In Native to the Republic, Minayo Nasiali traces the process through which expectations about living standards and decent housing came to be understood as social rights in late twentieth-century France. These ideas evolved through everyday negotiations between ordinary people, municipal authorities, central state bureaucrats, elected officials, and social scientists in postwar Marseille. Nasiali shows how these local-level interactions fundamentally informed evolving ideas about French citizenship and the built environment, namely that the institutionalization of social citizenship also created new spaces for exclusion. Although everyone deserved social rights, some were supposedly more deserving than others.

From the 1940s through the early 1990s, metropolitan discussions about the potential for town planning to transform everyday life were shaped by colonial and, later, postcolonial migration within the changing empire. As a port and the historical gateway to and from the colonies, Marseille's interrelated projects to develop welfare institutions and manage urban space make it a particularly significant site for exploring this uneven process. Neighborhood debates about the meaning and goals of modernization contributed to normative understandings about which residents deserved access to expanding social rights. Nasiali argues that assumptions about racial, social, and spatial differences profoundly structured a differential system of housing in postwar France. Native to the Republic highlights the value of new approaches to studying empire, membership in the nation, and the welfare state by showing how social citizenship was not simply constituted within "imagined communities" but also through practices involving the contestation of spaces and the enjoyment of rights.

About the Author

Minayo Nasiali is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Arizona.

Reviews

This detailed review of citizenship and housing in postwar Marseille amplifies understanding of French urban life through reconstruction and analysis of local dynamics in the neighborhoods (and public housing projects) of this dynamic, variegated city over time.... Carefully engaging literatures on the state and society in France, the author offers new vantages more than new patterns or interpretations. Nonetheless, the book should be welcomed for both its local, human focus and its accessible study of politics and urban transformations in the second city of France, which speaks to many contemporary issues in France and beyond. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries.

-- G. W. McDonogh, Bryn Mawr College * CHOICE *

In this groundbreaking book, Nasiali argues that ideas about membership in the nation and about quality of life in late twentieth-century France were forged at the local level...What is pioneering in Nasiali's approach is her engagement with housing projects at the local level in Marseille. Rather than observation from the heights of French central state authority, she digs down into the nitty-gritty of local negotiations between ordinary people and government authorities.

* Journal of Modern History *

Native to the Republic is a solid addition to postcolonial studies on France and the French welfare state.

* American Historical Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9781501704772
Author Minayo Nasiali
Format Hardback
Page Count 248
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 24mm