Rejected by all? Managing (Un)desired Migration through the Expulsion and Repatriation process. The case of Portuguese in France

Based upon analysis of the expulsion and repatriation practices applied to Portuguese migrants in four French cities (Bordeaux, Lyon, Le Havre, and Paris), from a gender-privileged perspective, the core MigMan objective involves rethinking the management of undesired migrations during the interwar years.

Interweaving the different interests between the countries of origin (Portugal), host (France), and transit (Spain), this seeks to grasp just why and how states decided to expel or repatriate Portuguese migrants. What actors were involved and what justifications did they provide? Who were these expelled and repatriated migrants?

The project will deploy an innovative perspective of the undesirability concept, through applying Mezzadra’s concept of internal bordering and differential inclusion to analyze the processes of interaction ongoing among actors of subjection and subjectivation and to identify the factors for decision-making in accordance with the study locations.

The interdisciplinarity also extends to recourse to never before consulted and interconnected archives in three countries (France, Portugal, and Spain), to historical methodologies (transnational and entangled methodologies) in conjunction with the digital humanities (with database building, spatiotemporal analysis and geovisualization).