In two weeks in February 1939, nearly half a million refugees from Spain entered France following the fall of Catalonia to the Francoist troops. More than 300,000 of them were placed in camps where they were counted and identified by the National Security services. These camps, created by the French Republic, would serve as models for those set up under the Occupation by Vichy. Some, such as Le Vernet or Gurs, would remain open until the end of the war. This book studies the control tools put in place by the authorities and the exclusion measures taken against these refugees, in the camps of France but also in North Africa. Through numerous unpublished sources, including the archives of the Ministry of the Interior, this book questions in particular the republican origins of Vichy through the prism of the control of foreigners. It details the continuities and ruptures between the two periods within the different police services. With this innovative work, Grégory Tuban traces the journey of these undesirables between 1939 and 1944, both in the historiography of the Retirada (the exodus of Spanish refugees from the civil war) and in that of the foreigner camps.
Gregory Tuban is a doctor of history and a journalist. He has published numerous articles and books on exile and the Retirada camps, including monographs on the Collioure and Argelès-sur-Mer camps. This book is based on his doctoral thesis.
