Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard is professor of contemporary social history at the Université de Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense. She is a specialist in the history of migration in France, and the author of a thesis on Italian immigration in eastern Paris published under the title Les Italiens dans l’Est parisien. Une histoire d’intégration. Années 1880–1960 (École Française de Rome, 2000), as well as a summary work on the history of immigration entitled Histoire de l’immigration (La Découverte, Repères collection, 2001). In 2008, she defended a habilitation thesis on slum clearance in the Paris region entitled La résorption des bidonvilles en région parisienne, années 1950–1970 (Université Paris-1), which is in the process of being published by Créaphis.