The routes to exile France and the Spanish Civil War refugees, 1939-2009 [Paperback]

As they trudged over the Pyrenees, the Spanish republicans became one of the most iconoclastic groups of refugees to have sought refuge in twentieth-century France. This book explores the array of opportunities, constraints, choices and motivations that characterised their lives. Using a wide range of empirical material, it presents a compelling case for rethinking exile in relation to refugees' lived experiences and memory activities. The major historical events of the period are covered: the development of refugees' rights and the 'concentration' camps of the Third Republic, the para-military labour formations of the Second World War, the dynamics shaping resistance activities, and the role of memory in the campaign to return to Spain. This study additionally analyses how these experiences have shaped homes and France's memorial landscape, thereby offering an unparalleled exploration of the long-term effects of exile from the mass exodus of 1939 through to the seventieth-anniversary commemorations in 2009.
Introduction: Coming to terms with the Spanish republican exile in France
Part I: The onset of exile
1. Unravelling rights and identities: the exodus of 1939
2. Reception, internment and repatriation, 1939-40
3. Organisations, networks and identities, 1939-40
Part II: Working in from the margins
4. Ambiguities at work: refugees and the French war economy, 1939-40
5. Work, surveillance, refusal and revolt in Vichy and German-Occupied France, 1940-44
Part III: Aspirations of return, commemoration and home
6. Mobilisation, commemoration and return, 1944-55
7. Moving memories, 1970-2009
Conclusion: Trajectories and legacies
Appendix 1
Index

Scott Soo is Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Southampton