Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T18:54:35.938Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - The Politics of Immigration

Unwanted Wartime Collaborators or Ideal White Settlers?

from Part I - The Politics of Relief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2021

Laure Humbert
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Get access

Summary

This chapter demonstrates that French arguments over the transfer of DPs to France sit at the juncture of several critical debates about post-war politics of migration and France’s diplomatic strategies in the context of the nascent Cold War. In the aftermath of the Second World War, DPs constituted an enticing demographic opportunity to replenish a French population denuded by two world wars and a declining birth rate. And yet the question of DP emigration defied consensus in France. Communist decision-makers and their ideological fellow-travellers on the French left were strongly opposed to the recruitment of what they regarded as fascist DPs and ‘war collaborators’. Beneath the surface of what was ostensibly a political and ideological opposition to the entry of allegedly ‘anti-communist’ DPs lay a labyrinth of economic fears, a traditional protectionist reflex, as well as a raft of moral and cultural concerns about their ‘assimilability’ and ‘desirability’. Thus despite the early high hopes attached to the transfer of fit and industrious DPs to France, it was not until April 1947 that a coordinated and significant recruitment scheme was launched by French authorities. Crucially, this chapter reveals that the selection of DPs triggered extensive controversies about how far DPs could or should be assimilated into the nation state and about the presumed superiority or inferiority of various categories of DPs and refugees.

Type
Chapter
Information
Reinventing French Aid
The Politics of Humanitarian Relief in French-Occupied Germany, 1945–1952
, pp. 37 - 76
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×