Elias Michaut (UCL) - 2023-24 Students
elias.michaut.23@ucl.ac.uk

Historical archaeology of youth detention in France, 1840s-1940s

The mid-19th century in France was marked by a boom in the rates of youth incarceration. At the same time, the French government also started separating incarcerated youth from adults, with girls mostly being sent to religious institutions while boys were sent to work in agricultural penal colonies in rural areas. Most of these youths, aged from 6 to 21 years old, were from the poorest and most marginalised strata of society. This criminalisation of working-class and marginal youth was a ‘prison fix’: large-scale incarceration appeared to elite classes and the French state like a solution to the fluctuating socio-economic crises and the growing political unrest. This archaeological study proposes to focus on a few selected youth penal colonies, making use of spatial computational methods, aided by archival research, to study their built environment and their landscape. Particular attention will be given to the necropolitical processes at play, as well as to episodes of youth resistance and autonomy. Ultimately, this should provide a window into the experience of incarcerated youth and work towards a broader critical genealogy of contemporary youth incarceration practices.

Primary supervisor: Dr Gabriel Moshenska

Secondary supervisor: Dr Rachel King