Description:
Immigration in France and the United States. Comparative historiography, Nancy L. Green. Even comparative history has its socio-cultural détermination, stronger it the nation-state in which it is practiced is seeking its identity. The French and the Americans thus have very contrasted reprasentations of the history of immigration. The former, rather open from a lagal point of view, are relatively closed to the idea of conceiving of France as a country of immigrants. The latter, on the other hand, very salective with regard to entry, have built a strongly open image of their society. The historians of each of the two countries have used the work of the other to refîne their own analyses, for France to rethink its identity, for the US, to reframe the issue of the possible exceptionalism of its development.