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The Spanish Republican exile to France was a challenge from a humanitarian point of view, but also an economic one. The arrival and internment of nearly 450,000 men and women in a socially, economically and politically turbulent context forced the French authorities to adopt useful strategies in terms of both their reception and their possible use. The use of this foreign labor force was met with resistances inherited from the discourse of defense of the national labor force, evoking the “undesirable” figure. However, the economic needs of labor in sectors such as agriculture or domestic service, as well as in the militarized companies, made the mobilization of exiled republican men and women become a reality.