Colonial Techniques in the Imperial Capital: The Prefecture of Police and the Surveillance of North Africans in Paris, 1925-circa 1970 (original) (raw)

The presence of North African colonial migrants during the interwar years spurred the Parisian Prefecture of Police to adopt some elements of colonial administration. From 1925 to approximately 1970, the Parisian police engaged in the specialized surveillance of the North African community. While official North African police services existed only from 1925 to 1945 and again from 1958 to 1962, a durable conception of North Africans as prone to violence and susceptible to anticolonial politics led the police to undertake systematic if at times unofficial surveillance of North Africans for the entire period under study. This colonial perspective on policing became integrated into the general policing of Paris and outlasted colonialism itself.