chapter 4: Privilege and Prejudice: The Invention of a New Immigration Regime in the Mid-1930s Chapter 5: Refuge or Refusal? The Vicissitudes of Refugee Rights between the Wars Chapter 6: Subjects, Not Citizens: North African Migrants and the Paradoxes of Republican Imperialism Chapter 7: The Insecurity State: Migrant Rights and the Threat of War Conclusion: Republican France, One and Divisible? Abbreviations Used in the Notes Notes Bibliography Index
