Photo: France (Photo: Sasha Popovic, cropped.) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Please view our conversation with the book author of Adventure Capital: Migration and the Making of an African Hub in Paris.

In this groundbreaking work, Julie Kleinman chronicles how West Africans use the Gare du Nord to create economic opportunities, confront police harassment, and forge connections to people outside of their communities. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic research, including an internship at the French national railway company, Kleinman reveals how racial inequality is ingrained in the order of Parisian public space. She vividly describes the extraordinary ways that African migrants retool French transit infrastructure to build alternative pathways toward social and economic integration where state institutions have failed. In doing so, these adventurers defy boundaries—between migrant and citizen, center and periphery, neighbor and stranger—that have shaped urban planning and immigration policy. Adventure Capital offers a new understanding of contemporary migration and belonging, capturing the central role that West African migrants play in revitalizing French urban life.

Book Author:
Julie Kleinman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Fordham University.

Discussant:
Laurie Hart is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Duration: 1:25:21