Description
Research using ethnographic observation of the international/transnational has largely focused on intergovernmental and international fora, migration networks, and popular culture. Ethnographic observation of the work of state administrators of international phenomena is rare. The rarity of ethnographic observation of everyday administrative work dealing with the international is due to the difficulty, or at times impossibility, of accessing fieldsites relevant to such questions due to the struggles around negotiating secrecy. In responding to this challenge, turning to the past can be interesting. Thinking transversally, this paper suggests historical ethnography as a way of circumcising this problem. This paper argues for further use of administrative archives as a site of observation. Such use can allow us to better “intensely observe” the everyday work of practitioners. This is the second intervention of this paper, and it is one in the field of historical approaches in IR. Historical IR scholars have rarely used the archives in order to make sense of the everyday of state administrators. In doing a historical ethnography of administrating international phenomena, this paper will focus on the governance of migration. I will focus on the case of the governing by French native affairs officers of the Moroccan migrant population in post-Second World War Paris. I will investigate how these officers gathered intelligence on Moroccans, what this intelligence told them and what they did with this intelligence. In elucidating these colonial officers’ everyday, I will uncover how these officers knitted – or tried to knit – relations of trust, allyship and how they navigated enmity and hostility in an imperial context. In this sense, this paper will go beyond the usual focus on international migration governance from the top and will try to understand how this governance operates in the everyday.
