THIS is a book about the origins of a new social class in industrial societies—the non-citizen alien laborer. Largely because of its contemporaneity, it is a new topic in historical research. The immigrant worker appeared often with industrialization in the nineteenth century not only in the United States but also Britain, Germany and France. Yet the characteristics of the contemporary non-citizen work force emerge only in the twentieth century. It is a distinct product of modern capitalist democracy. While the features of this new society (and the alien working class) become clear after 1945, their origins must be found between 1914 and 1940 and first in France.
This book is not an ethnic history nor a labor history; it may inform the reader about the attitudes, actions and work patterns of immigrant laborers to France. However, it focuses on a different problem—the growing impulse to regulate international migrations. This book attempts to explain the interaction between the social actors which created this new social class. These include French business, labor, and state agencies, on the one hand, and foreign governments, political and cultural organizations, and the immigrants themselves, on the other. Within this broad context of national and international decision-making, this book is about the politics of immigration.
Writing a history is often a solitary act, sometimes too much so. Yet a number of people contributed to this work—in addition to those whose painstaking work is unceremoniously cited in the notes. Harvey Goldberg, whose sensitivity to the urgent questions of modern social history I have learned to respect, suggested this topic to me. Georges Mauco wrote the definitive contemporary work on this subject in 1932 in an exhaustive human geography of the migration of the 1920s, Les étrangers en France. In an interview, Professor Mauco described how his interest in the social marginality of the immigrants in the early 1930s led him into the study of psychology in the 1940s and beyond. While his perspective is very different from mine, I found that Mauco’s work remains extremely useful. Another book, Les pouvoirs publics francais et l’immigration dans l’entre deux guerres, published in 1976 by Jean-Charles Bonnet, is basically a parliamentary history of the law on immigration in the interwar period. Like Mauco’s work it answers some of the questions that I cannot address.
The historical leftovers of any generation are, from the researcher’s point of view, very spotty. My period left a great many theses (for the doctorat en droit), basis census statistics, a few surveys, and a widely scattered mine of information in newspapers and archives (largely administrative and police files). Many French librarians and archivists patiently assisted me in finding material for this often elusive topic. The University of Wisconsin supported me during my travels. Helping me to refine my interpretation and writing were historians from Wisconsin (Milwaukee as well as Madison). In particular I must thank Margo Conk, James Cronin, Darryl Holter, and Dominico Sella. Other colleagues who made comments on various parts of the book include Lynn Lees, Christopher Johnson, Gary Freeman, Judy Reardon, Nancy Green, Mark Miller, and Michael Hanagan. Jessica Myers not only typed the manuscript but offered sensible suggestions for improvements.
In my wanderings across the face of industrial France seeking those bits of data buried in the “M” series of departmental archives, I often felt like a migrant worker. Largely out of economic necessity, I stayed mostly in the immigrant quarters where I had the opportunity to get to know a number of immigrant workers. I hope that this book may contribute a little to an understanding of their history.