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Criminal Fertility: Policing North African Families After Decolonization

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Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire

Part of the book series: New Directions in Welfare History ((NDWH))

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Abstract

This chapter considers the entanglement of two distinct sets of racialized fears about North African migrants: demography and criminality. Using the Lyon suburb of Villeurbanne as a case study, it shows that North Africans in France were subject to a set of discriminatory assumptions and prejudicial practices in the wake of decolonization. As demographic anxieties mounted, the language used to describe North African families repurposed longstanding tropes about North African criminality to bolster criticism of migrant birthrates and, ultimately, migrant presence. Working at the intersection of two rich bodies of scholarship, this local case study illustrates the important intersections between analyses of sexuality and population control and those of surveillance and police power. Within the context of this volume, this chapter examines the continued influence of ideas about nonwhite families from the former empire on social welfare policies in the postcolonial period. These moments in Villeurbanne also reveal significant grassroots support for racialized state policies and white supremacist ideologies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Le Progrès de Lyon, “Conseil municipal de Villeurbanne: Sévère prise de position du maire contre la nouvelle médina du Tonkin,” 20 September 1966, 7 (Archives départementales du Rhône, hereafter ADR, 248 W 356). “All translations are the author’s”.

  2. 2.

    Gagnaire to Préfet du Rhône, 18 September 1965 (Archives municipales de Villeurbanne, hereafter AMV, 1 J 15).

  3. 3.

    See Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization. “(Cornell University Press, 2006)”.

  4. 4.

    Virginie De Luca Barrusse, “Le complexe de la dénatalité. L’argument démographique dans le débat sur la prévention des naissances en France (1956–1967),” “Population 73 (2018),” https://www.cairn.info/revue-population-2018-1-page-9.htm (accessed 13 June 2022).

  5. 5.

    Tyler Stovall, “The Color Line behind the Lines: Racial Violence in France during the Great War,” The American Historical Review 103:3 (1998): 737–69, 751. The central case for this discussion involved a Moroccan man; Stovall further cites police reports on “Kabyle Manners.” Clifford Rosenberg identifies the First World War as the turning point in relations with North African migrants who previously faced an “unexceptional prejudice” that early aligned with the treatment of other, European, migrants. Rosenberg, Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control between the Wars (Cornell University Press, 2006), 109 and 113–9.

  6. 6.

    Rosenberg, Policing Paris, 162.

  7. 7.

    Mary D. Lewis, The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918–1940 (Stanford University Press, 2007), 196.

  8. 8.

    Rosenberg, Policing Paris, 141–3 and Danielle Beaujon, “Policing Colonial Migrants,” 658–9.

  9. 9.

    Danielle Beaujon, “Policing Colonial Migrants: The Brigade Nord-Africaine in Paris, 1923–1944,” French Historical Studies 42:4 (2019): 655–680, 657. The BNA was regularly called on to manage family affairs as well, often stepping in to assure that migrant workers’ husbandly and fatherly duties were properly fulfilled, as well as aiding white French women who had relationships (and sometimes children) with North African workers. Beaujon, 673–6. See also Emmanuel Blanchard, “Des Kabyles ‘perdus’ en région parisienne,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 144 (2018), at https://doi.org/10.4000/remmm.11699 (accessed 15 September 2022).

  10. 10.

    Beaujon, “Policing Colonial Migrants,” 678 and Amit Prakash, “Colonial Techniques in the Imperial Capital: The Prefecture of Police and the Surveillance of North Africans in Paris, 1925-circa 1970,” French Historical Studies 36:3 (2013): 479–510, 495–6.

  11. 11.

    Most of this research has focused on Paris: see especially Linda Amiri, La bataille de France : la guerre d’Algérie en France (Robert Laffont, 2004); Emmanuel Blanchard, La Police parisienne et les Algériens (1944-1962) (Nouveau Monde, 2011); Amit Prakash, Empire on the Seine: The Policing of North Africans in Paris, 1925–1975 (Oxford University Press, 2022); and Rémy Valat, Les Calots bleus et la bataille de Paris. Une force de police auxiliaire pendant la Guerre d'Algérie (Michalon, 2007). On the massacre of Algerian protestors by the Paris police, see Jim House and Neil Mac Master, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror, and Memory (Oxford University Press, 2006). On police relations with Algerian women in Lyon, see Marc André, Femmes dévoilées: Des Algériennes en France à l'heure de la décolonisation (ENS Editions, 2016); on surveillance in Lyon’s Centre Part-Dieu, see Émilie Elongbil Ewane, “Hébergement et Répression: Le Centre de la Part-Dieu,” in eds. Sylvie Thénault and Raphaëlle Branche, La France en guerre 1954–1962 (Autrement, 2008).

  12. 12.

    Prakash, “Colonial Techniques in the Imperial Capital,” 481–2.

  13. 13.

    Todd Shepard, Sex, France, and Arab Men, 1962–1979 (University of Chicago Press, 2017), 37–41.

  14. 14.

    Margaret Andersen, Regeneration through Empire: French Pronatalists and Colonial Settlement in the Third Republic (University of Nebraska Press, 2015).

  15. 15.

    See Andersen, Regeneration Through Empire.

  16. 16.

    Elisa Camiscioli, Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century (Duke University Press, 2009), and Nimisha Barton, Reproductive Citizens: Gender, Immigration, and the State in Modern France, 1880–1945 (Cornell University Press, 2020).

  17. 17.

    Camiscioli, Reproducing the French Race, 17. For more on métissage and racial mixing, see Emanuelle Saada, Empire’s Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies(University of Chicago Press, 2012).

  18. 18.

    Saada, Empire’s Children, 101–103. On the lingering perceptions that not all Algerian settlers were fully French, see Andersen, Regeneration Through Empire, 203–208. On the decisions to allow white French women who married nonwhite colonial subjects to keep their French status—and pass it to their children—see Saada, 115 and Judith Surkis, Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–1930 (Cornell University Press, 2019), 193–7.

  19. 19.

    Surkis, Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria.

  20. 20.

    See Stovall, “The Color Line Behind the Lines” on the intentional isolation of colonial laborers in the metropole during WWI. Nimisha Barton, however, contrasts overall imperial policies of racial exclusion with local neighborhood and social worker willingness to support Algerian fathers in particular, even against white French wives. Barton, Reproductive Citizens, 173 and 210.

  21. 21.

    See Louis Chevalier, Labouring Classes and Dangerous Classes: In Paris During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Routledge, 1973).

  22. 22.

    Amelia Lyons, The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole: Algerian Families and the French Welfare State during Decolonization (Stanford University Press, 2013).

  23. 23.

    Lyons, The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole, 67–68. Debates allocating family allowances to Algerian workers in France further highlighted the tension between fears of Algerian fecundity and a desire to integrate Algerian migrants: workers whose families were on the French mainland received the same benefits as other metropolitans, while those whose families remained in Algeria received a reduced rate, with the surplus funds those workers had earned funneled into social service funds. See Lyons 94–98.

  24. 24.

    Lyons, The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole, 100–101.

  25. 25.

    Lyons, The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole, 112–3.

  26. 26.

    Préfet de police to Ministre de l’Intérieur, 25 February 1960, “Au sujet de l’immigration en métropole des Français musulmans d’Algérie” (Archives Historiques de la Préfecture de Police, hereafter AHPP, HA 7).

  27. 27.

    Lyons, The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole, 215.

  28. 28.

    Shepard, Sex, France, and Arab Men, 21–29.

  29. 29.

    Lyons, The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole, 216.

  30. 30.

    Melissa K. Byrnes, Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon (University of Nebraska Press, 2024).

  31. 31.

    Neil Mac Master, “The ‘seuil de tolérance’: The Uses of a ‘Scientific’ Racist Concept,” in ed. Max Silverman, Race, Discourse and Power in France (Avebury, 1991): 14–28,’” 17.

  32. 32.

    Commissaire à la construction dans la région parisienne to Préfet de la Seine, 27 February 1961 (Archives de Paris, hereafter AP, PEROTIN/1011/69/2–112).

  33. 33.

    Vaujour served as Director for General Security in Algeria from 1953 to 1955. See Choukri Hmed, “‘Tenir ses hommes’: La gestion des étrangers ‘isolés’ dans les foyers Sonacotra après la guerre d’Algérie.”Politix 19:76 (2006): 11–30, 16–17.

  34. 34.

    Vaujour vaguely cited studies by “various ministries” to support this argument. His grammatical choices were revealing: the verb form, “Occidentalize,” implies an active endeavor, involving movement, while the noun, “Arabization,” implies a passive and sedentary process. Compte rendu de la Réunion tenue le 14 avril 1961 …au sujet du brassage des familles musulmanes et des familles métropolitaines logées par les Organismes d'HLM (AP, PEROTIN/1011/69/2–112).

  35. 35.

    Procès verbal de la réunion du jeudi 25 mai 1961… au sujet du brassage des familles musulmanes et des familles métropolitaines logées par les Organismes d'HLM (AP, PEROTIN/1011/69/2–112).

  36. 36.

    Orsetti to Ministre d’Etat chargés des affaires sociales, Direction de la population et des migrants, “Familles de travailleurs migrants – Difficultés de relogement” 18 October 1968 (Archives nationales, hereafter AN, F1a 5120).

  37. 37.

    Marc Roberrini, “Rapport,” 21 February 1970, 39 and 41. (Bibliothèque Administrative de la Ville de Paris).

  38. 38.

    Sophia Lamri, “‘Algériennes’ et mères françaises exemplaires (1945–1962),” Le movement social, 199 (2002), 65. Recognition of the importance of French motherhood extended back through the Third Republic, as a strategy to reverse the demographic crisis, and had been much vaunted under Vichy.

  39. 39.

    Lamri, “‘Algériennes’ et mères françaises exemplaires,” 65–66.

  40. 40.

    Lamri, “‘Algériennes’ et mères françaises exemplaires,” 79.

  41. 41.

    Paris Prefect to Ministre d’Etat chargé des affaires sociales, Direction de la population et des migrants, “Familles de travailleurs migrants – Difficultés de relogement,” 3 December 1968 (AN, F1a 5120).

  42. 42.

    Letter from Président du Quartier Bel Air, undated but likely late fall 1963 (Archives municipales de Saint-Denis, 3 AC 8).

  43. 43.

    “Note sure les bidonvilles dans l’agglomération Lyonnaise,” 19 January 1967 (ADR, 248 W 358).

  44. 44.

    Laporte to Interior Ministry, Direction Générale de la Police Nationale, Direction de Règlementation, 27 July 1971, “Problèmes posés par l'immigration étrangère” (Centre des Archives contemporaines, 19770317-1).

  45. 45.

    As Todd Shepard has suggested, “thresholds” for migrant presence were mobilized by French analysts and officials as a means to combat racism without addressing actual racist acts and rhetoric, merely by reducing the presence of migrants and thus the discomfort of French whites. “Comment et porquoi éviter le racisme: Causes et effets, culture, ‘seuils de tolérance’ ou résistances? Le débat français entre 1954 et 1976,” Arts &Sociétés: Lettre du séminaire 51 (March 2013), at https://www.sciencespo.fr/artsetsocietes/fr/archives/1410 (accessed 2 June 2022). Minayo Nasiali has also shown how social scientific discourses about the seuil de tolerance presented a seemingly objective or natural way to distinguish populations while denying racist bias. Nasiali, Native to the Republic: Empire, Social Citizenship, and Everyday Life in Marseille since 1945 (Cornell University Press, 2016), 99–106.

  46. 46.

    For example, in 1970, French civil servant and migration expert Michel Massenet highlighted the “seuil de tolérance” and restrictions on immigration as a primary means of assuaging women and girls’ fears of sexual violence in neighborhoods with large North African male populations (notably not proposing policies to prevent sexual assault or address potential victims). Shepard, Sex, France and Arab Men, 232–3.

  47. 47.

    Surkis, Sex, Law and Sovereignty, 48, 231, and 287.

  48. 48.

    SAMAS, “Synthèse,” 4th trimester 1961.

  49. 49.

    SAT-FMA, Rapport Mensuel, December 1964 (AHPP, HA 61).

  50. 50.

    Chessel, “Implantation Nord-Africaine dans le quartier Tonkin à Villeurbanne,” 25 August 1966 (ADR, 248 W 356).

  51. 51.

    Chessel, “Implantation Nord-Africaine,” and Commissaire Central to Préfet du Rhône, 29 August 1966, “a/s de l’implantation Nord-Africaine dans le quartier du Tonkin à Villeurbanne” (ADR, 248 W 356).

  52. 52.

    Chessel, “Implantation Nord-Africaine.”

  53. 53.

    Gagnaire to Moulins, 15 September 1966 (ADR, 248 W 356). Gagnaire was elected as a socialist but was markedly centrist in his approach (and vehemently anti-communist), to the point that he was expelled from the SFIO in 1967. See Bernard Meuret, Le socialisme municipal: Villeurbanne, 1880–1982 (Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1982), part V.

  54. 54.

    Bost, “Une colonie Nord-Africaine s'étend et ceinture Villeurbanne,” Dernière heure lyonnaise, 22 September 1966 (ADR, 248 W 356).

  55. 55.

    Tellingly, only non-North Africans were categorized as true “neighborhood residents.” Broc sought to dispel charges of racism by describing “sympathetic” exchanges between wives at the market and men and the factory and explaining that non-migrant residents were moved by the “unhappiness” of the new arrivals. Bost, “Une colonie Nord-Africaine s'étend et ceinture Villeurbanne.”

  56. 56.

    Gagnaire to Moulins, 11 October 1966 (ADR, 248 W 356).

  57. 57.

    This public letter was signed by the local CFDT (Confédération française démocratique du travail) the Cercle Tocqueville (a progressive Christian group), the unified socialist party, the Groupe lyonnais de la préparation à la non-violence, and the Union féminine civique et sociale. Progrès de Lyon, “Racistes ou pas racistes?” 15 October 1966 (AMV, 2 D 100).

  58. 58.

    Gagnaire’s use of “mafia” suggests that his earlier invocation of good relations with Italian migrants should not be taken at face value. Indeed, as many scholars have shown, Italian and other European migrants were subject to a host of discriminatory attitudes and policies when they arrived in France, many with racial overtones. See especially Clifford Rosenberg, Policing Paris.

  59. 59.

    Only positive letters appear to have been archived.

  60. 60.

    Minute would reemerge after 1968 as one of the main venues for the campaign to connect “Arabs” with sexual deviance and innate criminality. Shepard, Sex, France and Arab Men, 39–40.

  61. 61.

    Letter to Gagnaire, 2 November 1966 (ADV, 2 D 100).

  62. 62.

    Comité de défense prolétarienne et de solidarité ouvrière, pamphlet, received 28 November 1966 (ADV, 2 D 100). The language of self-defense revealed a notion that the state was failing to protect its citizens—narrowly defined; indeed, this particular group charged that the government and business interests were accepting the sick, unemployed, and criminal from North Africa in exchange for access to Saharan oil.

  63. 63.

    Letter to Gagnaire, 3 November 1966 (ADV, 2 D 100).

  64. 64.

    Balmonet to Gagnaire, 16 October 1966 (ADV, 2 D 100). This particular letter espoused some interesting racial ideas by including “Franco’s Spanish and the Portuguese” among “African tribes.” Multiple references to fighting the Germans suggest that the writer overlaid the population concerns with a strong anti-fascism lens.

  65. 65.

    Balmonet to Gagnaire, 16 October 1966.

  66. 66.

    Vinson to Ninin, copied to regional mayors, 29 October 1966 (ADV, 2 D 100).

  67. 67.

    To underline this point, the writer claimed that employers found only 10% of “Arabs” to be “acceptable as workers.” Vinson to Ninin, 29 October 1966.

  68. 68.

    Gagnaire to Vinson, 4 November 1966 (ADV, 2 D 100). Vinson sent a follow-up thank you note to Gagnaire’s expression of solidarity.

  69. 69.

    Hubert to Gagnaire, 17 October 1966 (AMV, 2 D 100). “Blousons noirs” refers to a particular youth subculture from the 1950s and early 1960s, based on rock’n’roll among other American styles and cultural types (James Dean, etc.).

  70. 70.

    Nigon to Gagnaire, 18 October 1966 (AMV, 2 D 100).

  71. 71.

    See Byrnes, Making Space.

  72. 72.

    Todd Shepard draws attention to the ways that racism—and antiracism—influenced emerging discussions of rape in the 1970s. In the face of feminist activists’ attempts to uncover and prevent sexual violence, anti-rape rhetoric seemed to find a larger audience only as an anti-immigrant approach. Meanwhile, leftists tended to focus more on the harm done to North African men by sexual stereotypes and unjust accusations than on the harm caused to victims of actual sexual violence. Sex, France, and Arab Men, Chapter 8.

  73. 73.

    Hubert to Gagnaire, 17 October 1966 (AMV, 2 D 100).

  74. 74.

    Despite repeated claims about higher rates of sexual assault by North African men, studies by police and others consistently found that sexual crimes were committed by North Africans at or below the rate by “nationals.” Shepard, Sex, France, and Arab Men, 230–2.

  75. 75.

    Lasaraff to Gagnaire, 21 September 1966 (AMV, 2 D 100).

  76. 76.

    Vinson to Ninin, 29 October 1966.

  77. 77.

    According to Todd Shepard, “accusations of sexual deviance resonate in virtually all the other social and political registers in which anti-Maghrebi sentiments played out, whether these entailed charges of criminality, high birthrates, parasitism, barbarism, ‘smells,’ ‘noises,’ or the like.” Shepard, Sex, France, and Arab Men, 8.

  78. 78.

    A 1967 survey of the 336 total households found 237 Algerian, 21 Tunisian, 4 Moroccan, 14 Spanish, 6 Italian, 4 Portuguese, and 44 “French” families. Gagnaire to Préfet du Rhône, “Enquête sur les logements de la Régie Simon,” 28 February 1968 (ADR, 759 W 318).

  79. 79.

    For more on this lengthy battle, see Byrnes, Making Space.

  80. 80.

    Mangeot to Borrel, 9 October 1974 and 9 December 1974 (ADR, 759 W 290). Ironically, the very desire for dispersal that animated officials’ actions with Olivier de Serres was the main barrier to closing down the complex as there simply weren’t enough spaces for these families if quotas were to be maintained. See Byrnes, Making Space.

  81. 81.

    Moulins to Inspecteur d’académie, 31 October 1969, “Scolarisation des enfants étrangers–problème posé par les enfants de la Régie Simon à Villeurbanne” (ADR, 759 W 318).

  82. 82.

    See folder “Plaintes – Incidences,” especially letter from L to President, 28 June 1971 and letter from P to Prefect, 8 July 1971 (ADR, 759 W 318).

  83. 83.

    Gagnaire to Préfet du Rhône, forwarding letter from Directrice du Collège Marie Curie, 16 June 1970 (ADR, 759 W 318).

  84. 84.

    Commissaire de police, 7 July 1970, “Surveillances des communautés étrangères et en particulier nord-africaines de l'agglomération lyonnaise” (ADR, 759 W 318).

  85. 85.

    Moulins, “Limitation de l’admission des familles étrangères – Refoulement,” 15 June 1970 (ADR, 759 W 261).

  86. 86.

    Silber, “Villeurbanne-les-deux-écoles,” Le Point 169, 15 December 1975 (ADR, 759 W 318).

  87. 87.

    Pétition de parents d’élèves algériens pour une école “mixte,” 1 October 1974 in “Olivier de Serres, Radiographie d’une ‘cité ghetto,’” exhibition catalog, Le Rize, 2009. See also Annie Schwartz, Olivier de Serres ou “la médina brumeuse” (Villeurbanne: Centre Social de Cusset, 1997) and Byrnes, Making Space.

  88. 88.

    SLPM, “Note relative à la Cité Simon à Villeurbanne,” 1974 (ADR, 759 W 318). In addition to police presence, officials tried to establish a socio-educative youth center in the complex; this center became subject to its own set of controversies.

  89. 89.

    Doueil, “Note a l'attention de Monsieur le Secrétaire d'Etat aux travailleurs Immigrées,” 1975 (ADR, 759 W 318).

  90. 90.

    See correspondence in AMV, 2 D 94.

  91. 91.

    Elise Franklin, “Inessential Labor,” Chapter 11 in this volume. See also Amelia Lyons, The Civilizing Mission in the Metrolpole, 216. This is not to say that the French state was unwilling to engage in coercive birth control measures; French doctors in Réunion carried out thousands of forced abortions and sterilizations in the 1970s. See Nimisha Barton, Reproductive Citizens, 215.

  92. 92.

    See Byrnes, Making Space, Chapter 5.

  93. 93.

    Conseil municipal de Villeurbanne, séance du 12 juin 78, “Quartier Olivier de Serres,” (ADR, 759 W 320).

  94. 94.

    Le Progrès de Lyon, “Le relogement des familles d'Oliver-de-Serres,” 19 September 1980 (ADR, 759 W 320).

  95. 95.

    Shepard, Sex, France, and Arab Men, 7.

  96. 96.

    Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “Donald Trump’s False Comments Connecting Mexican Immigrants and Crime,” Washington Post, 8 July 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/08/donald-trumps-false-comments-connecting-mexican-immigrants-and-crime/ (accessed 15 June 2022). Like many of the French figures cited here, Trump quickly asserted that these ideas did not make him racist.

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    Melissa K. Byrnes

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  1. Department of History, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Margaret Cook Andersen

  2. Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX, USA

    Melissa K. Byrnes

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Byrnes, M.K. (2023). Criminal Fertility: Policing North African Families After Decolonization. In: Andersen, M.C., Byrnes, M.K. (eds) Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire. New Directions in Welfare History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26024-7_10

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