<p dir="ltr">This dissertation examines the expansion of refugee student services in postwar France during three subsequent refugee crises involving students from Eastern Europe. More than just a product of Franco-Soviet Cold War relations, I show how French support for the students developed in the context of decolonization and contemporary migration politics that favored white Europeans. The Algerian Revolution (1954-1962) in specific transformed the way the French thought about citizenship and strengthened the importance of race to national identity. The racial and ethnocultural compatibility of Eastern Europeans students with postwar France became a distinct advantage that manifested itself in the financial and social support that students received.</p><p dir="ltr">Beginning in 1945 with the rebirth of the refugee student organization the <i>Entraide Universitaire Francaise</i>, I analyze how the arrival of Eastern European refugee students over the next thirty years coincided with these changes to French self-image and citizenship. I further explore how key developments in international and national refugee law helped establish and maintain Eastern Europeans as the stereotypical refugee figure in postwar France, despite the increasingly globalized nature of refugee emergencies. This dissertation therefore reveals the influence of migration politics, decolonization, and race on France’s treatment of refugee students in the postwar period.</p>