Living the postcolony Egyptian (be)longings in Paris

This dissertation examines how Egyptian migrants make a life in postcolonial Paris. It is based on fourteen months of fieldwork between January 2017 and February 2018 in Paris and its suburbs. Convening the many ways in which Paris is lived as a postcolony, it examines the poetics and politics of differentiated belonging, postcolonial relationalities, bureaucratic resilience, parenting dilemmas and migrant futures. It centers on the repertoires, ways of life, everyday references and frames of Egyptians in Paris. While these lives unfold within institutionally channeled and politically coded regimes, it deliberately foregrounds the perspectival locations through which migrants understand and make their presence in this postcolonial space and the ways in which they seek to make familial and familiar lives there. By doing so, this research provides a crucial relational phenomenological understanding of postcolonial belonging in Europe.