Reinventing the Republic: Gender, Migration, and Citizenship in France

Early one morning in 1996, the sanctuary of a Parisian church was suddenly disrupted by a police raid. A group of undocumented immigrant families had taken refuge in the church under threat of deportation due to the French state's increasingly restrictive immigration policies. Rather than disperse and hide, these sans-papiers--people literally without papers-- came together to bring to light the deep contradictions in the French state's immigration policies and practices.

Reinventing the Republic chronicles the struggle of the sans-papiers to become rights-bearing citizens, and links different social movements to reveal the many ways in which concepts of citizenship and nationality intersect with debates over gender, sexuality, and immigration. Drawing on in-depth interviews and a variety of texts, this disquieting book provides new insights into how exclusion and discrimination operate and influence each other in the world today.

Author: Catherine Raissiguier
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 06/03/2010
Pages: 216
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780804757621

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2011

About the Author
Catherine Raissiguier is Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at New Jersey City University. She is the author of Becoming Women/Becoming Workers: Identity Formation in a French High School (1994).