ABSTRACT
In the early 1960s, French officials in the Ministry of the Interior grew increasingly concerned over the growth in West African migration to France after independence in French-controlled West Africa. To monitor this growing population, the French state blended colonial and metropolitan tactics to track African immigrants, making them understandable, visible, and ultimately controllable. Surveillance also informed the development of social welfare programs, from which African immigrants procured benefits. Yet as authorities revised their outlook on the potential for politicization among African immigrants, surveillance tactics became more insidious and penetrating.
