Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2025

Hijacking Internationalism: International Student Migration, Political Activism, and the Western Order at Paris’ Cité Universitaire, 1930s–1970s

Résumé

Alongside several hundred compatriots, numerous activists and political leaders—such as Hô Van Nga, Habib Bourguiba, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Henri Lopes, Saloth Sâr, and Faranguis Habibi—were residents at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (CIUP) during their studies in France, where many received political training. This situation is paradoxical because the CIUP was established in the 1920s not as a campus for dissent or subversion but rather to promote the rapprochement of international elites in the pursuit of constructing a peaceful world order under Western dominance, aligning with the liberal internationalism of the Geneva milieu and American philanthropic organizations such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation. From the 1920s to the 1960s, all political activity was prohibited within the CIUP, which deployed what Pierre Bourdieu termed a ‘depoliticized political discourse,’ ostensibly impartial but aimed at neutralizing the politicization of international issues in favor of a technical and supposedly less contentious vision of international relations. Nonetheless, archival sources reveal that it was precisely within this depoliticized environment that, from the 1930s to the 1970s, student activism critical of the global political order thrived. During this period, this repoliticization of internationalism was manifested through student migration, making the CIUP an innovative laboratory for the development of nationalism, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and anti-authoritarian political cultures. This chapter will elucidate the role that the CIUP played within ‘streams of contentious politics’ on a global scale and demonstrate how the institution facilitated the transnational circulation of protest discourses and practices among migrant students, as well as the formation of ‘cross-border coalitions’ that reshaped the dominant political order between the 1930s and the 1970s.

Dates et versions

hal-05265680 , version 1 (17-09-2025)

Identifiants

Citer

Guillaume Tronchet. Hijacking Internationalism: International Student Migration, Political Activism, and the Western Order at Paris’ Cité Universitaire, 1930s–1970s. Dzovinar Kévonian and Guillaume Tronchet (eds). Managing Global Student Migration in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan; Springer Nature, pp.51-74, 2025, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, 978-3-031-81765-6. ⟨10.1007/978-3-031-81766-3_3⟩. ⟨hal-05265680⟩
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