This thesis explores the differences between works by and about francophone women migrants at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century as compared to the treatment of migration by women from francophone Africa in the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, in order to analyze how slavery is connected to migration by women. The thesis also looks at what the differences are in the literary representations of women migrants by writers from francophone Africa and the perspective on migration presented by a French woman writer, Claire de Duras. This trans-historical and comparative approach allows me to draw the line between the similarities and the differences in the representation of female migrants from francophone Africa from the nineteenth century to the present.

It turns out that some of the consequences of the displacement of women from Francophone Africa to France during colonial times are still in effect in the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Among these themes are, a crisis in identity, the social ascension of women who have migrated, cultural hybridity, problems related to integration and the female migrant's sexuality.