← New Books Network
New Books Network
Melissa Byrnes, "Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
01:09:39
Loading summary
Transcript97 lines
- [00:03]
Melissa Burns
Kids, they grow up so fast.
- [00:06]
Sarah Miles
One day they're taking their first steps and the next they don't fit into the tiny sneakers they took them in.
- [00:12]
Melissa Burns
You blink your eyes and their princess dress is two sizes too small, and their dinosaur backpack isn't cool anymore. But don't cry because they're growing up. Smile because you can profit off of it. For real. There are a bunch of parents on Depop looking for the stuff your kid just grew out of. Download depop to start selling. Toast the holidays in a new way.
- [00:35]
Sarah Miles
And raise a glass of Rumchata, a.
- [00:37]
Melissa Burns
Delicious creamy blend of horchata with rum. Enjoy it over ice or in your coffee. Rumchata. Your holiday cocktails just got sweeter. Tap or click the banner for more. Drink responsibly. Caribbean rum with real dairy cream.
- [00:50]
Sarah Miles
Natural and artificial flavors. Alcohol 13.75% by volume 27.5 proof.
- [00:55]
Melissa Burns
Copyright 2025 Agave Loco Brands, Pojoaquee, Wisconsin.
- [00:58]
Sarah Miles
All rights reserved.
- [01:01]
Melissa Burns
Limu Emu and Doug Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.
- [01:14]
Sarah Miles
Fascinating.
- [01:15]
Melissa Burns
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Ferry Unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates Excludes Massachusetts welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:37]
Sarah Miles
Hello and welcome to the New Books Network series in French Studies. My name is Sarah Miles and I'll be your host for today's conversation with Melissa Burns. Melissa, thanks so much for being here.
- [01:46]
Melissa Burns
Thank you for having me.
- [01:47]
Sarah Miles
So, Melissa K. Burns is a professor of modern, European and world history at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. Her research focuses on migration and activism in the context of French imperialism and decolonization and and she's previously co edited a volume on the colonial politics of population. Her new book, Making Neighbors, Officials and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon, was published in 2023 by Nebraska University Press. Focusing on four French suburbs from the 1950s to the 1970s, Burns examines how predominantly white French administrators, actors, and activists got involved with North African migrants and the problems and opportunities of migration in their cities. In tracing the motivations of these French mayors, city councillors, and community leaders, Burns examines what she calls locally lived migration policies to see how communities tried to make space for their neighbors against the backdrop of a national housing crisis, divergent political ideologies, perpetually constrained budgets, and decolonization. So to get us Started. Melissa, could you tell us a little bit about how you got into French history and what brought you to the topic of this book specifically?
- [02:50]
Melissa Burns
Sure. There's always the sort of funny place this starts, is. I mean, I always loved history. And the reason I ended up in French is that I did a lot of classical ballet when I was little. And so I had started learning French through dance terminology. And then when it came time to work on a language, that was it. And so there's some sort of path determinancy there that I had French, I loved history, hence French history. And then getting closer to this topic, I have an interesting path in that I started grad school for foreign policy. I actually thought I was going to go doing humanitarian work or maybe even work for the State Department. Department. And I started in Washington, D.C. in August of 2001 and 911 happened. And I suddenly was like, what do we know about how, you know, a predominantly Western culture, how it can interact, ideally in positive ways with Muslim communities? And so I started being interested in French history. I started paying attention to the French Empire with that question behind things, expecting that I would mostly find, like, what we shouldn't do, which is largely, largely the case. And then as, as, as graduate school went on, I realized that I just had really big questions that the community, that the policy world would not let me answer. And so I wanted to. I. I just kept diving deeper and deeper into history to spend time with those questions.
- [04:20]
Sarah Miles
So at what point did you change from foreign policy to history as a, As a grad program?
- [04:24]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, so I started. I actually started in a dual degree program. So I was set to get a master' and halfway through the first year. Jim Collins, a wonderful mentor to many French historian, not at all in my era, but he sat me down and said, you know, the whole calculus changes if you're doing a PhD for one. We start to pay you instead of you paying us. Which was a great thing to say to a graduate student. And like I said, I was just, I was sort of connecting with those courses a little bit more, and I was like, well, I can always leave, or I can take this as far as I want and still go into the policy world. And here I am years later.
- [05:02]
Sarah Miles
So the book is interestingly organized around kind of not strict chronological order, but rather these kinds of different forms of motivation that might inform what local officials are doing. I found that to be a really kind of unusual but interesting organization. So why was that how you tried to make sense of this complex story?
- [05:21]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, one of the things with this book is that I, for better or for worse, I had a lot of time to try to make sense of this. So I wrote the dissertation that it was initially based on was only about the Parisian suburbs, so only about St. Denis and Anier. And that is much more. If you go back and read that, I'm not sure I recommend it, but we can go back and look at that. And it's very much a sort of straight up comparison. What's going on with these two, specifically municipal governments. And then I had this postdoc that let me go to Lyon and start looking there. And I realized that we had a lot of different actors. It wasn't. The city governments weren't as involved. So the one to one comparison was getting a little strained. I was also by then doing a lot of teaching on histories of activism and rights and social justice. And so this question of like, why do people gravitate to these issues? What is it that makes someone decide that they're going to go out and advocate? Especially when they're advocating across what from the outside looks as like their community lines. Right. They're advocating for someone else or on behalf of someone else. And so that question was so much in my mind that I realized, wait, I can, instead of doing this, you know, there's an old version where it's like this chronological slog through like the anti bidonville projects. In like both places I was like, or I could ask much more interesting questions and have more fun. And I remember like the weight being lifted when I realized like, I don't actually have to do that. I can do this, this other thing and really get into some of these, like I said, more interesting questions about.
- [06:57]
Sarah Miles
So the motivations are, I think you, you frame it in a really striking way, which is that almost all of these folks with, you know, self evident exceptions and in some cases believe themselves or at least make the case that they're arguing for North African migrants. Right. That they're arguing for making claims, for attempting to do something that is to the benefit of somebody else.
- [07:18]
Melissa Burns
Right.
- [07:19]
Sarah Miles
But you know, it's obvious that that's not always what's happening. What's the nuance there? Right. They're trying to make this case for someone else, but doesn't always feel like it's for someone else. How do you kind of unpack that?
- [07:29]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, I mean, I think that the first thing, my first approach to that is that, you know, when do we as human beings ever do anything for just one purpose? Right. I mean, there's a way that that's very human. Everyone's got lots of different things going on. And that's something I love about having these sort of smaller units to look at with local history, is that it means that I can look in a lot of different directions at once. So you can see how people or towns or neighborhoods are kind of pulled in multiple directions. So I think they all have very different visions for that. Right. It's very different to have the imperial approach to advocating for someone else than it is to have like, you know, gauche proletarian, like far leftist, you know, sense of solidarity. Right. Those are completely different, you know, ways of thinking about how you relate to other human beings or other communities. And so I think as scholars, we're often trained to be a bit more cynical. Right. Like, the final chapter is actually in some ways the hardest, the one I wrestled with the most, because it's the one that's about solidarity. And it's kind of like, what if there are some good intentions in all of this? And I think we're really trained to be very skeptical of those for good reason. And there's lots of space to be skeptical of those. But even some of the skepticism, I feel like there are places where we have to admit that whatever they're trying to get at or whatever sort of framework they're working with, they might still be having some positive benefits. And the fact that motivations and outcomes don't always align is something, an extra nuance that we have to deal with. Right. But trying to sort of think through, okay, here's what they can get out of this, you know, as, as actors or here's where it's aligning with some of their interests and, and sort of how do we, I don't know, how do we make sense of that? How do we cast judgment? Because sometimes it feels. There are some cases where it's pretty clear cut where we're like, I don't think your art's in the right place. Like, you're, you're, you are, you know, we are doing Algerian welfare so that we can put more police into the bidon view. Right. That is one of these motivations that seems very, very different from, I'm trying to house people who live in my city who are sort of on the borders of who are unhoused or who are poorly housed. So I don't know that there's a good answer to that. I think the answer is that it is very complex and nuanced and that's like trying to dig through those. Is so much what this project was about.
- [10:04]
Sarah Miles
Oh, I think it's a really compelling thing to do because like we, I think historians are often drawn to the kind of most cynical answer. And we presume that the kind of most cynical or the least appealing in some ways is like the most true base instinct. And I think you say in that last chapter about solidarity. Right. That even attempting to get votes from people is also a form of inclusion. Right. That is a way to bring somebody into the political community. So just because it's also for your benefit doesn't mean it's not also for other people's benefit.
- [10:35]
Melissa Burns
Right, right. There is, you know, we have some and there's some folks and I think reading other scholars work in different places, sometimes you do see much more of this sort of strict clientelist, like vote buying version. I think what's different is what happens when you put that in a context where that is not the only place or the only context in which you see attempts to reach out to North African migrants. But that's part of a much broader pattern of interacting on a host of different issues. Right, right.
- [11:06]
Sarah Miles
We can put that in line with other evidence about how people are behaving and think of it maybe a little differently.
- [11:10]
Melissa Burns
Yeah.
- [11:12]
Sarah Miles
So the first chapter covers a little more well trod ground with debates around housing and around the kind of uses of urban space in Bidonville. But you frame it around the question of this kind of like urge to modernize and are particularly looking at an, I think in this chapter. So what does it mean for places like Aniel to modernize and what does it mean for them to modernize in a way that maybe doesn't provide a lot of space for North Africans in the city?
- [11:35]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, I think, you know, I use modernize in the sense one. Right. It's not to some extent, this is not my turn, it's theirs. Right. The way they talk about things is in the sense of like, we want a modern city. And I think, you know, at this point we're in the sort of early 50s and it's really important to mark that as heavily imperial language. Right. The way that notions of modernity are being leveraged to justify continued French imperial rule both outside the metropole and within it. And the way that sort of ideas of modernity are sort of underpinning this. Right. These ideas of, you know, civilizing and like there's just all of that baggage, I think comes into this. And so you're also dealing domestically when they're not. Because I think the, you know, the mayor of Anier, for instance, is not thinking only about North African migrants in this. There's this massive project to get rid of a set of Bidonville in the northern part of the city. That becomes a big part of this because they can use that land to build the modern city that they want to. That they want to have. You know, I think it's also this post war kind of coming out. They're facing this destruction. There's this need to rebuild France kind of come out of that. And so you have a set of ideas about what is a modern city, what's a hygienic city, what's a city with open space. You know, they want more greenery, although what they do is they build giant housing blocks that they name after plants, which is not quite the same. Totally the same thing. Yeah. You know, there are a host of other things. Again, we can see the way that they're thinking about North African housing in line with how do we house other folks who are in our town migrant and mostly not. How do we address, you know, sort of education for all the towns, the city's kids. How do we put that into conversation with what various employers need? So there are. There are a number of things going on, but there is this sense, you know, they put a lot in Onier in particular, they put a lot behind this one massive project. And you constantly see them projecting these ideas of what they think a modern French city is supposed to be.
- [13:55]
Sarah Miles
That particular housing block. And this kind of effect or this attempt to move people out of the Bidonville in order to build this housing block, I think says a lot too about the kind of ecosystem of metropolitan suburbs which includes St. Denis, which we'll talk about in the next chapter. But I'm curious if you could say more about that, like, what does Anya have that it can do on its own? What is it doing in relation to places like Paris? Like, how is this kind of functioning as a broader network of overlapping cities?
- [14:20]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, that's the sort of SEN department and later the various offshoots of what the SEN department. But it starts as the sen. At this point, they're very interested in all of these. And so you have housing associations across the Paris region who are trying to figure out how to manage this at the level of the urban agglomeration, not just the individual cities. And so there are some of these broader networks. One of the things that you come across a lot both in terms of migrants advocating for themselves and in the concerns for local elected officials and employers, is they want to keep people close to where they're working. And that this idea that you can move them around interchangeably gets a little sticky when we think about workplace and proximity. There. Something that happened in Onier that was really striking against what you see going on in St. Denis is that it's really clear that they are clearing away these Bidonville with the intention of also getting rid of these people. And that's, again, their sort of dehumanizing way of thinking about this. Not necessarily my words there, but it's this sense of how do we push as many of these people outside? They should be someone else's problem. This is not something that we're interested in. We are not invested in this community. We need to just send them anywhere else that we can. And so you can see all these agreements that they're coming to to move folks who are in these Bienville or in other sort of slum neighborhoods to just move them into dormitories or housing complexes that are outside the city. So I think that's one way that they really sort of pull on this broader Parisian region in Lyon. So in this chapter, I also look at two different things in the Lyon region. So one is the closing down of this massive North African housing center that they had in the center of Lyon. So it starts in Lyon, and they push them out to the suburbs, which, again, is a way of Lyon there being the one to say we need to break apart. There's always this discussion of breaking down. The language itself, the rhetoric can be very violent. The sort of destruction or blowing up of these places that have large numbers of North African migrants. And this idea that concentration is something that's really dangerous. Like there's this fear of what a concentrated North African population represents that later will become this notion of the soil de tolerance, the tolerance threshold, this idea that local communities can only take so many foreigners before all hell breaks loose. So there you also see the way that in this case, it's Lyon is pushing. Pushing North Africans into some of these suburban cities and trying to get them to take on the responsibility for them. Right.
- [17:10]
Sarah Miles
Which, as you show in other chapters, then becomes kind of a point of contention for those suburbs as well. Right. They have to then deal with what this means, deal with obviously also being this kind of dehumanizing term for engaging with populations. But, you know, it is often the way they're framing those. So moving people is one option. What are other political tools the cities have to shape the population in their cities?
- [17:35]
Melissa Burns
Yeah. So I think the moving of People is a big one. I mean, you can also make it uncomfortable for them to stay. Right. There's officially getting them to move. There's the use of police forces. I think this is something more and more folks are talking about really explicitly when we think about the clearance of the bidon vieux, but the fact that you're getting the police who are national, locally situated, but, you know, it's the Interior Ministry that you're ultimately drawing on to come in and clear out these neighborhoods with bulldozers, with identity checks, all sorts of things. And so there's the ability to kind of mobilize the force of the state there. I think presumably there's also this idea of, you know, who are you trying to attract and retain? I don't talk about that that much explicitly, but certainly with Anya, they're trying to make space for some of these young French families. We can understand that as being sort of white, metropolitan French families. Right? These young French families that they want to try to keep in the city. And these are the. These are the people that they're building these new parks and new schools for and these new, you know, sporting facilities and that sort of thing. So I think there's trying to figure out, okay, what can we control in terms of what are we building that will pull certain types of people in or retain them, and how can we, again, pull not just the buildings, but the people in these buildings that we feel are holding us back?
- [18:58]
Sarah Miles
Do you have a sense of at whose behest this is being done? Is this sort of a technocratic story where mayors and officials are determining what's best for the urban area? Is this something that they're being asked to do or pushed to do by populations or constituencies?
- [19:13]
Melissa Burns
I think is probably the place where I can see this best. And there's a bit of a combination. I think the mayor is very much right. Like, he has this vision. He has a lot of backing. He's quite popular. So. And he has very close relations to the national government. He holds a couple of positions. And so he has all these connections that he's able to use for this. We also see that there are, you know, locals who have been there for a long time.
- [19:46]
Sarah Miles
Right.
- [19:46]
Melissa Burns
Again, sort of white, metropolitan French locals who are complain about parts of the process. And mostly they too, are complaining about. Not the. The construction, which is never nice, but they're complaining about neighborhoods, they're complaining about migrants. Usually it has to do with ideas about sort of public health or cleanliness. There's a lot of these and Again, all of these complaints we can also read as very sort of racially loaded critiques. But there are enough complaints that you get the sense that they seem to be very much on board with this. So I don't think I have. I'm trying to think. I don't think I have any records of community meetings or something like that being held. But you can see through some of this that there's a synergy there, that most of the residents are also kind of on board with this. And then you also have the occasional letters from the North Africans who are being displaced, who are not, who do not like this and are trying to. They're not necessarily. You have some who are saying, no, we really want to stay here. Like, this is the property or a cafe that we've been running for X number of years. And then you have lots of others who. Interestingly, in Lanier, you have a lot of letter writers who call on their Frenchness. They identify themselves as having these deep connections to France, but are also saying, I'll move anywhere as long as you give me a good option. Which is interesting because in a place like St. Denis, they tend to identify more as like, no, I'm from St. Denis. I want to stay here. I think you can in some ways see that difference in attitude and that the folks in Agna also, they don't feel as welcome. They don't feel that sense of local belonging. They feel like they belong to feeling France, maybe the Paris region, but they're willing to move to other cities where they think they might be treated better. This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, real United Airlines customers. We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Kath and Andrew. I got to sit in the driver's seat. I grew up in an aviation family.
- [21:44]
Sarah Miles
And seeing Bronx kind of reminded me.
- [21:46]
Melissa Burns
Of myself when I was that age. That's Andrew, a real United pilot.
- [21:51]
Sarah Miles
These small interactions can shape a kid's future.
- [21:53]
Melissa Burns
It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever. That's how good leads the way. Hablas espanol spries to joy. If you used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation based techniques teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers. Speakers Babel is like having a private tutor in your Pocket. Start speaking with Babel today. Get up to 55% off your Babel subscription right now at babbel.com Spotify spelled B A B-B-E-L.com Spotify rules and restrictions may apply. Deck your home with blinds.com.
- [22:37]
Sarah Miles
Diy or let us install.
- [22:43]
Melissa Burns
Free design consultation plus free samples and free shipping. Head to blinds.com now for up to 45% off sitewide plus a free professional measure. Rules and restrictions may apply.
- [23:00]
Sarah Miles
Right. So because in St. Denis, we can. We can kind of move into chapter two as well. But because in St. Denis, they're making this effort to make them tied to the local community that may be then makes North African migrants feel like they actually want to stay there. Yeah, Yeah.
- [23:13]
Melissa Burns
I think it's different to make a case for belonging somewhere if you've also got that place saying that they think you belong. However, they follow it up with action. Right. At least the rhetoric is there for you to kind of grab onto and say, like, well, if they say I'm part of this city, then I can be part of the city. Right.
- [23:28]
Sarah Miles
It's difficult in some ways to try to fight for your right to stay in a place that doesn't seem like it's particularly invested in having you there.
- [23:36]
Melissa Burns
Especially if you think that right next door you might have a better reception. Right, right.
- [23:39]
Sarah Miles
There's other opportunities available to you. So you mentioned these letters from some of the North African residents of Ania, but there are Letters too, in St. Denis. How is the treatment in the archives? I thought that story in St. Denis was really fascinating. You found these kind of trove of letters from North African migrants. So how is the treatment in those two places different? I don't know if you want to tell us that story.
- [23:59]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of troves of letters from North Africans themselves, there's less of a difference. What was absolutely remarkable in St. Denis is the amount of attention that the city itself paid. And so, like their own, like, what they produce is just orders of magnitude greater than just about anywhere else I had seen or expected to see. But I think that, you know, the tonal. What you see in the difference with these letters is where you can see responses. Oftentimes in Onier, they would get these letters. And again, this is usually in the context of trying to figure out housing options in the case of your housing being destroyed or just trying to get somewhere better. There's a few employment requests as well. And there are more employment requests in Sandini, I think. So in the Responses to these. In Onier, you tend to have this attempt to kind of shunt them off. They often forward them to other, to the sen department, to a housing organization. Um, you know, they're, they're trying to sort of send them out. They, they don't tend to, to make a lot of the content. They're just like, oh, so and so wants lodging. And so Nani, you, you see this different. Like they'll actually adapt a lot of the things they'll keep. They'll say, oh, so and so who, you know has worked here and who served in the army for this long and who, you know, who's this, you know, single father. Right. Like, they talk about families that they really give them much more personality when they forward things to forward. They also try to respond themselves. There's a lot more. Of course, I don't have actual minutes of any of these, but there are many more invitations. Come in and meet us, come talk to us. They hire a translator in City Hall. They're doing a lot of things that show that they're having these deeper and longer standing interactions with folks. Whereas Onier, they're getting the requests, but they're giving minimal answers and again, sort of moving them around.
- [25:58]
Sarah Miles
Right, right. You said they sort of like forward these requests often onwards to the next department, which puts you in. I'm sure what we have, many of us have experienced some version of which is the inevitable cycle of French bureaucracy in which you have to have something before you can do something else. Every time, all the time.
- [26:12]
Melissa Burns
Yes, yes.
- [26:14]
Sarah Miles
So the kind of Politics of Chapter 2 is part of the explanation for why things are different in St. Denis than St. Naniere. But in comparing St. Denis to Venicieux outside of Lyon, you sort of suggest that, you know, communism alone cannot be the explanation for what these policies are. So why is belonging so important to the people in St. Denis? And why is it not just communism?
- [26:38]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, I mean, I feel like I wrote this entire book trying to answer that question and I'm still not really satisfied with the answers that I have. I don't like, there are days where I'm like, maybe like the mayor Gillot is just this kind of person. Right. I mean, it needs to be more than that. That's also not a good answer, I think what's clear. So first of all, we can step out a little bit further and say that I walked into send and he started reading these things. When you see in 1951 the mayor of this town saying that Algeria should be independent. Right. That's like this moment where you're like, I did not expect to see that. Right.
- [27:15]
Sarah Miles
And far apace is what the PCF was doing at the time too. So it is, it's a great choice.
- [27:20]
Melissa Burns
And I think that's the thing is that you could see that communism is clearly a part of this story because it's so much of how sad any is positioning itself. When they're talking about North African rights, they're talking about them as fellow workers. When they're talking about the Algerian war, which they oppose quite loudly, quite early, with much more radical language than the actual national PCF ever uses. Right? They are, they're pulling on this idea of like, this is another front in our struggle against imperialism. So the communist framing is really important. But they are so different from the communist, the National Communist Party, right? They're running a different line. They are, they are much closer to Algerian nationalists. I really, I mean, this is terrible, but like, I'm still not entirely sure, like, what explains this. They look very different from the, you know, even the very close neighbors who are run by, by communist municipalities. They look very different from Venice here. It's interesting. You can see I sort of talk about this. You see, in Venice there are moments where. And there's two different mayors that sort of span the time here. But there are moments when they come out and they're, they're on a similar theme, right? You can see the way that, that communist. So that overall communist framework is working for them as well, or how they can leverage it in moments where they want to be involved in supporting particularly Algerians in these cases, but they don't do it all the time. Whereas in Sendini, it's again, it's just this longer standing. They've been doing this. They have deeper connections to this community. They've had all sorts of outreach for much longer. I mean, I think it's in 1946 is the first. They're barely out of the war. They barely have a system going. And they're already passing resolutions saying that we need to house North Africans better. And by the way, we need to reconsider this, this whole imperial system in which they sit. So that. This is a lot to say that again, I, I'm still trying to wrestle with, okay, what is it that's different there? Because clearly, again, communism is not the only answer, but it's a big part of it. There is a, a longer standing relationship with immigrant populations. So there, there's a lot of close connections to the Spaniards in, in sort of the interwar years and, you know, getting involved in anti Francoist politics and supporting Spanish communists and Spanish Republicans, like that's something else that they've done. So I think maybe there's a little bit of like, how can we carry that forward? Right. This is just the next group that we are sort of folding into this process that we are used to. Right, Right.
- [29:57]
Sarah Miles
So this is kind of like longer history of identifying with being a place that might. That could accommodate migrant populations and therefore might explain part of that. So I think one thing that's interesting about thinking it at that much of a local level is how distinct local belonging is in comparison to, say, questions of citizenship or questions of national belonging. And obviously we have great scholars who have explained to us that even citizenship is not as clear as we think it is. But it struck me throughout the book that local belonging is both way more flexible and also sometimes way less flexible than citizenship. You know, you can do all the things that citizenship requires and still not be accepted at a local level. Or like Saint Denis, you cannot be a citizen and still be accepted. So how do you think about local belonging? What kind of opportunities, what limits does it have?
- [30:49]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, I think there's, you know, in some ways it is so much more flexible. Right. Because to some extent anyone can make the case. It helps again if it's being made in multiple ways and from multiple fronts. But it's really interesting in those few moments that I can access the voices from the North Africans themselves, the way that they very savilely leverage their sense of belonging or their sense of how others consider them belonging. You never have that question, do they really feel Dionysian or are they invoking that because it's going to help them get what they need. Right. They've got plenty of agency there. So. So I think that's interesting and right. Sometimes, especially as we move further, you know, there's the identity of what it means to be a bidon villier. Right. Like how. How that sort of whole community, there's an entire, you know, this amazing sort of social, economic, cultural ecosystem that. That pops up in these biddle view. And so that can be a place for identity. There's, you know, various neighborhoods, the various cites, they get built in Venice. I end up using any of this for the book. But for a while, Minguet, which is this massive housing project in Venice that very famously starts to get blown up in the. In the 1980s, it's one of the first ones to then be torn down again. But for a while they actually have a. I Think it's called the Zupien. But there's this idea of, it's like this little journal that they published just within the cite that invoked this idea of like, we are the people of this, you know, this one neighborhood. And so there's all kinds of ways that you can, that anyone can kind of grab onto one of those neighborhood identities and sort of run with it and make it work for them in all sorts of interesting ways. When it comes to the city level identities, that's where I think the city itself has a little bit more say. And there can be in a place like St. Denis where there's this openness and this constant use of us. Right. This inclusive language, this first person plural, all of these ways that they're rhetorically pulling people in, whereas there's a lot of them in other discourses. I think the other thing is that there's the way that you mobilize us, but there's also this question of resources. Where are you putting money? Where are you putting time, energy, where are you using your words? If those are also. We can also think of those as a resource. Who are you advocating for and where? You know, it's just to me, I'm, I'm, I'm. I have, you know, taught about the nation state forever and, and it like, it just bothers me. Right. And so any chance I have to look at something that's not the nation state, right? What that, that's something else that was really important to me. Right. Is that, sure, citizenship is complex and really interesting, but like, we don't necessarily, as much as it can concretely affect our lives. We don't live every day to day as a citizen necessarily. We live in much smaller groups and we encounter smaller groups of people. And so trying to figure out, okay, how does that evolve? How do people mobilize? That is fascinating to me. Yeah.
- [33:59]
Sarah Miles
And so in a lot of cases, like the object of discussion is North African migrants, but the subject in some ways is that French identity that is very complex, very diverse across all these spaces. And you show. Has all these different facets to it, maybe we shouldn't be thinking about. I think you say this quite explicitly, but like the French culture to which one should assimilate, but rather question, what is that hole? Or is there a hole?
- [34:22]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, yeah. You can't take the Republican claims to monolithic, like belonging seriously. Right. Like, or you can deal with them on one level, but then you also have to ask all sorts of questions underneath. And the day to day experience is clearly quite different in some of these places. Right.
- [34:38]
Sarah Miles
And I'm sure it would affect, you know, this isn't obviously the subject of the book, but, like, I'm sure it would affect how migrants themselves would think about, like, well, what is the thing I'm supposed to be doing to assimilate to the thing you're telling me I should be, because the people around me are not the same as the people from before when I moved from this other place in France, et cetera, et cetera. Like, that's not experienced as a monolith either. Right, Right.
- [34:57]
Melissa Burns
Yeah.
- [34:57]
Sarah Miles
Well, so you were talking about funding and resources. St. Denis is kind of odd on this front insofar as they seem to both constantly be trying to get more resources and also sometimes refuse resources. Can you talk about why they're doing that at various points? What's the kind of motivation there?
- [35:14]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, something that's really interesting. So some of basically every other city in some way or another is constantly asking the department or the national government, saying, like, you need to take charge of this. Like, you should be paying for this. This is a national policy, this migration thing, right? Like, you need to. Someone else needs to be responsible for this. And Sandini is often. Is always making the case that, you know, it is a French decision, right? It is a French imperial system. You're, you know, it is French industrialists who are trying to pull in what they see as cheap workers. You can't. You have to care for them. What's interesting is St. Denis too, then, is that on the one hand, this, like other people need to be providing a lot of funds for this, but they want to have control of them, right? They want to be sort of the.
- [35:58]
Sarah Miles
The.
- [35:59]
Melissa Burns
The ones who get to say then how this gets used. And in part, right, The. The positive spin on that is that they're very justifiably skeptical of. Of the state of the police, of all of the ways that. That welfare is being used as a surveillance tactic and a form of discipline and control, right? There they see that happening in real time and they're trying to. To shield migrants from that where they can. On the flip side, I think there. There's also a way that. That, you know, they want to be purveyors. They. They want to be the ones that get the credit for this. They want to be the ones that have. It's. It's almost paternalist, right? It is in some ways very paternalist, right. This idea that they're going to take care of these fellow workers who, who are. Who are being oppressed and that they're going to be the ones that helped fight for their, for their freedom. And so they want to, to, to have more control and say over what's going on. They do. More than any other place I found it, they do commit some of their city's own resources and places where the state or the department are not coming in. There are moments where like they, they actually spend their own funds, which I think is very telling. But they're also constantly saying, no, someone else needs to pay for this and you need to come and do this. And if you're going to, you know, if you are going to, you know, bring all of these people over under sort of the false premise that, that they're going to have a better life, you need to actually make sure that they're working and you need to give them all this training and you need to make sure that they're, you know, earning at the same level as our workers. Because that's always the tricky thing when you're looking at working class movements and migration is it's, it's easy for, and in places we see this, it's easy for some of these workers groups to, to see migrants as, you know, sort of cheap competitors or strike breakers. Right. There's ways that they can be used politically to divide working class folks. So, so the way the sanity keeps trying to, or that, that municipal officials are trying to say no, we need to make sure that they're actually provided for in the same way and they can't be used in that as that kind of a wedge.
- [38:04]
Sarah Miles
One thing that seems like it makes it possible for people in St. Denis to see North African migrants as more relevant to their day to day lives is also representation. Right. There is visibility of North African migrants. There's I think one person who's maybe on the city council and others who are maybe more actively around. So what role does that play?
- [38:25]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, so they do have. You know, I don't think it's a coincidence that of all the places I look at, they actually have the largest population of North Africans in full numbers. I can't remember how it all shakes out proportionally, but they have a fairly large set of North African communities in town. They're also one of the things that really struck me when I was just looking at the Paris region is that the North African communities are really embedded in the fabric of St. Anita. They're very present in the center and there are a bunch neighborhoods throughout. And that's really different from Aniere where it's, you Know, the northern zone of Aniere, which is where they had most of their Bidonville, and where they have this massive urbanization project, right? It's almost like a suburb of the suburb, right? It's this disconnected little piece of land that kind of juts out from the core of the town. And so it's quite literally geographically marginalized in ways that the communities in St. Denis aren't in Benicio and viola. Urban. There's. There's a little. They're kind of in between those. They're not just in one place, but they're also not like, right in the center. So I think that proximity, one of the things, and it's hard to prove, but it's quite striking that that is one of the differences there. It's just that the makeup of the city is such that there's more, again, in very concrete, like actual embedded in the territory terms, there's more sort of immersion and more visibility, therefore. And that's something. The visibility is something that the officials in San Denis will often say. They're like, you need to come see this. Like, we see this. You need to come see this. And with the assumption that seeing is going to go past believing into action, right? So I think that that's one thing in terms of representation, right? What's really interesting, there's a story of Rene Ben Amou, who is a municipal counselor. And I had to go through all of these things to try to figure this out. Ben AMU is clearly a North African name. The French police think he's a Muslim. Like, they actually call him. They say there's a fellow Muslim in the city hall. All of this I wasn't sure. So I started, you know, doing all of these things. Like, is. You know, how. What is the etymology of the last name Ben amu? It's used in. It is North African, but it's used both by Muslim and Jewish families. And so. So then I'm starting to try to find out, you know, what can I find out about his family? I know that both have. His parents died in concentration camps, but they're also communists, right? So are they being targeted for their identity or are they being targeted for their politics? That. That's a little unclear. And I. While I was in Paris, I got to work with Nancy Green for a while, and she was the one who said, well, go find his birth certificate. Maybe one of his parents has, like, a really clearly ethnically identified name. And it turns out his parents were named Rachel and Judas. And so I was like, okay, we have Answered the question. Right. So. So he comes from this Jewish family, but the, I mean, the police still think he's Muslim and presumably a lot of folks in Sandini, you know, who don't know him that well. Right. Like it's. If the police can make that mistake, other people can make that mistake. So there's this whole question of like, they actually do not have a North African Muslim on the city council, but there is someone who has clear North African roots and he's in charge of housing for, for a part of the late 50s, I want to say. And then the other representation I mentioned earlier, City hall, is they bring in a translator for a couple days a week, which means that folks can come in and speak directly to them. The fact that they're even thinking maybe we should bring in a translator means that they've been trying to talk to folks. They do try. There's a couple of different moments where they're often when they're working with unions, local unions, they're communists, they have good relationship with all the local unions. They're trying to make sure that their union representatives and even North African Union representatives on the boards of some of these dormitories. So there is this interest in trying to make sure that there are voices later on. Actually, in Vieurobin, this is another place where the main cite that I look there, this cite Olivier de Serres, which is this massive complex that finally gets. They tried to shut it down for like 20 years, but there's a point where there's a new mayor in Villerban who also actually goes out and starts doing community listening sessions and pulling them into the process for what it's going to be like to finish tearing down and then figure out where they should go. So you have these moments where you do have outreach to North African groups and they're brought into the decision making process in what looks like fairly meaningful ways.
- [43:02]
Sarah Miles
There's a story you start out, chapter three talking about that indicates maybe the extent to which connections don't always equal this kind of anti colonial solidarity, as we might imagine mentioned in St. Denis, which is the Ramadan celebrations in Lyon starting in, what is it, May of 53, I think. So that is a collaboration between North Africans and city officials, but for very different purposes. Right.
- [43:26]
Melissa Burns
I'd call it a collaboration. I think there's ways that they pull some North Africans in to the end, but it's the prefix of the Rhone. So the departmental head, his wife, the head of a couple of local sort of housing organizations and employments or sort of employers of North Africans and the local sort of military commander. Right. So you actually. It's actually all of these French. And in their own way, I think they think of themselves as being very French imperial figures. Right. So they're the ones who put this forward. And so they kind of do this for the local North African community. It is unclear to me that there is the same level of collaboration or any kind of level of collaboration. There's this idea of, like, we need to do this for them with much more of that sort of imperial, paternal sort of overtones than any kind of, like, I don't. I didn't find, like, the place where this was being asked for or, you know, the way that, you know, I didn't see the, you know, the mention of multiple North African names and the oversight committees or, you know, anything that's going on. So I don't think it's that collaboration. Right.
- [44:34]
Sarah Miles
So maybe not collaboration so much as people that are put forward as people who should have this kind of, as you say, paternalistic, like, colonial expertise on what migrants would need. I'm doing scare quotes here for this audio format, but. Okay, right. So providing something that is imagined to be useful by these figures. So how are they mobilizing imperial imagination or imperial politics that are kind of coming from a global space at a local level, quite differently than St. Denis.
- [45:02]
Melissa Burns
This is one of those things, you know, when you open up, like, a folder full, you know, you're in. You get a dossier in the middle of the archives. You're like, whoa, what is going on here? And so the. When I found the set of reports from the Rome prefect, just sort of general reports in, right? This is not a special sort of thing on North Africans, but he started to have all of these, you know, these sort of asides be like, oh, and by the way, right, here's what the North African community is doing. And it starts to be like, there are just all of these moments where he was like, you know, we have to keep French Algeria. This is a big part of French glory. And it's just, you know, it is a strange context to find that rhetoric, like, what. What's going on here? And so, yes, technically, a prefect is within the Interior Ministry, right? They're. They're. They're part of that sort of organogram. But usually, right, They're. They're considered. Their. Their jurisdiction is supposed to be this very local, limited.
- [45:54]
Sarah Miles
At a local level, Right?
- [45:56]
Melissa Burns
Yes. Starts talking about things that they're doing in their own. As part of this imperial Project. And, and again, it's, it' sort of what kind of housing, what sorts of employment. And especially as, as we get past 1954 and the outbreak of the Algerian revolution, it starts to be all about the various policing operations that they are running to ensure that, you know, the nationalists don't gain traction and to ensure that France will remain Algeria. There should just be giant scare quotes around everything I just said in the, the, the department offices, you have these. I'm not going to remember what this stands for off the top of my head, but the IGAM you basically have. Colonial officers are attached to each of the main cities in France where they're actually brought over from or brought out of service in North Africa to provide extra oversight and connection points. So in the Rhone, it's this man, Georges Martin, who grew up in Algeria, had positions within the colonial administration and comes to Lyon to kind of do the same work there. And then you have, you know, the way. There are lots of scholars who've given us some insight into this, but the way that all of these colonial figures start coming into the metropole, you know, it's people who are, you know, retired army officers or others who are also then in this space and able to, you know, to make these imperial arguments sort of see North Africans as theirs in a very, there's this quotes again in this very, you know, paternalistic, like, this is the community that, like I should be taking care of. And so they're, they're. What was just fascinating to me is that they're talking about things that are only happening, you know, in neighborhoods in Lyon or in Villeban or Venusieux. Right. But they're talking about them in terms of. This is how what we're doing here is going to, you know, preserve French Algeria. Right. This is how we save the French Empire by hosting local Ramadan celebrations and by, yes, by making sure that we are sending all of this counter propaganda into the dormitories and into the workspaces and curbing these strikes and these other actions.
- [48:12]
Sarah Miles
Yeah, I thought that was just so fascinating because I think we're used to thinking about anti imperialism coming home to Rus, but we're not necessarily thinking about the ways in which imperialism comes home at a local level and is also implemented.
- [48:23]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, and I certainly expected it. Right. In Onier, you can see the way that there are various things, forms of like imperial thoughts having to do again with civilizing and modernizing that, that are there, but they're sort of these abstracted. I, you know, sort of this, this.
- [48:37]
Sarah Miles
Very Cultural ideas rather than.
- [48:39]
Melissa Burns
Right, exactly. What was just. Was so fascinating in their own is, is again they, it is these, these local officials themselves are explicitly like they are drawing these connections and making cases and in places that they're, they're not necessarily being invited. Right. Like, like the other, other, other departments did not write reports that, that look like these. And so there's, there's this very interesting like they are, they're not being forced, they're not being prompted in any way. There's all of a sudden this very sort of, you know, bubbling up from. From what they're doing authentic to them way that they see these things connected.
- [49:14]
Sarah Miles
One of the, the places where the kind of complex like is this well intentioned if we can use that word ever. Is this cynical is this, you know, how do we understand it is in the fifth chapter, which is also about Lyon, the suburbs of Lyon. So I'm bringing us over there and the Olivier d' Ser complex which you've talked about and the kind of motivation of providing houses for North African migrants, but for profit or businesses who are involved in advocating for migrants. So maybe tell us the story of the Olivier des Art complex.
- [49:47]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, yeah. So there's sort of this broader, you know, the idea is like okay, what's the profit motive behind a lot of these? And so, you know, one of the places that that actually a lot of the original impetus for providing special housing and for, for starting up a lot of these social services for North African migrants, a lot of that comes from their employers. They're like, we need, we need our workforce to be healthy and we need them to have a reliable place to live and it needs to be close to where we want them to work and on all of these things. So there's this broader pressure. But so, so Olivier d' Serre is this fascinating complex. It starts off like the land starts off as a bicycle factory and the landowner starts to build apartments that are originally supposed to be for, for Pied Noir families. So you know, sort of settlers coming back over are, are the first group that he tries to get. But they very quickly leave for the most part and he starts to, to lease out to. He and his corporation start to lease out to a lot of these North African migrants. And what we know, and this makes sense, but a lot of times with migrant populations, they will start to cluster together because they have connections. And so this one housing complex starts to get this reputation and for the very first little bit it seems a fairly normal renting situation. But what happens really quickly is that the landowner is not actually interested in keeping up the buildings. So they start to deteriorate quite quickly. Meanwhile, he starts to raise his rents and his fees in particular quite a lot. And what the business model ends up becoming is that there's a point at which North Africans, well, basically any migrants need to prove that they have housing to be able to bring their families over. And what he does basically is he charges these exorbitant rates. And so someone will get a lease with this complex just long enough to get their family over and then they'll like relocate into some other place that the department doesn't actually want them living in. So it's got very high turnover, although there are some, there are some families that stay there for a really long time and kind of do really make their home there. But there's also this like really high turnover. And I mentioned earlier that one of the sort of boogeymen of French urbanization at this point in time was this idea of like concentrations of foreign populations and the deep anxiety that, that surrounds this that is just so palpable on the page and in these archival sources, right, that they freak out when there's too many North Africans living next to each other. It's just not something that they are willing to cope with because this complex is privately owned. All of the various ways that nationally and then locally in the room that they've been trying to break up large populations of North Africans, all of these ways are just failing them because it's a private landowner and he gets to sort of say who he leases to and they're applying all kinds of pressure. And there's a point finally when things are going badly enough for him that he caves and says like okay, never mind, like I, I, I, let's close this, let's just, we're going to ra. Cut, raise all the buildings and, and I'm going to, to give this up. But before he gets there, there's a series of a few years where he suddenly starts to write these full throated defense of the rights of North African migrants and, and uses some of the most sort of progressive language like, like it's, it's this fascinating case that he makes about, you know, what our human, you know, the French, we are bringing them over. It sounds in some ways right, he uses some of the same lines that send and he was using for, for years. But we're bringing them over. We have this responsibility to them. You know, it is, you know, discrimination that, that we're trying to say that they can't live together and that they can't live here. And so, yeah, there's this just fascinating disconnect from this language that's being used.
- [53:43]
Sarah Miles
Right.
- [53:43]
Melissa Burns
Some of the most, I think, eloquent expressions of why North African migrants should be considered full members of these communities and that they should be cared for and that they should have equality in all ways. And yet he's making that case in order to continue to extort them, basically. So, yeah, it's a fun little story in there that. That again, pulls on all of these things at once. Right.
- [54:09]
Sarah Miles
And it doesn't mean that he didn't mean some of it in this moment. But also, I think you say that once he gives up the project, he very quickly stops making that case publicly. So it perhaps was not his primary driving interest. Even if, you know, we won't know whether or not he sincerely believed it for some period of time.
- [54:25]
Melissa Burns
Right, right, exactly.
- [54:27]
Sarah Miles
So one question that maybe brings together some of the topics here is, you know, you note how there's increased police surveillance in the Desaix complex during the Algerian war, but also afterwards. So what is particular about the kind of experience of the Algerian war and Algerians versus North Africans, North Africans versus other French imperial migrants? What do you see as like, the particularity versus commonalities, maybe across more than you were capable of talking about in one book?
- [54:57]
Melissa Burns
I default to North African as opposed to Algerian in most cases, because that's, that's what the sources say. And I think 90% of the time they actually mean Algerian. Right. There's this way, if you're in these sources, anyone's been in these archives, you know, Algerian, North African for a while, migrants or migrant worker, Muslim, a French Muslim from Algeria. These all have very different meanings, but they're used interchangeably, sometimes within the same document, like people use them as exact synonyms. And technically, Algerians are in a very different, different legal category. Right. They have full citizenship after 47. They can vote. They are not considered foreigners. There is a whole host of, you know, you can find all of these letters and memos reminding employers that, like, they have to hire Algerians before other Europeans because Algerians are French citizens and, you know, Poles or Spaniards are not. Right. Which we can see as sort of the we behind that. Of course, you can read in that the employers are using race as opposed to citizenship to make their calls on who is employable or not. So Algerians have a very different category. They have a very different experience. And of course, the, the Algerian war looms so large here because it's, it's, you know, this massive event for them, right? It completely changes, you know, it's for, for any Algerian living through this, it must be a, you know, a really important way of trying to understand sort of your place in the world and what it means to be from where you are. And it has real changes on exactly what, what welfare benefits and what rights folks have. At the same time, you know, there are times, especially sort of in Paris, I could see this a little bit closer, but I. You would know that a certain group of people was more Moroccan or more Tunisian, but they're getting treated the same way and they're sort of getting folded in. And in particular, when it comes to policing, there are enough sort of stories of this. They're getting racially profiled and like, they can be let go at some point, but like, they, they get caught up in all of these, these things without actually being Algerian. And so whenever my sources are saying North African, sometimes it's really clear if they're Algerian, but it's not always. And so I have to be kind of careful with that. You know, Algeria is so fascinating because of that claim to Algeria being part of France and therefore all of the citizenship implications that. That has. The long tale of which is that, you know, the, the great, you know, French double, double U.S. soli. Right? So if you're born in France to someone born in France, but like, if Algeria is France until 1962, what happens if your parents were born before 62? Like, there's all sorts of things that they have to deal with there anyway. There are real differences and real, real legal ways in which Algeria is just so different and therefore fascinating. What happens in a lot of cases is, post1962, the French state has to swing. Like, overall, everyone has to make the swing where no longer can you treat North African separately, you can't treat Algerians separately now. They either, you know, in some cases they do offer French citizenship. And either you're dealing with French Algerians and they don't really know how to deal with them, but. Or you're dealing with actual foreigners now who have, you know, a different set of status, who have another country that can argue in some ways or sometimes for their rights. And so that's where you see that transition from like the, you know, Sonnet Courtral becomes Sonnet Cotra, no longer Algerian workers, but just workers. The Maison d' Afrique du Nord becomes the Maison de Travaileur Etranger. You know, there's this brief moment where a lot of these organizations and institutions go from Algerian to sort of post colonial. Right. And anyone coming out of former colonies kind of gets pulled into all of these, but very soon after that, then it becomes anyone. Right. So the Portuguese are now eligible or part of this system. And there are ways that even in St. Denis, suddenly the, the amount of discussion of North Africans in particular sort of gets folded into a broader foreign workers, migrant workers kind of column. That's the heading that then all of.
- [59:11]
Sarah Miles
This gets subsumed under the question of nation then is flexible. Right. Because it suddenly encompasses different people. It suddenly encompasses a lot of different nations that might, as you say, perhaps advocate for the rights of theirs, but also perhaps justify discrimination that maybe they wouldn't have been able to before. So in this last chapter on solidarity, you talk about the importance of what you call kind of non national definitions of belonging as the thing that we can see is linking different groups of solidarity. So how do you understand that as part of the motivation for claiming belonging or for making space?
- [59:44]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, I mean, you kind of hit this interesting moment where. And there are others who have seen this in related contexts, either specifically with the Algerian war, so more broadly in the 60s, but like the communists and Christian groups are suddenly doing a lot of. I'm not gonna say that they're partnering necessarily. I think they're still largely wary of each other, but they're doing some similar things. Right. And particularly, you know, the, the Advent or sort of the, the growing popularity of liberation theology, of social Catholicism more specifically in, in France. Right. There's this way that, that the church, the Catholic Church in particular, is starting to position itself in terms of, of partnering with migrants and, and sort of adopting migrants one way or another, so pulling them into their services, providing services for them. And again, the way that the communists and now the new left is also reimagining the boundaries of the struggle they're in. And so that was the way to kind of think through how is it that all of these different players are now working in similar ways with North African migrants and making to some extent similar arguments about the fact that there's a broader human connection here and we need to care for these people and we need to stand up for them, even if it doesn't seem obvious. And there, there's also this great exchange in the Rome prefecture where the local cardinal and actually the head of the Protestant church in Lyon get really upset about this policy that's trying to break up neighborhoods or prevent North Africans and others from settling in particular neighborhoods and so these major religious leaders sort of take the stand and. And without quite saying this, it is very clear that in the prefect's response that he's like, I'm talking about Muslims. Why are you upset? And it's like they're sort of talking past each other there, because that's not the issue. They're not advocating for these people as members of their flock. They're saying, we have, as religious leaders, we have a responsibility to a broader humanitarian platform or program or way of understanding the world. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be transactional. Right. They're not interested necessarily in directly getting converts. And this is one of the things. You sort of can be a little skeptical of this, but there are plenty of critiques that North Africans launch at some of these organizations, and proselytization is never one of them. Right. Presumably that would have come up if they were feeling it or if they were upset about it. And they're willing to, like, complain about all sorts of things and go on rent strikes and do all sorts of things, but that doesn't seem to come up. So I actually think that from what I can tell, they're not out there sort of pushing this, like, we're going to, you know, house you as long as you come to Bible study or what have you. It actually does seem to be a bit more open than that. And then, you know, it's like, how often do you put, you know, the Catholic Church and the Maoists in the same category? Right. It's kind of this fun thing. Be like, oh, but also, the Maoists are out there saying. They're also trying to say, hey, you know, sometimes they're combating the exact same set of local policies, and they're, you know, trying to, you know, provide education or sort of help with housing. They have, in some ways, very different worldviews. But as you said at the start, what those worldviews share is they're not thinking in terms of what is my community in terms of Frenchness. They're thinking about what is. What is this human community, what are some sort of larger global or cosmological, like, struggles that I am a part of, that these should be my allies. Like, what kinds of alliances should I be building, what kinds of partnerships do I need to be forging for my sort of greater purpose? Yeah, yeah.
- [63:32]
Sarah Miles
No, and if we can, you know, we said at the beginning, right, that not all motivations lead to the same outcomes. Right. They don't necessarily always lead to the outcomes one would expect or One would hope. But also we can maybe see in the parallels between Maoist and Catholic organizing that not all the outcomes have to come from the same motivation. Right. These can be similar things on the ground, even if they come from very different places. So you say in your introduction that you kind of hope to think through how to create kind of other workable models of inclusive republican citizenship or how people have done that, which I think reflects to some degree what you were saying was your initial question when you went to grad school.
- [64:08]
Melissa Burns
Right.
- [64:09]
Sarah Miles
How do we think about living together in these places? Do you, you feel like you got at some answers of how people do that?
- [64:15]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, I mean, I think that this. Right. Part of it is. This is my answer. Right. Like that you have to get rid of the nation state. To say somewhat flippantly, but also somewhat seriously. Right. I think, you know, a lot of things become possible when that's not the only framework. You know, at least, at least when it's not the only framework, when people, like actual people start to think of themselves as having relationships that don't follow sort of particular citizenship or nationalist lines, then all sorts of different coalitions can come out of. Like, this is like all kinds of 19th century revolutionaries also said this. So this isn't new, but I feel like it's a good way to see it closely and to see it in action. You know, something that became really clear to me here and is continuing to really guide my work is just that, that when you look at very local circumstances, you have an amazing window actually into global and transnational circumstances because you're sort of skipping out that, just that national level. And you can start to see, like, how, how are these people? Right. People are coming from all over the world and then they are interacting with each other in this small urban space or suburban space. And, and that, that makes a lot of things possible, right. That, that pulls them into new conversations and they can learn from each other and they can, you know, kind of bring these experiences in. And I think that's, that's one of the things that's, that's just so fascinating to me.
- [65:47]
Sarah Miles
Yeah, well, that's maybe a good place to bring this conversation to a close. So, as always, our last question is, what else are you working on that you're excited about right now?
- [65:55]
Melissa Burns
Yeah, so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm running with this. So what I am working on now, and I got to go back to the archives in Paris this past summer for the first, first time since like pre pandemic it was very exciting. And I'm looking at this question of sort of how local activists get involved in global and transnational issues. So I'm back in St. Denis, but also looking at some. Some new suburbs to me, all around Paris, I think, this time. And I'm trying to figure out essentially what the grassroots, sort of, the grassroots initiation of what become major transnational human rights rights movements. What does that look like from the French suburbs? What happens when I. When I go into those neighborhoods that I've been so familiar with from this work? What happens when I start looking at other things? And what really launched that is when I was in St. Denis, I found some really interesting material about Portuguese migration and anti Salazar activism. But what really struck me, and this is the part that I'm still working on getting out there, figuring out how to craft this, is that especially in St. Denis, where I have the same people and I can see the ways that they're making arguments that oppose the Algerian war. And they turn around and they use almost the same set of arguments to oppose Salazarism and Portuguese colonialism. And they're. They're really using. It's. It's like a form, right. They figured out what are the. What are the high notes that we can. We can hit, that can really pull people in and kind of activate them and get them on board with us. Us. And so now I'm trying to. So we have anti Algerian war protests, we have anti Salazarism. And now I'm trying to sort of, ideally, we'll see how this goes in the end, but ideally stretch this across the 20th century and look at anti Francoism that, you know, going back to some of those, those Spanish communities that are there in the interwar years. Looking forward, maybe looking at, you know, support for Bosnians and criticism of Serbia or there are a number of possible case studies that I'm really kind of bringing in, but it's all centered in this question of in what way when migrants come into a community, how can they get people to care about things that are happening sort of back where they're from and really get them to mobilize and actually start to, again, make really meaningful alliances to try to take on some sort of global injustice? Yeah.
- [68:16]
Sarah Miles
Well, we will look forward to pieces of that work coming out over time. And eventually a book. We won't pressure you, but, you know, it would be great. Well, for now, this book is available from the University of Nebraska Press. It's a rich story, really. There's so many other questions I had that we could have talked about. So folks who are listening should go get a copy. Ask the library to get one. Whatever works for you. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to listen to this episode and thank you Melissa for taking the time to talk to us today.
- [68:42]
Melissa Burns
Thank you Sarah for having me. This has been a lot of fun. Hey Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best, best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try at Mintmobile. Com Switch Upfront payment of $45 per.
- [69:18]
Sarah Miles
Three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of network's.
- [69:24]
Melissa Burns
Busy taxes and fees extra CMINTMOBILE.COM.