In 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 oversight-the 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 women-mobilizing naturalization, family law, social policy, and welfare assistance to ensure they would procreate, bearing French-assimilated children. Immigrants often embraced these policies because they, too, stood to gain from pensions, family allowances, unemployment benefits, and French nationality. By striking this bargain, they were also guaranteed safety and stability on a tumultuous continent.
Barton concludes that, in return for generous social provisions and refuge in dark times, immigrants joined the French nation through marriage and reproduction, breadwinning and child-rearing-in short, through families and family-making-which made them more French than even formal citizenship status could.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
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) Reproductive Citizens expands our understanding of citizenship in the first half of twentieth-century France, illuminating the ways in which gender and sexuality shaped access to social rights, privileges, and protections. Barton has written a book both engaging and vital to understanding issues of immigration and French citizenship in this period.
(Journal of Modern History)
Sprache
Verlagsort
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
16 b&w halftones - 16 Halftones, black and white
Maße
Höhe: 229 mm
Breite: 152 mm
Dicke: 21 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-5017-7020-3 (9781501770203)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Nimisha Barton serves as Director of Equity and Inclusion at an independent school in Los Angeles and as a diversity and inclusion consultant for institutions of higher education. She has published her research in French Politics, Culture and Society and the Journal of Women's History. She has also received awards and fellowships from the Georges Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Society for French Historical Studies, and the Western Society for French History. Follow her on X @NimishaBarton.
Introduction
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 Mixite
6. Motherhood, Neighborhood, and Nationhood
7. Neighborly Networks and Welfare Work under Vichy
Conclusion
