Making Black Lives Matter in France

 In this talk I will discuss my ongoing ethnographic research on anti-racist mobilization and activism against police violence, and put that in conversation with anti-racist mobilization and the BlackLivesMatter movement both in the United States and worldwide. I discuss what it means to consider Black Lives Matter in a society that disavows race and racism and how anti-racist activists in France, many of whom are Black and Maghrebin-origin, assert a place for themselves in a society that continually marginalizes them. 

Bio: Jean Beaman is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with affiliations in Political Science, Feminist Studies, Global Studies, and the Center for Black Studies Research. Her research is ethnographic in nature and focuses on race/ethnicity, racism, international migration, and state-sponsored violence in both France and the United States. She is author of Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France (University of California Press, 2017).