BUMIDOM (1963-1982) and its Afterlives: Literature, Memory and Migration
This book investigates cultural representations of the BUMIDOM (Bureau pour le développement des migrations dans les départements d’outre-mer), a state-organised migration scheme which brought workers from Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion and French Guiana to mainland France between 1963 and 1982. It argues that the French government has not sufficiently commemorated the BUMIDOM through national frameworks such as museums and education systems. This would mean admitting that participants, who were French citizens, were treated as racialised migrants and second-class-citizens. Through a series of original case studies spanning life writing, novels, films, bande dessinée, children’s fiction and music, the study demonstrates that it is cultural practitioners who, in the absence of adequate state representation, are undertaking this important memory work themselves. In a period in which Black identity is increasingly entering public debate in France, the book raises urgent questions about what it means to be a French citizen and a racial minority.
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BUMIDOM (1963-1982) and its Afterlives: Literature, Memory and Migration
This book investigates cultural representations of the BUMIDOM (Bureau pour le développement des migrations dans les départements d’outre-mer), a state-organised migration scheme which brought workers from Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion and French Guiana to mainland France between 1963 and 1982. It argues that the French government has not sufficiently commemorated the BUMIDOM through national frameworks such as museums and education systems. This would mean admitting that participants, who were French citizens, were treated as racialised migrants and second-class-citizens. Through a series of original case studies spanning life writing, novels, films, bande dessinée, children’s fiction and music, the study demonstrates that it is cultural practitioners who, in the absence of adequate state representation, are undertaking this important memory work themselves. In a period in which Black identity is increasingly entering public debate in France, the book raises urgent questions about what it means to be a French citizen and a racial minority.
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BUMIDOM (1963-1982) and its Afterlives: Literature, Memory and Migration

BUMIDOM (1963-1982) and its Afterlives: Literature, Memory and Migration

by Antonia Wimbush
BUMIDOM (1963-1982) and its Afterlives: Literature, Memory and Migration

BUMIDOM (1963-1982) and its Afterlives: Literature, Memory and Migration

by Antonia Wimbush

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Overview

This book investigates cultural representations of the BUMIDOM (Bureau pour le développement des migrations dans les départements d’outre-mer), a state-organised migration scheme which brought workers from Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion and French Guiana to mainland France between 1963 and 1982. It argues that the French government has not sufficiently commemorated the BUMIDOM through national frameworks such as museums and education systems. This would mean admitting that participants, who were French citizens, were treated as racialised migrants and second-class-citizens. Through a series of original case studies spanning life writing, novels, films, bande dessinée, children’s fiction and music, the study demonstrates that it is cultural practitioners who, in the absence of adequate state representation, are undertaking this important memory work themselves. In a period in which Black identity is increasingly entering public debate in France, the book raises urgent questions about what it means to be a French citizen and a racial minority.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781399521574
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication date: 05/31/2025
Series: New Directions in Francophone Studies: Diversity, Decolonisation, Queerness
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Antonia Wimbush is Lecturer in French Studies in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. From 2020 to 2023 she was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Languages, Cultures and Film at the University of Liverpool. Her previous publications include Autofiction: A Female Francophone Aesthetic of Exile (2021) and Queer(y)ing Bodily Norms in Francophone Culture (2021), co-edited with Polly Galis and Maria Tomlinson. Her research interests include French Caribbean literature, literary representations of exile and migration, memory studies, and gender studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Memorialising Migration
1. A History of the BUMIDOM
2. Gender, Work and Race in Caribbean Life Writing
3. National Identity, Diasporic Citizenship and Postdiaspora: The BUMIDOM in Fiction
4. Racism and Classism in Film and Television
5. Migration, Memory and Pedagogy in Graphic Novels and Children’s Fiction
6. Music as Memory: The Legacy of the BUMIDOM
Conclusion: Remembering the BUMIDOM Today

Bibliography
Index

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