Black Lives Matter in France – Ethnographer Jean Beaman Reads Transnational Connections for Black Liberation

Ten years after Black Lives Matter was founded in the U.S., it has reverberated abroad. Today, BLM has global reach and its slogans appear in protests around the world. Anti-racist activists across many nationalities have found a sense of shared experience in BLM, despite cultural and political differences. That capacity to connect resistance movements across borders is the research focus of ethnographer Jean Beaman, who studies how anti-racist activists resist similar structural conditions around the world, and specifically in France.  

“Part of this anti-racist movement is evoking transnational connections, the struggle for Black liberation worldwide, including Black Lives Matter, but not just Black Lives Matter,” said Beaman, an associate professor of sociology at UC Santa Barbara, who recently returned to campus from a prestigious fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. In France, she noted, it is common to see the words “Black Lives Matter” on signs or chants at protests or the French version of “No Justice, No Peace,” or even signs that reference victims from the U.S. and other countries besides France.

Jean Beaman's 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), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.

Source and Full Article:
The Current