Incidents of state violence and activism against that violence illustrate the continuing significance of race and the persistence of white supremacy in France, the United States, and worldwide. Based on past and current ethnographic research and interviews with ethnic minorities in the Parisian metropolitan region, Beaman argues that, despite France’s colorblind and Republican ethos, France’s “visible minorities” function under a “suspect citizenship,” in which their full societal belonging is never granted. Beaman will also focus on the growing problem of state violence against ethnic minorities, which reveals how France is creating a “bright boundary” (Alba 2005) between whites and non-whites, furthering disparate outcomes based on race and ethnic origin.

About the speaker

Jean Beaman is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with affiliations in Black Studies, 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 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). She is a 2022-2023 fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences and was a Co-PI for the Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar grant, “Race, Precarity, and Privilege: Migration in a Global Context” for 2020-2022.