New Books In French Studies

Today’s episode is a conversation with Dr. Elise Franklin whose first book, Disintegrating Empire: Algerian Family Migration and the Limits of the Welfare State in France, was published by the University of Nebraska Press (2024). Distintegrating Empire examines the processes of decolonization through the intersecting histories of the French welfare state, family migration from Algeria to France, and the French social workers who mediated between the state and their Algerian clients. Franklin argues for the importance of connecting these threads before, through and after formal decolonization, allowing us to see not only the colonial origins of French welfare but the ways in which the French welfare state always winnowed down who could access its benefits, making a “golden age” of welfare only out of the purposeful exclusion of Algerian workers and their families. In our conversation, we cover Franklin’s main arguments and how she came to this analysis through the winding path of archival research and intel