Colonial Techniques in the Imperial Capital: The Prefecture of Police and the Surveillance of North Africans in Paris, 1925-circa 1970

Abstract

The presence of North African colonial migrants during the interwar years spurred the Parisian Prefecture of Police to adopt some elements of colonial administration. From 1925 to approximately 1970, the Parisian police engaged in the specialized surveillance of the North African community. While official North African police services existed only from 1925 to 1945 and again from 1958 to 1962, a durable conception of North Africans as prone to violence and susceptible to anticolonial politics led the police to undertake systematic if at times unofficial surveillance of North Africans for the entire period under study. This colonial perspective on policing became integrated into the general policing of Paris and outlasted colonialism itself. Pendant l’entre-deux-guerres, la présence de migrants nord-africains incita la Préfecture de police de Paris à adopter certaines procédures de l’administration coloniale. A partir de 1925 et jusqu’aux années 1970, la police parisienne fut chargée de surveiller de façon spécifique la communauté maghrébine. Alors que les services de police relatifs aux Nord-Africains n’ont fonctionné officiellement qu’entre 1925 et 1945, puis de 1958 à 1962, l’idée, solidement ancrée, que les Maghrébins étaient enclins à la violence et susceptibles de fomenter des troubles anticoloniaux, conduisit la police à entreprendre une surveillance systématique, et parfois non officielle, des Nord-Africains pendant la période étudiée ici (1925-70). Ce dispositif colonial fut intégré au fonctionnement de la police en général et a survécu au colonialisme lui-même.

Policing Commercial Sex in 1970s France: Regulating the Racialized Sexual Order

“…Critical race researchers on policing have argued that policing practices constitute a form of 'internal colonialism' to the extent that they involve the exertion of power over racialized populations with the aim of control (Gutiérrez, 2004). With particular relevance to France, they have argued that the police treat North African migrants as internal enemies, employing colonial techniques of policing that outlived independence (Rigouste, 2014;Prakash, 2013). Especially during the Algerian war, the French police in the metropole employed extensive violence and torture against Algerians (House, 2004;House and MacMaster, 2006).…”

“…Selective tolerance was spatial: neighbourhoods racialized as ‘North African’ were spaces in the city where commercial sex was available, establishing ‘zones of degeneracy’ with different ‘social and legal conventions’ (Razack, 1998). This reinforced the public image of these districts as dangerous and morally transgressive spaces, marked by the presence of racialized men and sex workers.…”

“…This article draws upon insights from scholars on gender, intimacy and colonialism who have argued that the regulation of interracialized sex and intimacy has been integral to constructing and protecting racial hierarchies within the colonial sexual order (Stoler, 2010; Stoler, 1989; Stoler, 1995; Ray, 2015). Thus, to manage interracialized heterosexual contact, the colonial administration regulated prostitution to ensure that colonized men did not have access to commercial sex with white women (Howell, 2000; Razack, 1998; Staszak, 2014; Taraud, 2003). Research on the regulation of interracialized intimacies should be attuned to such indirect types of regulation that aim to make possible some forms of intimacy while preventing or restricting others.…”

Toward a genealogy of the police idea in imperial Japan: a synthesis

“…For example, on policing and race in the contemporary USA, see Muñiz 2015. On policing in Paris and the French Empire, seeRosenberg 2006 andPrakash 2013. …”

Between Problematisation and Invisibilisation

“…them (Gutiérrez, 2004). In the French context, some scholars have argued that the police treated North African migrants as internal enemies, employing colonial techniques of policing that outlasted independence (Prakash, 2013;Rigouste, 2014). This chapter brings together these two strands of literature, on the policing of sex and sexuality and of postcolonial migrants to examine how the police monitored and controlled the intimate lives of postcolonial migrants, and specifically how they implemented and enforced legislation to regulate interracialised intimacies during and after independence.…”