ISBN:
9780226822242
Language:
English
Pages:
1 Online-Ressource (272 pages cm)
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als Boittin, Jennifer Anne Undesirable
DDC:
305.4094409/04
Keywords:
Women Social conditions
;
Women Social conditions
;
Women Social conditions
;
France Colonies
;
France Colonies
;
Afrika
;
Kambodscha
;
Frankreich
;
Kolonie
;
Frau
;
Soziale Situation
;
Geschichte 1900-1945
Abstract:
"Examining little-known policing archives in France, Senegal, and Cambodia, Jennifer Boittin unearths the stories of hundreds of women labeled "undesirable" by the French imperial police in the early twentieth century. These undesirables were often women traveling alone, women who were poor or ill, women of color proclaiming their "Frenchness" to move throughout the empire, or women whose intimate lives were deemed unruly. Undesirability often brought alongside it immobility or imposed migration; French officials routinely either denied passage throughout the empire or attempted to relocate women as they saw fit. To refute the label, women wrote impassioned letters to police and ministers throughout France, French West Africa, and French Indochina. Some emphasized their "undesirable" qualities to suggest that they needed the care and protection of the state to support their movements. Others used the empire's own laws around Frenchness and mobility to challenge state interference, illustrating their independence. Tacking between advocacy and supplication, these women summoned intimate details to move beyond, contest, or confound surveillance efforts and the intrusions of imperial policing, bringing to life a practice that Boittin terms "passionate mobility." In considering how ordinary European, Southeast Asian, and West African women pursued autonomy, security, companionship, or simply a better existence in the face of police surveillance and control, Undesirable illuminates pressing contemporary issues of migration and violence"--
Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index
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