Camiscioli’s article on the French pro-natalist movement was incredibly interesting, as it showcases how the nation-state, as an organizational unit, is more fluid and unstable than our social sciences often describe. As Wimmer and Schiller discussed, narratives of the nation-state are ignored or perceived as natural, and formalize a perception of the groups within the territory as constant and unchanging. Camiscioli shows how citizenship and belonging change as interests shift. France reimagined belonging from the previous era’s Enlightenment universalism (dictating that every individual could assimilate into the nation) to focus on reproduction, the maintenance of white hegemony and colonial power, and a shift to civic duties. Various elements prompted this change: a frustration with modernity, colonial concerns, the rising influence of various Asian countries, and challenges to gender roles and dynamics. Additionally, scholarship and the sciences, such as ideologies of racial hygiene and civilization (both in Malthusian and linear progression of modernity), informed these understandings of belonging.
I am not fully on board with the idea that Enlightenment Universalism fully informed the nation-states’ understanding of belonging. Certainly, the language from the Enlightenment helped articulate the liberal and democratic ideals of the era; however, these foundations were still racialized, despite the fluid mobility across borders. Although, admittedly, my understanding of this topic is informed by American migration history. I find Camiscioli’s article to be somewhat congruent with Barbara Welke’s book, Law and the Borders of Belonging in the Long Nineteenth Century United States. Welke discusses how the concept of the borders of belonging is a conceptual tool suited to describe the consequences that states attach to identities such as gender, race, and ability. She argues that belonging for some groups is often achieved through the subordination of others and entails this constant negotiation of what it means to belong in a nation-state. This idea applies to Camiscioi’s work, as the criteria for belonging changed in France. The “organic” cultural groups of the nation-state expanded to allow Spanish, Italian, and Polish immigrants to integrate into French society and defined who couldn’t belong. This process might have expanded the borders of belonging for French society, yet drew harsh boundaries— turning Asian and African colonial subjects completely unassimilable and incompatible with “white culture”.
While reading this article, I also noticed some similarities with my project on the Far Right. Although this reading is before the periods I am studying, it articulates earlier ideas and debates that shaped the development of the New Right thirty years later. Most significantly, this article echoes the New Right’s tension with the aftereffects of modernization and its role in the civilizational narrative. Modernization was considered crucial for maintaining white hegemony and economic dominance. However, conservatives also longed for this (somewhat mythical) shared cultural past that deteriorated due to the changes spurred by globalization and modernization (this is evidenced in concepts of biological determinism, ideas of “natural and innate’ gender differences, fertility, and rural life). It showcases this ongoing debate to define their relationship with a changing world– and leads to ignoring nationalism when imagining the past– and drawing from a history that wasn’t perfectly aligned with the ideal of the nation state of their time. However, despite this desire to return to this idealized harmony of the history, where the “organic” culture was aligned with the mores and norms in society, the goals of this pro-natalist movement are still deeply aligned with modernization and the nation state, as concerns over Frances’ dwindling population are shaped by fears over their decline of colonial power, lack of industrial workers, and dwindling miliary force.