Participant Info

First Name
Melissa
Last Name
Byrnes
Country
United States
State
TX Texas
Affiliation
Southwestern University
Website URL
https://www.southwestern.edu/live/profiles/25746-melissa-byrnes
Keywords
France, French Empire, Migration & Immigration, Colonialism, Nationalism, Islam, Muslim minorities, Race, Human Rights, Activism, 20th Century Europe
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

My research interests include the histories of migration, race, empire, activism, human rights,  and humanitarianism in France and the French Empire. My book, Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon (UNP, 2023), examines post-1945 community activism for migrant rights and welfare. I have also published on how urban development programs excluded or included North Africans in local communities, the ways French officials supported Muslim practices to shore up their imperial power, the effects of imperial and racial ideologies on Franco-Portuguese diplomacy during decolonization, and transnational activist student networks between France and Portugal around the events of May-June 1968. I recently co-edited a volume on Fertility, Family and Social Welfare: The Colonial Politics of Population (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). In addition to my scholarly work, I am a regular contributor to the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog.

Recent Publications

Books

Making Space: Arguing for North African Rights in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon, 1945-1974 (University of Nebraska Press, France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization Series, 2023).

Co-edited with Margaret Andersen, Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire: The Colonial Politics of Population (Palgrave Macmillan, New Directions in Welfare History Series, 2023).

Articles

“Anti-Salazarism and Transnational Solidarity: Franco-Portuguese Student Activism in the 1960s,” French History and Civilization, Vol. 10 (August 2021), pp. 4-18.

“Diplomacy at the end of empire: Evolving French perspectives on Portuguese colonialism in the 1950s and 1960s,” Cold War History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (November 2019), pp. 477-491.

“Ramadan in the Republic: Imperial Necessity and Religious Assistance in the Rhône Department,” French Cultural Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, February 2017.

“Liberating the Land or Absorbing a Community: Managing North African Migration and the Bidonvilles in Paris’s Banlieues,” French Politics, Culture & Society [special issue: “Algerian Legacies in Metropolitan France”], Vol. 31, No. 3, Winter 2013, pp. 1-20.

“Teaching the French Revolution from the Inside Out: Views from Egypt and the Caribbean,” World History Bulletin, Vol. XXVI, no. 1 (Spring 2010).

Media Coverage
Regular contributor, Lawyers Guns & Money, Jan. 2017-present. Occasional op-eds for the Austin American Statesman
Country Focus
France
Expertise by Geography
France, Mediterranean, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
Modern, 20th century
Expertise by Topic
Colonialism, Human Rights, Local & Regional, Migration & Immigration, Race, Religion, Urban History