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Undesirable
Passionate Mobility and Women’s Defiance of French Colonial Policing, 1919–1952
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2022
About this book
Archival research into policing and surveillance of migrant women illuminates pressing contemporary issues.
Examining little-known policing archives in France, Senegal, and Cambodia, Jennifer Anne Boittin unearths the stories of hundreds of women labeled “undesirable” by the French colonial police and society in the early twentieth century. These “undesirables” were often women traveling alone, women who were poor or ill, women of color, or women whose intimate lives were deemed unruly. To refute the label and be able to move freely, they spoke out or wrote impassioned letters: some emphasized their “undesirable” qualities to suggest that they needed the care and protection of the state to support their movements, while others used the empire’s own laws around Frenchness and mobility to challenge state or societal interference. Tacking between advocacy and supplication, these women summoned intimate details to move beyond, contest, or confound surveillance efforts, bringing to life a practice that Boittin terms “passionate mobility.” In considering how ordinary women pursued autonomy, security, companionship, or simply a better existence in the face of surveillance and control, Undesirable illuminates pressing contemporary issues of migration and violence.
Examining little-known policing archives in France, Senegal, and Cambodia, Jennifer Anne Boittin unearths the stories of hundreds of women labeled “undesirable” by the French colonial police and society in the early twentieth century. These “undesirables” were often women traveling alone, women who were poor or ill, women of color, or women whose intimate lives were deemed unruly. To refute the label and be able to move freely, they spoke out or wrote impassioned letters: some emphasized their “undesirable” qualities to suggest that they needed the care and protection of the state to support their movements, while others used the empire’s own laws around Frenchness and mobility to challenge state or societal interference. Tacking between advocacy and supplication, these women summoned intimate details to move beyond, contest, or confound surveillance efforts, bringing to life a practice that Boittin terms “passionate mobility.” In considering how ordinary women pursued autonomy, security, companionship, or simply a better existence in the face of surveillance and control, Undesirable illuminates pressing contemporary issues of migration and violence.
Author / Editor information
Jennifer Anne Boittin is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of Global History at UNC Chapel Hill. She is the author of Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris.
Reviews
“Innovative and engrossing, Undesirable contains cutting-edge scholarship on sex and gender in the French Empire. Boittin provides a vivid and powerful set of images of white and Indigenous women’s encounters with the French state, showing how women engaged the colonial bureaucracy, police, and judiciary.”
— Leora Auslander, University of Chicago“Undesirable is a breakthrough study of women’s determined pursuit of mobility across France’s twentieth-century empire. Boittin uncovers in rich detail the many strategies that individual women from all walks of life used to defy a colonial state determined to keep them ‘in their place.’ A wonderful achievement.”
— Alice Conklin, The Ohio State University"This is a book that is both about telling stories and that itself tells many stories. It seems as if an accurate review should, itself, engage in an act of storytelling to fully convey the essence of Jennifer Anne Boittin’s remarkable and, in many ways, unsummarizable Undesirable. Doing so, however, would require too many stories and more space than even H-France Review allows."
— Hannah Frydman, H-France Review“Undesirable is a wide-ranging study that sheds further light on women’s colonial experiences, adding to the growing body of work on colonial or colonized women.”
— Patricia M. E. Lorcin, JMH Book ReviewsTopics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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List of Illustrations
ix -
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Introduction
1 -
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1 “I Refused”: Undesirable Immobile Vengeful
29 -
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2 Traversing Movements of Embarking, Crossing, Disembarking, Circulating, Dispersing, and Reconstructing
55 -
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3 “Man- Woman”: Siting Frenchness, Sites of Frenchness
88 -
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4 “The Law Has Been Violated in My Person”: On the Anatomy of Intimate Violence
116 -
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5 They “Allegedly Had Intimate Relations”: Gossip, Desire, and Companionship
147 -
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Epilogue
178 -
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Acknowledgments
195 -
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Abbreviations
199 -
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Notes
201 -
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Bibliography
241 -
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Index
263
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 26, 2022
eBook ISBN:
9780226822242
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780226822242
Keywords for this book
France; Southeast Asia; West Africa; Senegal; Indochina; undesirable; women; migration; police; colonial
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
