Counting Migrants

"Counting is a way of conceptualising", wrote Alain Desrosières. Counting migrants first entails defining them and constructing a statistical category that distinguishes "us / nationals" from "others / foreigners". This study day seeks to question the purposes of such quantification: is counting intended to control, to stigmatise, to exclude or marginalise, or rather to foster better integration? Who is likely to be unsettled or reassured by these figures, and to what extent?

Five papers address this process of quantification in distinct political and geographical configurations in an effort to deconstruct the category of "migrants" and analyse its implications.

The event forms part of the seminar series "Encrypting and Decrypting Empires", organised at the Maison Suger since 2024. It is supported by the Centre national de la recherche scientifique programme "FRontières de PaPiers: Exclure par les chiffres" (FRAPPE), which funds the research stay in France of Chikouna Cissé, Senior Lecturer in contemporary history at Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny. In both cases, the aim is to quietly re-examine the "paper borders" that restrict the circulation of people in the name of criteria that are more or less contestable and arbitrary. The study day will also provide an opportunity to clarify the impact of colonisation on the construction of the category of the "foreigner".

9:30-10:00 a.m
Wellcome and Introduction

Béatrice Touchelay (University Lille) & Emmanuelle Sibeud (University Paris 8)

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10:00-11:00 a.m.

"'Indigenous' repertoires for circumventing colonial encryption in French West Africa (late 19th-early 20th century)"

Chikouna Cisse, MCF History, Houphouët-Boigny University, Abidjan, Ivory Coast

This presentation addresses the deep structures of a society seeking to survive under foreign domination, juxtaposing its long-standing cultural and social realities with the deployment of an imperial political and economic order. The concept of the colonial potentate, borrowed by Achille Mbembe from Frantz Fanon, was far from omnipotent. The analysis draws on the notion of agency from Anthony Giddens and Edward Palmer Thompson to characterise the resilience and inventive capacity of “indigenous” societies in the face of colonial orders, while avoiding the trap of denying domination, as noted by Jérôme Vidal. It adopts a subalternist perspective, inspired by Ranajit Guha, emphasising the history “from below” of resistance to imperial authority. The presentation demonstrates that African resistance to French colonial rule extended beyond armed opposition. The Jula merchant guild and traditional African legitimacies offer a lens to reinterpret these dynamics.

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11:00-12:00 a.m. 

"Counting students from colonial Asia. Methodological and practical issues in the history of (trans)imperial student mobility (first half of the 20th century)"

Sara Legrandjacques, Sorbonne University – IHMC Associate Member

This paper examines the methodological challenges of counting students from colonial Asia, particularly French Indochina and British India, in the first half of the 20th century. The establishment of colonial higher education in French and British Asia, including imperial and international mobility, exposes researchers to the partial and fragmented nature of sources.

Official attempts to monitor student populations primarily capture scholarship recipients, a minority within student cohorts. This highlights the agency of students in navigating academic careers, including avoidance strategies, and the archival challenges faced by historians. The study relies on cross-referencing government, university, and private archives, whose heterogeneous content and preservation practices present additional challenges.

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12:00-1:00 p.m. 

"Counting migrants at the Paris police headquarters, between registration objectives and regularizations (1890s-1930s)"

Roxane Bonnardel-Mira, postdoctoral researcher, University of Padua

In 1888, foreigners were required to register with the local town hall, and in 1917, to obtain an identity card to reside legally in France. These measures aimed to locate and monitor foreigners, distinguishing authorised residents from those deemed irregular.

The press, demographers, and migration authorities often considered compliance low. The mobility of foreigners raised fears of unreliable statistics, prompting the Minister of the Interior to declare the administration "unable to establish reliable statistics on the movement of foreigners in France". This motivated a reorganisation of the immigration police in the 1920s. The new foreign nationals department at the Paris police headquarters oversaw both compliance checks and the compilation of a "central registry", providing a unique statistical record of migration.

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1:00-2:00 p.m. 
Lunch

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2:00-3:00 p.m.

"Planning labor migration to Algeria during the emergence of a modern statistical state (1950s–1970s)"

Baptiste Mollard, Research associate at the Center for Sociological Research on Law and Penal Institutions (CESDIP, UVSQ) and member of the Convergences Migrations Institute

This paper explores the development of statistics on labour emigration to France during late colonial and post-independence periods, and the independent Algerian state’s attempts to use these figures to plan migration. Algerian planners identified biases in colonial statistical approaches, which reduced migration to demographic phenomena.

From the mid-1960s, data evaluations were conducted with precision, treating statistics as instruments for policy action. Critiques within the Algerian Ministry of Labour of the 1969 emigration plan emphasised the need for a nuanced understanding of Algerian statistical modernity. While primarily demographic, the plan aimed to compensate for limited state information capabilities in a pragmatic, critical, and reflective manner.

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3:00-4:00 p.m.

"The use of statistics and changes in migration policy in French-administered Cameroon:  issues, continuities, and discontinuities (1916–1939)"

Willie Foga Konefon, Historian, PhD, University of Yaoundé I/ CIRPES, Cameroon 

Statistics on foreign populations, particularly the German community, functioned as tools of knowledge and governance under French administration (1916–1939), enabling control of migration flows, regulation of movement, and the establishment of “legitimate means of movement” to ensure France’s security, stability, and sovereignty.

Drawing on archival and secondary sources, the paper contributes to the socio-history of public migration policy, showing how control over migration statistics underpinned colonial domination and the consolidation of sovereign authority.

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4:00-5:00 p.m.

"Sources for counting internal migrants in Madagascar during the contemporary period"

Roland Rokotovao, Associate Professor of History, University of Antananarivo, Madagascar

Since colonial times, the main sources on internal migration in Madagascar are official statistics compiled annually by district chiefs and municipal authorities. During the colonial period, records primarily captured workers registered at recruitment centres and in areas of colonial exploitation.

Figures were approximate due to unregistered migrant workers and spontaneous migrants, though identities of recorded individuals were known. In the post-colonial and contemporary periods, the definition of internal migrants has become more complex, with identification complicated by group affiliation, village of origin, diversity of activities, and temporal aspects of migratory trajectories.