Indispensables et indésirables

A few months after the outbreak of the First World War, the French government decided to mobilize tens of thousands of workers in the colonies to address the severe labor shortage in metropolitan France. This involved organizing not only their recruitment throughout the Empire – in Indochina, Madagascar, North Africa, and even China – but also their transportation, job placement, and day-to-day management.This vast undertaking, the first experiment in "organized" immigration, brought some 220,000 men to factories and farms in mainland France. And it profoundly shook the racial order and colonial habits inherited from the 19th century. These new imperial migrations indeed gave rise to unprecedented problems. To ensure the continuity of colonial authority, how could the system of native status be adapted in the metropole? How could these transplanted workers be prevented from breaking free from the new disciplinary order that the administration was striving to impose upon them? How could interracial relationships, which radically subverted colonial domination, be prevented? And what should be done with the mixed-race children born in the metropole? While the participation of soldiers mobilized in the French Empire from 1914 onward is now well documented, the fate of colonial workers during the Great War, perceived as both indispensable and undesirable, remains largely unknown. Using previously unpublished archives, Laurent Dornel opens a new chapter in history and sheds light on an episode that profoundly marked the history of migration to mainland France.