The displacements of the `shadow line'
2008 ◽
Vol 47
(4)
◽
pp. 529-539
◽
The term `clandestine' has grown prevalent over the two last decades as a way of describing illegal immigration, which looks more and more like an irrepressible process in the context of an anomic mondialization. The word carries the idea both of a disseminated and Janus-headed presence. In French, it is linked to the political history of European societies during the 19th and 20th centuries. This article attempts to analyze the semantic shifts that have occurred with respect to this period of history. It revisits the first time the word was used in France in its present-day sense: this was in 1938, in the decrees issued by the Daladier government.