ABSTRACT
African political activism in the 1960s and 1970s retained links to the colonial and metropolitan past while also shaping subsequent generations of immigrant activists. The period between 1960 and the late 1970s, then, proved vital in the establishment of the postcolonial African immigrant community. As their predecessors had done in the interwar period, postcolonial African immigrants shaped public discourse on immigration and migration from the former colonies through the political activism that they undertook in response to the dire circumstances that they faced. Building upon a long-standing tradition of migration from France's colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Africans who arrived in France after 1960 found themselves facing many of the same challenges as their predecessors and some new ones as well. The breadth and depth of politicization was evident in myriad ways which African immigrants expressed themselves and challenged the French state throughout the early postcolonial era.
