Postcolonial Minorities in Britain and France


Book Description

This is an examination of how Britain and France are handling the new religious and racial diversity that has become a fact of life in both countries, and how postcolonial minorities are caught between the nation and the state in relation to status and identity, acceptance and integration.




Post-Colonial Cultures in France


Book Description

Ethnic minorities, principally from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the surviving remnants of France's overseas empire, are increasingly visible in contemporary France. Post-Colonial Cultures in France edited by Alec Hargreaves and Mark McKinney is the first wide-ranging survey in English of the vibrant cultural practices now being forged by France's post-colonial minorities. The contributions in Post-Colonial Cultures in France cover both the ethnic diversity of minority groups and a variety of cultural forms ranging from literature and music to film and television. Using a diversity of critical and theoretical approaches from the disciplines of cultural studies, literary studies, migration studies, anthropology and history, Post-Colonial Cultures in France explores the globalization of cultures and international migration.




Postcolonial minorities in Britain and France


Book Description

This book compares the postcolonial populations of Britain and France, examining the ways in which they are redefining citizenship. Bearing in mind the different histories and political systems of each country, it considers questions of national identity, values, the place of religion, secularism and public spaces - all integral to determining what makes a country a true nation. Recent security threats have made the debate around minorities and assimilation all the more pressing, and this book delves deep into the issues of feminism, Islam and group identities. It will be of interest to students and scholars of race, religion and migration studies.




The Memory of Colonialism in Britain and France


Book Description

This book explores national attitudes to remembering colonialism in Britain and France. By comparing these two former colonial powers, the author tells two distinct stories about coming to terms with the legacies of colonialism, the role of silence and the breaking thereof. Examining memory through the stories of people who incited public conversation on colonialism: activists; politicians; journalists; and professional historians, this book argues that these actors mobilised the colonial past to make sense of national identity, race and belonging in the present. In focusing on memory as an ongoing, politicised public debate, the book examines the afterlife of colonial history as an element of political and social discourse that depends on actors’ goals and priorities. A thought-provoking and powerful read that explores the divisive legacies of colonialism through oral history, this book will appeal to those researching imperialism, collective memory and cultural identity.




The Politics of Integration


Book Description

After almost seven decades, Britain and France, nations with divergent political cultures and heirs to contrasting philosophies of 'integration', have proclaimed the failure to integrate their post-war ethnic minorities: at this present time, the ‘Muslim’. The ‘argument’ of this book, therefore, is a question: despite the legal, political and social commitments that emerged from the events of the Holocaust, why do both nations continue to govern minorities on the sites of the law and race? Through comparative readings of British Asian and Franco-Maghrebian literatures, the author examines the contours and patterns of British and French post-war governance and racism over four decades. Departing from prevailing theories in postcolonial studies that situate post-war racism within the narrative of colonialism or the politics of the nation-state, The Politics of Integration shows how we must re-appraise the inter-war histories of minorities if we are to ask more meaningful questions about the present. We are invited to take stock of how well theorization of post-war ethnic populations and their politics have served us in terms of asking: what does history tell us, and how and where do we - Europe and its minorities - go from here? As such, the book will appeal to scholars in multiple disciplines in the humanities and social sciences such as history, philosophy, literature, cultural and postcolonial studies.




Post-migratory Cultures in Postcolonial France


Book Description

Post-Migratory Cultures in Postcolonial France offers a critical assessment of the ways in which French writers, filmmakers, musicians and other artists descended from immigrants from former colonial territories bring their specificity to bear on the bounds and applicability of French republicanism, Frenchness and national identity, and contemporary cultural production in France. In mobilizing a range of approaches and methodologies pertinent to their specialist fields of inquiry, contributors to this volume share in the common objective of elucidating the cultural productions of what we are calling post-migratory (second- and third-generation) postcolonial minorities. The volume provides a lens through which to query the dimensions of postcoloniality and transnationalism in relation to post-migratory postcolonial minorities in France and identifies points of convergence and conversation among them in the range of their cultural production. The cultural practitioners considered query traditional French high culture and its pathways and institutions; some emerge as autodidacts, introducing new forms of authorship and activism; they inflect French cultural production with different 'accents', some experimental and even avant-garde in nature. As the volume contributors show, though post-migratory postcolonial minorities sometimes express dis-settlement, they also provide an incisive view of social identities in France today and their own compelling visions for the future.




Scars of Partition


Book Description

Based on three decades of fieldwork throughout the developing world, Scars of Partition is the first book to systematically evaluate the long-term implications of French and British styles of colonialism and decolonization for ordinary people throughout the so-called Third World. It pays particular attention to the contemporary legacies of artificial boundaries superimposed by Britain and France that continue to divide indigenous peoples into separate postcolonial states. In so doing, it uniquely illustrates how the distinctive stamps of France and Britain continue to mark daily life along and behind these inherited borders in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Caribbean. Scars of Partition draws on political science, anthropology, history, and geography to examine six cases of indigenous, indentured, and enslaved peoples partitioned by colonialism in West Africa, West Indies, South Pacific, Southeast Asia, South India, and the Indian Ocean. William F. S. Miles demonstrates that sovereign nations throughout the developing world, despite basic differences in culture, geography, and politics, still bear the underlying imprint of their colonial pasts. Disentangling and appreciating these embedded colonial legacies is critical to achieving full decolonization—particularly in their borderlands.




The Construction of Minority Identities in France and Britain


Book Description

In France the idea that a person can be both a French citizen and have an ethnic or religious identity is unacceptable, while in Britain community cohesion promote the combining of race or faith with the idea of being British. This volume examines the problems posed by these assumptions and the realities that are forcing them to be revisited.




The Colonial Legacy in France


Book Description

Debates about the legacy of colonialism in France are not new, but they have taken on new urgency in the wake of recent terrorist attacks. Responding to acts of religious and racial violence in 2005, 2010, and 2015 and beyond, the essays in this volume pit French ideals against government-sponsored revisionist decrees that have exacerbated tensions, complicated the process of establishing and recording national memory, and triggered divisive debates on what it means to identify as French. As they document the checkered legacy of French colonialism, the contributors raise questions about France and the contemporary role of Islam, the banlieues, immigration, race, history, pedagogy, and the future of the Republic. This innovative volume reconsiders the cultural, economic, political, and social realities facing global French citizens today and includes contributions by Achille Mbembe, Benjamin Stora, Françoise Vergès, Alec Hargreaves, Elsa Dorlin, and Alain Mabanckou, among others.