Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon

Making Space by Melissa K. Byrnes examines how four French suburbs near Paris and Lyon reacted to growing populations of North Africans, particularly Algerians, before, during, and after the Algerian War. It challenges a version of French migration history that reads the urban unrest of recent years as preordained and offers a deeper understanding of the decisions that led to the current tensions in French society.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 354 pages
Publication date: 01 January 2024
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Since the 2005 urban protests in France, public debate has often centered on questions of how the country has managed its relationship with its North African citizens and residents. In Making Space, Melissa K. Byrnes considers how four French suburbs near Paris and Lyon reacted to rapidly growing populations of North Africans, especially Algerians, before, during, and after the Algerian War. In particular, Byrnes investigates what motivated local actors such as municipal officials, regional authorities, employers, and others to become involved in debates over migrants' rights and welfare, and the wide variety of strategies community leaders developed in response to the migrants' presence. An examination of the ways local policies and attitudes formed and re-formed communities offers a deeper understanding of the decisions that led to the current tensions in French society and questions about France's ability—and will—to fulfill the promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity for all of its citizens. Byrnes uses local experiences to contradict a version of French migration history that reads the urban unrest of recent years as preordained.

Since the 2005 urban protests in France, public debate has often centered on questions of how the country has managed its relationship with its North African citizens and residents.

In Making Space, Melissa K. Byrnes considers how four French suburbs near Paris and Lyon reacted to rapidly growing populations of North Africans, especially Algerians, before, during, and after the Algerian War.

In particular, Byrnes investigates what motivated local actors such as municipal officials, regional authorities, employers, and others to become involved in debates over migrants' rights and welfare, and the wide variety of strategies community leaders developed in response to the migrants' presence.

An examination of the ways local policies and attitudes formed and re-formed communities offers a deeper understanding of the decisions that led to the current tensions in French society and questions about France's ability—and will—to fulfill the promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity for all of its citizens.

Byrnes uses local experiences to contradict a version of French migration history that reads the urban unrest of recent years as preordained.

Weight: 494g
Dimension: 151 x 228 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781496237583