The tailor and the grocer

In the social sciences, we can only be struck by the small place offered by the abundant literature on economic actors in the figure of “ little » (entrepreneur, boss) and the structures in which this figure moves. The reasons for shelving this “ unknown class » — to classify « among the declining forces that deserved an obituary more than an analysis » as Heinz-Gerhard Haupt wrote — are known. Claire Zalc reminds us of this in the introduction, evoking the distrust of historians towards independents, perceived as guarantors of national identity and necessarily attracted by reactionary movements. By focusing on self-employed immigrants, a reduced fringe – although present in the collective imagination, as evidenced in particular by the A little dictionary to fight against the extreme right that the author cites (p. 83) — of this population, during the interwar period, the author offers to read a work of social history rich in lessons on the heterogeneity of the actors who constitute it. Elements of quantitative and legal framing are thus mixed with the trajectories of these individuals who one day took the paths of professional independence in France, like Norbert Elias. Throughout the pages, we find the sociologist, an ephemeral toy manufacturer, on several occasions and he draws our attention to two characteristic features of the work: the argumentative posture adopted as well as the data analysis work carried out at most close to the actors of this story.

Mythhunter

“ In this universe, preconceived ideas are legion » (p. 12): this observation established on the second page of the introduction innervates the entire demonstration proposed, in line with the position that Norbert Elias lent to sociologists in particular, to scientists in general. The introduction covers a wide range of “ myths » (p. 13), clichés, clichés about the immigrant entrepreneur that the author, using her material, strives to deconstruct. The appearance of this work is, in this respect, attractive but misleading. From the eye-catching image, which promises us the most exotic showcases of the Pletzlin the title, which introduces the “ foreign traders in France », this editorial artifice is at odds with the numerous original results defended in the work.

Regarding the category of “ trader » first of all, the author recalls the deep confusion which then reigns in the separation of this from that of artisan: “ In fact, the trader does not correspond, then, to a stable reality whose contours could be precisely traced. (…) Worker and boss, the small trader often makes what he sells. The distinction between artisan and trader based on the differentiation of the type of activity (manufacturing for the artisan, selling for the small trader) is still irrelevant. » (p. 31). If the division by profession, which does not make a distinction between collective and individual activities, strikes throughout the XIX^e century the statistical capture of “ traders », classification by status, introduced at the end of the XIX^e century and which is still in use in 1936, only slightly alleviates this confusion. So, in the face of this observation, it is more “ independent » and the place of these among the immigrants which Claire Zalc deals with by providing numerous elements of intelligibility of the legal evolution as symbolic of this economic taxonomy and its permeability to immigrants. Against the representation of a necessary ascension through accession to this status and of its permanence once endorsed, the author underlines, through the study of a few cases (chapter 5), the multiplicity of trajectories in which involves a passage through professional independence. The desirability of the status varies depending on the period, it is not always claimed by applicants for French nationality who then prefer to emphasize their qualifications and their work (p. 135 et seq.).

It is then the character “ stranger » of these traders which, when tested by the data, is brought to discussion: “ from the “Jewish tailor” to the “Auvergnat bougnat”, from the “Arab grocer” to the “Italian mason”, clichés are rife on this theme as soon as small foreign traders are mentioned. » (p. 83) To theories on ethnic specializations (irrigated by two arguments: an innate inclination for certain tasks ; the easier importation of certain products or certain know-how) sometimes put forward by migrants themselves (p. 88), Claire Zalc opposes “ the facts » (p. 89) which, if they agree with common sense representations at first analysis, underline two things:

• The professions carried out in France do not generally correspond to those carried out in the countries of origin and putting the migratory trajectory and the context of installation into perspective often shows an adaptation to the constraints and opportunities encountered: employment depends then networks of interrelations in the country of arrival and the vagaries of the economic situation (the fact that the “ crisis leads to an increase in distress registrations by young single immigrants » (p. 72) thus explains the fact that the rate of single people increased among this population in the interwar period). In this explanatory bundle, the “ migration channels » occupy pride of place: “ The small pioneer entrepreneur (new arrival of a given nationality) is able to make the migratory network work when he can offer job prospects to the “followers”. » (p. 153) This advantage being, observes Claire Zalc, directly linked to the independent status and largely explains the specializations observed.

• If there is specialization for certain national origins (specialization observed by the gap between the share of individuals of a nationality in a sector and the share of foreign individuals in this same sector for the period 1921-1939), it does not There is never an absolute majority of this sector within each national group. This is the case, underlines Claire Zalc, of Italians who are 18% in construction (compared to 5.6% of foreigners) but are, however, 24% in food.

These observations lead the author to emphasize that “ the categories of “Italian mason”, “Greek shoemaker”, “Armenian grocer” or even “foreign craftsman” are constructions whose content varies depending on the context. » (p. 97).

Claire Zalc also notes that the character “ stranger » of these independents is very rarely displayed in capital letters on their windows and this character is often only revealed when traders are explicitly invited to do so. Because the story that this work writes is also that of a gradual closure of the shopkeeping environment to foreigners, concomitant with increased visibility due to increasingly strict nationality control procedures. From the “ freedom of trade for all » established by the Allarde decree of March 1791 and confirmed by the Commercial Code of 1807, we slip from the end of the XIX^e century towards increasingly significant restrictions fueled by a growing distrust of the “ stranger “. The crisis of the 1930s constituted the high point of this process of stigmatization with in particular, under the guise of commercial honesty, the obligation to register the full surname on the signs and commercial papers of companies as well as the establishment a foreign merchant card.

The visibility of these independent immigrants is therefore reduced but, for all that, and this is a fourth axis of analysis deployed by Claire Zalc – this time in the direction of the myth of “ immigration neighborhoods » –, their relationship to urban space is singular: “ Shops and workshops are places of life and work where local affiliations to a district, a street, a neighborhood are at stake. » (p. 171) and this relationship to space is an entry point to this universe. Indeed, Claire Zalc does not study self-employed immigrants “ In France » but in the Seine department. This precision is not small as the subject and the data most of the time refer to this geographical reality. The author thus observes that, due to the strong intricacy between the living space and work space of the self-employed and although self-employed immigrants occupy more “ urban corners » (p. 175) than their French counterparts, “ Immigrant neighborhoods are built around foreigners’ businesses » (p. 180). This sentence, very rich in implications (it establishes a direct causality, from companies to neighborhoods), which completes this demystification enterprise carried out in chapters 2 to 7, however remains poorly supported by the data used despite a coherent explanation in terms employment and housing opportunities unfolding within migratory channels.

An embodied social story

The tour de force of Claire Zalc’s work, which also allows her to reach the conclusions detailed above, is to succeed in bringing the reader to life, solely through the few administrative traces left during a life in France or by crossing these traces with period stories, the trajectories of these independent immigrants. More than indexed on the spatio-temporal frame of reference that underlies them, the author’s words are most often embodied by these modest workers who give life to a social and economic history of the first twentieth century. By a laudable interpretative modesty, Claire Zalc finely recreates the diversity of trajectories without falling into the trap of making a general case.

In addition to Norbert Elias and a few other intellectual figures of the first half century, we find Maurice Arnoult (a provincial migrant who became a Parisian shoemaker, met several times throughout the chapters and whose journey is “ modeled on that of foreigners » (p. 98)), Arcangelo Indelicato (Italian immigrant who went from salaried locksmith worker to fairground merchant (p. 124) who exemplifies the winding trajectories of downgrading in which independence intervenes), Thadée Kwasniewski (Polish immigrant to whom the marriage with a real estate owner opens up rental opportunities (p. 145), David Rotbard (butcher whose family biography allows us to understand the role of the household, based here on a triple proximity: of origin, profession and location (p. 150)), Ti Hu Chan (Chinese immigrant who sets up as an itinerant in the year following his domiciliation in France (p. 159)) and many other independent immigrants treated as historical actors. The articulation of the chapters allows us to see the intersection of these individual trajectories with the evolution of the legal framework of practice and more general economic and political history. However, we can regret that the finesse of the line through which Claire Zalc strives to restore these trajectories, and which makes this work an undeniable success, does not more often let the general trends speak, trends to which her material seemed to open access Overall, this work makes meticulous academic work accessible to a wide audience and opens up, through its convincing conclusions, its literary anchoring as well as the articulation of its methods, to a wide area of ​​interdisciplinary dialogue on an object often analyzed under the features of the Kirznerian individual entrepreneur.