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Acknowledgments

Writing this book has been an adventure, and like the Gare du Nord it brings together paths both beaten and less explored. It is a product of encounters across many boundaries. It has been shaped through ongoing conversations with research participants, friends, and mentors—and several people who have been all three. At the end of the day, I had to sit down and write, a practice I often experienced and heard described as isolating and painful. Yet thanks to this long journey, I have created many ties, and they are the kind that give life meaning and that lift us from isolation. This book is a profoundly social product, a product of many adventures.

“The adventure is hard work.” This refrain of many West African migrants in Paris came to me often as I was writing, as did their imperative to avoid getting stuck, to keep moving. My deepest gratitude goes to the people who give this project its life and its source. Without Baha Niakate, it may have never gotten off the ground. More than a key informant, he has also acted as research assistant, friend, and brother. His generosity and insight into the social world of the Gare du Nord allowed my research to take flight. His family in France and in Mali—Mina, Silima, Bakary, and Tene—has taken me in and traveled with me, and I will keep trying to find ways to reciprocate their hospitality. The group of West African men I met at the Gare du Nord let me into their community, amiably put up with my intrusive questions, shared their stories, and taught me more than I could contain in this book.

I was able to research and write this book thanks to the support of several institutions and grants. These include the Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship of the Social Science Research Council, the Krupp Foundation Dissertation Research Award of the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies, the Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship of Harvard University, the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Harvard Department of Anthropology, the Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Harvard Committee on African Studies, the Cora Du Bois Trust, the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, the Oberlin College H. H. Powers Grant, Penn State University, the Penn State Center for Global Studies Career Development Award, and Fordham University. I wrote and revised much of the manuscript thanks to a Macmillan-Stewart Fellowship at the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute of the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. I thank these institutions and the many people who administer these grants and fundings for their support and work. Parts of chapter 4 appeared in “Adventures in Infrastructure: Making an African Hub in Paris,” City & Society 26(3): 286–307 (2014); parts of chapter 5 appeared in “The Path Between Two Points,” Transition (113): 25–43 (2014) and “From Little Brother to Big Somebody: Coming of Age at the Gare du Nord,” in Affective Circuits: African Journeys and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration, edited by Jennifer Cole and Christian Groes, 245–68, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2016). I thank the publishers for the permission to reprint this material.

The folks in Paris who made this research possible are too numerous to list here. I would like to thank Catherine Avice and the SNCF workers at the TGV-Escale Gare du Nord, Patrick Cabaniols and Yann Lorquin, for welcoming me as a summer intern and making me feel like part of the cheminot family. The Gare du Nord railway police team (SUGE) generously allowed me to intrude upon them on several occasions, as did the Equipe Assistance Rapide team. Thanks to Etienne Tricaud and Daniel Claris for offering their time and insight about redesigning the station. The Association pour l’Histoire des Chemins de Fer en France (AHICF) and its director, Marie-Noëlle Polino, offered railway resources and many great contacts. The staff at French archives and libraries were enormously helpful, and I would like to extend my gratitude to the Archives de Prefecture de Police in Paris, where Commissaire Françoise Gicquel and Olivier Accarie helped me access many documents I may never have seen otherwise. Thank you to the brilliant Sorélia Kada for providing rigorous research assistance. Among the many scholars and experts who gave me their time and insight in Paris, I would like to thank Julien Artero, Karen Bowie, Beth Epstein, Christian Lallier, Léna Mauger, Anne Monjaret, Steve Rhinds, Stephanie Sauget, Sylvie Tissot, and Stéphane Tonnelat. Jonathan Friedman was my official host at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), but also provided much in the way of community and lively exchange. The intellectual comradeship I found in Paris kept me going on even the darkest days, and for that I would like to thank Lauren Elkin, Erin Schlumpf, Barbara Karatsioli, Rebecca Johnson, Nadim Audi, and Anna Weischelbraun. In Bamako, thank you also to my many hosts, friends, and Malian families, in particular Chérif Keita, Aminata Cissé, Rosa and Chérif Cissé, Bruce Whitehouse, and Katarina Höije; as well as Phil Paoletta and the whole team at the Sleeping Camel. My appreciation goes to Brema Ely Dicko at the University of Bamako and the members of the Association Malienne des Expulsés (Amadou Coulibaly, Ousmane Diarra, Alassane Dicko, Souhad Toure, and the late Mamadou Keita, Allah ka hin a la), who taught me what the adventure means.

This project has had many interlocutors along the way, and it begins with my intellectual roots at Haverford College. My deepest thanks to Mark Gould for nearly two decades of support and mentorship, and for, as he likes to say, rewiring our brains. The brilliance, criticism, and dedication of Laurie Kain Hart, Maris Gillette, and Zolani Ngwane have inspired me, pushed me, and provided the best exemplars of scholar-teachers that I still try to emulate. The seed of this project came from my work at the EHESS with Marc Abélès, who spurred me to take risks. Paul Silverstein has been a long-standing source of intellectual support and inspiration.

Four amazing women have shaped my intellectual trajectory. Ajantha Subramanian has paved the way for combining intellectual, political, and social commitment. Jean Comaroff has been my model of generosity and brilliance in mentorship and scholarship, and has provided insight and counsel at many stages of this project. Since the time I was working on my dissertation, the careful reading and criticism of Joan Wallach Scott has made this a better book. I cannot thank Jennifer Cole enough for offering extra-institutional support and mentorship, and I strive to meet her high standards and emulate her ability to cut through all the pretense and mess to the heart of things.

In my graduate days at Harvard, I benefitted from the mentorship of Vince Brown, Steve Caton, Caroline Elkins, Bill Granara, Susan Kahn, Michael Herzfeld, and Michèle Lamont. I first started writing about the Gare du Nord in Engseng Ho’s graduate seminar Mobilities, and he and the members of that seminar offered the generous antagonism that one hopes for in grad school. Camille Robcis, Christian Groes, Trica Keaton, Sasha Newell, Charles Piot, Jason Throop, and Henrik Vigh have offered help, intellectual community, and opportunities to present my work.

Writing and our whole intellectual enterprise has been much less lonely thanks to the incredible people I have met on this journey. I am humbled and inspired by Louisa Lombard, who has read almost all of the manuscript in many of its stages, and has offered the best kind of intellectual, moral, and emotional support and insight, from integrating theory and ethnography and navigating life after the field to navigating the field with a toddler. I have the pleasure of being in writing groups and partnerships that have offered more than only great criticism, and would like to thank Cal Biruk, Jatin Dua, Jonathan Echeverri Zuluaga, Claudio Sopranzetti, Anand Vaidya, and Rebecca Woods for reading my stuff and for sharing their brilliant work with me, sometimes over cocktails and often across several time zones. I would also like to thank my extended cohort in the PhD process: Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Kerry Chance, Namita Dharia, Alireza Doostdar, Alex Fattal, Anush Kapadia, Darryl Li, Jennifer Mack, Lilith Mahmud, Federico Perez, Laurence Ralph, Erin Schlumpf, and Dilan Yildrim. Orkideh Behrouzan has been an inspiration and a dear friend when I most needed it. For helping me make a new intellectual home for a brief period in Cambridge, England, I thank Anastasia Piliavsky, Nadia Marx, Robert Priest, Michal Murawski, and the Cambridge Anthropology Division.

I was fortunate to begin writing this book at Oberlin College on a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, where Grace An and Libby Murphy were wonderful hosts, interlocutors, and friends. I could not imagine a more ideal place to think and write, and would like to thank my people of the Lady’s Grove, and in particular Laura Baudot, Cal Biruk, Erika Hoffman-Dilloway, Vange Heiliger, Bridget Guarasci, Daphne John, Julie Keller, Silvija Koschnick, Greggor Mattson, Kristen Sutcliffe, and Sarah Waheed. Victoria Fortuna was an inspiring writing partner and provided insight and a sunny place to write. Brandon County is our formidable Oberlin jatigi and an endless source of knowledge about African history, Bamako, and beer. I have learned so much from Vange Heiliger, thanks to whom this world is a brighter place. To my Penn State family: thank you for making State College livable. I could not imagine two more brilliant and generous women to navigate the first tenure-track years with than Tracy Rutler and Magalí Armillas Tiseyra. Jonathan Marks offered books, critique, and hospitality, and conversation bested only by his daughter Miranda. Alicia Decker was my sister in the African Studies program from our early days of motherhood, and Gabeba Baderoon and Dorn Hetzel welcomed our family and inspired us. Thanks to Bill Dewey, Kevin Thomas, and my other colleagues in African Studies. In the French and Francophone Studies department, thanks to Jennifer Boittin’s mentorship and friendship, to Bénédicte Monicat’s support, and to Heather McCoy who gave me the fou rire every day.

My deepest gratitude to Henry Louis Gates Jr., Krishna Lewis, and Abby Wolf at the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute of the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, to Jean and John Comaroff, as well as to my fellow fellows, especially Cassi Pittman Claytor and LaFleur Stephens-Dougan. Much of this book was completed at the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study where my partner had a fellowship and I was welcomed as part of the community. Thank you to Françoise Rubellin, Alain Supiot, and to Claire Mony-Laffay who went above and beyond providing me books and a friendly space to write. Thank you to Fordham University and the department of Sociology and Anthropology, and particularly to my colleagues Hugo Benavides, Orit Avishai, Daisy Deomampo, Natalia Mendoza, and Aseel Sawalha for welcoming me and for your support, and especially to Rosa Giglio. In New York, I am grateful for our hosts Greg Mann, Oumou Sidibe, and Kadiatou, for Josh Schreier, and for my writing buddy and photographer Rachel Fish. My thanks to the wonderful people at Coffee Mob in Ditmas Park, where many of these pages were written, and Common Good in Harlem, where they were finished. My hilarious and brilliant anthropologist friends Brooke Bocast and Anna West made the writing process much, much better.

This book would be much worse off were it not for fantastic editors and readers. Thanks to Chris Lura, who had a knack for drawing out clarity from muddled phrasing, to Laura Frader for her help on the introduction, and to Gary J. Hamel’s excellent copyediting. Cal Biruk, Kerry Chance, Jennifer Cole, Brandon County, Andrew Konove, Caroline Melly, Sasha Newell, Andrew Newman, Chrystel Oloukoï, Josh Schreier, Ryan Skinner, Claudio Sopranzetti, and Anand Vaidya offered invaluable comments and criticism on chapter drafts. Chrystel Oloukoï and Alexandra Rallo provided first-rate research assistance. This book exists thanks to the smart stewardship of my editor Kate Marshall, Enrique Ochoa-Kaup, and the team at the University of California Press. Thank you to Paul Stoller and the two anonymous reviewers for thorough and generous criticism of the first draft of the manuscript. I am responsible for any remaining inaccuracies.

I dedicate this book to my two grandmothers, Alwina Wittenzelner O’Brien and Marcia Fanny Kaplan Kleinman (Nana), both benevolent matriarchs and forces of nature. My parents, Patricia O’Brien Kelley and Stephen Kleinman, instilled in me an early passion for books and conversation and have been there for me wherever I ended up. Kevin Kelley has been a source of much-needed comic relief, and Arthur Kleinman has given me an example to follow when it comes to doing anthropology with a purpose.

This book is the product of the path I share with my partner and fellow migrant, Isaïe Dougnon. He has shown me the meaning of intellectual rigor, of loyalty to family and community, and of building a purposeful life. He has made me an optimist. Last and most, to Alexis Amaseru, whose constant questions, ebullient energy, and love of hugs reminds me what matters and keeps us striving to create a more just world where adventures can flourish. May he also learn from the ancestors.