Abstract

This chapter analyzes the movement of people to and in Europe through the historical lens of “travel control”. Focusing on the so-called Long 1960s, it looks at how French authorities controlled, monitored, and sometimes outright stopped the movement and activity of individuals and groups that they deemed politically troublesome and menacing. In the guise of maintaining “public order”, the double goal of French travel control policies was to prevent the “import” of what national authorities considered international or external political issues and causes, and the “export” of what these authorities considered internal political issues into the global public arena. In this way, authorities emphasized French sovereignty in international affairs, prevented or contained global political networking on French soil, and kept the political sphere organized in the way they saw fit, with a separation between the “national” and the “international”. In order to illustrate what travel control means in this historical context, the chapter focuses on three separate yet related examples: the African-American political activist Malcolm X, antiwar activists during the Vietnam War, and African students after decolonization.

Citation

Temkin, Moshik. "Europe and Travel Control in an Era of Global Politics: The Case of France in the Long 1960s." Peoples and Borders. Ed. Elena Calandri, Simone Paoli, and Antonio Varsori. Munich, 2017, 109-128.