Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l'Homme (MMSH ) - Aix-en-Provence, France

Post-Doc, IDEMEC

Other Affiliations: EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) - Paris, IRIS (Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux - Sciences sociales, Politique, Santé)

Researcher

Thesis Title: La police des identités. Histoire comparée d’une administration d’État en France et en Italie, 1880-1914 [Police of Identity: Comparative History of a State Administration in France and Italy, 1880-1914]

About

I wrote my PhD about the police activities in France and Italy in the field of individual identification during the period 1880-1914 with a focus on institutions, innovative processes, techniques and police practices. This research was based on the analysis of several series of archives mainly situated in the Archives de la Préfecture de Police (Paris), in the Archives nationales (Paris and Fontainebleau) and in the Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Rome). I compared the inheritance of criminal anthropology in the identification of criminals, the influence of biological theories in Italy and the construction of a practical knowledge in France. I also analysed the institutional construction of police services specialised in criminal identification, their position and actions in the judicial system at national level, their pedagogical activities to police agents and their self-representation through press newspapers and public exhibitions. A part of this research was dedicated to the role of French and Italian experts in the internationalisation of identification methods toward the congress of international police held in Monaco in April 1914. A special focus was on the importance given to three major criminal figures prior to WWI and their importance in the development of specialised police identification activities : the “international criminal”, the “foreigners” and the “Gypsies”.
At the moment, I am involved in a postdoctoral project comparing the different politics and policing of the “Gypsies” in Western Europe, including Italy, France, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany, between 1880 and 1930. A special focus is given to transnational migrations of Gypsy’s caravans, their public perception through local and national press and their consequences on the control and surveillance of the national borders. The main purpose of this research is the study of the “Gypsy Question” at international level : diplomatic exchanges, correspondences between local or national police heads, international police conferences, normative discourses and police identification and research techniques are especially considered.
Another postdoctoral project is dedicated to the institutionalisation of a French police department specialised in the identification, control and surveillance of the foreigners during the interwar period. This study is based on the special identity card for foreigners created in 1917 and on the police administration involved in the mechanisms of card registration, deliverance or renewal and expulsion decrees. This study is essentially based on the archives of the central service under the direction of the Minister of Interior (Service central de la carte d’identité des étrangers), based in the Archives nationales (Paris and Fontainebleau), and its relation with the Préfectures in charge of the control in the provinces. The link between individual controls and political surveillance of the refugees, especially during the 1930’s, the personal implication of identification in exile and migration experiences, the special police borders reinforced after 1933, the control of special categories such as the non-national “Gypsies” and the French “Indigenous”, and the origins of internment politics are the most important aspects of this ongoing research.