Book chapter
Modernizing Migrants: Welfare and the Postwar Transformation of Marseille’s African Communities
Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire, pp.183-206
New Directions in Welfare History, Springer International Publishing
2023
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-26024-7_9
Abstract
This chapter demonstrates how the ambitions of African migrants, French imperial officials, and local philanthropists converged in efforts to “modernize” postwar Marseille’s African workers. For decades, young men from across sub-Saharan Africa worked and lived in the city as sailors. These men largely relied on personal and professional connections to survive, often resisting efforts by both activists and officials to regulate their daily lives and social reproduction. However, the postwar “modernization” of the city’s shipping industry pushed most of these men off local maritime companies’ payroll, threatening these longstanding communities’ future. In response, African sailors tried to preserve their place in the city by demanding employment and welfare support from colonial officials in Marseille. In response, imperial officials and local philanthropists promoted foyers, a kind of semi-residential community center, that sought to shelter these men and retrain them to find new work in the city’s “modernizing economy.” These foyers lived on after decolonization and became models for similar programs that sought to integrate a growing numbers of West African migrants into “modernizing” economies in both France and West Africa. Marseille’s foyers demonstrate how French imperial welfare programs did not emerge simply from top-down efforts to control colonial populations. Rather, many welfare-related programs like Marseille’s foyers emerged responded to colonial migrants’ own efforts to navigate changing urban economies and preserve communities that had traversed imperial borders for decades.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Modernizing Migrants: Welfare and the Postwar Transformation of Marseille’s African Communities
- Creators
- Gregory Valdespino
- Contributors
- Margaret Cook Andersen (Editor)Melissa K. Byrnes (Editor)
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire, pp.183-206
- Publisher
- Springer International Publishing; Cham
- Series
- New Directions in Welfare History
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-031-26024-7_9
- eISSN
- 2730-7670
- ISSN
- 2730-7662
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2023
- Academic Unit
- History
- Record Identifier
- 9984696682102771
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