'Un flot d'agitateurs politiques, de fauteurs de désordre et de criminels': Adverse perceptions of immigrants in France between the wars

French History

Volumn 14, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 201-221

  Lawrence, Paul ^a  

^a OPEN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 4243786186     PISSN: 02691191     EISSN: 14774542     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/fh/14.2.201     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. T. Ferenczi, 'Les troubles de l'identité nationale', Le Monde, March 1996.
2. e siècle (1998), p. 16.
3. P. Ogden and P. White, Migrants in modern France: population mobility in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries (1989), p. 34.
4. R. Gildea, France since 1945 (Oxford, 1996), p. 107.
5. N. Herzberg, 'Un habitant sur quatre est immigré ou d'ascendance étrangère', Le Monde, 8 February 1997, p. 10.
6. e siècle (1990), p. 266.
7. Cited in G. Noiriel, Population, immigration et identité nationale (1992), p. 47.
8. Alec Hargreaves, Immigration, 'race' and ethnicity in contemporary France (1995), p. 4.
9. G. Noiriel, Immigration, citizenship and national identity, trans. G. de Laforcade (Minneapolis, Minn., 1996), p. 15.
10. Bechelloni, Dreyfus and Milza, L'intégration italienne en France (Brussels, 1995);
11. Y. Lequin, Histoire des étrangers et de l'immigration en France (1992);
12. G. Noiriel, Le creuset français (1988);
13. Perhaps the key exception is the work of Ralph Schor, particularly his major publication L'opinion française et les étrangers, 1919-1939 (1985), although where specific groups of immigrants, for example refugees, are considered, a far greater body of work does already exist.
14. See here the work of V. Caron 'Prelude to Vichy: France and the Jewish refugees in the era of appeasement', J Cont Hist, 20 (1985),
15. and (forthcoming book) Uneasy alliance: France and the Jewish refugees, 1933-1940 (Stanford, Calif.)
16. and M. R. Marrus, The unwanted: European refugees in the twentieth century (Oxford, 1985).
17. J. Singer-Kérel, 'Foreign workers in France 1891-1936', Ethn Racial, 14 (1991), 281.
18. French National Census Data (1936), British Library, SE 250/7. Census data can never be exact and in this case is obviously subject to the vagaries of both seasonal and clandestine immigration. Nevertheless, it is clearly indicative of a strong upward trend following the First World War.
19. For further information on the impact of demographic anxiety on French politics: R. Tomlinson, 'The "disappearance" of France, 1896-1940: French politics and the birth rate', Hist J, 28 (1985), 405-15.
20. A detailed explanation of the legislation surrounding the importation of immigrant labour into France in the interwar period can be found in G. Cross, Immigrant workers in industrial France (Philadelphia, Pa, 1983).
21. For figures see Schor, L'opinion française, p. 47-56
22. Cross, Immigrant workers, p. 191. Such slogans are clearly reminiscent of anti-immigration discourse in the 1990s.
23. L. Köll, 'Immigration italienne et intégration française à Auboué (Meurthe-et-Moselle)', Ann Est, ser. 5, 30 (1978). Köll notes that the immigrant population of Auboué was so numerous that it outnumbered the indigenous populace.
24. La Réforme Sociale, May-June 1925, p. 331.
25. A. Girard and J. Stoetzel, 'Français et immigrés: nouveaux documents sur l'adaptation', Cah INED, 19-20 (1954).
26. M. B. Miller, Shanghai on the Métro: spies, intrigue and the French between the wars (Berkeley, Calif., 1994), p. 11.
27. AD Alpes de Haute Provence 4M 54, circular to prefects, 14 Apr. 1938. Note that Sarraut was a leading Radical party politician (theoretically left of centre) but was, in reality, a hard-line interner of les sans-papiers and refugees: V. Caron, 'The missed opportunity: French refugee policy in wartime, 1939-1940', The French defeat of 1940: reassessments, ed. J. Blatt (Oxford, 1998).
28. G. Mauco, L'opinion française et les étrangers (1932), p. 482.
29. C. Ourgaut, La surveillance des étrangers en France (Toulouse, 1936), p. 82.
30. Amar and Milza, L'immigration en France, p. 190.
31. C. Woog, La politique de l'émigration de l'Italie (1930), p. 237.
32. P. George, 'L'immigration italienne en France de 1920 à 1939: aspects démographiques et sociaux', Les Italiens en France de 1914 à 1920, ed. P. Milza (Rome, 1986), p. 59.
33. Schor, 'Les étrangers dans la ville: le "péril italien" dans les agglomérations des Alpes-Maritimes de 1919 à 1939', Ann Facul Lett de Nice, 25 (1975), p. 90.
34. Schor, 'L'image des Italiens dans la France de l'entre-deux-guerres', Les Italiens en France de 1914 à 1940, ed. P. Milza (1986), p. 106.
35. E. Weber, The hollow years: France in the 1930s (1995), p. 89.
36. Marrus, The unwanted, pp. 124-5.
37. For further information: R. J. Young, 'French military intelligence and the Franco-Italian alliance, 1933-1939', Hist J, 28 (1985), 143-69.
38. B. F. Martin, The hypocrisy of justice in the Belle Epoque (Baton Rouge, La, 1984), p. 234.
39. Cross, Immigrant workers, p. 166.
40. Schor, 'Les étrangers dans la ville', p. 82.
41. Mauco, L'opinion française, p. 482.
42. Inter alia, A.-L. Shapiro, Breaking the codes: female criminality in fin-de-siècle Paris (Cambridge, 1996)
43. and Martin, Hypocrisy and justice in the Belle Epoque.
44. L'Ami du Peuple, 6 December 1933.
45. As above. See also R. Schor, 'Xénophobie et extrême-droite: l'exemple de "L'Ami du Peuple" (1928-1937)', Rev Hist M, 23 (1976), 125.
46. For example, Le Gringoire, 15 October 1937, p. 3 and 10 December 1937, p. 4.
47. C. Lambert, La France et les étrangers: dépopulation, immigration et naturalisation (1928), p. 65.
48. Mauco, Les étrangers en France, p. 485.
49. A. Kaspi and A. Marès, Le Paris des étrangers 1919-1935 (1989), p. 30;
50. Weber, The hollow years, p. 89.
51. R. Rey, La police des étrangers en France (1937), p. 26.
52. L'Éclaireur, 18 September 1929.
53. P. Sorlin, 'Jewish images in the French cinema of the 1930s', Hist J Film, 1 (1981).
54. T. Perron, 'L'image de l'ouvrier italien dans le cinéma français des années 30 au années 50', in Bechelloni, Dreyfus and Milza, L'intégration italienne en France, p. 155.
55. Schor, 'L'image de I'Italien dans la France', p. 99.
56. Miller, Shanghai on the Métro, p. 79.
57. P. Bonté, L'espionnage devant la loi Pénale (Lille, 1936), p. 14.
58. Young, 'French military intelligence and the Franco-Italian alliance', p. 149.
59. For a concise examination of the French phobia of immigrants 'polluting' the race in the interwar period: W. Schneider, Quality and quantity: the quest for biological regeneration in twentieth century France (Cambridge, 1990).
60. P. Bernard, 'Immigration: leçon d'histoire', Le Monde, 25 April 1997.