An Address in Paris - (Black Lives in the Diaspora: Past / Present / Future) by Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye (Paperback)

About the Book

Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye examines the changing roles that foyers have played in the lives of generations of West African migrants, weaving together rich ethnographic description with a critical historical account.

Book Synopsis

After West African migrants arrived in France in the 1960s, the authorities opened residences for them known as "foyers." Initially intended to contain the West African population, these hostels for single men fostered the emergence of Black communities in the heart of Paris and other cities. More recently, however, a nationwide renovation program sought to replace the collective living arrangements of foyers with more individualized spaces by constructing new buildings or drastically reshaping existing ones--and casting the West African presence as a threat to French identity.

Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye examines the changing roles that foyers have played in the lives of generations of West African migrants, weaving together rich ethnographic description with a critical historical account. She shows how migrants settled in foyers through kinship ties, making these buildings key parts of diasporic networks. Migrants also forged a sense of place in foyers, in an intricate relationship with bureaucratic requirements such as having an address. Mbodj-Pouye scrutinizes the physical and social evolution of foyers and the administrative dynamics that governed them. She argues that even though these buildings originated in state attempts to manage migrants along racial lines, the shared way of life that they encouraged helped spark a sense of political agency and belonging whose significance extends far beyond their walls.

Combining close attention to the social and cultural meanings of the foyers and keenly observed portraits of Black experiences in France across decades, An Address in Paris offers a new lens on the global African diaspora.

Review Quotes

Mbodj-Pouye has contributed a trustworthy study of one of our most pressing contemporary global problems: how to survive and manage the huge northward waves of migration.-- "H-Africa"

Of great value for teaching and to anyone who wishes to understand the relations between politics, architecture and individual experiences of space.-- "International Migration Review"

An Address in Paris is a fine-grained ethnography that is a valuable contribution to the scholarship on West African migration in France. Its historical perspective captures quite masterfully the evolution of institutions and policies governing African migrants while examining their claims on localized urban spaces. Its ethnographic narratives shed light on the lived experiences of West African migrants from the Senegal River Valley engaged simultaneously in processes of place making in Paris and its suburbs and continued engagement in transnational relations with sending communities. Scholars and students of migration will find in this book an excellent ethnographic case illuminating the active participation of migrants often viewed as marginal in shaping the sociocultural, economic, and political processes surrounding their incorporation in a host city.--Abdoulaye Kane, editor of African Migrations: Patterns and Perspectives

Building on both archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, An Address in Paris offers fresh insights into West African labor migration to France. By using the foyer, the housing residences that the French state historically provided to migrant workers from the former colonies, as a lens, Mbodj-Pouye sheds light on not only the French state's efforts to govern migrant populations but also how West Africans seized on and redeployed the foyer to build transnational networks and claim belonging in the city. Tracing how generations of foyer residents appropriated and transformed the foyer in line with their changing circumstances, An Address in Paris also takes into account the crucial element of time so often overlooked in discussions of migration. Painstakingly researched and beautifully written, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary migration.--Jennifer Cole, editor of Affective Circuits: African Migration to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration

Mbodj-Pouye's pathbreaking book is an exquisite close reading of foyers in Paris. The residents of these dormitories, West African men, take center stage as key interlocutors who have shaped and challenged state efforts to manage their homes and their bodies. An Address in Paris is precisely the kind of careful, empirical, and rigorous scholarship that demonstrates how race--as a social construct--necessarily intersects with other categories such as gender, space, and citizenship.--Minayo Nasiali, author of Native to the Republic: Empire, Social Citizenship, and Everyday Life in Marseille Since 1945

About the Author

Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye is a research fellow in anthropology at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris.