Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin (Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series) 3030358356, 9783030358358

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PALGRAVE POLITICS OF IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP

Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin Jacek Kubera

Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series

Series Editors Varun Uberoi Brunel University London London, UK Nasar Meer University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, UK Tariq Modood University of Bristol Bristol, UK

The politics of identity and citizenship has assumed increasing importance as our polities have become significantly more culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse. Different types of scholars, including philosophers, sociologists, political scientists and historians make contributions to this field and this series showcases a variety of innovative contributions to it. Focusing on a range of different countries, and utilizing the insights of different disciplines, the series helps to illuminate an increasingly controversial area of research and titles in it will be of interest to a number of audiences including scholars, students and other interested individuals. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14670

Jacek Kubera

Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin

Jacek Kubera Faculty of Sociology Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań Poznań, Poland Translated from the Polish and French by Anthony Sloan This translation has been co-funded by the Foundation for Polish Science and by the Institute for Western Affairs in Poznań

Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series ISBN 978-3-030-35835-8    ISBN 978-3-030-35836-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020, corrected publication 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image © Rastko Belic / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book is a shortened version of Francuzi, Algierczycy? Relacje między identyfikacjami Francuzów algierskiego pochodzenia, published in Poland in 2017 by the Nicolaus Copernicus University Press in Torun as part of a series of monographs by the Foundation for Polish Science. That publication grew out of my doctoral thesis, which I defended in 2015 at the Institute of Sociology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (AMU). I would like to thank everyone who supported me at various moments when I was writing my thesis, and all those who contributed to the preparation of this book. Special thanks go to my promoter, Professor Stanisław Lisiecki, for continually encouraging me to look for new solutions, and to the reviewers, Professor Leon Dyczewski and Professor Marek Ziółkowski, for the comments they made. I drew much inspiration from participating in seminars run by Professors Renata Suchocka, Rafał Drozdowski, and Marek Krajewski, which took place at the AMU Institute of Sociology, and also from consultations with Professors Jerzy Lis and Mirosław Loba held at my second place of studies, the AMU Institute of Romance Philology. I am very grateful for the substantive and organizational support received from Professors Nancy Green and Judith Lyon-Caen of L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and from Professor Marc Hatzfeld, also associated with it for some time. Many thanks to Charlotte Perdriau from the mediatheque in the National Museum of the History of Immigration (Cité nationale de l’histoire de v

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l’immigration) in Paris, and to Karolina Marcinkowska Ph.D. from the Foundation for Polish Science for her professionalism. The English version of the book has gained a lot thanks to the effort, talent, and valuable comments of its translator, Anthony Sloan, and his colleagues. Special thanks go to Professor Anna Loba for her kind words and her faith in this undertaking. Last but not least, thanks to my parents and my aunt and uncle in Poznan for letting me know I can always count on them, and particularly to Zbigniew Rykowski for his help with the editorial work. Naturally, all imperfections of this book are to be attributed solely to the author. Poznań, Poland

Jacek Kubera

Contents

1 Introduction to Research on Identifications  1 French Debates over Frenchness    1 Identification Argument and Category Name as Components of Identification   4 Methodology of Research on the Relationship Between Identifications in the Fictional and Autobiographical Texts   24 Results of Quantitative Studies   34 Bibliography  38 2 Names and Arguments: Algerians and the Descendants of Algerian Immigrants in France 49 The Republic, Its Citizens, Foreigners and Strangers from the Suburbs  49 Identification of Algerian Immigrants from the Beginning of the Colonial Conquest to 1974   56 Algerians and the Descendants of Algerian Immigrants in the Structure of French Society After 1974   67 Bibliography  76

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3 French and Algerian Identifications in the Context of the Colonial Period 81 Algerianness as Part of Frenchness: A Republican, Political Definition of the French Nation   82 Algerianness and Frenchness as Separate Characteristics: The Colonial, Ethnic Definition of the French Nation   88 Algerianness and Frenchness as Conflicting Characteristics: The Algerian War and Its Consequences   98 Summary 121 Bibliography 130 4 Family and Religious Identification133 The Family: Where Algerian and French Characteristics Coexist 133 Family: Different ‘Speeds’ of Acquiring French Characteristics  144 Family: Differences in Preserving Algerian Characteristics  152 Summary 169 Bibliography 177 5 Identification with Immigrants179 Hereditary Migrants: Migration as a Choice of Frenchness  179 Immigrants: Origin as an Obstacle to French Identification  184 Emigrants: French of Algerian Origin in Algeria  205 We Are Not Migrants!  209 Summary 219 Bibliography 227 6 Identification with the Suburbs229 The French Suburbs  229 Immigrant Suburbs of Apartment Complexes Versus French City Centres and Detached Houses  247 Summary 255 Bibliography 260

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7 Class Identification263 Integration of Algerians and Their Children with the French Working Class  264 Social Advancement and Degradation as a Departure from Parents and Algerianness  273 Poverty as a Result of Exclusion from Frenchness: The Inheritability of Migration  279 Summary 284 Bibliography 290 8 Conclusions293 Correction to: Introduction to Research on IdentificationsC1 Index311

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Single act of identification 10 Fig. 1.2 Single act of identification supplemented by an identification argument11 Fig. 1.3 Single act of identification supplemented by other elements  13 Fig. 1.4 Single act of identification supplemented by other elements  16 Fig. 1.5 Identification with a category, affiliation with that category and categorial characteristic as interdependent concepts 17 Fig. 1.6 Single act of identification (all elements) 20 Fig. 1.7 Percentage share of different types of identifications, and identification arguments in the whole of the material collected 35 Fig. 1.8 Situations in the collected material where a French or Algerian identification is present 38 Fig. 3.1 The Great Mosque of Paris, built in the years 1922–1926  in gratitude for the contribution made by Algerians, among others, during World War I 85 Fig. 3.2 L’Arc de Triomphe—the setting of the victory parade in 1945, in which soldiers from French Algeria also took part 87 Fig. 3.3 In memory of the events of the Paris Massacre of 17 October 1961104 Fig. 3.4 French memory of the Algerian War: the National monument of the Algerian War and the fighting in Morocco and Tunisia 117 Fig. 3.5 One of the plaques below the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, dedicated to those who fought for France during the Algerian conflict118 xi

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List of Figures

Fig. 3.6 The political, Republican definition of Frenchness and the relationship between Frenchness and Algerianness imposed on the indigenous inhabitants of Algeria during the colonial era 123 Fig. 3.7 The ethnic, colonial definition of Frenchness, manifest in unequal civil rights among inhabitants of Algeria during the period of French domination 125 Fig. 3.8 Frenchness and Algerianness as conflicting characteristics during the Algerian War and afterwards in situations where the conflict of 1954–1962 and its causes are discussed 126 Fig. 4.1 Algerian Cultural Centre in Paris 136 Fig. 4.2 A Berber restaurant in Paris 136 Fig. 4.3 The Arab World Institute in Paris 137 Fig. 4.4 Family identification as an argument in favour of both French and Algerian identification (Algerianness and Frenchness as characteristics coexisting or neutral in relation to each other) 170 Fig. 4.5 Family identification of French of Algerian origin in the context of their own and their parents’ French identification 173 Fig. 4.6 Family identification of French of Algerian origin in the context of their own and their parents’ Algerian identification 175 Fig. 5.1 Inheritability of migrant status as justification for French identification220 Fig. 5.2 Identification with the category of immigrants or emigrants in light of French and Algerian identification 221 Fig. 5.3 Rejection of identification with migrants as evidence of French identification226 Fig. 6.1 Suburban space between estates 237 Fig. 6.2 Identification with the suburbs as an element of French identification256 Fig. 6.3 Identification with the suburbs as an obstacle to French identification259 Fig. 7.1 Affiliation with the French working class conceived within French identification 285 Fig. 7.2 Social movement away from the working class as evidence of the possession of certain additional French characteristics 287 Fig. 7.3 Combined identifications: class (‘I’m not a bourgeois’), sociospatial (from the suburbs), and with immigrants as an argument hindering identification with France 289 Fig. 8.1 Map of interrelationships between selected identifications of French of Algerian origin 309

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Authors of the analysed texts 27 Table 1.2 Authors of the analysed texts. Division by gender and age 28 Table 1.3 Authors of the analysed texts. Division into those raised in Algeria or in France, and in an Algerian or Algerian–French family28 Table 1.4 The analysed textual materials 29 Table 1.5 Distribution of identificatory situations according to gender, origin, and immigrant generation 37 Table 2.1 Increase in the number of articles in Le Monde on the Algerian War over the period 1987–2002 72

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1 Introduction to Research on Identifications

French Debates over Frenchness In France, for many years now, there has been a debate on the essence of Frenchness, seeking to answer the question of what it means to be French. If Zygmunt Bauman (2001, 8) was correct, the question itself may point to a certain crisis over French identity. In those debates, attention is often centred on the presence in France of immigrants and their children, particularly on those originating from North Africa, and especially Algeria. The variety of answers given by the majority population to the question of Frenchness—as to who may identify themselves with France and the French—have been widely discussed, so it would seem to be of particular interest to examine what those answers do not contain. Thus, the idea arose of conducting research into how these issues are dealt with by those people who are often the subject of the public debate, but not always participants in it.

The original version of this chapter was revised. The correction to this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5_9 © The Author(s) 2020 J. Kubera, Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5_1

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In wanting to get to know—and transmit—the opinions of those French people who are descendants of Algerian immigrants,1 I posed a question concerning their French identification. If we take into account such elements as citizenship and the degree of rootedness within French society of French people of Algerian origin, they are objectively ‘French,’ yet they encounter situations where they do not perceive themselves as being so. The problem of a clear majority of such persons, then, is not their valence (most often French valence or a bivalence including elements of the culture of the country of origin) as defined by Antonina Kłoskowska (2005, 110–112)—that is, the degree to which they have absorbed a given culture. Rather, the problem is the identifications they themselves make. While I was aware that the context of migration naturally raises a multitude of questions about the national affiliation of both migrating parents and their children, I also wanted to find out whether other contexts, apart from that of migration, might affect the occurrence of one identification at the expense of another. I wanted to look at members of the community selected from the angle of their affiliation to numerous social categories, and not restrict myself to considering their identifications only in light of the fact that they, their parents, or their grandparents were born in Algeria. Not only are they descendants of immigrants, they are also citizens of France, fathers, mothers, grandchildren, and children; they work at particular jobs, vote for different political parties, live in city centres or in the suburbs, and have various attitudes toward religious practice and the shared colonial past of France and Algeria. Their identity, then, consists not only of national identifications, but also of identifications with migrants, family, particular classes, or particular places. Who are the French of Algerian origin? For the purposes of the research project, I have assumed that they were born and live in France, or were born in Algeria but have been socialised in France since their arrival (before the age of 15), and are the direct descendants of the first generation of Algerian immigrants. Thus, FAOs may be defined as the second generation of Algerian immigrants (see Attias-Donfut and Wolff 2009, 23–24), since they themselves did not make the decision to live in the Hexagon2—their  When speaking of this community, I frequently use the abbreviation FAO (French of Algerian origin). I refer to French people whose parents were not immigrants as the host society, majority population, or French of French origin. 2  The Hexagon—the term, popular in France and also used in this book, means France, because of the country’s roughly hexagonal shape on a map. 1

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parents did. I decided to use the term ‘French of Algerian origin’ rather than ‘second-generation Algerian immigrants’ in order to emphasise that—as various sociological studies show—they are people of French valence (or a bivalence combining French culture with elements of the culture of the country from which their parents emigrated) who speak the language of Molière fluently and function within various circles, layers, or factions of French society (not outside its structure). For these reasons, I call them ‘FAOs’, though not all members of this category, especially those born in Algeria, hold a French identity card (though it is a fact that, among those born in France, aged 18–50, and at least one of whose parents was an Algerian immigrant, 65 percent have only French citizenship, and 34 percent French and other citizenship; see INSEE 2012, 115). By the first generation of Algerian immigrants, I mean those people who became socialised in Algeria, within Arab or Berber culture, and moved to France after having reached the age of 15. In practice, one can assume that they are persons who were defined in colonial France as Français Musulmans d’Algérie (if they were born before the end of the Algerian War), or are the descendants of such people (if they were born after Algeria became independent). Consequently, when speaking of Algerians (unless otherwise stated herein) I have in mind Algerian Arabs or Berbers. This definition of Algerians, though, does not encompass other communities that also have the right to consider Algeria as their homeland. These mainly include those who possessed French citizenship (citoyenneté) in Algeria before 1962, i.e. indigenous Algerian Jews and the population known as Pieds-Noirs (literally ‘Black Feet’)—people of European origin. Jacques Derrida belonged to the first of these two groups, Albert Camus to the second. Like the Arab and Berber peoples, they treated Algeria as their natural home. The Algerian War (1954–1962) and the exodus of most of the Pieds-Noirs to France, where they were often treated as foreigners, gave rise to dramatic experiences for them and their families (Nora 2012, 71 et seq.). They, however, were a community that differed in many ways from the Arab–Berber majority population of Algeria, and so I have not included their problems with identification in my considerations here. The goal of my research project was not only to describe the relationships that exist between the identifications of a specific social community. It was also to propose theoretical concepts that make it possible—to para-

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phrase a well-known article by Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper (2000)—to go beyond identification: to indicate its components and thereby explain what the relationship between one identification and another involves. When conducting my research on the identifications of FAOs, then, I tested the usefulness of concepts such as ‘identification argument’ and ‘category name.’ For the requirements of this project, I also created quantitative and qualitative research tools that may also be of use to others investigating the subject of complex social identities. Because the quantitative analysis of the material I collected was carried out mainly in order to prepare for the qualitative analysis, the most important points arising from it are included toward the end of this introduction. The chapters that follow (3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and most of 8) present the results of qualitative research, thanks to which it is possible to identify mutual connections between French, Algerian and other social identifications.

Identification Argument and Category Name as Components of Identification As mentioned above, this book examines the phenomenon of social identifications, and considers identifications to be vital components of human identity. Identity is a processual phenomenon (Galton and Mizoguchi 2009, 78; Nichols 2010, 256–266; Golka 2012) and etymologically refers to a situation where A is ‘the same,’ identical to B, equal to B or in certain respects similar to B, where a given element of reality (object, phenomenon, living organism, process) can be compared with another both diachronically and synchronically; in other words, the comparison concerns either different elements apposed within the same time, or one element over various intervals of time. In sociology, the term ‘identity’ refers to those relatively unchanging, permanent characteristics that a person shares with other people as a social being, and which ensure that, in various moments of the person’s life, one can speak of them as being the same person, despite the passage of time and the changing nature of other of their characteristics (Baumeister 2011, 49).

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Today, it is frequently postulated that the extremely loaded term ‘identity’ should be replaced in the social sciences with other, more precise terms referring to particular aspects of the phenomenon of identity (Brubaker and Cooper 2000; see Erikson 1960; Crisp 2010). These include identifications and categorisations which, for Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper (2000, 14–15), are contextual, situational and narrational in character. An identification is every performative or descriptive assertion by a subject about themselves or another subject that: (1) they do or do not possess a certain characteristic, and (2) they occupy a particular position in relation to another person. The first type of assertion is categorial identification, since the subject identified is included within a certain social category of all those persons who possess some kind of attribute and among whom one can identify specific characteristics such as: gender; age; class, religious, national, ethnic or regional affiliation; political views and convictions; the performance of certain work; physical features; place of residence (country, city, village, neighbourhood); aesthetic and culinary preferences, and so on. Examples of this type of identification are the statements: ‘I am a Pole,’ ‘You’re no longer a child,’ ‘He’s a communist,’ ‘She doesn’t eat meat [meaning ‘She’s a vegetarian].’ The second type of assertion is relational identification, referring to someone’s position in a relationship or network of relationships such as kinship, friendship, teacher–student relationship or a historical patron– client relationship. Examples of such identifications are: ‘They’re friends,’ ‘He’s my father,’ ‘This is my employer.’ Note that relational identifications may easily be changed into categorial identifications: the above relational examples provided by Brubaker and Cooper also provide information on the categorial affiliations of both the identified and identifying persons (the social categories ‘friends,’ ‘fathers,’ and ‘children,’ ‘employers,’ and ‘employees’). Hence, relational identifications are treated in this book as a specific type of categorial identifications. Where subjects describe themselves, they make a self-identification, whereas when they are named by another subject this is a case of external identification (Ardener 1992, 21). Brubaker and Cooper (2000, 15–16) emphasise that persons performing self-identification must take account of identifications known to them previously, created during social contacts, including interactions with other people or as part of the dominant

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discourse. This is why identifications never appear in abstracto (Machaj 2007, 35) but are made in a specific social situation which is an important context for them, though subjects may be aware of this to differing degrees. A specific, exceptional, and extraordinary context is provided by situations such as a marriage before a state official, the awarding of citizenship to a foreigner, or a religious ceremony welcoming someone into a congregation. These ensure that the recital of specific words by the person identifying is not only descriptive, but also performative (effecting a change in marital status, citizenship, or religious affiliation), and causes the person identified to be subject to specific legal, political, religious, or cultural norms. The concept of ‘identification’ means that the subject performs certain actions that define their own or someone else’s categorial affiliation, situate the person identified in relation to others, and locate them within the context of a certain narrative; it does not mean that the person identified objectively possesses a given characteristic (cf. Burszta 2009, 19; Znaniecki 1988 [1922], 90–108). For Stanisław Ossowski (1983, 57), identification meant ‘a relationship to other members of the community that we express by the plural personal pronoun ‘we.’ Of course, the content of that pronoun may be more or less rich.’ We are dealing with an identification whenever someone defines themselves or another as, for example, ‘conservative,’ ‘Silesian,’ or ‘nature lover,’ regardless of what arguments they would use to justify the assertion. Certainly, the justification of an identification, that is the criteria deemed sufficient for someone to be counted among a given social category, can be extremely interesting and constitutes the subject of many sociological studies (see Appadurai 2009). Essentially, the question about identifications touches on whether any kind of social category can be distinguished as such. If its potential members do not define themselves in various situations as belonging to that community (social category), it is hard to justify making such a distinction. As to the frequency of identifications and situations conducive to them, persons identify with certain categories especially when ‘it becomes necessary for subjects to become aware that they exist as an elemental part of communal life’ (Machaj 2007, 35). For Irena Machaj (2007, 35) these are mainly situations of social change that concern an entire social com-

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munity, as well as important changes in the lives of individuals (cf. Lahire 2005, 57–59). Nevertheless, certain identifications are made less often than others—as in the case, for example, of national identification, according to Antonina Kłoskowska (2005, 111) (‘It’s not a plebiscite you conduct every day,’ as one of the respondents in Kłoskowska’s study says). Krzysztof Koseła (2003, 54–55) refers to identifications that dominate in various social situations as ‘momentous.’ A specific type of identification comprises any statement asserting that a given individual does not belong to a given social category (that, for example, for some reason he or she is not French or not Algerian). A separate case is what is known as negative self-identification, in which subjects confirm their affiliation with a given community because they have certain characteristics but do not evaluate this positively (Piotrowski 2006, 247). Examples of such self-identifications are provided by, for example, the works of the Polish writers Witold Gombrowicz and Stanisław Witkiewicz, in which the authors express their negative attitude toward their own Polishness. Moreover, the results of studies of young descendants of immigrants from the Maghreb in France show that the source of a person’s negative image about their own ethnic or national category often turns out to be experiences of discrimination leading to an acceptance of negative stereotypes disseminated in society (Malewska-­ Peyre 1992, 45–57). The existence of affirmative and non-affirmative attitudes to one’s own categorial affiliation makes it possible to speak of an important property of identification—the sign (Koseła 2003, 54–55). Another important assumption made in this book makes it possible to separate the phenomenon of identification from that of identity and particular aspects thereof. It is worth pointing here to the distinction between valence and identification introduced by Kłoskowska in respect of cultural identity. In the view of this distinguished Polish sociologist, valence and identification constitute parts of identity, which itself ‘is whole and unitary, but composed of a multiplicity, variable, and at times fraught with tension’ (Kłoskowska 2005, 112). Unlike identification, which is based only on a declarative feeling of affiliation with a particular cultural group (ethnic group, nation), valence is a permanent assimilation of an essential part, including a canonical part, of the culture deemed one’s own and close, ‘intensifying the feeling of one’s own worth, dignity and

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sense of participation in the community’ (Kłoskowska 2005, 112 and 128). With regard to valence, Kłoskowska invokes the distinction made by Alfred Schütz between ‘own’ culture and ‘foreign’ culture. The former features ‘knowledge of acquaintance,’ the latter only ‘knowledge about.’ Valence—the feeling of being ‘immersed’ in one’s own culture, of being acquainted with it, usually from early childhood and as a result of socialisation—breeds confidence in associating with other members of that culture and its products, and the conviction of being in authentic contact with that culture (Kłoskowska 2005, 110–112). A concept that seems congruent with ‘valence,’ and which refers to culture as broadly understood, not only to its national dimension, is that of ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu 2005; Strzyczkowski 2011). And another term close in meaning to ‘valence’ is ‘cultural practice,’ about which Pierre Mayol (2011, 5) says that it is: a more or less cohesive, more or less lasting connection of specific, daily (food menu) or ideological (religious, political) elements provided simultaneously by tradition (of the family, social group) and updated from day to day thanks to behaviours expressing that cultural mechanism in a socially visible way, in the same manner as an utterance (énonciation) expresses a fragment of discourse in speech (parole). ‘Practice’ is key to the identity of a user or group to the extent that that identity permits it to hold a place in the network of social relationships existing within the environment.

The approach to identity proposed by Kłoskowska is respected in those studies that, in dealing with the issue of the identity of a selected group (ethnic, national, or other of a specific, separate culture), analyse declarations made by members of the group about their feeling of affiliation to it separately from their cultural practices, which may or may not attest to their being ‘immersed’ in a given culture. The results of such studies of the identity of French of Algerian origin, conducted since the end of the 1970s, suggest that, at the level of cultural practices, such persons are ‘immersed’ in French culture (their French valence is indisputable, though it may be accompanied by elements of their culture or origin, in which case we can speak of a bivalence), while a socially important and scientifically interesting problem is their various national identifications

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(Camilleri 1980; Camilleri 1990; Zehraoui 1999; Bruneaud 2005; Perrin 2008; Rio 2010; Sicard 2011). Viewed sociologically, the final form of the identity of a given subject depends less on the characteristics that subject possesses than on what they think about those characteristics (Chlebda 2008, 259; Smolarkiewicz 2007, 395); ‘in accordance with my theoretical source, the concept of identity describes a reflective attitude a subject has toward themselves,’ writes Kłoskowska (2005, 99). Hypothetically, therefore, even if one could determine that two people were objectively the same, because of their individual self-reflections their identities could nevertheless differ diametrically. As rightly observed by Marian Golka (2012, 210–211), identity is the ‘effect of one’s self-actualisation, discovery, seeking, selecting, recovering—a more or less theatrical creation.’ That being so, a subject’s reflections on themselves and their place in the world, as expressed by every instance of their self-identification, are conceived of within sociology as a constitutive element of identity, a condition that is necessary, and even sufficient, for that identity to exist: ‘identity is the result of self-­ recognition and self-knowledge, that is, of contact with oneself and one’s own past, but also with other people and today’s highly diversified culture’ (Golka 2012, 213). In this context, every identification expressed should be treated as a statement by the subject resulting from their reflections about themselves or another subject. If ‘the concept of identity … most often refers to the sphere of self-definition of a social actor’ (Bokszański 2000, 252), then research on the identity of a given social category leads, especially during the stage of operationalisation, to a question concerning the self-­ identifications of social representatives of that category. Often, it is also the case (e.g. Gajda 2008) that identifications are treated as the most objective aspect of a subject’s identity. Examples of such an approach to the phenomenon of identity, which is reduced de facto to the phenomenon of identification, are extremely numerous in empirical studies (see Bokszański 2004), and justified in theory (replacing ‘identity’ with ‘identification’ is suggested by, among others, Hall 1996; Gotman 2008). On the other hand, studies of this type, which primarily concern identifications, might—given their definitional clarity—not be defined as studies of identity as a whole, since they frequently omit the aspect that

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Kłoskowska called valence and others describe as habitus or cultural practices. Identification may be a one-off act, a continuum of acts (a process), or a lasting result (a mental construct) (Chlebda 2008, 261). This book is predominantly engaged with one-off identifications, without forgetting that these may, in a certain manner, be ordered over time so that they normally result in a certain self-definition of the subject concerned that is reasonably stable. Sets of identifications displaying different degrees of complexity and functioning within the social identity of a given individual constitute configurations of identifications (Koseła 2003, 54–55). When speaking further of an ‘identification,’ I will have in mind a single act (action as defined by Znaniecki 1988 [1922], 90–108): identification as the attribution of a categorial name to the subject being identified by the person making the identification. Such an act of identification may occur as shown in Fig. 1.1. In an act of identification, one can determine the identifying subject (S1) and the subject identified (S2) (see Chlebda 2008, 258–259), where: 1. The identifying subject may be simultaneously identified, as in a case of self-identification (S1 = S2); 2. The identifying subject may be a person or people performing the same identification act, or an institution (e.g. state, church); 3. The subject identified may be a person, group of people, collective or community having a certain categorial characteristic, or an institution; 4. S2 is defined as a subject, not an object, because the phenomenon of identification assumes a symmetrical relationship (S2 may also make a separate act of identification).

Subject identifying

Category name, e.g. ‘French’

Fig. 1.1  Single act of identification

Subject identified

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In an act of identification, a category name can also be distinguished. I treat the attribution of a name (‘Frenchman’) as equivalent to an assertion by the identifying subject that the subject identified belongs to the social category denoted by that name (‘the French’). I also assume that an act of identification requires that, if asked to do so, the identifying subject will be able to present sufficient arguments justifying the attribution of the name to the subject identified (see Fig. 1.2). With reference to the theory of the sign of Ferdinand de Saussure (1991 [1916], 89–102), we can say that, in an act of identification, an argument is the signified element (signifié), while the name functions as the signifying element (signifiant). The signifying element does not therefore have to be verbal in nature, while the act of identification can take place in a given situation by means of a gesture, provided that its intention is to locate a given subject within a particular category. Furthermore, an act of identification need not be communicated to the subject identified, and therefore is not an act of linguistic communication as understood by Roman Jakobson (1989). Let us now consider what identification arguments and names are. An identification argument is a justification that can serve an identifying subject in locating an identified subject within a particular category.

Subject identifying

Argument

Name

‘Born in Rennes, a city in the region of Brittany, in France’

Category name, e.g. ‘French’

Subject identified

Fig. 1.2  Single act of identification supplemented by an identification argument

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Any characteristic that S1 believes S2 possesses, and which is also present in S1’s definition of a ‘typical’ member of a given category, may be an argument. Someone may use as an argument any phenomenon they believe is present—for which Brubaker and Cooper (2000) proposed such terms as: ‘self-understanding,’ ‘social location,’ ‘commonality,’ ‘connectedness,’ and ‘groupness.’ When identifying with, for example, the French, we assert that we possess French characteristics, which consist of those that constitute the essence or nature of Frenchness. As Chlebda argues (2008, 260): Saying ‘someone is identical’ is incomplete and requires supplementation as to ‘with whom’ or ‘with what’: with themselves, with a defined environment, with a given nation. Hence, as a kind of derivative of such supplementations, the terms: personal identity, environmental identity, ethnic identity, Silesian, Slavic, European identity, etc. … To say that someone has European identity is to say that they have a feeling of maximum convergence (accord) between characteristics considered their own and characteristics considered European.

Particular subjects may possess definitions—often diametrically opposed—of what is a ‘typical’ representative of a given community. Leon Dyczewski and Robert Szwed (2010, 5) addressed this issue as follows: ‘The members of every community, even if they have never met, have in their consciousness an image of the community to which they belong and with which they identify. That image is assimilated individually and complemented, depending on the individual’s and the community’s experiences, reflections, knowledge, and communication with others.’ Consequently, a single identification may be justified by completely different arguments, while arguments deemed sufficient by some (e.g. ‘I’m Catholic because I feel Catholic’) may not be so for others (e.g. ‘I’m Catholic because I follow the tenets of the Catholic faith; just feeling this is not enough’). Moreover, an argument (e.g. the fact of being born in 1955 in Algeria) may serve very different identifications (e.g. for some, it is an argument in favour of affiliation with the French, and for others—with the Algerians) (Fig. 1.3).

1  Introduction to Research on Identifications  Argument

S1

‘Born in Rennes, a city in the region of Briany, in France’

13

Name

‘French’ (community of French na onality)

Sufficient argument

Category name, e.g. ‘French’

S2

Insufficient argument

Fig. 1.3  Single act of identification supplemented by other elements The figure illustrates situations in which S1 (the identifying subject) deemed the argument ‘Born in Rennes, a city in the region of Brittany, in France’ as sufficient for identifying S2 (the subject identified) as French. Notice that the same argument could serve (if S1 deemed it sufficient) to identify S2 as, for example, a European (the civilisational community of the Europeans), a Breton (the regional community of the Bretons), or a Rennais [an inhabitant of Rennes or a person born in Rennes] (the territorial community encompassing inhabitants and natives of Rennes)

It is assumed that argumentation requires a reference to ‘common’ objects shared with other interlocutors, such as (Vignaux 1988, 46): facts (real objects about which the majority agree that they are real), truths (convictions forming part of philosophical and religious systems and scientific theories), suppositions (opinions and superstitions proper to a given group on the subject of what is normal or probable), values (close to norms, they refer to morality and direct the entire debate), places (in the Aristotelian meaning: topoi, i.e. very general assumptions that form the basis for the creation of values). Each of the above-mentioned objects is connected with a given community’s perception of reality, and with how particular elements thereof are valued and placed in a hierarchy. Among the mental phenomena that characterise a given group, of particular interest are those where ‘cognitive distortions’ dominate, i.e. views that are simplified, one-sided or simply false (Sztompka 2005, 300). These are considered to be pathological phenomena, and include, in par-

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ticular, stereotypes (wildly exaggerated images of a given community— one’s own or another) and treating all members of a group in the same way, regardless of their individual attributes; they only appear to be objective knowledge (Sztompka 2005, 300). Stereotypes are based on a selective perception of phenomena (Amossy and Herschberg-Pierrot 1997, 38). Here the primary function is fulfilled by the mechanism of social categorisation (Hogg and Abrams 1988, 63–68). This results ‘from the need to create a simplified, schematic image of the world in order to reduce cognitive dissonance or a conflict of values’ (Paleczny 2002, 125). Various studies have shown that such beliefs can be very widespread, even if they have no objective correlation with reality (Amossy and Herschberg-­ Pierrot 1997, 36), and, being fixed in the tradition of judgments about the characteristics, flaws and virtues of people from different cultures, they are subject only to very slow and slight modifications (Paleczny 2002, 132). A stereotype, in itself harmless as a conviction, opinion or notion on the subject of a group (a cognitive component), may become an attitude toward the group (an affective component), and this may in turn evoke specific behaviour addressed toward it (a behavioural component), i.e. discrimination in the case of a negative stereotype (Amossy and Herschberg-Pierrot 1997, 34–35; cf. Hogg and Abrams 1988, 60–81; Budyta-Budzyńska 2010, 111–138). Arguing in favour of a given act of identification concerns the sphere of both logos and pathos. When we speak, we appeal not only to knowledge and logical thinking, but also to the realm of feelings. With regard to the requirements of effective argumentation, the class distinction between pathos and logos proves to be inadequate and artificial (Amossy 2008, 114; Angenot 2008, 85). The importance of emotions in the art of argumentation is emphasised in numerous works on rhetoric and literature rooted in the ancient thought of Cicero, Tacitus, and Sallust on the subject of pathos, defined by Aristotle in his Rhetoric as a speech act (after: Delarue 2008, 21; Rinn 2008, 13). Studies of what emotions are transmitted using certain linguistic means reveal conclusions that are not always rational or causal, and open the way to recognising the most sensitive elements of the culture of every social group and—more broadly—of a society as a whole (Rinn 2008).

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15

Summarising, a given argument may be considered as: 1. True or false. In someone’s opinion, S2 may possess (a true argument) or not possess (a false argument) a characteristic attributed to them in an identification, where people may have different convictions as to the truthfulness or falsehood of a given argument (cf. Ziółkowski 1981, 147–254). 2. Referring to the past (e.g. identifications such as ‘Yugoslavian,’ ‘Czechoslovakian’ used today), the present, or the future (teleological, postulative identifications). 3. Sufficient or insufficient. In someone’s opinion, a given argument, even if it is true, may be deemed insufficient in order to assert that a subject identified belongs to a social category broader than simply the category of persons who possess the characteristic described in the argument (see Hall 1996, 2–3). For some, the fact that someone was born in Rennes is sufficient in order to describe them as French, while for others it may only mean that the person concerned belongs to the category of people born in Rennes, i.e. to the category of Rennais (see Fig. 1.4). 4. Necessary or unnecessary—similar to the above. 5. Supportive of a given identification (reinforcing the confidence of the subject that the characteristics they possess are sufficient to make the identification) or unsupportive of it. 6. In the belief of many subjects, arguments can be mutually connected, e.g. contradictory or non-contradictory (see Bokszański 2006, 46; Walczak 2010, 15–18). For example, for the same people ‘Rennais,’ ‘French,’ and ‘European’ can be used as arguments that are non-­ contradictory (since for such people it is possible for a person to simultaneously belong to the communities of people born in Rennes, the French, and the Europeans), while ‘non-Catholic’ and ‘Irish’ are contradictory (if for them simultaneous affiliation with the group of people who are not Catholic and with the Irish is impossible; cf. Stegner 1994). From point 6) above, as well as from earlier reflections on what an argument of identification is, we can make the assumption that, in the

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J. Kubera Argument

Name Sufficient argument

S1

‘Born in Rennes, a city in the region of Brittany, in France’

‘French’ (community of French nationality)

Category name, e.g. ‘French’

S2

Insufficient argument

‘Born in Rennes’ (category of all those born in Rennes)

Fig. 1.4  Single act of identification supplemented by other elements The figure illustrates situations in which S1 (the identifying subject) deemed the argument ‘Born in Rennes, a city in the region of Brittany, in France’ as sufficient for identifying S2 (the subject identified) as French. Because that argument was considered true, however, S1 may attribute to S2 the name of all people for whom the argument is true (regardless of whether it is sufficient)

definition of specific subjects, the relationships that exist between arguments (characteristics) run in parallel with the relationships between affiliation with the social categories to which those arguments refer (e.g. if in a definition accepted in a given situation it is acknowledged that one can combine French and Algerian characteristics, i.e. Frenchness and Algerianness, it is thereby acknowledged that a person can be simultaneously French and Algerian). Moreover, as Fig. 1.4 shows, every argument (e.g. born in Rennes) can be reduced to the fact that a subject belongs to a certain category (e.g. the category of those born in Rennes), and therefore to an identification associated with a given characteristic and category (identification with the category of Rennais). Even if, in the example analysed here, an argument is deemed insufficient (the Frenchness of the subject identified is refuted), the identification of the subject with the category of Rennais will not, in a given situation, be questioned (but will therefore be a permanent, stable element of that subject’s identity). From this we may assume that one identification

1  Introduction to Research on Identifications 

17

identification (e.g. French)

category characteristic (e.g. Frenchness)

affiliation to a given category (e.g. to the category ‘French’)

Fig. 1.5  Identification with a category, affiliation with that category and categorial characteristic as interdependent concepts

(connected with a specific characteristic and social category) may be an argument in favour of another, and for that reason one can speak of relationships between identifications, which are parallel to the relationships particular subjects define among the same arguments. These ideas are depicted in Fig. 1.5. Another indispensable element of every identification is its name, in other words the expression of the argument in language. As we know, particular characteristics are distinguished by means of the language in which the identification is made. By choosing a category name to be attributed to someone, the identifying subject takes account of existing acts of identification known to them. Subjects’ attitudes toward existing identifications may be (Gajda 2008, 14): conservative (preserving previous elements and traditional identifications); adaptational–innovative (readiness to accept new identifications and seeking to preserve those previous identifications that are not contrary to tendencies in the development of the situation); or disintegrational–innovative (tending toward new identifications by rejecting old ones, a conscious de-­traditionalisation). Furthermore, the name used to define the same social category may depend on the regional, environmental, professional, or class affiliation

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of the identifying person (regional, environmental, professional dialects and sociolects), and may result from a specific communication situation, such as where code names must be used (for example, Poles I met in Paris told me that, in public places, they use the euphemism ‘Swiss’ instead of ‘Arab’; similar phenomena can be found in groups using an argot, that is to say an environmental or professional dialect). The same argument can be expressed using various synonymous names, which, if not uttered ironically, express an attitude that may be neutral, positive or negative in relation to an argument, social category or subject identified. Different names, which are signifiers of the argument, often carry different emotional colourings (e.g. ‘fanatic’ vs. ‘fan’; ‘medico’ vs. ‘physician’; ‘leftie’ vs. ‘leftist’). Nowadays, many people belonging to various social categories demand that, in acts of identification, their own community be defined in a way that is less negatively coloured; they reject certain names currently in circulation. For example, feminist movements in France and Poland seek to have feminine endings added to the names of professions and public functions, while associations acting on behalf of people with limited mobility propose new terms for categorising such people (not ‘handicapped’ but, for instance, ‘disabled,’ ‘physically challenged’). Attitudes expressed in language appear in Aristotle as pairs of opposites: ‘anger–serenity,’ ‘fear–trust,’ and so on (Delarue 2008, 23). Current analyses of statements also find that these are positioned around ‘fixed places’ (topoi). In political discourse, these are: the topos of pain and suffering vs that of happiness; fear vs hope; antipathy vs friendship (Charaudeau 2008, 51). Topoi are used as ready-made scenarios that evoke appropriate emotions and specific reactions of the human body (Eggs 2008, 291). While, in his Rhetoric, Aristotle showed that, when seeking to convince an interlocutor, one should be aware of the listener’s (or the listening public’s) fixed constitutive characteristics such as age, wealth, and origins (êthê), of much more importance are variable human characteristics that depend on emotions and result from a particular situation (pathê) (after Delarue 2008, 23). These can be acted upon to the greatest degree, and it is precisely this connection between ethics and emotions (pathétique) that was, for the ancients, a theoretical problem difficult to resolve (Delarue 2008, 30).

1  Introduction to Research on Identifications 

19

The above elements can be supplemented by motivations and situations. The motivations for making an act of identification may be autotelic or instrumental. According to Zbigniew Bokszański (2008, 26), in contemporary societies the expression of ethnic identifications is increasingly motivated by a desire to satisfy some kind of need or attain certain goals. The role of motivations in identification is of vital importance, since they determine whether an identifying subject deems a given argument sufficient for ascribing someone to a particular social category rather than to another (Fig. 1.6). For example, in France, politicians that hold nationalist views often negate the Frenchness of descendants of immigrants if they have two passports, arguing that they treat French citizenship instrumentally for administrative purposes and those of daily life, but are not connected with the country emotionally (Brubaker 1994, 146–151). Among the elements that accompany acts of identification, an important place is held by the situation. As Bokszański (2008, 28) writes, the identifying subject chooses those arguments and those names that they consider essential, credible, proper or adequate in a given situation. In their ‘Methodological Note’ to The Polish Peasant, William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki (1958 [1918–1920], 68) defined ‘situation’ as follows: The situation is the set of values and attitudes with which the individual or the group has to deal in a process of activity and with regard to which this activity is planned and its results appreciated. Every concrete activity is the solution of a situation. The situation involves three kinds of data: (1) The objective conditions under which the individual or society has to act, that is, the totality of values—economic, social, religious, intellectual, etc. which at the given moment affect directly or indirectly the conscious status of the individual or the group. (2) The pre-existing attitudes of the individual or the group which at the given moment have an actual influence upon his behaviour. (3) The definition of the situation, that is, the more or less clear conception of the conditions and consciousness of the attitudes.

Because the situation in which an identification is made determines what characteristics (arguments) of the subject identified are perceived (e.g. ‘born in Rennes’) and to what social category they are ascribed (e.g.

20 

J. Kubera Argument

S1

Situation

‘Born in Rennes, a city in the region of Brittany, in France’

Name

‘French’ (community of French nationality)

SA Motivations IA

Category name, e.g. ‘French’ S2

‘Born in Rennes’ (category of all those born in Rennes)

Fig. 1.6  Single act of identification (all elements). (Abbreviations: S1 identifying subject, S2 subject identified, SA sufficient argument, IA insufficient argument)

national — ‘French’), a change in situation may cause a change in identification, through: 1. a perception of a new characteristic of the subject (e.g. ‘graduate of law studies’) resulting in re-ascribing the subject to a social category of another type (e.g. not national, but professional—’lawyer’); 2. a perception of a new characteristic of the subject (e.g. ‘born in Rennes to Algerian immigrant parents’) resulting in re-ascribing the subject to a social category of the same type (here: national—the same category—‘French’) or a different one (e.g. ‘Algerian,’ ‘French and Algerian,’ ‘non-French,’ ‘non-Algerian,’ etc.); 3. a perception of a new characteristic of the subject (e.g. ‘born in Rennes to Algerian immigrant parents’) with the previous argument being requalified from sufficient to insufficient, or the reverse (e.g. ‘it’s not enough to be born in Rennes to be French’); 4. a change in the qualification of the previous argument from sufficient to insufficient for other reasons resulting from a change in the situation (a new subject identified, a change in the observers of the ­identification, the acquisition of new characteristics by the identifying subject, a change in the definition of a ‘typical’ member of a given social category, etc.).

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21

Every new situation, then, forces the identifying subject to consider anew where in their belief the borders of a given social category (‘French’) lie, or to choose between categories of the same type (‘French’ and ‘Algerians’), or to reconsider what characteristics and what type of categories are to be taken into account at all (e.g. religious, professional, class or national) (see Ammar et al. 1990, 10; Vibert 2011, 21–22). Of course, in daily life we don’t ponder these kinds of issues; it only happens in certain situations, especially when an identifying subject has difficulty in making a proper identification, e.g. when faced with a heretofore inadequate definition of a given category. Of decisive importance is how the situation is defined—how existing circumstances are to be interpreted, taking into account only certain facts while ignoring others, etc.—thanks to which one of the possible attitudes ‘becomes predominant and subordinates the others. It happens, indeed, that a certain value imposes itself immediately and unreflectively and leads at once to action, or that an attitude as soon as it appears excludes the others and expresses itself unhesitatingly in an active process’ (Thomas and Znaniecki 1958 [1918–1920], 68; see Znaniecki 1988 [1922], 110–111). While motivations determine whether a given argument is deemed sufficient or not, a situation affects what characteristics (arguments) the subject chooses to raise when making an identification, and what name they apply to a specific characteristic. The situation causes one identification to ‘cover’ the rest—it becomes the axis of action, the point of reference for how others are perceived and assessed. From a psychological perspective, the ease with which one particular categorisation and not another is used (Kwiatkowska 1999, 20–28) is affected by: (1) the degree of cognitive access to the category and the degree to which it fits reality; (2) factors that determine the degree to which the category fits, such as the entitativity (the possibility of separating the whole group) and perceptual distinctiveness of its members (including being in a minority, physical features accessible mainly visually, clarity of stimuli), or how recently the category was activated; and (3) the degree of inclusiveness of the category. It is also the case that people differ in the speed with which they recognise strangers as belonging to a given social category (the dimension of ‘rashness of categorisa-

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tion’) and in the number and type of indicators they need to ascribe some to a particular category (the dimension of ‘superficiality of categorisation’) (Kwiatkowska 1999, 142–168). In every situation where people identify others, they either focus on shared characteristics (possession by both subjects of the same argument) or the reverse, on divergent characteristics (even if they could point to many arguments that connect them) (cf. Jarymowicz 1992, 226–230). Situations take place in a particular context, and themselves create that context, affecting further identifications (Marcin Starnawski calls this context the field of identification [2008, 253–254]). Andrzej Sakson (2017, 162) discusses the impact of the specific type of situation that arises during contact with a sociologist asking  questions about nationality, based on his many years of research  conducted among native inhabitants of Poland’s WarmiaMazuria Province: When the conversation with the respondent turns to the subject of the Polishness, Mazurianness or Germanness of a given group, there is a likelihood that the person may highlight certain examples from their life, and not others, thereby confirming their adherence to one or another tradition. As the experiment showed, some of the persons researched, if they were dealing with someone who had come from Germany, displayed their Germanness during the conversation (language, affiliation with German organisations, relatives in Germany, etc.), whereas if they were conversing with a Polish researcher, they played down those connections, highlighting their connections with Polishness.

Finally, let us review the elements of each identification discussed above: (a) act of identification, (b) identifying subject, (c) subject identified, (d) identification argument, (e) category name, (f ) motivation, (g) situation.

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23

In social research, concentrating on identifications serves to dismantle the opposition between the postmodernist and modernist views, to elucidate both what is ‘fluid’ and what is relatively ‘fixed.’ Situation, discourse and context, which are seen as ‘fluid’ factors of identity that hinder the study of it, in the case of an identification are an asset, given real expression in the form of language. Identifications vary depending on the situation, and yet they are not completely arbitrary, since they are made in close connection with the external world. Relatively stable points of human existence, such as status, role or place in the structure of society, largely determine what identifications are made in a given situation. Both in classic sociological studies such as those by Georg Simmel (2005, 2008 [1908]) and Florian Znaniecki (1988, 2009 [1934]; 2011 [1965]), and in the contemporary works of Bernard Lahire (2005), we find justification for the hypothesis that people live in many social worlds; they are ‘multiple,’ yet the number of those worlds is limited, providing a framework for identifications. The existence of many points of identificatory reference means that, apart from very exceptional situations, people never completely lose the feeling of their own continuity, since the changes that determine the fluidity of their identity usually concern only certain aspects of it. In philosophical trends rooted in the social sciences, such as performatism (Eshelman 2000; Domańska 2007), post-postmodernism (Epstein 1999) and post-millennialism (Gans 2000, 2001a, b, c), constructivist reflections are combined with a vision of a person who is active and aware of their own ‘I.’ This indicates that, on the one hand, postmodernism does not completely explain reality, and on the other that, in looking for what is fixed and stable in human existence, we should not break away completely from postmodernist thinking. The metamodernist paradigm can be seen as a synthesis of these currents (see Kubera 2013). This is because the creators of the concept of ‘metamodernism,’ Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker (2010), emphasise that contemporary man is doomed to oscillate between concepts known from both postmodernism and modernism. Those concepts include universal truths and relativism; a longing for sense and doubting sense; hope and melancholy; sincerity and irony; knowledge and naivety; construction and deconstruction; and engagement and detachment. Such an understand-

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ing of the subject and his or her identity, which attempts to connect two seemingly totally contradictory paradigms, is presented in this book.

 ethodology of Research on the Relationship M Between Identifications in the Fictional and Autobiographical Texts At the heart of my research project are the national identifications of FAOs, French, and Algerian, examined in terms of their connections with other social identifications. Previous sociological studies have pointed to the occurrence of various identifications among FAOs (including Zehraoui 1999; Bruneaud 2005; Perrin 2008; Rio 2010; Sicard 2011), but have treated these as static. Ideal types are normally presented, according to which descendants of Algerian immigrants were supposed to identify themselves mainly as ‘French like the others,’ ‘Algerian French’ or ‘French Algerians,’ ‘French Plus,’ ‘French Arab Muslims,’ or ‘French-­ Occidental inhabitants of the Earth’ (les Terriens franco-occidentaux) (Rio 2010, 107–178). Furthermore, those works usually concerned only one type of identification, mainly national (French, Algerian) or spatial (suburban). The aim of the research reported and discussed in this book was to create as full a typology as possible of various situations experienced by FAOs, in which calling someone French or Algerian (or non-French or non-Algerian) (see category name) goes hand in hand with indicating their affiliation with another community (see identification argument). In preparing for the research, I set myself the following seven questions: 1 . With what social categories do FAOs identify? 2. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments in favour of their being identified as French (i.e. as French characteristics)? 3. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments in favour of their being identified as Algerian (i.e. as Algerian characteristics)?

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4. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments against their being identified as French (i.e. as non-French characteristics)? 5. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments against their being identified as Algerian (i.e. as non-Algerian characteristics)? 6. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as characteristics that are simultaneously French and Algerian? 7. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments against French and Algerian identification simultaneously? Among the research methods that could take account of assumptions concerning the variability, variety and mutual connections of identifications, I chose the assumptions of the biographical method (Denzin 2009 [1970]; 220–238; Włodarek and Ziółkowski 1990) and, within that framework, based on the methodology of Florian Znaniecki (2009 [1934]), I selected as my fundamental research material literary texts located on the continuum between fiction and autobiography. The material that was analysed consisted of literary texts written in prose by French of Algerian origin, featuring various degrees of autobiographical elements and published in the years 2000–2013; the texts were selected both qualitatively and quantitatively. Because French of Maghrebi origin, including FAOs, call themselves Beurs, the literature they create is also sometimes known by that name. This literary current began in 1983, when Mehdi Charef published his first autobiographical story entitled Le thé au harem d’Archi Achmed. Stories arising within littérature beur are studied in terms of both literature and linguistics (Hargreaves 1991; Redouane 2012; Vitali 2011a, b), as well as sociology. As to sociological themes, researchers are interested in such currents as identity in the post-migration world, daily life in the suburbs (Desplanques 1991; Galaï 2005; Geiser 2008), and the presence of the authors of these stories in the French literary field (Olsson 2011). Books by French authors whose parents were Algerian immigrants are met with considerable interest by readers in France, and are often published by renowned publishers (Gallimard, Mercure, Stock, and Seuil),

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although, on the other hand, aesthetic and literary appraisals of them differ very widely. It should be added that many of the authors of these novels are not in favour of the term littérature beur (or of another term once used in this context—‘literature of the suburbs’), viewing it as one that ethnicises and ghettoises. For this reason, a group of young French writers, mainly of Maghrebi origin, published a manifesto in 2007  in which they opposed such terms as beur and de banlieue, arguing that they wish to be perceived as a group of French writers bearing no other adjectives. The group took on the name ‘Qui fait la France,’ a play on words involving the argot word kiffer, which means ‘to love’ (Kleppinger 2011, 41). On the basis of a search, I drew up a list of 23 FAOs, defined as at the beginning of this chapter (by their family migration history and their socio-cultural rootedness in French society, not necessarily by the criterion of citizenship), whose literary texts were published after 1999. They are: Hamid Aït-Taleb (HAB), Karim Amellal (KA), Azouz Begag (AB), Mouss Benia (MB), Nina Bouraoui (NB), Mehdi Charef (MC), Magyd Cherfi (MCh), Ahmed Djouder (AD), Faïza Guène (FG), Achmy Halley (AH), Tassadit Imache (TI), Jean-Luc Istace-Yacine (JLIY), Ahmed Kalouaz (AK), Mehdi Lallaoui (ML), Sabri Louatah (SL), Ali Magoudi (AM), Mabrouck Rachedi (MR), Zahia Rahmani (ZR), Karim Sarroub (KS), Samira Sedira (SS), Akli Tadjer (AT), Madjid Talmats (MT), and Razika Zitouni (RZ). This group does not include authors who, according to the definitions accepted herein, belong to the first, not the second, generation of immigrants (i.e. those who themselves made the decision to migrate), such as Assia Djebar (a former member of the Académie Française), Leïla Sebbar, Nourredine Saadi, Malika Mokeddem, and Abdelkader Djemaï. Nor does the list include second-generation authors from Tunisia or Morocco (which, along with Algeria, comprise the Maghreb), including Kaoutar Harchi, of Moroccan origin. As a result of a purposeful random selection (Flick 2010, 56–58), 12 of the 23 above-mentioned writers were included in the sample: six women (NB, FG, TI, ZR, SS, RZ) and six men (KA, AB, MB, MC, AD, AK). They represent different generations and different migration trajectories: in the year 2000 some of them were 35 years of age or younger

1  Introduction to Research on Identifications 

27

(NB, FG, RZ, KA, MB, AD); the over-35s were TI, ZR, SS, AB, MC, and AK. They socialised both in Algerian families (AB, MC, AD, FG, AK, ZR, SS, RZ) and mixed French–Algerian families (KA, NB, TI); they were born in France (KA, AB, NB, AD, FG, TI) or in Algeria (MC, AK, ZR, SS). For each author, one text was selected at random (Tables 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4). As Table 1.4 shows, thus arose a collection of more than 2100 pages of literature on various themes, including childhoods spent in Algeria, the first years after coming to France, family and occupational problems, interactions with neighbours in various places, and issues concerning people’s world view. The basic method employed was content analysis, where qualitative and quantitative analyses were treated as mutually complementary (Flick 2010, 31–34). Table 1.1  Authors of the analysed texts First and last name 1.

Occupation

Karim Scientific researcher in Paris, writer, social Amellal activist, critic 2. Azouz Begag Economist and sociologist, politician (centre-­ right), writer 3. Mouss Benia Writer, critic, actor 4. Nina Writer Bouraoui 5. Mehdi Charef Film director, playwright, novelist 6. Ahmed Writer, editor Djouder 7. Faïza Guène Writer, screenwriter, author of short films 8. Tassadit Writer, member of the Commission nationale Imache de déontologie de la sécurité (CNDS, 2001–2007) 9. Ahmed Writer, poet, educator Kalouaz 10. Zahia Researcher at the National Institute of Art Rahmani History (L’Institut national d’histoire de l’art), writer 11. Samira Sedira Actress, writer 12. Razika Geography and history teacher Zitouni

Year of literary debut 2005 1986 2003 1991 1983 2006 2004 1988

1975 2003

2013 2005

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Table 1.2  Authors of the analysed texts. Division by gender and age Age group Younger (35 or younger in the year Gender 2000)

Older (over 35 in the year 2000)

Women Nina Bouraoui Faïza Guène Razika Zitouni Men Karim Amellal Mouss Benia Ahmed Djouder

Tassadit Imache Zahia Rahmani Samira Sedira Azouz Begag Mehdi Charef Ahmed Kalouaz

Table 1.3  Authors of the analysed texts. Division into those raised in Algeria or in France, and in an Algerian or Algerian–French family Socialisation Where raised

Algerian family

Algerian–French family

in Algeriaa

Mehdi Charef Zahia Rahmani Samira Sedira Azouz Begag Ahmed Djouder Faïza Guène Ahmed Kalouazb Razika Zitounic Mouss Beniac,d

Karim Amellal Nina Bouraoui

in France

Tassadit Imache

Authors of whom it is known that they were raised for at least several years in Algeria b The author came to France at the age of 6 months c The birthplaces and places of early socialisation of these authors was not established, though it is probable that they were only, or mainly, raised in France d Being an Algerian immigrant is confirmed in the case of one of the author’s parents a

The quantitative analysis made it possible to record every identification or identification argument observed in the texts in respect of one of 50 selected category names (including those based on nation, region, religion, world view, class, immigrant status, personal appearance, gender, sexual orientation, experience of colonialism or the Algerian War, type of district inhabited, economic status, cultural capital, level of education, attitude toward social norms and, finally, toward generally understood formal and informal relationships and roles).

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29

Table 1.4  The analysed textual materials First and last name (Author No. code)

Title of book

Year first published

Place of publication, publisher and number of pages of first edition

Karim Amellal (KA) Azouz Begag (AB)

Cités à comparaître. Roman

2006

Paris: Stock, 177 pp.

Le marteau pique-­ cœur. Roman

2004

Mouss Benia (MB) Nina Bouraoui (NB)

Chiens de la casse. Roman

2007

Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 251 pp. (I used the paperback edition: Points, 2005, 229 pp.) Paris: Hachette Littératures, 229 pp.

Garçon manqué

2000

5.

Mehdi Charef (MC)

À bras-le-cœur. Roman

2006

6.

Ahmed Djouder (AD)

1.

2.

3.

4.

7.

8.

9.

2006 Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés: les racines du malaise. Récit Faïza Guène Du rêve pour les oufs 2006 (FG)

Tassadit Imache (TI)

Ahmed Kalouaz (AK) 10. Zahia Rahmani (ZR)

Presque un frère. Conte du temps présent. Roman

2000

Avec tes mains

2009

France, récit d’une enfance

2006

Paris: Éditions Stock, 197 pp. (Le Livre de Poche, 2010, 189 pp.) Paris: Mercure de France, 187 pp. (Collection Folio, 2007, 246 pp.) Paris: Éditions Stock, 157 pp. (J’ai lu, 2007, 127 pp.) Paris: Hachette Littératures, 213 pp. (Le Livre de Poche, 2010, 155 pp.) Arles: Actes Sud (Générations), 147 pp. (Actes Sud [Babel], 2001, 143 pp.) Rodez: Rouergue (La Brune), 110 pp. Paris: Sabine Wespieser, 165 pp. (Le Livre de Poche, 2008, 153 pp.)

(continued)

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J. Kubera

Table 1.4 (continued) First and last name (Author No. code)

Title of book

11. Samira L’odeur des planches Sedira (SS) Comment je suis 12. Razika devenue une Zitouni beurgeoise (RZ)

Year first published

Place of publication, publisher and number of pages of first edition

2013

Arles: Rouergue, 136 pp.

2005

Paris: Hachette Littératures, 210 pp.

The qualitative analysis involved placing identifications observed in the texts within one of eight fields (see Fig. 1.8 and those that follow in Chaps. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7), thereby revealing their relationships, resulting from a specific situation, to French or Algerian identification. The results of the qualitative research were grouped according to five large themes (each dealt with in a chapter of the book): 1. colonialism and post-colonialism, the Algerian War and its consequences, the anti-colonial discourse; 2. family, relations between generations, life in relationships, marriage, differences in approaches to religion, differences among family members in acquiring ‘French’ characteristics and maintaining ‘Algerian’ ones, everyday and holiday customs; 3. the ‘inheritability’ of migration, two homelands and double absence, experiences of racism and xenophobia, the anti-immigrant discourse, experiences resulting from the Republic model of integration; 4. spaces inhabited, the suburbs, the culture of the suburbs, the conflict between the suburbs and ‘good neighbourhoods’ as intra-French or as French vs foreign; 5. experiences of class differences, the accumulation of inequality, integration due to affiliation with the working class, causes and consequences of social advancement among descendants of immigrants, causes of the declining socioeconomic status of FAOs. Apart from these, two important subjects can be identified that are discussed in each of the following seven chapters. Firstly, many of the situations analysed concern experiences resulting from someone’s gender

1  Introduction to Research on Identifications 

31

affiliation. These include the role of Algerian women during the colonial period; specific situations experienced by women during the Algerian War; the emancipatory significance of moving to France for the first generation of Algerian women emigrants; the experience of isolation experienced by emigrant women in the home; generational and gender differences in how FAOs perceive the roles of women and men, and of marriage, in society; the situation of women in the suburbs; the advancement of women and men in French society. Secondly, many of the passages analysed concern how the body and appearance are perceived as indicators of affiliation with various national, social, and class categories. This motif appears, for example, in the context of the different kinds of legal status of inhabitants of colonial Algeria, and in that of racism against today’s inhabitants of France. One’s body and way of behaving are an important subject of discussion between generations within Algerian immigrant families (for instance, how a ‘real’ Algerian, Arab, Muslim, or French woman looks and behaves). The body is also present in those chapters concerning class affiliation and living in the suburbs (for instance, different ways of moving, walking, dress taste, relaxing). In this way, referring to theories and concepts such as ‘argument’ and ‘category name,’ I discovered various types of situations that concern the relationship between Frenchness, Algerianness, and other identifications. The material collected was of enormous illustrative value and provided a basis for the creation of a kind of map of relationships between different identifications of FAOs (see Chap. 8). Moreover, the results of my own research were compared with those of other qualitative and quantitative studies conducted in France in recent years, whose objectives, however, were somewhat different. The most important source in this regard turned out to be representative surveys entitled Trajectoires et Origines (Trajectories and Origins), conducted in 2008 by INED and INSEE,3 and utilised later in various publications (including Collet and Santelli 2012; Condon and Régnard 2010; Okba 2012; Pan Ké Shon 2011a, b; Simon 2012). The photographs included in the book were taken during  INED: L’Institut national d’études démographiques (National Institute for Demographic Studies), INSEE: L’Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies). 3

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J. Kubera

meetings with members of the Algerian minority in France and visits to places associated with French and Algerian history. The book refers in a specific way to the years after 2000. This period includes more heated discussions about: the Algerian War and how it is commemorated in France; the intensification of Islamophobia and xenophobia; the increasing popularity of anti-immigrant parties; riots in the suburbs of French cities; the economic crisis; and increasing social and economic inequality in France. The conclusions drawn from the analysis of texts written by FAOs at that time concerning attitudes toward Algerians and the French remain valid; in fact, the social and economic problems noted at that time have intensified since then. The results presented in Chaps 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 of the qualitative research into the 12 selected literary texts provide information on the appearance among the FAO population of certain attitudes toward Frenchness and Algerianness in specific types of situations, although without considering how frequently those attitudes appear and without referring to all possible attitudes. At the same time, because the texts are located in different places along the continuum from fiction to autobiography (Lis 2006; Lejeune 1996), we must suspend giving any answer to the question of whether the narrators of the stories can be identified with their authors (cf. Eakin 1985; Ulicka 2001; Colonna 2004; Czermińska 2009; Welzer 2009; Kubera 2012). Assuming that the situations and attitudes toward Frenchness and Algerianness described in the texts are close to the experiences of at least a part of the FAO population, what matters is not whether and to what degree the texts are autobiographical, but that the authors and the narrators or protagonists display certain important social characteristics (migrant parents, Algerian origin, life in the suburbs, etc.) and that all the texts meet the criterion of verisimilitude (Lis 2006, 60–69; Duprat 2004, 219–223). Methodological support for this approach is provided by works in the field of the sociology of literature (Goldmann 1967; Mencwel 1980; Dirkx 2000; Kubera 2012), the methodology of Znaniecki (2009 [1934]) and the Polish tradition of biographical research, which was particularly fond of using memoirs written for competitions organised by social researchers, often later published. In reference to the traditions associated with the names of such sociologists as Florian Znaniecki (1984 [1931];

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33

1988 [1922], 110–111 and 288–289), Józef Chałasiński (1979 [1931], 1938), Janusz Ziółkowski (1984) and Zygmunt Dulczewski (1975), one may formulate several important reasons why texts described even as ‘only’ novels can in fact be enormously helpful in studying the collective consciousness of a given group (see Kubera 2015). The use of texts of a literary nature also finds support in other schools of the biographical method (Denzin 2009 [1970]: 220–238), including in the current represented by Fritz Schütze (2012), associated mainly with autobiographical-­ narrative interviews (see Kaźmierska 2008, 19). Today, it is recognised in methodological handbooks that literary texts may be a valuable source of sociological knowledge, and that it is worth studying them using methods similar to those applied to other types of source material (see Babbie 2006, 342; Flick 2010, 12; Rapley 2010, 43). At the qualitative level, I am interested in analysing attributes of the characters depicted (for example, that they are of Algerian origin and live in an apartment complex in the suburbs) and their attitudes toward specific identifications—but not in the degree to which those features are part of the actual biography of the author of a given text. The situations analysed are treated as realistic and credible, which makes it possible to examine the attitudes expressed therein in terms of various values, in the meaning of Florian Znaniecki (1984 [1931]; 2009 [1934]), but not as situations that are actual historical events, since it would be neither possible nor relevant to the subject of this work to determine whether that is actually the case. Therefore, due to the methodological assumptions made, the word ‘narrator’ will be used to refer to the main character speaking in a text in first person, not to the person of the author of the text—even where the names of both are the same, or where other characteristics exist that would permit the narrator to be identified with the author. As to the possibility of extrapolating from the results of the quantitative analyses presented in the next section, note that these were of an auxiliary nature, and served to enhance the qualitative analysis (see 199, 13). They should only be used with regard to the quantitative extent to which identifications and relations between them appear in the specific analysed texts.

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J. Kubera

Results of Quantitative Studies The quantitative studies, conducted with the aid of a computer program, made it possible to organise the collected material and identify certain regularities within it (6437 separate identificatory situations were recorded, and, within these, 10,641 identifications). Above all, they revealed the multiplicity of identifications made by French of Algerian origin. This hypothesis, albeit banal, was verified in order to identify a much more serious problem concerning the essence of sociological research into identity and identifications. For the results show how important it is to perceive a given community, distinguished by a given characteristic (whatever it may be), not only through the prism of that attribute, but also with reference to the relationships that exist between different social characteristics. Particular members of the FAO population may be seen as members of different communities: as French parents, children of parents of foreign origin, inhabitants of a particular neighbourhood, adherents of a particular world view, citizens of France having a particular education, and so on. From the analysis of the collective results of the quantitative studies (Fig. 1.7), we note that those identifications we would traditionally associate with studies of the national identity of immigrants in France and of their social environment (included under the terms: Frenchness, Algerianness, Ethnicity and migration, Religion, Skin colour, and Colonisation) take up less than 30 per cent of all of the identifications observed. Only 6 per cent of identifications concern Frenchness, and 5 per cent Algerianness. In the collected material, in the vast majority of situations French of Algerian origin do not consider whether they themselves or other people belonging to their social world are (or are not) French or Algerian—these questions are of course important to them, but not dominant. After all, there are many situations where what is most important is to be someone’s parent, colleague, student, inhabitant of a particular neighbourhood, etc. The above conclusions are based on collective results, where all of the identifications appearing in the collected texts were added together. They therefore concern the entire social world presented within them—identi-

1  Introduction to Research on Identifications 

35

fications (including self-identifications) referring to French of Algerian origin, their parents and friends, and to other characters appearing along with them or whom they describe. On the basis of these results, one can state what the role of particular identifications is in the social world described by these FAOs (in other words, by the authors of each of the texts selected) in their fictional and autobiographical stories. Table 1.5 provides information on the question of what social categories are identified most frequently. Particular situations are considered in terms of the gender of the person identified and whether they are an immigrant (and if so, to what generation of immigrants they belong and whether they migrated from Algeria or another area). The results show that about 60 per cent of all the identificatory situations concern immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants, where a clear majority concern Algerians, their children or grandchildren living in France.

Family and friends 26,1%

Other Frenchness 1,5% 6,3% Algerianness 5,4% Ethnicity (other) and migration 9,6%?* Skin colour 1,2% Colonization 2,1% Religion 4,2%

Work, school, institutions, formal relations Gender 7,2% 15,1%

Space 9,1% Class and social structure affiliation 12,1%

Fig. 1.7  Percentage share of different types of identifications, and identification arguments in the whole of the material collected ∗Including: Europe and the West 1 per cent, Arabness 2 per cent, Maghrebness 1 per cent, Kabylianness 1 per cent, Migration 2 per cent 100 per cent = 10,641 identifications or identification arguments observed in the material Identifications with a place (or identification arguments therewith) take up about 9 per cent of all identifications observed in the material collected

36 

J. Kubera

Almost 40 per cent of all of the identificatory situations concern the second generation of Algerian immigrants, and almost 20 per cent the first generation. The relatively high share of situations concerning the parents of French of Algerian origin may attest to the important place they occupy in the social world of their children. Note that the information contained in Table 1.5 refers to characteristics recorded in the studied texts that the person identified possesses objectively. Thus, if we say that about 20 per cent of all identificatory situations referred to first-­generation Algerian immigrants, we are not saying that, within that 20 per cent, those people were identified solely as first-generation immigrants: on the contrary, beside statements about their affiliation with the category of immigrants, there were numerous others describing them, for example, as Muslims, inhabitants of a village in Algeria, inhabitants of an apartment complex, or—obviously—parents. It is worth recalling that, in a given identificatory situation, they could be simultaneously identified as members of two or more social categories distinguished (e.g. ‘Algerian immigrants from the suburbs’ = ‘immigrants’ + ‘Algerians‘ + ‘inhabitants of the suburbs’), from which follows the difference between the total number of identificatory situations and the total number of identifications. The final element of the results of the quantitative analysis I would like to address is that of identificatory situations concerning Algerianness or Frenchness (see Fig. 1.8). Various situations were noted in which a subject stated that they themselves or another subject possess some kind of characteristic (here: Algerianness or Frenchness), that they belong to the category of persons possessing it (here: to the category of Algerians or the French), or in which the subject spoke of the absence of a given characteristic or doubted that they possessed it. In all of these situations, a total of 1088 involved Algerianness or Frenchness (about 17 per cent of all situations), that figure also including situations where, beside Algerian or French identification, identifications of another type appeared, e.g. religious or professional (e.g. ‘French Muslim’ or ‘Algerian taxi driver’). Separating situations where Frenchness or Algerianness appear made it possible to analyse them in terms of the mutual relationships between those two characteristics, and between each of them and other social characteristics.

1  Introduction to Research on Identifications 

37

Table 1.5  Distribution of identificatory situations according to gender, origin, and immigrant generation Identificatory situation Those identified are… Women Of whom immigrants Of whom from Algeria Non-­ immigrants Men Of whom immigrants Of whom from Algeria non-­ immigrants Both women and men Of whom immigrantsb Of whom from Algeria non-­ immigrants TOTAL Of whom immigrants Of whom from Algeria non-­ immigrants

All

Persons whose origin is other than French First-­ generation immigrants

Second generation

Third generation

%a

Number %a

Number %a

498

7.7

1277

19.8 16

0.2

462

7.2

1226

19.0 16

0.2

46.1 29.2

606

9.4

1268

19.7 6

0.1

1781

27.7

582

9.0

1193

18.5 6

0.1

1088

16.9

979

15.2

205

3.2

158

2.4

36

0.5

11

0.2

195

3.0

151

2.3

33

0.5

11

0.2

774

12.0

6437 3876

100.0 60.2 1262

19.6 2581

40.1 33

0.5

3680

57.2

18.6 2452

38.1 33

0.5

2561

39.8

% of Number totala Number 2490 1791

38.6 27.8

1704

26.5

699

10.8

2968 1880

1195

There were 6437 individual identificatory situations observed in the material collected. A total of 3680—that is, 57.2 per cent of the identificatory situations observed—were of immigrants from Algeria (first generation) and their children (second generation) or grandchildren (third generation). Figures for persons of Algerian origin in bold a % = percentages of total identificatory situations; figures are rounded off b Most often identified as ‘parents’

38 

J. Kubera

Fig. 1.8  Situations in the collected material where a French or Algerian identification is present A French or Algerian identification is made in 1088 of the 6437 situations observed in the material collected 74 situations were noted in which the subject identified simultaneously possessed arguments in favour of both Algerianness and Frenchness

Bibliography Texts Analysed Amellal, K. (KA) (2006). Cités à comparaître. Roman. Paris: Stock Begag, A. (AB) (2005[2004]). Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman. Paris: Points. Benia, M. (MB) (2007). Chiens de la casse. Roman. Paris: Hachette Littératures. Bouraoui, N. (NB) (2010[2000]). Garçon manqué. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Charef, M. (MC) (2007[2006]). À bras-le-cœur. Roman. Paris: Collection Folio. Djouder, A. (AD) (2007[2006]). Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés: les racines du malaise. Récit. Paris: J’ai lu. Guène, F. (FG) (2010[2006]). Du rêve pour les oufs. Paris: Le Livre de Poche.

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Imache, T. (TI) (2001[2000]). Presque un frère. Conte du temps présent. Roman. Arles: Actes Sud (Babel). Kalouaz, A. (AK) (2009). Avec tes mains. Rodez: Rouergue (La Brune). Rahmani, Z. (ZR) (2008[2006]). France, récit d’une enfance. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Sedira, S. (SS) (2013). L’odeur des planches. Arles: Rouergue. Zitouni, R. (RZ) (2005). Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise. Paris: Hachette Littératures.

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Bokszański, Z. (2004). Ponowoczesność a tożsamość narodowa. In K. Gorlach, M.  Niezgoda, & Z.  Seręga (Eds), Władza, naród, tożsamość. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Bokszański, Z. (2006). Polacy o sobie: autoidentyfikacje i samooceny. Kultura Współczesna, 47(1). Bokszański, Z. (2008). Tożsamość grup etnicznych a język w społeczeństwach wielokulturowych. In S.  Gajda (Ed.), Tożsamość a język w perspektywie slawistycznej. Opole: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Opolskiego. Bourdieu, P. (2005). Dystynkcja. Społeczna krytyka władzy sądzenia (trans: P. Biłos). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar. Brubaker, R. (1994). Citizenship and nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. Brubaker, R., & Cooper F. (2000). Beyond “Identity”. Theory and Society, 29. Bruneaud, J.-F. (2005). Chroniques de l’ethnicité quotidienne chez les Maghrébins français. Paris: L’Harmattan. Budyta-Budzyńska, M. (2010). Socjologia narodu i konfliktów etnicznych. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. Burszta, W. J. (2009). Obcość wielokulturowa. In D. Angutek (Ed.), Obcy w przestrzeni kulturowej współczesnej Europy. Zielona Góra: Uniwersytet Zielonogórski. Camilleri, C. (1980). Les immigrés maghrébins de la seconde génération: contribution à une étude de leurs évolutions et de leurs choix culturels. Bulletin de psychologie, 347(33). Camilleri, C. (1990). Positionnement identitaire chez l’adolescent maghrébin en France. In N. Kridis (Ed.), Adolescence et identité. Marseille: Hommes et perspectives. Chałasiński, J. (1938). Młode pokolenie chłopów. Procesy i zagadnienia kształtowania się warstwy chłopskiej w Polsce. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Kultury Wsi. Chałasiński, J. (1979[1931]). Drogi awansu społecznego robotnika. Studium oparte na autobiografiachrobotników. Warszawa: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza. Charaudeau, P. (2008). Pathos et discours politique. In M. Rinn (Ed.), Émotions et discours. L’usage des passions dans la langue. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes (Interférences). Chlebda, W. (2008). Leksykografia w aktach i procesach polskiej autoidentyfikacji narodowej. In S. Gajda (Ed.), Tożsamość a język w perspektywie slawistycznej. Opole: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Opolskiego.

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Collet, B., & Santelli, E. (2012). Couples d’ici, parents d’ailleurs. Parcours de descendants d’immigrés. Paris: PUF (Le Lien social). Colonna, V. (2004). Autofiction & autres mythomanies littéraires. Auch: Éditions Tristram. Condon, S., & Régnard, C. (2010). Héritage et pratiques linguistiques des descendants d’immigrés en France. Hommes et Migrations, 1288. Crisp, B. R. (2010). Belonging, Connectedness and Social Exclusion. Journal of Social Inclusion, 1(2). Czermińska, M. (Ed.) (2009). Autobiografia. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo słowo/ obraz terytoria. Delarue, F. (2008). Pathétique et “Grand Style” à Rome (premiers siècles avant et après J.-C.). In M. Rinn (Ed.), Émotions et discours. L’usage des passions dans la langue. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes (Interférences). Denzin, N.  K. (2009[1970]). The Research Act. A Theoretical Introduction to Sociological Methods. Chicago: Transaction Publishers (Aldine Transaction). Desplanques, F. (1991). Quand les Beurs prennent la plume. Revue européenne de migrations internationales, 3. Dirkx, P. (2000). Sociologie de la littérature. Paris: Armand Colin. Domańska, E. (2007). “Zwrot performatywny” we współczesnej humanistyce. Teksty Drugie, 5. Dulczewski, Z. (1975). Florian Znaniecki jako twórca metody autobiograficznej w socjologii. In A. Kwilecki (Ed.), Florian Znaniecki i jego rola w socjologii. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM. Duprat, A. (2004). Les trois formes du vraisemblable au XVIIe siècle. In M. Baschera, P. Dumont, A. Duprat, & D. Souiller (Eds.), Vraisemblance et représentation au XVIIe siècle. Molière en question. Dijon: Centre de Recherches Interactions Culturelles Européennes. Dyczewski, L., & Szwed, R. (2010). Wstęp. In R.  Szwed, L.  Dyczewski, & J. Szulich-Kałuża (Eds.), Odmiany tożsamości. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL. Eakin, P. J. (1985). Fictions in Autobiography. Studies in the Art of Self-Invention. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Eggs, E. (2008). Le pathos dans le discours – exclamation, reproche, ironie. In M. Rinn (Ed.), Émotions et discours. L’usage des passions dans la langue. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes (Interférences). Epstein, M. (1999). On the Place of Postmodernism in Postmodernity. In M.  Epstein, A.  Genis, & S.  Vladiv-Glover (Eds.), Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Culture. Oxford: Berghahn Books.

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Erikson, E. H. (1960). The Problem of Ego Identity. In M. R. Stein, A. J. Vidich, & D. Manning White (Eds.), Identity and anxiety. Survival of the person in mass society. Glencoe (Illinois): The Free Press of Glencoe. Eshelman, R. (2000). Performatism, or the End of Postmodernism. Anthropoetics. Journal of Generative Anthropology, 2(6). Flick, U. (2010). Projektowanie badania jakościowego. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. Gajda, S. (2008). Słowiańskie dyskursy tożsamościowe. In S. Gajda (Ed.), Tożsamość a język w perspektywie slawistycznej. Opole: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Opolskiego. Galaï, F. el (2005). L’identité en suspens: à propos de la littérature beur. Paris: L’Harmattan. Galton, A., & Mizoguchi, R. (2009). The water falls but the waterfall does not fall: New perspectives on objects, processes and events. Applied Ontology, 4. Gans, E. (2000). The Post-Millennial Age. In Chronicles of Love and Resentment, 209, 24 November 2001. http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw251. htm. Accessed 12 September 2012. Gans, E. (2001a). Victimary Thinking Forever. In Chronicles of Love and Resentment, 230, 31 March 2001. http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/ vw230.htm. Accessed 27 May 2012. Gans, E. (2001b). The New World Order. In Chronicles of Love and Resentment, 244, 11 September 2001. http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw244. htm. Accessed 27 May 2012. Gans, E. (2001c). Scapegoating after September 11. In Chronicles of Love and Resentment, 251, 24 November 2001. http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ views/vw251.htm. Accessed 27 May 2012. Geiser, M. (2008). La littérature „beur” comme écriture de la post-migration et forme de „littérature-monde”. Expressions maghrébines, 1. Goldmann, L. (1967). Le structuralisme génétique en sociologie de la littérature. In Littérature et Société. Problèmes de méthodologie en sociologie de la ­littérature. Colloque organisé […] du 21 au 23 mai 1964. Bruxelles: Éditions de l’Institut de Sociologie de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles. Golka, M. (2012). Konstruowanie tożsamości – czynniki społeczno-kulturowe. Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny, 2(74). Gotman, A. (2008). Le reconnaissance de l’identité: Pourquoi? Socio-logos. Revue de l’association française de sociologie, 3. Hall, S. (1996). Introduction: Who Needs “Identity”? In S. Hall, & P. Du Gay (Eds.), Questions of cultural identity. London: Sage.

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Perrin, E. (2008). Jeunes Maghrébins de France. La place refusée. Paris: L’Harmattan (Logiques Sociales). Piotrowski, A. (2006). Proces kształtowania tożsamości narodowej w dyskursie potocznym i publicznym. In A. Misztalska, & A. Piotrowski (Eds.), Obszary ładu i anomii. Konsekwencje i kierunki polskich przemian. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego. Rapley, T. (2010). Analiza konwersacji, dyskursu i dokumentów (trans: A. Gąsior-­ Niemiec). Warszawa: PWN. Redouane, N. (Ed.) (2012). Où en est la littérature „beur”? Paris: L’Harmattan (Autour des textes maghrébins). Rinn, M. (2008). L’introduction. In M. Rinn (Ed.), Émotions et discours. L’usage des passions dans la langue. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes (Interférences). Rio, F. (2010). Les tribulations identitaires de Franco-Algériens. Représentations et enjeux des nationalités française et algérienne. Codes, laïcité, éducation, football. Paris, L’Harmattan. Sakson, A. (2017). Mazurzy—dylematy tożsamości. In A. Sakson: Dziedzictwo Prus Wschodnich. Socjologiczne i historyczne studia o regionie. Dąbrówno: Retmam (Moja Biblioteka Mazurska, 29). Saussure, F. de. 1991[1916]. Kurs językoznawstwa ogólnego (trans: K. Kasprzyk). Wyd. 2. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Schütze, F. (2012). Analiza biograficzna ugruntowana empirycznie w autobiograficznym wywiadzie narracyjnym. Jak analizować autobiograficzne wywiady narracyjne. In K.  Kaźmierska (Ed.), Metoda biograficzna w socjologii. Antologia tekstów. Kraków: Zakład Wydawniczy “Nomos.” Sicard, F. (2011). Enfants issus de l’immigration maghrébine. Grandir en France. Paris: L’Harmattan (Logiques Sociales). Simmel, G. (2005). Obcy. In G. Simmel, Socjologia. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN (Biblioteka Socjologiczna). Simmel, G. (2008[1908]). Krzyżowanie się kręgów społecznych. In G. Simmel, Pisma socjologiczne. Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza. Simon, P. (2012). French National Identity and Integration. Who belongs to the National Community. Washington: Migration Policy Institute. Smolarkiewicz, E. (2007). Tożsamość w warunkach migracji. In R. Drozdowski (Ed.), Końce i początki. Socjologiczne podsumowania, socjologiczne zapowiedzi. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM. Starnawski, M. (2008). O reżimach identyfikacyjnych i dylematach tożsamości w diasporze. In B.  Zimoń-Dubowik, & M.  Gamian-Wilk (Eds), Oblicza

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2 Names and Arguments: Algerians and the Descendants of Algerian Immigrants in France

 he Republic, Its Citizens, Foreigners T and Strangers from the Suburbs The Republic of France, which opens the doors of its own national community to whomever wants to live in it and is ready to share its most important values, is a country particularly attractive to immigrants. It is no wonder that people speak of France as ‘the America of Europe’ (Finkielkraut 2007, 8–9). Many of today’s citizens of France have their roots in all corners of the globe, being first-, second-, third- or fourth-­ generation immigrants (Attias-Donfut and Wolff 2009, 7). In 1999, 14 million French people, in other words 23 per cent of the total population, had at least one parent or grandparent who was born outside France (Tribalat 2004). The unifying, inclusive Republican definition of the French nation, oblivious in public life to the existence of any other type The basis of sections “Identification of Algerian Immigrants from the Beginning of the Colonial Conquest to 1974” and “Algerians and the Descendants of Algerian Immigrants in the Structure of French Society After 1974” of this chapter is a translation of J. Kubera (2013), Algierczycy we Francji. Jaka integracja? [Algerians in France. What Kind of Integration?], Przegląd Zachodni, 1, supplemented with new content.

© The Author(s) 2020 J. Kubera, Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5_2

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of community, proved to be remarkably effective throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is in this context that we should view both French policy towards the successive, mass waves of immigrants since the end of the First World War—first from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Poland; later from colonised Algeria (independent from 1962), Tunisia, Morocco, and other areas with a French presence; then from countries such as China and Vietnam; and today—again Poles, as well as Romanians and other newcomers from Central and Eastern Europe who are benefiting from their countries’ membership of the European Union. Since 1789, and especially since the period of the Third Republic, the French have been a nation defined politically as comprising citizens of various cultural, regional, linguistic, or religious provenance, who should not disclose their affiliations in public—in offices, schools, and so on. The unity of the nation is guaranteed by, among other things, the French language, state institutions, the principle of secularism, and the primacy of citizenship—implicit in the motto ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’— which is to prevail over allegiance to any other than the national-political community. It has been thought that, since the beginning of the Republic, such a definition of Frenchness was conducive to individuals being quickly absorbed into the French nation, though of course, given the cultural differences that objectively existed, this was a challenge to both the established population in France and to newcomers. It would, however, be a mistake to claim that cultural differences among the French only arose with the mass influx of ‘people on the move’. From the initial formation of the French state in the ninth and tenth centuries to the present, the area between the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean Sea, the Western Alps, the Rhine, and the English Channel, extraordinarily varied in terms of terrain and climate, has been strikingly diverse in culture, language, and customs as well (Braudel 1986, 28–40). As Hervé Le Bras and Emmanuel Todd (2012, 79) write, ‘from the anthropological perspective France should not exist’; when concluding their study on French customs, they state: ‘Politics cuts France into two. An analysis of the relationships between parents and children, between men and women, turns any idea of a national whole into dust. France does not consist of one but of a hundred peoples, differing in their conceptions of life and death, their systems of kinship and their relationship to work or violence.’ It is

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largely thanks to the idea of Republicanism that the French can feel they are members of a single national community. But it is important to note that, in merging all inhabitants of France ideologically, in making them all French regardless of their cultural, national or regional dissimilarity, it was not only the issue of citizenship that the Republic addressed historically. In parallel with the political definition of Frenchness, there also operated another, ethnocultural, definition (see Smolicz 2004, 80; Giddens 2006, 207–208). In the opinion of Fabienne Rio (2010, 39–41), since the 1830s there has been a gradual questioning of the understanding of the nation established by the Revolution. In the writings of Amédée Thierry, Maurice Barrès, Ernest Renan, and Hippolyte Taine, nationality is defined not only in terms of a contract, but also (and, for some, primarily) in terms of rootedness or the inheritance of certain distinctive characteristics. The introduction of a distinction between the concept of nationality (in the ethnic sense) and the institution of the state has also been affected by the political sympathies of many French people (particularly on the left) for the emancipation movements of the nations of Central and Eastern Europe, and in response to the Franco-Prussian War, after which national differences began to be explained by the concept of ‘race’. Naturally, other tendencies existed at the same time, as is evident, for example, in the dispute in 1889 over the vote on the Code of French Nationality (Code de la nationalité). At that time, the conception of the ius soli prevailed over the ius sanguinis, though the cause of the victory was the fact that the ius sanguinis would have necessitated invoking a common ethnos, whereas France was already distinguished by the presence of many ethnic communities (among whom, at that time, those most markedly different were the Bretons). Faith in a Republican nation, ‘one and indivisible’, suffered a serious blow. Since that time, that faith has been strengthened by various measures taken by the Republic of France; after 1889, it made a strong distinction between what was national (French, under the accepted definition of the right of land) and what was foreign (Brubaker 1994, 48–49). As in other West European countries, here, too, the law introduced by the state furthered a reinforcement of national ideology and a melding of the consciousness of various communities residing within the state (cf. Castells

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2008, 41–62; Lewandowski 2008; Piotrowski 2006; Szacki 2004; Znaniecki 1990 [1952]). The actions taken, which constituted an application of the ideals of the French Revolution, the rejection of local particularisms, and the adoption of the aim of ‘nationalisation’ of the territory of the state, included (after: Rio 2010, 39–41): 1 . military service for all male citizens; 2. the introduction of separation between church and state, equality of all religions, and a ban on the politicisation of one’s religious affiliation (which is why, for example, it is thought that, despite antisemitism, Jews in France were better integrated with the nation than in other European countries); 3. a guarantee of social welfare for citizens; 4. a strengthening of the role of administration (bureaucracy as understood by Max Weber) in the implementation of state policy and compliance with its provisions; 5. compulsory education (under which the national language and culture became the mother tongue and culture, and all pupils learned the same things from the same textbooks, including on the history ‘of our ancestors the Gauls’); 6. other measures creating and reinforcing national identity (the same newspapers read throughout the country, a single currency and economy, etc.). For Fabienne Rio (2010, 46), those measures did strengthen the internal cohesion of the French nation, but they also introduced a Manichean vision dividing ‘us’ (the great, diverse family of the ‘true’ French) from ‘them’, i.e. foreigners. In the context of the identification of FAOs, the notion of teaching the Gallic origins of the French nation would seem to be of particular interest. Amédée Thierry, a nineteenth-century historian whose work was relied on in Third Republic textbooks (and, indirectly, later textbooks as well), described the nation by applying the metaphor of the family, and took on the task in his research of looking for the genealogies of ‘98 per cent’ of all French people (Venayre 2013, 52). In his opinion, the Gauls had specific, defined physical characteristics (well-built, fair complexion,

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blue eyes, bushy blonde or brown hair) and mental ones (a courage unmatched by that of other peoples, sincerity, impulsiveness, an openness to all experiences, great intelligence, tremendous mobility, inconstancy, lack of discipline, love of ostentation, vanity). Thierry emphasised that the characteristics of the Gauls were passed down through the generations and could still be observed, despite the mixing that had occurred from Gallo-Roman times up to the modern epoch (Thiesse 1999, 50 et seq.; Reynaud-Paligot 2011, 91 et seq.). This simultaneous existence of two definitions of Frenchness has lasted down to today, and so it is worth comparing the two approaches. The author of the first is Éric Besson, sometime Minister of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Solidarity Development. In January 2010, after the French government had opened a debate in November 2009 on the subject of national identity, Besson was clearly against an ethnocultural understanding of Frenchness: ‘France is neither one people, nor one language, nor one territory, nor one religion; it is a conglomeration of people who want to live together’ (after Finkielkraut 2013, 105). In 1985, Jean-Marie Le Pen stated that, because of their origins, not all immigrants are able to accept French values: ‘In our homeland we are witnessing a clash between two totally different cultures. Islam, which is already the second most popular religion of France, opposes any kind of assimilation whatsoever and threatens our own Western and Christian identity (after Gonzalès 2007, 23). This sentence, in various versions, has since been repeated by the National Front (nowadays the National Rally) founded by Le Pen and which, though once marginalised, is now the second-largest political force in France. Contemporary immigrants and their children, for instance from the Maghreb countries, are sometimes compared with past immigrant movements, for example from Poland, Portugal, Spain, or Italy, which are held by public opinion to have run smoothly and to have led to rapid assimilation with the host society. If, however, we look not only at the history of previous influxes of immigrants, but also at the nature of the relations that arose between city centres and their suburbs, we observe that there is a long tradition of perceiving suburban areas as ‘non-French’, inhabited by a population that represents an alien culture (see Hatzfeld 2005; Lefebvre 2009 [1968], 16). For example, when in the 1830s peasants

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began—as part of migration within continental France—to form the ranks of workers in suburban factories (faubourgs), they were spoken of as barbarians at the gates of the cities of France. The journalist Saint-Marc Girardin wrote in Le Journal des débats (8 December 1831): ‘Today, barbarians are threatening our society, and they are not to be found in the Caucasus or the Tatar steppes; they are in the suburbs, in our factory estates’ (Thiesse 2010, 122). On the pages of the same newspaper in 1842, the writer Eugène Sue began publishing instalments of his novel Les Mystères de Paris. In the foreword to the story we also read about aliens from the suburbs (Thiesse 2010, 122): [They are] barbarians as far beyond the pale of civilisation as were the savage peoples Cooper painted. With this difference, that the barbarians we are speaking of here are to be found among us, we squeeze between them if we risk going to their hiding places where they live, gather together to consider murder, theft, and in the end to share the spoils taken from their victims. These people have their own mores, their own women, their own speech—secret, full of foul, bloody images.

In the 1930s, immigrants from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe were referred to in a similar tone, and the pattern was repeated again with the economic crisis of the 1970s with regard to immigrants from the former French colonies (Malewska-Peyre 1992, 49–50). In the region of Lyon, for example, Italians, Spaniards, and Poles lived in districts having very poor levels of sanitation (barracks, no electricity or running water, unpaved roads) which the residents of other parts of the city considered dangerous, inhabited by criminals. European migrants were dubbed “blacks” and contact with them was avoided. Over time, the tenants of those areas moved out, while new waves of immigrants, this time from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa, moved into similar neighbourhoods, known today as slums (Fr. bidonvilles)—also usually only for a certain period of time (Chavanon 2001, 155–172). Today, 80 per cent of the descendants of those immigrants live outside districts having a high unemployment rate and other social problems (Fr. zone urbaine sensible), though they continue to be over-represented within them: the percentage of French people aged 18–50 living outside such areas whose parents

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were not immigrants is much greater, from 95 to 99 per cent in different social classes (Marlière 2006; Attias-Donfut and Wolff 2009, 34; cf. Pan Ké Shon 2011a, b; Collet and Santelli 2012, 327). The suburbs’ apartment blocks, built from the 1950s to the 1980s and 1990s are not only ‘seen from a distance’, but are also built in a way that distinguishes them from the city: they look different, were built cheaply, and are located not so much at the edges of the city as at a distance from them (Hatzfeld 2005, 4; Lapeyronnie 2009; Marlière 2006). The interbellum period, that in France today—in the context of the influx of foreigners—is seen as one of calm, was a time of mass immigration. Le Bras and Todd (2012, 81) write that, in 1911, foreigners (who quickly became naturalised) comprised less than 3 per cent of the total population of France; by 1931 that figure was more than 7 per cent. Writing about the fears that arose at that time, the authors return to the hypothesis of the cultural diversity of France, arguing that, from the anthropological perspective, there is no culture, at least no European culture, that could threaten Frenchness (Le Bras and Todd 2012, 81): The issue of their integration [Poles and Italians—J.K.] only disturbed a handful of intellectuals … . In 1941, in a defeated France, Daniel Halévy lamented over the Italianisation and Polonisation of French villages. This fear was absurd, if we consider the context of the anthropological history of the country. For it was not more difficult to assimilate those two groups than it was to organise the coexistence of the Gascons and the Lorrainers— the anthropological distance between two European cultures is of the same type as that which exists between two French provinces. Because France is not defined anthropologically, any element at all can integrate within it.

People identified as immigrants, then, whatever region they come from, can be identified as non-French. By obtaining French citizenship, they acquire a (Republican) argument in favour of their being identified as French, although certain characteristics take time to change (e.g. children of immigrants acquiring the culture of the recipient country), while others in fact cannot be changed (e.g. “non-Gallic” appearance). When discussing migrants, it is worth remembering that emigration and immigration are two names applied to the same process (Sayad 1999,

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56). In what follows, which solely concerns Algerian–French issues, I try to present the point of view of the emigrant and immigrant simultaneously, since ‘people on the move’ face the problem of being included in the category ‘we’, or excluded from it, both in their country of origin and in their recipient country.

Identification of Algerian Immigrants from the Beginning of the Colonial Conquest to 1974 In the opinion of Jean-Jacques Gonzalès (2007, 26–30), contemporary relations between Algeria and France should not focus only on modern history, but on earlier periods as well. The two countries have a shared past in which one can find roots of both French and Maghreb identity. For Gonzalès, a bridge between them is provided by ancient Mediterranean culture, and then by the preservation, renewal and transmission of Greek thought to medieval philosophers; by the region of Andalusia; and by the Muslim Andalusian philosopher Averroes (for four centuries, from 1230 to 1600, the personification of philosophical, Western Christian rationality alongside Aristotle, whose works were known to the West thanks to Averroes’ commentaries). Becoming aware of our common roots helps us look differently at Maghrebis: to perceive them not as foreigners, but as people to whom we are culturally close, and to recognise that the Maghreb constitutes part of Europe. What is today the Maghreb was known by the ancient Greeks as Libya, by the Romans as Africa, and by the Arabs as the Western Land (Djezira el-Maghreb). The Romans described the inhabitants of those lands as barbarians, considering them alien to their civilisation. That word was also adopted by the Arabs. The Berbers, the original population of the region, were in turn described as Amazigh (a ‘free person’ or ‘noble person’, plural Imazignen). They were organised in tribes which, having given up their indigenous beliefs, adopted Roman or Egyptian gods in some cases, and in others Judaism or, later, Christianity. In the third century bce, the royal Massylii dynasty leading those tribes formed a Berber

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state known as Numidia, whose borders corresponded in part to those of modern Algeria. Subsequently, Numidia was conquered seven times: by the Phoenicians and Carthaginians (1100–147  bce), the Romans (146  bce-432 ce), the Vandals (432–533), Byzantium (533–633), the Arabs (755–1516), the Turks (1516–1830) and the French (1830–1962) (Rio 2010, 49). Despite the long history of relations between the inhabitants of today’s France and Algeria, the focus here will be on the periods of French– Algerian history that, on the one hand, relate to a specific political connection, and on the other, to the intensification of migration between the two areas. The emigration of Algerians to France is conventionally divided into three periods. The nature of each stage relates to changes that affected agriculture and village life in Algeria—because those migrating were mainly peasants—and to changes in the political status of Algerians. Moreover, it should be noted that the first two stages are periods of internal migration, taking place within a single state organism. The first period of migration ran from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of the Second World War. To a large extent, journeys to France were at that time short, seasonal, and subordinated to agricultural work in Algeria. They were treated as material assistance for the rural community, which chose emigrants from among its older men, already married, who were trusted. Those who went to France, then, had a precisely defined mission and a clear mandate from their family and the community that sent them. Moreover, emigrants strongly identified themselves with their village and the land they worked, and in this they did not differ from those members of their community who stayed behind (Sayad 1999, 60–61). Thus, identification with the family–tribal collective living in a specific area, connected by ties of kinship, customs, and religious practice, was the primal communal identification, and was much stronger than the feeling of belonging either to what at that time was still an abstraction—the Algerian nation (Algerian nationalism began to spread in the 1920s)—or to the very real, perceptible but alien French nation (the experience of being dominated by colonisers). Most emigrants came from Kabylie, the region of Algeria most severely affected by poverty after the unsuccessful anti-French Mokrani Revolt of

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1871. The land of those tribes that took part in the rebellion was confiscated, and many of their members were deported to New Caledonia (Bouamama 2003, 6). Over time, more and more rural communities, not only in Kabylie, began to live from migration, and became dependent on the rhythm of migrants journeying to and fro. The villages were full only during the summertime, when everyone returned home for the holidays. The status of each family was determined by how long its members had been in emigration, with the highest place in the hierarchy belonging to those families who had men both in the village and abroad. As to how individuals were stratified, a distinction was made between, on the one hand, those few who could afford to remain at home and work the land (les hommes de la maison, de l’intérieur), and on the other, those whose hard conditions of life forced them to repeated emigration and, as Abdelmalek Sayad describes it (1999, 47–48), to a village life that was only makeshift (les hommes du dehors). The Algerians who went to France at that time were usually illiterate, and did not have any specific occupation.1 Like other immigrants of the period, they met the rapidly developing French industry’s need for labour. In 1912, from 4000 to 5000 Algerian workers travelled to France, most of whom came from Kabylie. They worked mainly in mines and factories in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region near the Belgian border and in the refineries and ports of Marseilles. Employers willingly took them on in companies that operated in all the industrial regions of France, including around Paris and Lyon. Colonists in Algeria, however, took a dimmer view of Algerian migration to Metropolitan France, lest their own lands be deprived of cheap farm labour. Throughout the colonial period, both industrialists from the European part of the French state and colonists from its African part tried to influence French law, which as a result was changed many times—either towards preventing Muslims from emigrating to France or towards lifting all restrictions on such travel. In 1913, the arguments of the industrialists prevailed, leading to the abolition of a law which had been on the books since 1876, requiring Algerians wishing  Muslim children did not attend school in Algeria—not because the school system was badly organized, but because of its Republican secular educational ideology, with which the parents of young Muslims did not agree. It is worth noting that parents’ fears that their children could absorb Western models gradually receded during the period of the Third Republic (Monneret 2008, 36). 1

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to leave their family village to obtain the consent of the local administration. In 1914, almost 13,000 immigrants from Algeria arrived in France (Bouamama 2003, 6–7). By the eve of the First World War, Algerians had already become a fixed element of the French working class, increasingly integrated with its trade union movement. From French unionists, Algerian workers learned the ropes of union and political activism. It was within the Algerian immigrant community, still categorised in France according to ethnic origin (as confirmed by their ties to their family villages and the communities living in them), that a national consciousness distinct from the French was born, and from which ideas of Algerian nationalism spread. The outbreak of the Great War meant that the number of Algerian immigrants arriving in Metropolitan France (still to stay temporarily) increased dramatically. During the war, Algerians were recruited by factories whose previous workers were now at the front, and by the French army, which was trying to make up for the losses it had suffered in its first military encounters. Up to 1918, in the second sector of the economy, including the arms industry, 78,000 Algerians were employed as workers, and another 175,000 recruited as soldiers, of whom 22,000 died fighting under the French flag (Bouamama 2003, 8). After the end of the First World War, Algerian workers and surviving soldiers returned to Algeria, though in 1920 emigration back to French soil again increased. In general, though, the period between the two world wars was not particularly conducive to migration. Colonists in Algeria were sounding the alarm that masses of Algerians employed in metropolitan industry were carrying ideas of Algerian independence across the Mediterranean Sea and threatening the interests of French society as a whole. An association, and later political party, named Star of North Africa (Étoile Nord-Africaine, or ENA) demanded independence for Algeria. The organisation was founded among Algerian immigrants in France in 1926 by Messali Hadj (Belaskri 2007, 16). Other important figures propagating Algerian nationalism included Frantz Fanon, author of the seminal book The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1961 (for more on North African, and particularly, Algerian political movements in France from the interbellum period up to the 1970s, see Aissaoui 2009, 13–160).

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In most French cities there were special services for controlling newcomers from North Africa (the Sainas—Services des affaires indigènes nord-africaines). Working together with the police, their role was to ensure that Algerians remained separated from both the majority community and other groups of immigrants, among which those from European countries enjoyed a privileged position. Algerians were also hindered from reuniting families and settling in working-class districts and villages, so that Algerian immigration would not become an immigration of settlement (immigration de peuplement). Such activities were deemed justified by the racist theories pronounced in France at the time, for example by Georges Mauco. Enjoying the status of the first ‘expert on immigration’, and operating from 1937 in the office of the secretary of state for immigration, Mauco became notorious as the author of comparative studies from which it emerged that Arabs (popularly understood as all Algerian Muslims, including Kabylians) had the least chance of assimilating with French society (Bouamama 2003, 8–10). A similar opinion was expressed later, and frequently, by General de Gaulle,2 who in 1945 appointed Mauco as secretary general of a body named le Haut Comité consultatif de la population et de la famille, that is, a committee dealing with issues of population and the family (Bouamama 2003, 8). From the legal perspective, migrations of Algerians were internal migrations, just like those of residents from other French departments, such as Brittany or Corsica, to large urban centres such as Paris or Marseilles. Pursuant to decrees from 1865 and 1870, Algerian departments were inhabited by people of French nationality, though only some of them were granted French citizenship. The first group of people of French nationality were indigenous Muslims (indigène musulman) who, as French, could be drawn into the French army as the need arose. Yet,  Aleksander Hall (2005, 428) wrote in reference to the problem of Algeria that de Gaulle ‘believes that one can assimilate individuals—and only to a certain degree—but not nations [but was convinced that an Algerian nation existed, and so was ready to recognise the independence of Algeria]. He considers it beneficial for a certain number of people from other races and cultures to belong to the French nation, but on condition that a clear majority of them become French: “After all, we are mainly a European people, of the white race, of Greek and Roman culture and the Christian religion”, he said in conversation with [Alain] Peyrefitte. For de Gaulle, allegiance to a nation did not result solely from formal possession of citizenship, but from possession of a national consciousness. He did not believe that the French nation could be a multicultural nation.’ 2

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because they did not enjoy the full rights of citizenship, they were subject to a separate, restrictive penal code (Le Code de l’indigénat) which covered many particular behaviours and provided various penalties for them, including arrest, deportation, and collective punishment, without the right to a defence or the right to appeal to a higher instance (Merle 2004, 137–162; Weil 2005, 95–110).3 In fact, this collection of provisions, which applied only to the Muslim population, only ceased to be in force in 1944 (Bouamama 2003, 7). ‘Indigenous Muslims’, the ancestors of today’s Algerians, including Algerian immigrants, were inhabitants of an integral part of the state of France, were deemed by French law to be members of the French nation, but voted in a separate, relatively insignificant electoral college (Monneret 2008, 16), and in civil matters were subject to Sharia, not French law. Those of European origin residing in Algeria for a minimum of three years, however (mainly Spaniards and Italians, apart from the French), as well as Jews indigenous to Algeria, had citizenship (citoyenneté) subject to the same civil and penal codes as those enjoyed by the French in Metropolitan France (Monneret 2008, 60–61). While it is true that ‘indigenous Muslims’ could submit a special request to be granted the rights of citizenship, this was tied to their renouncing Sharia law and the traditional rules of communal life arising therefrom,4 which was equivalent to apostasy, and was therefore chosen only very rarely.5 Moreover, existing testimonies show that local administrative  This section focuses on issues of civil rights, omitting French economic policy towards the Algerian departments. For Jean Monneret (2008, 34–37), apart from its detrimental aspects, that policy had several positive consequences: Algiers became a modern city with higher education and a stock market; other urban centres such as Oran and Constantine were developed; agriculture thrived, especially the cultivation of grapes and grain; roads were laid out, and ports created or reopened; the irrigation system was expanded; hospitals were developed and infectious diseases effectively combated. On Algeria’s development after 1962, see Jałowiecki 1978. 4  In practice, this was about the need to do away with five customs: polygamy; a father’s choice of his daughter’s husband (droit de djebr); unilateral dissolution of a marriage by the husband (répudiation); the application of the theory of enfant endormi (paternity recognised in cases where a child is born within five years following the breakup of a marriage); and privileges for men concerning inheritance (Weil 2005, 100). When Algerian nationalists were seeking full civic rights for Muslims, they simultaneously demanded the preservation of those practices resulting from Sharia (Monneret 2008, 32). 5  For example, in the first 50 years following the establishment of such a possibility (1865–1915), 2396 ‘indigenous Muslims of Algeria’ underwent the procedure. They were mainly soldiers, administrative officials, or Muslims who had converted to Catholicism (Weil 2005, 103). 3

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bodies, which in every case issued an opinion on an application, were reluctant to grant citizenship to ‘indigenous Muslims’, and hindered the initiation of the relevant procedure (Weil 2005, 102–103). Unlike Morocco and Tunisia, Algeria was perceived by French politicians as an area that should be brought closer to France culturally in a relatively short time. This was to be accomplished by, on the one hand, assimilating selected groups of indigenous Algerians, and on the other by encouraging French and other European settlers to live in Algeria. In Algeria—which was divided historically, culturally, and linguistically, inhabited by Berber and Arab tribes, and which before the French conquest had been composed of various rival states—nationalism arose only in the early decades of the twentieth century, much later than in Morocco and Tunisia (incidentally, the word ‘Algeria’ was used officially for the first time by the French to identify those lands under the jurisdiction of the regency in Algiers; ‘Algiers’ is an Arab word). In the beginning, Algerian nationalists mainly sought legal equality with other French citizens, not independence. Independence began to be seriously considered only later, after Algerians became involved militarily in the First and Second World Wars, and after successive governments put off the idea of granting all inhabitants of the Algerian departments the same rights (Monneret 2008, 11–12 and 48). The migration of Algerians to France after 1945 contrasts sharply with the model of migration that prevailed between the wars. It should be emphasised that this second period of migration consisted mainly of individual journeys, deprived of the communal, collective goal characteristic of previous emigration. In the new period, people moved not to help the group, but to free themselves from it. The emigrants were now mainly young, single men. While they continued to leave for short periods, their stays in France were increasingly treated as an opportunity to acquire a specific occupation and break away from their peasant identity. Thus, the length of their stays away from their family village became longer, with an increasing number of emigrants visiting their village only once or twice in twenty years, and only during their annual leave. Their migration was now similar to that of the rural French population: a move to the cities in order to find stable work outside farming and a permanent place of residence in town (Sayad 1999, 46 and 69–78).

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In this period (and later, up to the economic crisis of the 1970s), France underwent a golden age of economic growth, post-war reconstruction and modernisation (Les Trente Glorieuses) in which hundreds of thousands of people were hired in the production, extraction, construction and transport industries. Special companies arose to recruit inhabitants of the Algerian departments, who responded to the needs of the metropolitan labour market by travelling there to work for relatively low remuneration. Kabylians still constituted the majority of this group, though the importance of their role diminished somewhat as migrants from all regions of Algeria made their way to Metropolitan France (Bouamama 2003, 10). In this way, Algerian emigrants extended their stay in France to 20 or 30 years, and became French workers. They returned to their family villages only for short holiday visits, and came to realise that they had fewer and fewer ties with their original community. On the other hand, they felt compelled towards to present to their families their decision to emigrate as the right decision. When they visited Algeria on vacation, they often felt ashamed that they lived in very difficult conditions and that, in order to earn enough to support themselves, they had to work much longer and harder than the French employed in higher positions. To the communities from which they originated they presented an idealised image of France, which encouraged others to emigrate for economic reasons, and undermined faith in the traditional values of their home communities. Contacts with their places of origin became increasingly superficial; some emigrants stopped sending money to their families in Algeria, while others decided to remain in France permanently, eventually bringing over their wives and children (Sayad 1999, 76). The emigration of the first Algerian families to France dates from the 1950s (Bouamama 2003, 10). Algerians decided to work in Metropolitan France and bring over their wives and children even though the living standards they had there were definitely worse than those of the average French worker. Most Algerian families lived, at least for some time, in les bidonvilles—associated with the worst type of slums—or in makeshift settlements composed of barracks devoid of heating, electricity, or potable water. In documents published by opinion-forming national institutions such as the INED, France definitively rejected the possibility of

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treating Algerians other than as a source of cheap labour whose place of residence was to be outside the large cities. In 1947, in one such publication, Louis Chevalier essentially repeated the main hypothesis put forward earlier by Mauco, and overall the texts reflected the spirit of French policy towards immigrants from Algeria and other colonies, not only in the 1940s and 1950s, but up to the end of the period under discussion, that is up to 1974 (Bouamama 2003, 10–11). It was those emigrants living on the fringes of the great cities of France that became de facto the first generation of immigrants (those who settled in France permanently and raised their children there), although under French law they were not immigrants. Beginning in 1946, in other words after the adoption of what is known as the Lamine Guèye law, the inhabitants of all areas of Overseas France acquired French citizenship with rights and obligations equal to those of the inhabitants of Metropolitan France (Weil 2005, 108). Up to 1958, however, when the new constitution was adopted, vestiges of the old law were visible in the existence of separate electoral colleges; these had the same number of electoral votes as before—for about nine million Muslims and about one million other French citizens living in Algeria, to which were added some tens of thousands of Muslims belonging to the elite (Monneret 2008, 66–67). Moreover, although they held citizenship and formally belonged to the French nation, Muslims from the departments of Algeria were defined by the administration, and thereby in the mass media as well, as Français Musulmans d’Algérie, which in secular France symbolically accentuated their religion. From 1947 onwards, a distinction was made between French Muslims who lived in the departments of Algeria and those who came to Metropolitan France for longer or shorter periods. The latter were guaranteed all the privileges of other metropolitan residents, but did not lose their status as French Muslims. The Algerian War and the creation of a new state in North Africa did not slow down Algerian migration to France, whose economy at that time was in its peak phase of modernisation. At the beginning of the war in 1954, there were 211,675 Algerians in France, and when it ended there were 350,484 (Bouamama 2003, 10). Algerian immigration during the conflict came under closer scrutiny by the French police than ever before, and the image of Algerians as dangerous required that they be

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isolated in les bidonvilles. The war, described in detail elsewhere (e.g. Hall 2005; McCormack 2007), revealed the existence of many problems that have to be faced by today’s descendants of both those who fought for Algeria’s independence and those who were militant supporters of a ‘French Algeria’. Although the subject of the war has not been touched on officially for many years, it lives on in the memories of four collectives within French society that number 6–7 million people: French born in Algeria who settled in France after 1962 (known as repatriates or Pieds-­ Noirs); Muslims who cooperated with the French army who also settled in France after 1962 (known as harkis, from the Arab word denoting the political movement); Algerian immigrants and their descendants; and French soldiers, including former young recruits, who took part in the fighting in Algeria (Kubera, Skoczylas 2012, 166). When the war for Algeria’s independence ended in 1962, French Muslims arriving in Metropolitan France had to claim either French or Algerian citizenship—a requirement not made of other French people originating from the departments of Algeria (Stora 1992, 20). By choosing the French citizenship option, Algerians maintained their good job positions and the social status this entailed (mainly a concern for those who held public functions now reserved solely for French citizens, whereas there continued to be a big need for workers from Algeria in the labour market and they did not have to fear for their jobs); if they chose Algerian citizenship, they would lose their position. Thus, in the early years after Algeria won its independence, there were very few cases of French naturalisation among workers, but more among those who enjoyed the privilege of having a job now reserved exclusively for French citizens. As we know, an immigrant’s resistance to taking on foreign citizenship is related to how the society from which he comes will react. Naturalisation is understood as evidence that the person’s ties with the community have been cut, that he has left or even betrayed it—even when claiming new citizenship would strengthen the community economically. In the case of immigrants from Algeria, the taboo against naturalisation was all the greater because the new dominance (of host country over country of origin) was perceived in the prior context (of coloniser over colony), and resistance to naturalisation was identified with the previous resistance to the attempts made to impose assimilation with the

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foreign culture (Sayad 1999, 328–333). After years of a division into better and worse inhabitants of the French state, which ended only as a result of the war (which only in 1999 did the French recognise as a war rather than an internal fight against insurgents acting illegally, [Monneret 2008, 7]), consent to naturalisation, or more properly renaturalisation, was seen as tantamount to going over to the side of the French–European coloniser (Sayad 1999, 334–335). Algerian citizens living in France were then defined as ‘French Muslims of Algerian origin working and residing in Metropolitan France’ (Français-­ Musulmans originaires d’Algérie travaillant et résidant en métropole). Overnight, people who had once been French migrants and who, after eight years of the Algerian War of Independence, largely felt an inner prohibition against submitting to naturalisation, suddenly became Algerian immigrants, in other words foreigners (Sayad 1999, 327–328). After 1962, importantly, emigration was no longer based on travelling abroad to work, and no longer involved only men and adults (Sayad 1999, 96). Diverse social groups, and whole families, began emigrating. Men came to France in the greatest numbers at or just after the end of the war in Algeria, in 1962–1963. And they continued to come to France throughout the period of intensive economic growth, from the 1950s up to 1974 when, for economic reasons, France suspended new immigration (Attias-Donfut and Wolff 2009, 49–50). Emigration among Algerian women was gradual and continuous from the 1950s to the 1980s. It took place even though French policy was consistently antagonistic towards Algerian families becoming connected, preferring to see Algerians as temporary, not permanent, immigrants. Algerian men and women, and their children born in Algeria or France, also dwelt under the collective illusion that their time away from their family community was only temporary. The consequence of this was a continual need to refer to two very different social worlds. On the one hand they idealised France (stable work, good earnings), their ‘second homeland’, which put off any decision to return to Algeria, but on the other they also idealised Algeria, which they knew about mainly from short holiday visits (their imagined Algeria seemed to guarantee them what they lacked in France) (Sayad 1999, 93–94).

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This ‘illusion of return’ was what maintained numerous organisations arising in France after 1962 which were based—like the former informal groups of Algerians working in France—on ties of kinship or geographic origin. For the migrants, these communities constituted a kind of substitute ‘little homeland’, a private one that both put off thoughts of returning to Algeria, the ideological homeland, and in practice broke their connections with their country of origin (Sayad 1999, 93 and 98). By strengthening mutual ties and at the same time opening themselves to contacts with the French, Algerians now ran their own shops, restaurants, hotels, and travel agencies. They were visible in the healthcare services and as professionals. They created their own bodies for mediating their contacts with French society, guaranteed Algerian customers good conditions for cooperating with insurers, became vendors of cloth, jewellery, used cars, travel, and so on. The development of the Algerian market for matrimonial services was phenomenal (Sayad 1999, 96–98). In 1974, because of a slowdown in the industrial sectors of its economy, France decided to suspend the immigration of foreign workers, not only from Algeria. A year earlier, Algeria had suspended travel to France for its citizens in protest against murders of Algerian workers that had taken place in the region of Marseilles, and demanded that France take steps to effectively combat the racism experienced by Algerian immigrants.

 lgerians and the Descendants of Algerian A Immigrants in the Structure of French Society After 1974 When addressing the subject of the children and grandchildren of immigrants from Algeria and other former colonial countries, many contemporary commentaries omit the issues presented above. A discussion of the history of Algerian–French relations, which would shed at least some light on the complicated relations between Algerian immigrants and France, is often replaced with a short statement about France’s colonial past. Yet, as we know, Algerian immigration to Europe did not begin in the 1970s or 1980s. Algerians and French of Algerian origin living in

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today’s France are descendants of those who came to Metropolitan France at the beginning of the twentieth century (Stora 2007, 8). By the end of the 1970s, Algerian immigration had led to the formation of the largest foreign community in France, comprising 900,000 people (Sayad 1999, 94). It had 100,000 families, with 270,000 children below the age of 16. These children comprised almost one-third of the entire population of Algerians in France. French researchers began studying the specific problems of descendants of Algerian immigrants in France in the mid-1970s, and that interest grew in the 1980s when, as Benjamin Stora writes, the French ‘discovered’ to their surprise that Algerians living in France permanently were often not alone, but had wives and children with them. French of Maghreb origin, including those from Algeria, are known colloquially as Beurs,6 though they themselves do not always use that term willingly. In accordance with the provision regulating the issue of citizenship, which entered into force on 1 January 1963, every child born in France after 31 December 1962 is deemed a French citizen if at least one of its parents was also born in France, where France is understood as both Metropolitan France and the departments and territories of Overseas France. Thus, all children of Algerian immigrants born in France after 1962 are French citizens, while the national affiliation of their older brothers and sisters who were also born in France, but before the end of 1962, remains an open question (Sayad 1999, 342–343). The matter is further complicated in that possessing French citizenship does not release the children of Algerian immigrants in France from their connections with Algeria—which also treats them as citizens on the basis of kinship: a law adopted in Algeria in 1963 and again in 1970 stipulates that every child whose father was an Algerian is deemed to be of Algerian nationality (Sayad 1999, 343). The children of Algerian immigrants, whom Abdelmalek Sayad calls the products and victims of both colonisation  The word derives from the youth argot known as verlan, a basic characteristic of which is the creation of new words that reverse the order of syllables of existing words. At first, Maghrebs were called Rebeus (a syllabic transposition of the word Arabes), and later Beurs (a reversal of Rebeus) (Stora 1992, 436). Opponents of the word use arguments similar to those they employ to negate what they believe is a label for the second generation of immigrants. In their view, both terms have an ethnic character and emphasise that the Beurs are not completely French (Hargreaves 1991, 31; Redouane 2012, 16). 6

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and immigration, therefore largely belong (in a legal sense) to both nations and both societies at the same time. It is true that young Algerians born in France can renounce their French citizenship, but in practice there are a number of serious obstacles that prevent them from making such a decision. These include military service in Algeria, which is compulsory for every male citizen of that country (Sayad 1999, 344–345; cf. Brubaker 1994, 138–164). Algerians once travelled to France in order to return home. This was also the plan of the fathers of French of Algerian origin who brought their families to France. Ahsène Zehraoui (2003, 16–17) points out that other family members differ from the fathers precisely in that they stop dreaming of a return sooner (children) or are ambivalent about it (wives). In the first years after their arrival, women lived in isolation, for socialisation in France took place through the agency of their husbands who—especially at the beginning—represented the patriarchal model of the family they knew. Over time, however, wives learned the basics of the French language, acquired a certain autonomy and accompanied their children in their socialisation. They often found themselves in the middle of disputes between their husband and their children. Even as the years passed and the children become socialised within French society, the idea of going back to Algeria persisted in the family. Yet in reality, an actual return was replaced with substitute practices that symbolically maintained a family’s affiliation with the Algerian nation and the conviction that a return was still possible (Zehraoui 2003, 19–20). These included: building a house in the region of origin and maintaining it without living there; using the Arab or Berber language; preparing traditional dishes; having contact with Algerian art; using Algerian local or national media (press, radio, television). But, as Zehraoui maintained (2003, 20), Algerian families were not usually competent enough in the migration context to provide their children with adequate knowledge of their language and religion of origin; they only transmitted information to their children on how to take part in the community. Furthermore, fathers did not discuss their working life, and tended to become isolated and withdrawn (Zehraoui 2003, 20). While the most important issue for the first generation of Algerian immigrants in France was work, the problems faced by the Beurs involved

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not only employment but also their very presence within French society. When in the 1980s the slogans voiced by Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front gained in popularity (to which the French right must respond even today), young Algerians took to the streets in peaceful marches and, supported by the largest French newspapers, protested against xenophobia, racism, and anti-Arab feeling. Near the end of 1983, marches for equality and against racism were held, which the media dubbed the Marches des Beurs. These were the first national demonstrations by members of the young generation of children of immigrants. They were held in Lyon, Marseilles, Paris (where more than 100,000 people took part) and many other large cities of France (Hargreaves 1991, 30–31). Over time, many of those who took part rejected the name given to the marches by the media. The term Beur is also rejected by Rachida Dati, who is French of Algerian and Moroccan origin and one of the most recognizable activists of the French right. In her opinion the word, which arose out of the ‘right to be different’, actually serves social isolation (ghettoïser). This is why Dati supports the right, not the left, which in her opinion ‘imposed’ the role of victim on the children of immigrants (Redouane 2012, 20–21). The descendants of immigrants from North Africa do not hide their origins; they set up their own online radio stations, open new press titles and write autobiographical stories about their experiences in the suburbs and their first attempts to seek acceptance in French society (Stora 1992, 436). They don’t want to be merely a subject of political debate; they want to have a voice in it, especially when certain sections of the public see them as the cause of unemployment or a rising crime rate (Amellal 2005). Moreover, one of the most serious obstacles to the full integration of the children of Algerian immigrants continues to be the memory of the Algerian War, preserved not only in Algerian but also French families. The second and third generations of Algerian immigrants are now to a large extent French, and expect the French state to acknowledge the error of colonisation and to make settlement for crimes committed during the Algerian War (Kubera and Skoczylas 2012). Being fully integrated with French society, they do not want their origins to have an impact on their daily relationships with other citizens (Stora 1992, 12). Yet they must constantly cope with stereotypes according to which today’s Algerians

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differ very little from their grandparents: they are almost all workers and Muslims, live in the suburbs, are poorly educated, and so on. These French of Algerian origin no longer idealise France as did the first generation of immigrants and no longer think about when they are French and when Algerian, as did the second generation, but simply feel French, though aware of their origins. The double national identification of the children and grandchildren of Algerian immigrants in France makes itself felt in events presented by politicians and analysts as proof of the divide between Algerian culture (Muslim and Arab) and French culture (secular and Western). At the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the family memory of the war, which had previously been mainly individual, became a public and media matter that provoked enormous discussion (see Table 2.1).7 This was due in part to three doctoral theses from 1998, 2000 and 2001, written after the military archives were opened in 1992 by scholars who had no memory of the Algerian War. Their work addressed such issues as the use of torture by French soldiers and how judicial officials operated during the period of conflict, 1954–1962. Since that time, old resentments and anti-­ immigration slogans have become an important component of contemporary political dispute, capturing votes for such people as Jean-Marie Le Pen (incidentally a veteran of the Algerian War), who in 2002 took part in the presidential election run-off and gained 16.86 per cent of the vote (Kubera and Skoczylas 2012, 170). The reasons why Algerianness can appear to be a characteristic that is opposed to Frenchness arose in the years that followed. A Manichean view of the incompatibility of social systems dominated the French media after 11 September 2001, when the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center seemed to be explained by Samuel Huntington’s hypothesis of a  Nelly Wolf (2011, 7–10) claims that the current period is characterised by ‘memory inflation’ and compares it to the period 1958–1981 (the governments of de Gaulle and his successors), in which there was ‘memory deflation’—in relation to both the Second World War (especially, French collaboration with the Nazis and the issue of the genocide of Jews and Roma) and the Algerian War. This obliviousness towards the Algerian War, in Wolf ’s opinion, comprised three periods: 1962–1968, a time of legal and judicial amnesia and forgetfulness; after 1968, when those ‘events’ gradually disappeared from public life; and the period from the beginning of the 1980s, in other words the beginning of historical research on the subject, after which came a time of hypermnesia (see McCormack 2007). 7

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Table 2.1  Increase in the number of articles in Le Monde on the Algerian War over the period 1987–2002 Year

No. of articles

1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

28 18 18 22 40 58 17 48 24 24 50 30 50 200 300 100 (up to June)

Source: McCormack (2007, 203)

clash of civilisations. In October of that year, a football match between France and Algeria, initially presented as a symbol of reconciliation between countries once hostile towards each other, ended in the 76th minute when Algerian fans ran onto the pitch, France’s victory having already been assured (the score was 4–1). The incident confirmed the conviction of many commentators that French of Algerian origin could never integrate with the rest of society. Three years later, a legal ban was introduced on Muslim women wearing the headscarf and on adherents of other religions displaying religious symbols in public (Włoch 2011). These events led to a mobilisation of various social groups and once again sparked a debate on the integration of people of immigrant origin (Rio 2010, 9). Those discussions heated up in November 2005 after riots that broke out in French suburbs were interpreted almost exclusively in ethnic terms, neglecting the fact that the problem of “difficult neighbourhoods” is primarily a social and economic problem, and that rebellion on the part of residents in those areas is nothing new in France, but is rather a social rebellion in the name of equality—a value close to the heart of all the French (Hładkiewicz 2009). The policy of Nicolas Sarkozy, Minister

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of the Interior in 2005, was to take decisive action against those who participated in the rioting; two years later he was elected President of France. In 2007, and again in 2012, he spoke of a need to reduce the influx of immigrants to France, flirting with the National Front’s electorate. In 2012, however, in the first round of the election many of those people voted not for Sarkozy but for the daughter of the founder of the Front, Marine Le Pen, who came third with a support of almost 18 per cent. This steady growth in the Front’s popularity resulted in the party’s unheard-of success in the first round of the regional elections held in December 2015. Capitalising on the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim mood in the country, which was exacerbated by two terrorist attacks in Paris (in January and November 2015) and by the refugee crisis that was a consequence of the war in Syria, in the first round the National Front managed to attract almost 28 per cent of the voters. In 2017, Marine Le Pen, who continued to promulgate anti-immigration slogans, found herself in the second round of the next presidential election and gained almost 34 per cent of the vote. Paradoxically, the more time has passed since 1962, the more French citizens—descendants of an immigration that began at the beginning of the twentieth century—are reminded of the change in the state’s historical policy. The attitude of the second and third generation of Algerian immigrants, who promulgate knowledge about France’s colonial past and its consequences (through memoirs, academic research, literary and musical works, reports, and films on the period, but also through less respected forms of expression such as graffiti sprayed on walls), provokes irritation on the part of some politicians, historians, and ordinary citizens. In such moments, the origin of those French people whose parents or grandparents were born in Algeria brings about a reversion to the old and very emotional division—which so affects mutual perceptions—into ‘us’ and ‘them’. For many French citizens, the ‘battle over historical memory’ is associated with those defiant Algerians who, as they did during the 1954–1962 war, are again ‘raising their heads’, not wanting to integrate but seeking to convince part of the French public (as they once tried to convince intellectuals to support Algerian independence) that France should bend to their demands, apologise to them and renounce its ­existing policy. This trend is also evident in Pascal Bruckner’s book, La

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tyrannie de la pénitence. Essai sur le masochisme occidental (2006), in which he argues against the tendency, as he sees it, to continually beat oneself over the head for the mistakes of the past that prevailed in the West, and particularly in France, after 1945. Their opponents counter that integration does not need to involve accepting just one interpretation of history, especially one according to which French schools should only teach about the ‘positive aspects of colonialism’.8 Different evaluations of the past, therefore, constitute an objective obstacle to a full integration of the descendants of Algerian migrants with the rest of French society. The Republic, which from 1789 strove to forge a homogeneous nation speaking a single language and sharing Enlightenment values, adopted a model of integration whose purpose was the acceptance of a specific understanding of the French state and its history. It is therefore understandable that some French citizens contest the interpretation of the history of the Republic that has prevailed until now, and find causes of current problems in that history. It is also understandable that questions arise as to whether the French state committed errors over integration even in the most recent decades. However, it is more difficult to understand, firstly, why some people point out the ethnic origins of citizens who propose an alternative view of the history of their country, France; and secondly, why citizens who have a family experience different from that of the majority should be deemed incapable of integration. Such actions have nothing to do with the spirit of the Republic. They are reminiscent of those moments when France betrayed its Republican ideals (of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) in its dealings with those who were included in the French national community but were not granted the same legal status as other citizens. The word ‘citizenship’, repeated here many times, seems vital to any discussion on the integration of the Algerian minority. Citizenship is not mere affiliation with some kind of state organism, but also entails taking a critical approach towards one’s state, having a voice in the debate concerning it, and wanting to shape its contemporary image. If today, then,  I refer here to an act passed by the French parliament in 2005 that contained controversial provisions (deleted in 2006 after numerous protests) concerning the need to show the positive outcomes of the French presence in its former colonies, especially Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, in school teaching programmes (cf. Stora 2007, 20–21). 8

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the descendants of Algerian immigrants are ‘raising their heads’, invoking as French citizens the values of the Republic, their conduct can be treated as an indicator of their deep integration with French society, as proof of their responsible attitude as citizens. When a survey of the whole French population was conducted in 2008, it turned out that one-fifth of the population, i.e. 10,140,000 people, were immigrants (people born abroad who were not French citizens on the day of their birth) or direct descendants of immigrants, born in France (counted regardless of their citizenship status). Among that group, 713,000 were Algerians and 640,000 were children born in France to Algerian parents (INSEE 2012, 101–105). The ages of direct descendants of Algerian immigrants in France in 2008 was as follows (INSEE 2012, 109): 1 . aged 18–24: 24 per cent 2. aged 25–34: 35 per cent 3. aged 35–44: 29 per cent 4. aged 45–54: 10 per cent 5. aged 55+: 2 per cent (100 per cent = 640,000 persons). In 2008, almost 40 per cent of immigrants held French citizenship. Among Algerian immigrants (713,000 persons), interest in acquiring French citizenship was on the rise. In 1999, 25 per cent of men and 30 per cent of women immigrants born in Algeria held French citizenship, while in 2008 those figures were 40 and 45 per cent, respectively (INSEE 2012, 112–113). The largest number of all immigrants in France live in urban centres (INSEE 2012, 117). One third of all direct descendants of immigrants who are between the ages of 18 and 50 live in the region of Paris (Borrel and Lhommeau 2010, 1). In rural districts they comprise only 4 per cent of the population; in communities of less than 20,000 inhabitants 5 per cent; in towns of up to 100,000 inhabitants 8 per cent; and in cities of up to 2 million inhabitants 9 per cent. In Paris, immigrants comprise 19 per cent of the entire population. It should be added that 2,022,000 immigrants live in the whole region of Paris (Île-de-­ France), constituting 17 per cent of the population of that region.

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More detailed quantitative issues (the distribution of particular social traits among the population of FAOs) are addressed in further chapters, where they are presented along with the results of the qualitative analysis of selected texts written by FAOs.

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Gonzalès, J.-J. (2007). Introduction. In Y. Belaskri (Ed.) Les Franco-Maghrébins et la République. Paris: Agence de Promotion des Cultures et du Voyage. Hall, A. (2005). Naród i państwo w myśli politycznej Charles’a de Gaulle’a. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Neriton. Hargreaves, A. G. (1991). Voices from the North African Immigrant Community in France: Immigration and Identity in Beur Fiction. New York – Oxford: Berg. Hatzfeld, M. (2005). Petit traité de la banlieue. Des modes de régulation multiples. Profession Banlieue: Les “5 à 7”, 12. Hładkiewicz, W. (2009). Obcy w wielokulturowej Europie – casus francuski. In D.  Angutek (Ed.), „Obcy” w przestrzeni kulturowej współczesnej Europy. Zielona Góra: Uniwersytet Zielonogórski. INSEE. (2012). Immigrés et descendants d’immigrés en France; Édition 2012. Paris: L’Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. https:// www.insee.fr/fr/information/1300620. Accessed 13 December 2019. Jałowiecki, B. (1978). Procesy rozwoju społecznego współczesnej Algierii. Warszawa – Łódź: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Kubera, J. (2013). Algierczycy we Francji. Jaka integracja? Przegląd Zachodni, 1. Kubera, J., & Skoczylas, Ł. (2012). Pamięć o wojnie, wojna o pamięć. Pamięć społeczna o wojnie w Algierii w relacjach pomiędzy Francją a imigrantami algierskmi. Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 40. Lapeyronnie, D. (2009). Ghetto urbain, Demain la ville, 4. Le Bras, H., & Todd, E. (2012). L’invention de la France. Atlas anthropologique et politiqe. Gallimard (nrf essais). Lefebvre, H. (2009[1968]). Le dront à la ville. Paris: Economica – Anthropos. Lewandowski, E. (2008). Charakter narodowy Polaków i innych. Warszawa: Muza. Malewska-Peyre, H. (1992). Ja wśród swoich i obcych. In P. Boski, M. Jarymowicz, & H. Malewska-Peyre, Tożsamość a odmienność kulturowa. Warszawa: Instytut Psychologii PAN. Marlière, É. (2006). Le sentiment d’injustice chez les jeunes d’une cité HLM. Société et jeunesses en difficulté. Revue pluridisciplinaire de recherché, 2. McCormack, J. (2007). Collective Memory. France and the Algerian War (1954–1962). Lanham: Lexington Books. Merle, I. (2004). De la “légalisation” de la violence en contexte colonial. Le régime de l’indigénat en question. Politix, 66(17). Monneret, J. (2008). La guerre d’Algérie en trente-cinq questions. Paris: L’Harmattan. Pan Ké Shon, J.-L. (2011a). Discrimination au logement et ségrégation ethno-­ raciale en France. Les après-midi de Profession Banlieue, 19.

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Włoch, R. (2011). Polityka integracji muzułmanów we Francji i Wielkiej Brytanii. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Wolf, N. (2011). Amnésies françaises à l’époque gaullienne (1958–1981). Littérature, cinéma, presse, politique. Paris: Classiques Garnier (Rencontres). Zehraoui, A. (2003). De l’homme seul à la famille: changements et résistances dans la population d’origine algérienne. Hommes & Migrations, 1244. Znaniecki, F. (1990[1952]). Współczesne narody (trans: Z.  Dulczewski). Warszawa: PWN. English edition: Znaniecki, F. (1952). Modern Nationalities: A Sociological Study. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

3 French and Algerian Identifications in the Context of the Colonial Period

This and later chapters discuss the results of qualitative research into relationships between the French, Algerian, and other identifications of French of Algerian origin (FAOs). They concern various arguments that today’s FAOs can raise in favour of their Frenchness or Algerianness, or against either of these. These arguments exist in the consciousness of descendants of Algerian immigrants in France, though certainly not all members of that collective would agree with or use all of them when making one identification or another. One issue worth taking up at once is the old, political connection between Algerian and French identification. Although French colonialism is definitely evaluated negatively by Algerians in both Algeria and France, and while more than 50 years have passed since the end of the colonial era, it continues to be an important point of reference in discussions on the presence of Algerian immigrants in France today. Speaking about colonialism often means looking for a causal connection between current migrations from the Maghreb to Europe and the previous movements of people in the opposite direction: from France to Morocco, Tunisia and—above all—Algeria.

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 lgerianness as Part of Frenchness: A A Republican, Political Definition of the French Nation Let us first examine those areas in which Algerianness and Frenchness are not presented as characteristics that are separate or contradictory. In these, reference is made to the fact that the French decided to make Algerians members of the French national community (understood politically), that they taught many of them to speak French and think like other French people. In this argumentation, Frenchness is a characteristic that also encompasses Algerianness. Being an Algerian not only does not exclude a French identification, but is sufficient justification for identifying with France and the French, and also for the presence today in Metropolitan France of descendants of Algerians who were once colonised. In this context, researchers speak of migrations from the former colonies to continental France as a ‘return home’ (Gandhi 2008, 121). For Algerians themselves and their children living in France, such an understanding of Frenchness undoubtedly has a bitter-sweet flavour, since it means accepting an identification that was once external, and imposed by means of violence. There are many other and more important arguments in favour of the Frenchness of FAOs than their Algerianness in the context of France’s colonial past. Yet when other arguments (such as their long-standing inclusion in French society) prove insufficient for their interlocutors, FAOs can use the political one. Incidentally, this is an argument that French people of, say, Polish, Italian, or Spanish origin cannot use, since their grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not belong to the same body politic as the ancestors of the French today. The analysed excerpts concerning the inclusion of Algerians in the category of ‘French’ during the colonial era mainly refer to what the inhabitants of Algeria and France had in common. The narrator of France, récit d’une enfance (ZR, 89–90)1 refers, for example, to a meeting with a  The letters in brackets refer to the initials of the authors of the analysed texts (see the list in Table 1.4), while the numbers refer to the pages on which the cited excerpt can be found. Square brackets contain abbreviations and comments (except for those cases where they contain footnotes by the narrator of the cited text). 1

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Frenchman speaking about the attachment of his compatriots to all the French colonies. From what he says, it follows that the relationship of the French to those areas was above all emotional and positive, but not based on any particular knowledge about what was going on in the colonies or who lived there. (1) You know, in our classes in school all the children had the same French ID card. When we thought of those rose-coloured colonies so far away, we started to dream. I’ll be frank with you—you know I’m a communist [as a rule, communists were against Western colonial imperialism], but I remember from childhood that we really loved those territories. They belonged to us. They were ours, you know. We weren’t worried then about what would happen to you, because we knew nothing about you. The colonies, that was part of us. Ask all the people here in this room of my age—at school they all had a French ID. And France was Indochina, Africa, and all our islands. We loved it that way. You know what I mean, we were children. We loved that France that was ‘there’. We were kids and we could go to all those places. That was our country. … We were children, we just lapped up everything they told us. We swallowed it whole. (ZR, 89)

On the other side of the Mediterranean, in colonial Algeria, children identified by the Metropolitan French as Arab, Muslim, and Algerian were also told, if their parents agreed for them to go to school along with Europeans, that Algeria was part of France. At school they were mainly taught the history, geography, and language of France, although also of Algeria, included within the borders of France. For example, the narrator of À bras-le-cœur. Roman (MC, 24) learns about Algiers, Oran, and other Algerian regions only at school. Thanks to a French education, he learns about Algeria and can identify with it, though at the time this was seen as a threat to the ties existing among the tribal community in the village where he lives: (2) Dazzled, I watched the tip of our teacher’s ruler trace out lines, points and circles showing the important features of our great country [Algeria—J.K.] … . This was the first time I had been taught about the natural history and people of my country. Before, without any schooling, my horizon was child-sized. I thought there was only us, the tribes

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of the nearest desert region, and those who lived in the nearby town. (MC, 24)

In the political, Republican definition of the French nation propagated by the colonial state in Metropolitan France and in Algeria, Frenchness was a characteristic that could be attributed to Arabs, Berbers, and Jews that had lived for generations in the land of Algeria (indigenous Algerians), and to French and other Europeans who decided to settle there permanently, as well as to their children and subsequent generations born in Algeria (known as Pieds-Noirs, literally “Black Feet”). All of these groups could be called Algerians, which was understood under the definition presented here as French living in the French departments in Algeria, those departments formally possessing the same status as the French departments on the Old Continent. In this interpretation, based primarily on a political understanding of the French nation (nationalité française), the category ‘French’ encompassed not only different territorial collectives (regions and departments) but also cultural ones: the various ethnic groups included in the political national community (on the subject of the peaceful coexistence of Jews and Arabs in Algeria, see MB, 174–175 and RZ, 208). Drawing on a metaphor also used by Nina, the narrator of Garçon manqué (NB, 116), one can say that the Mediterranean Sea was for France what the Seine is for Paris—a natural border connecting two shores functioning within a single organism. Besides, Nina can also be a metaphor for the coexistence of French and Algerian characteristics, though for her this issue is problematic. Her mother, French and Breton, married an Algerian, a graduate of both the École normale d’instituteurs in Constantine, Algeria and of the Faculty of Economic Studies at the University of Rennes in France (NB, 126–127). When Maryvonne decides to reveal her relationship with Rachid to her parents, she describes him as follows: (3) So I met this guy. He’s a student in my faculty. He’s Algerian. Well, French Muslim, as they say. I love him. I want to marry him. (NB, 109–110)

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Fig. 3.1  The Great Mosque of Paris, built in the years 1922–1926 in gratitude for the contribution made by Algerians, among others, during World War I Within the mosque are plaques commemorating the 100,000 Muslims who died for France during the First and Second World Wars. The unveiling took place on 11 November 2010. French Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande have both paid homage here. Photo J. Kubera (2014)

Up to 1962, the French Republic saw French Muslims from Algeria (Français Musulmans d’Algérie) as representatives of the French national political community, including when the need arose to combat a common enemy (cf. Fig. 3.1). In several places, the analysed texts mention how Algerians were recruited into the French army in times of armed conflict. We learn, for example, that the grandfather of the narrator of À bras-le-cœur. Roman (MC, 37) fought in the First World War, while the

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grandfather of the narrator of France, récit d’une enfance (RZ, 33) took part in the Second World War, as did the grandfather of the narrator of Chiens de la casse. Roman: (4) ‘… What’s your real name?’ ‘Bouabdalah Benhadjii.’ In fact, I go by the name of Bob. To the great despair of my grandmother, who’s constantly reminding me that I bear the name of my late grandfather Bouabdalah, whom the French army stuck in the front lines at Monte Cassino during World War II and whom I should honour. A proud rifleman who was politely told by France to pack off once the armistice had been signed. (MB, 29)

During the two world wars, Metropolitan France and French Muslims from Algeria had a common enemy in the Germans and their allies, against whom they fought together for both France and Algeria. Both during and after the war, many Algerians felt a sense of community with the French. So did the father of the narrator of Avec tes mains, who, after the fighting in Oran in 1943 and in the Apennine Peninsula in 1944, took part in the solemn parade through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in 1945 (cf. Fig. 3.2). The narrator imagines this episode in his father’s life as follows: (5) [Imagining that time] I find you, father, in the midst of another rifle regiment, setting foot on Italian soil under the command of General Juin. From time to time you used to recall Monna Casale and Castelforte, clear as a bell. You remembered all those names precisely, and you spoke about disembarking in Saint-Tropez in August 1944, and of your triumphal march across the Vosges all the way to Jura to enter Strasbourg as a conqueror. That episode has probably remained one of the most vivid memories of your life. When you talk about those days, you speak with pride and in great detail, especially about the parade in Paris in April 1945. (AK, 28)

The memory of how much Algerians contributed to the victory of France and the Allies, and of their participation in other conflicts

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Fig. 3.2  L’Arc de Triomphe—the setting of the victory parade in 1945, in which soldiers from French Algeria also took part One of the plaques below the arch is dedicated ‘To those in the army and the resistance who died for France in the years 1939–1945’. Photo J. Kubera (2014)

alongside the French, is still very much alive. These facts can be used as an argument in favour of the presence of Algerians today in the Hexagon. When the sisters of the narrator of Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise are offended by a peer from the neighbourhood, their mother goes to the mother of the boy, who is of Italian descent, and tells her: (6) ‘It won’t do, what your son told my daughters. … “Dirty Arabs” is serious. You know I could make a complaint. But never mind, there’s no need, we’re neighbours. You know, my father fought for France in Indochina, and during World War Two, he did so much for France, and you, you say “Dirty Arabs”, it’s disgusting.’ (RZ, 108–109)

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 lgerianness and Frenchness as Separate A Characteristics: The Colonial, Ethnic Definition of the French Nation In the continuation of the above passage, however, the same woman, who is Algerian and the mother of French girls of Algerian origin, adds: (7) Besides, there are no French in France, you yourself are Italian, and what of it? We’re all alike, we’re all foreigners. (RZ, 109)

This passage suggests that, if only the colonial political definition of the French nation is taken into account, the Frenchness of Algerians is not a complete Frenchness, and the argument of a French Algeria inadequate. Arabs and Berbers called French Muslims from Algeria were, it is true, French, but they were ‘French with an adjective’. Many Algerians having such limited Frenchness must have been well aware of it, just as they experienced the inequalities of the colonial system daily. Of course, this distinction in status between members of a single—politically defined—nation into French and ‘French with an adjective’ became even more apparent during the Algerian War which, for the Algerians, was a war of independence. Of interest in this context are the statements concerning the attitudes of the first generation of immigrants in France; they tried not to teach their children about their own and their families’ experiences in colonial Algeria, and about what happened during the 1954–1962 war. In the analysed texts, it is often the case that children born in France to Algerian immigrants often acquire such knowledge only when they travel to the land of their ancestors. The childhoods of those who grew up in Algeria, however, dealt them various, often brutal memories they are not always willing to talk about. Recalling the dark side of the shared French– Algerian past also means making others aware of the limited affiliation of Algerians living in the colonial era with the category of ‘the French’. For this reason, for a long time the French of Algerian origin retained only fond memories of colonial times, or none at all. In their accounts, they often speak of the silence around difficult subjects related to colonialism

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and the Algerian War. A silence, we might add, that was kept by both their parents and French society at large (see Kubera and Skoczylas 2012). As we know, it was only in 1999 that France recognised the events of 1954–1962 as a war, while in 2005 an act of law almost entered into force that stipulated that, in schools, only the ‘positive aspects’ of the French presence in the colonies, and particularly in North Africa, should be emphasised. As we read in France, récit d’une enfance (ZR, 96–97), there was silence in France about the war in Algeria among French veterans (for many of whom their wartime experiences were a trauma about which they had no one in France to speak with), in school textbooks, and among the ‘ordinary French’ and the harkis, who had for various reasons fought for a ‘French Algeria’. As Nina, the narrator of Garçon manqué, writes: (8) A plague. An epidemic. Silence on everyone’s lips. The silence of France. Silence from the whole world. Silence on Algeria. (NB, 115)

As to the parents of French of Algerian origin, they were often poor sources of information on former French–Algerian relations. The narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur (AB, 32) admits during a visit to Algeria that his parents were reluctant to share their recollections of themselves and their families: (9) Many times during my adolescence I tried to get information from them about my ancestors. Sadly, they knew very little about their own history and could barely transmit anything about their cultural or family heritage. I concluded that it was also because of poverty, they were afraid to answer their children’s questions about their forefathers, their family tree, or because they felt no interest in talking about such things. My parents had gone through such horrible things in childhood that—to protect themselves—they destroyed in themselves every seed of a memory that might one day harm them. (AB, 32)

Thus, when the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur visits Algeria to bid a final farewell to his father, he treats this as a chance to learn something about his family history. It turns out that the inhabitants of his Algerian

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village who offer their condolences end up meeting his expectations, revealing something new to him at every step. This provokes the narrator to make the following comparisons:

(10) Each of them gave me a piece of the puzzle, where my father had always remained discreet, explaining with a smile that he never knew where to begin, or how …  . When we insisted, he always ended up getting annoyed and retreated behind a barricade of his own making, unable to understand why we were ganging up on him. The war in Algeria was over, the French paratroopers had gone home, Le Pen as well, so what was the point? He didn’t want to talk about it, and had the right not to. (AB, 161)

Many second-generation Algerian immigrants in France seem unable to understand either the silence of their parents, or that of French institutions, on the subject of the relations between French Muslims from Algeria and other French people during the colonial era. This is clearly visible in the reaction of the narrator of Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise (RZ, 35–36). When her grandmother tells her about the past, the girl’s father bursts out:

(11) ‘Stop telling her about the past, she’ll end up hating France, we’ve got enough problems with the children as it is, don’t make things worse’. And so they didn’t talk with us about the war in Algeria [the narrator continues]—or about our grandfather—so as not to stoke up any hatred towards France! Like many others, my father thought it better to forget that painful heritage, to make a clean slate of the past. Not to say anything that could get in the way of his children’s integration into French society. That’s a terrible mistake! … School maintained our parents’ silence: colonialism and the war in Algeria were discussed only briefly, in the final year, at the end of the curriculum. By then it was too little and too late. (RZ, 35)

With the exception of the general statements discussed at the beginning about common state allegiance and Algerians’ contributions during

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the First and Second World Wars, the context of colonialism and the Algerian War is conducive to putting the Algerians and the French into two separate social categories. In situations of identification in which that context appears, it is easier than at other times to say that ‘we’ are the Algerians and the aliens are the French. For many, to think then that Algerianness could be conceived within Frenchness would be to accept the domination over one’s own parents and grandparents by the European French colonisers. As a rule, thinking about colonialism and the Algerian War makes it difficult to identify the French of Algerian origin with France or the French. A reading of the texts leaves no doubt that in the colonial period, alongside the political, Republican definition of the nation under which Arabs and Berbers were French, another definition of Frenchness operated that was contrary to Republican principles, under which citizens were divided according to their ethnic and religious affiliations (see Nora 2012, 104–110). To be an Arab or Berber inhabitant of Algeria meant belonging to the category of ‘French’ under the first definition, but to be excluded from it under the second. An argument in favour of not identifying Arabs and Berbers as French was their autochthonism (indigenous nature), i.e. they belonged to ethnic groups that were living in Algeria before the French conquest. In the opinion of the narrator of France, récit d’une enfance (ZR, 116–117), for the colonisers the concept of autochthonism justified the unequal status of particular groups of the inhabitants of French Algeria:

(12) You can’t dominate when there is no other side. What can you do with an army when there is no enemy, or with a throng of colonisers to whom a better life was promised under the skies of North Africa? The way to satisfy their desire for greatness found its fulfilment in the person of the indigenous commoner. The person without rights, who will be made more miserable than them. I don’t doubt the suffering of the poor whites coming to Algeria. Alsatians fleeing from the Germans, others fleeing from the misery in Malta, Spain or Italy, who were honoured, like ‘the Arab Jew’, with the status of citizens of France at a time when, in France, they were nothing. … You can’t blame anyone for having been born where they were. But if

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instead the laws had been equal for everyone, we would have seen a different type of insurgency than that which occurred in this department of France. And so social differences were done away with in favour of racial dominance—engraved more deeply in the human heart. (ZR, 116–117)

In practice, in colonial Algeria, alongside the Republican definition of the French nation there also functioned an ethnic definition, under which Algerianness, understood as a characteristic attributed only to indigenous Algerians known as Français Musulmans d’Algérie, meant subjection to the will of the French (see ZR, 33–34). Memories of this are still alive in immigrant circles. For example, the subject of political and economic domination in Algeria during the colonial period comes up in conversations about the relations that currently prevail on the labour market in France, as exemplified in this passage from Le marteau pique-cœur:

(13) … cousin Ali was anxious to know what I would be when I grew up—a vizier, minister, director or perhaps a doctor? He said the important thing was not to be ordered about by anyone, as they had been in the labour camps of Algeria when it was a colony, when they didn’t even have the right to walk on the grass because they were told it wasn’t their grass. Ali said that you’re successful in life when you give orders to other people, and not the other way round. Whether it’s a whip or a truncheon, you don’t want to be at the receiving end. (AB, 75–76)

Often, when the issue of inequalities experienced in colonial Algeria arises in any of the collected texts, the division between the French and the Algerians is mentioned, but not the division between the French and the Arabs, with whom at that time the Berbers were also, mistakenly, included (cf. Aissaoui 2009, 156–160; Nora 2012, 182). Because, as we saw earlier, for many Pieds-Noirs Algerianness was not a characteristic that could easily be connected with Frenchness, it was Arabness, and the Islam related to it, that seemed to them, and to institutions of the French state as well, to be a characteristic enabling a distinction to be made between the French and non-French, to distinguish their different positions in the social structure. Thus, alongside the Republican definition of

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Frenchness there functioned a parallel, ethnic definition that regulated the daily conduct of particular inhabitants of Algeria. The division into French and Arabs was used, for example, at the school attended by the narrator of À bras-le-cœur. Roman (MC, 18–19, MC, 25). In cinemas, Arabs were permitted to sit only in the first three rows, the others being reserved for the French (MC, 111–112). A similar segregation was in force in other places too (RZ, 34). When the narrator of Garçon manqué (NB, 153) goes on holiday to her French grandparents in Brittany, she notices the differences between the beaches of today’s France and those of Algeria before 1962:

(14) The beach in Pont. It’s a beach of France. A beach of the French. Open access. Even for Arabs. Not like those colonial beaches. Like those bars. Like those restaurants. French only. No dogs or Arabs allowed. (NB, 153)

Of course, it’s not the case that French of Algerian origin only speak about the negative aspects of the French presence in Algeria. In their accounts one can also find sections in which today’s Algerians appreciate the progress in civilisation that was made during the colonial period. But the reason why they still cannot identify themselves with the French when they think about colonialism is the kind of social relations introduced to Algeria by the French. And so, while both negative and positive aspects of the colonial period can be detected, the arguments against the French presence in Algeria prove to be much stronger, since they are often associated with people having experienced physical violence or the death of people close to them:

(15) Like in the days of the French! Here’s what I think! ‘Remember when they were here, how high the wheat stood in the fields, the water running in the fountains, how their houses were kept, and the road, the power and beauty of their horses?… Do you remember?’ ‘Yes, I remember, but you were too young to remember what happened in May 1945, when the army shot into the wheat field where we were hiding. You remember Boumaazi’s son, who got two bullets

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in his head? We went looking for him with my father—may Allah welcome him in his gardens—and found him with his mouth open… So, as for France…’. (AB, 170–171)

The events of 1945 played out in the vicinity of Setif, and described here as French soldiers hunting for Arabs hiding in the grain, are also mentioned by the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman (AB, 151–153) in another passage. It contains examples of various forms of domination: physical (military), political-symbolic (‘Who’s the boss here?’) and legal-economic (the relationship between coloniser and colonised):

(16) Twenty years ago I went along with my father on a visit to his old friends, with whom he traded stories about the past, like the time in May 1945 when the French army was shooting at all the Arabs from the area and my father and his friends hid in a wheat field. The soldiers caught sight of them and started blasting into the grain to flush them out. One of their friends didn’t come out of the field when the shooting stopped. When they came back later to look for him, he wasn’t moving about so well in the field and they found him easily. After that he no longer moved at all. He had two holes in his head, which the bugs were already using as a playground and larder. An anecdote from 8 May 1945. My father never forgot that day. … The whole region had been tattooed with French Algeria—in wheat fields, on rocks, in people’s memories. It was the same in El-Ouricia. On an enormous farm belonging to a rich coloniser, my parents had spent a good part of their lives as gladiators ready to do anything at a moment’s notice. We went back there many times with them on a kind of pilgrimage. Every time they remembered exactly how everything had been configured, as if you could still touch it: the master’s room, the kitchen where my mother had worked, the tree where she hung the chekoua, a sewn goatskin full of sheep’s or cow’s milk in which she made butter by shaking it regularly, the stable where the horses were better treated than them, the salon where she served her mistress. (AB, 152)

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In the analysed texts, we find more examples of the different treatment meted out in colonial Algeria to the French (Pieds-Noirs) and the Algerians (Français Musulmans d’Algérie), even though, formally, the two groups belonged to a single body politic. One question important to the family history of French of Algerian origin is the status of Algerian soldiers (Arab, Muslim) fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the French during the First and Second World Wars. As the narrator of Avec tes mains (AK, 20) writes when recalling events in his father’s life, Algerians were kept in uncertainty over whether they were French soldiers or not:

(17) Like salaries in civilian life, those in the army were unequal, and always to the benefit of the Europeans. Injustice again went on her merry way, as she always will. In this [French] uniform, at least you knew why they were giving you orders. It wasn’t humiliation, but rather a different life containing a semblance of fraternity—a feeling new to you, always solitary. I don’t know if your battalion went to fight the unlikely warriors of Rif, or if it was waiting for news from another front. In your ignorance of the law and customs, you didn’t know if you were considered soldiers of France, or just indigenous people subordinate to the law of the occupier. (AK, 20)

In another passage, the narrator of Avec tes mains (AK, 24) expresses the opinion that France decided to take Algerians into its armed forces because it wanted to save the blood of the ‘true’ French—those born in Metropolitan France. The later fate of the narrator’s father confirms this supposition. Despite all his efforts, France did not want to recognise him as a French veteran:

(18) … before this business gives you any respite, you will revolt against the army, generals, ministers. Like others, you want to assert your rights as a veteran, to get back a bit of a pension, but no one wants to see—in an old man like you—the valiant tirailleurs who pushed forward under the bullets and insults of the Germans. You learned the word ‘wog’ [Fr. bougnoule] in the war, long before you heard it on construction sites or street corners. To anyone who will listen for a moment, you show the tattered papers detailing your military service, though they don’t record the

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nights you spent freezing or your fear of dying. But the dates alone, the numbers of your assignments and regiments, are ample evidence of your passage through hell. … Apparently no one—neither you nor your brothers—expected you to again become an anonymous autochthon. Your former glory has been consigned to the closet, ignored. Yet you are sure you did fight, you did watch out for shadows at the edges of thickets, you did march in the final victory parade along with Leclerc and Juin, and you won’t accept their wiping those harsh years away with contempt or arrogance. (AK, 72–73)

The issue of France not acknowledging the devotion of Algerian soldiers comes up again several more times in Ahmed Kalouaz’s Avec tes mains:

(19) In spite of all your bravery, later on you waged a long battle to have your service recognised. The luckiest skirmishers were those who got a medal; most were given nothing but contempt. (AK, 28)



(20) … those who once died for France had now ‘died for nothing’. (AK, 107)

The situations discussed above show an Algerian citing the argument raised by France of his political affiliation, with the category of ‘French’, defined politically. They also show that Frenchness is a characteristic that can be graded. Those who were ‘fully’ French in the colonial period had both obligations towards France and privileges resulting from their Frenchness. Those, however, who were ‘less’ French might consider the Frenchness they had as a negative characteristic, a discomfort that might be worth getting rid of: for they could not attain Frenchness in full, which made them subordinate to other French people, yet possessed it to some degree, which meant that their relations with the ‘true’ French, based on domination, could not be broken. The only ways out were to fight for the possibility of acquiring full Frenchness (recognition by France of the political equality of all inhabitants of Algeria), or to fight for Algerianness

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being recognised not as a characteristic within the framework of Frenchness, but as a characteristic that was competitive, parallel towards Frenchness (recognition by France of the right of Algerians to self-determination). After the Second World War, it became increasingly clear to Algerians that the status they had been given of Français Musulmans d’Algérie meant the status of second-class French. That status didn’t change for those Algerians who went to Metropolitan France and worked in French companies during the 30  years of rapid economic modernisation and development:

(21) To save yourself, you’ll learn during those interminable weekends that other building sites are opening far from town, that elsewhere there are factories that need hands. Your hands make an impression on people. Your first and last name are enough to get you hired at once, transported the next day at dawn. In the margin, the recruiters make a note: ‘French Muslims’ [Français Musulmans]. In fact, you no longer have a country. Considered neither as a citizen of France nor as an alien. With just two words they invent a civil status for you that gets you nowhere. Two words that falsify your history. (AK, 35)

The French in Algeria, who possessed full Frenchness and the rights that entailed, were mainly the Pieds-Noirs; they personified French Algeria—an Algeria that was difficult for the Arabs and Kabylians in Algeria to accept. As a friend of the narrator of Garçon manqué admits:

(22) [In France] you won’t like some Pieds-Noirs. You won’t like their ways. You won’t like their words. You won’t like their regrets. They’ll tell you, ‘You’re like us’. But you’ll be different, Amine, so different, for you loved the Algeria of the Algerians. (NB, 74)

Let this quotation stand as an introduction to further reflection on the connections between Frenchness and Algerianness during the colonial period.

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 lgerianness and Frenchness as Conflicting A Characteristics: The Algerian War and Its Consequences The Algerian War of Independence in the years 1954–1962 was also a war over what Algerian identification was and what other identifications it could coexist with. In this context, there is a need to answer such questions as: Can one be French and Algerian at the same time? Can Algerianness still be considered to fit within the category of Frenchness (a question that concerns, among other things, the status of Algerian immigrants in France)? And conversely: In the new sovereign state of Algeria, can Frenchness fit within the category of Algerianness (a question that concerns, among other things, the status of the Pieds-Noirs in Algeria after 1962)? What characteristics must one have to be included within the Algerian or French national community? The difficulty of answering each of these questions is a consequence of the fact that the Algerian War was not only a war between Algeria and France, but was also a double civil war. In essence, various French and Algerian social groups were divided over how to answer these questions (Nora 2012, 29). The war led to mutual distrust on both sides of the Mediterranean, and caused Frenchness and Algerianness to be seen not only as separate but as mutually exclusive characteristics, difficult to reconcile. In the texts on Algerians’ memories of the war, there is a predominance of recollections of events that were brutal, bloody, and full of fear on the one hand and a feeling of wrongdoing, regret, and injustice on the other. In those fragments, Frenchness and Algerianness are associated with different characteristics. For example, in a reminiscence shared by the narrator of Garçon manqué (NB, 154), the helplessness and innocence of the inhabitants of an Algerian village are juxtaposed with the violence of their aggressors. The memory must have been a vivid one, for it was evoked in the narrator’s mind just by the sight of people lying on the beach, resting and sunning themselves:

(23) Those motionless bodies. Congealed in their latest position. From a distance you might think they were dead. Dead and naked. Like all

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the bodies discovered after the massacre in the village of B. Bodies of children. Cut in two. Bodies of women slashed open lengthwise. Like a zipper. Bodies of men without heads. And heads without bodies. With their eyes still open. Looking blindly ahead. Who hadn’t seen what was coming in the night. (NB, 154)

Other recollections of the narrator are more personal, touching on events that took place at home, in the residence inhabited by her family. In them, one can observe something characteristic of this type of scene that occurs in other stories as well—a dichotomous conception of the social situation described. In the passage below, femininity is contrasted with masculinity, and the inner world and its defencelessness with the outer world threatening the safety of those who are caught in the middle:

(24) I slip out of the house often. Separate myself from the Residence, that shaking body, that torn skin. That seismic epicentre. The scene of crimes. … We find some champagne glasses rolled up in an old newspaper from 1962… From the time of the crime. The year the Algerian women of the Residence were massacred. The year of the OAS massacre. Their last massacre. Their spirit of vengeance. In my room. On the walls of the apartment. On the tiled floor. In the laundry room. Everywhere. A curse. We find their weapons under the pipes in the bathroom. Their alcohol. That madness. The rejoicing of the men of the OAS. (NB, 60)

Characteristics are similarly polarised in a description in the book by Mehdi Charef. A mother’s religious song sung in Arabic is contrasted with the brutality of the French soldiers. While the narrator’s mother here represents the world that is emotionally and culturally close to him (family, home, singing, conversation, the inner life, activities that heighten the feeling of security), the soldiers embody the world of the invaders, foreigners who sow destruction (the army, vehicles, terrifying sounds, blows, the outer world, activities that heighten the feeling of fear). Furthermore, those worlds seem completely different, without any overlap (the narrator is unable to translate the title of the song into French) and functioning according to different rules (oral and spiritual culture vs

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the culture of bodies and machines; the rhythm of the song and calculation of a shopping list vs noise and ‘running in all directions’):

(25) The vehicles pull up around our homes, their engines go quiet, the soldiers jump out onto the ground. … The soldiers run in all directions, banging sharply on the doors. You have to open or they’ll shoot the locks off. Inspection! So this time my mother decided to sing. I can’t find the French word to translate the title of that religious song, Allahlah. The words lengthen out into a chant that masks the terrifying noise of the soldiers’ boots. We can hear them running up on the roofs amid the metallic sound of their weapons, the cries of the women whose husbands are handcuffed, the shots fired at those escaping. My mother goes on singing, telling her story or making an imaginary list of what she would buy … . It was her way of trying to protect us and drive our fear away. (MC, 76)

The same narrator devotes a lot of space to a family tragedy strongly felt by all the inhabitants of the village. His aunt and uncle, killed by French soldiers during the Algerian War, are mourned for by not only their closest kind, but also by the members of the broader tribal community. This collective memory of the deceased is expressively conveyed by the villagers’ refraining from eating from the fig tree under which the narrator’s uncle was killed. Identification with the family, with the village, and with Algeria (Algerianness personified by the insurgents who are given support) here stands in sharp contrast to French identification (Frenchness embodied by the French soldiers):

(26) I watch my mother closely as she energetically scrubs away, with a thick cloth dripping soapy water, at a yellow wall stained with blood. Sometimes squatting, sometimes standing upright. My mother is alone. She sobs breathlessly before me. She weeps the words that translate her heartache and tell of our misery. The blood she is making disappear is that of my aunt, her sister-in-law. French soldiers came to slit her throat for having hidden and fed rebels [fellaghas]. … Whiteness envelops the ground, covering the walls of the whole village. My clan weeps for the dead fellaghas, denounced and taken by surprise in their lair. They dug a pit. Now there’s no more sky, no more sun, no more colour. …

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The fig tree [where the execution took place] bears large, green, fibrous fruit. The figs are appetising, appealing; you get the impression they’re offering themselves. But we don’t touch them. Ever since the villagers saw my uncle shot under the tree, not one of them has raised his eyes to look at it. … At the foot of the tree, my grandmother and mother are silent. (MC, 68–69, 80)

Similar conclusions concerning not only the differences, but also the conflicts, between Algerianness and Frenchness can be drawn from a passage in which the narrator of À bras-le-cœur. Roman describes the last moments in the life of his aunt. Her heroism, beauty, pride and courage are part and parcel of her awareness of being rooted in a culture that is rich in meaning, handed down for generations. For her, her native cultural heritage was a point of reference, a weapon in the fight to retain her dignity, which—the narrator suggests—the French soldiers would have liked to deprive her of. The price she ended up paying was high, but morally—in the eyes of the narrator and the people whose conversations he committed to memory—she was triumphant, though she did not take up arms:

(27) Listening in on what the adults were saying, I learned that my aunt whose blood my mother was wiping away prepared herself for death in a manner that was magnificent and heroic while the French soldiers pulled the pins from their grenades above the wells where the Arab rebels were defending themselves. Aware that no escape was ­possible and of the inevitability of her fate, with full awareness, she began to wash her entire body, head to toe, paying little heed to the battle raging just a few steps away. Then she put on her most beautiful dress, the one she’d had sewn for the next feast of Sidi Ali, over a petticoat of the same colour. That way the dress didn’t appear to be transparent, making her more elegant still. She combed her long fair hair, anointed it with monoi oil, and formed it into a heavy braid that she wrapped round her head and covered with a light kerchief patterned in gold. … When the soldiers arrived, no doubt she still had the sharp, bitter taste in her mouth of the miswak she had just finished chewing, the final delicate attention she paid to her person. … Around her neck she wore a collar whose precious

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yellow metal had paled in the sun. A medallion hung in the neckline of her dress. It was finely wrought, worked with the awl of a masterful artisan. It depicted the hand of Fatima ... . On her wrist she wore the seven traditional bracelets adorned with a motif, each representing one letter of the holy name of the Prophet. From her ears hung two beads of violet mother-of-­pearl with a thin golden chain, setting off her white, angular face. It was thus that the stupefied soldiers discovered her. (MC, 70–72)

In presenting the events and characters discussed here, the narrator of À bras-le-cœur. Roman employs a military topos: on the one hand the innocent, defenceless and noble victims, and on the other the brutal, armed, ruthless attackers (cf. ZR, 33–44). At the same time, in the last sentence of the passage below, the narrator admits that the French would cast that topos differently, and would call the loved ones of the narrator ‘terrorists’. This fact reflects the degree to which the French and Algerians were in conflict, and the difficulty in reconciling French and Algerian identification when discussing the events of the war of 1954–1962. For many, the awareness of that contradiction is a reason to hide their own memories and the emotions they evoke:

(28) [Recalling his aunt and uncle] … when they were stopped, my mother’s brother and my gentle aunt were not carrying arms. They might have spared them! But no: they shot my uncle by the fig tree on the pretext that he was coming back from the insurgents, and they cut my aunt’s throat because she had been supplying the moujahideen in their refuges. Not to mention the other victims in the area… That was how it was. I learned at a very young age to keep everything inside, pain and anger… A pity. So my uncle and aunt— to speak just about them and not give others away—had really been terrorists, like they said! And I was proud of it… (MC, 49)

Up to now we have focused on the memories of Algerians about the events of the war in Algeria itself. In the texts by French of Algerian origin, there are also descriptions of the memories of the families of immigrants about what happened in France during the period of the 1954–1962 war in Algeria. In this context too, Algerianness and Frenchness emerge

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as two different, conflicting characteristics. For example, in a passage in which the narrator of Presque un frère, a French woman who is married to an Algerian immigrant in France, decides to tell their grandchildren about a certain personal event. In her story, the phrase ‘Paris Massacre’2 does not appear, but a reader familiar with the circumstances of 17 October 1961 will have no doubt as to what event is described:

(29) I told my grandchildren an anecdote, an event that was a bit personal: what I thought I saw through the skylight in the attic, one autumn night, on a bridge. Men pulling others out of a crowd they broke up with batons. I begged him not to go out. ‘Your child’, I wailed. ‘Aren’t I a man?’, he asked me. ‘You’re the father of a family’, I answered. ‘And from the window you can see just as well. You don’t have to go out’. He shouted: ‘I see my own people’. Your illiterate grandfather wasn’t without a powerful, authentic voice. Together we watched the religious spectacle from the skylight. They broke their skulls, gathered them up, lifted them, their heads bleeding, no one understanding their language, and them crying ‘imma’ [mother]. Imma. Not everyone knew what ‘imma’ was about. Many didn’t realise that the phoneme ‘m’ is common to both our languages. That deaf pack of men in uniform, all with the same face, shouting and beating their shields with their batons; the sight of the first blood did not blind them—on the contrary, the smell of it filled their nostrils and made their vision more acute. After they had thrown the bodies, one after the other, over the railing. They ran along the river, pushing heads into the black, stinking water. Smashing those fingers that were still hanging on, and the teeth of those whose mouths were still imploring. Firing into the eyes of those who were still looking. (TI, 134)

 The phrase describes the violence that ensued from a peaceful demonstration of Algerians who took to the streets of Paris to protest against the introduction of a police curfew that applied only to the Algerian minority. The demonstration was quelled by the police and other law enforcement services (who fired into the crowd, threw demonstrators off bridges into the Seine, and committed mass executions in police buildings), with the result that dozens or, in the opinion of some researchers, from 200 to 300 people died, while 10–15,000 were arrested (Viet 2002, 190; Chemin 2011). 2

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Fig. 3.3  In memory of the events of the Paris Massacre of 17 October 1961 Plaque commemorating the events (unveiled on 17 October 2001), built into the Saint-Michel Bridge over the Seine near Saint-Michel Square and Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. The inscription reads: ‘In memory of the many Algerians killed during the bloody repression of a peaceful demonstration on 17 October 1961’. Photo J. Kubera (2014)

Scenes from the Paris Massacre also appear in Ahmed Kalouaz’s book Avec tes mains (cf. Fig. 3.3). At one point, the narrator describes the fear prevailing among Algerian workers in France during the Algerian War: ‘Anyone even a bit swarthy was designated as guilty, a possible carrier of arms’ (AK, 52–53). Algerians in France during the period of the war recall in particular the hostile attitude of the police:

(30) For people on the street, there was no justification for your [the narrator’s father and his friends] presence in France. Some were not afraid to say: ‘Killers with killers’. Even at our age [childhood] we had ears enough to hear and enough sense to understand and feel wounded. … In France as well, they said that in the big cities men [Algerians] didn’t make it back to their homes or encampments at night. They

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said that the belongings of those who were absent just remained there for days until someone dared to stack them away into a corner. When the person’s colleagues from work went to make an enquiry at the police, they would go in a group, for there were rumours about people disappearing in police stations. Sometimes the missing person would be found at the morgue, with suspicious marks on the body, wrists or ankles. If it wasn’t two bullets in the back. People said that Algerians, when they went out to go to work, would suddenly be surrounded by plainclothes police ordering them to put their hands on their heads. After that, nobody knew anything more. Those who did come back gave accounts of brutal interrogations, questions about friends they had spent time with, and fundraisers who came through the slums or shanties at the edges of the cities. You lived and worked outside town, but the rumours gathered momentum and found their way to us. (AK, 50–52)

Further pages will be devoted to fragments that contain recollections by French people of the war from 1954–1962. It is worth remembering that the Algerian War affected not only how Algerians viewed the French, but also gave rise to Algerians acquiring a bad image in French society. Algerians’ awareness of how they were presented during this period—at least to certain groups in society—is certainly a factor that is not conducive to their identifying with France and the French. For it is surely difficult to identify with people who see us in certain respects as alien, dangerous, and—as in the fragment below—repulsive:

(31) I remember a persistent feeling of unease, a feeling of revolt I experienced in the barracks of the French army: the conscripts of the contingent, who were mostly still innocents, barely more than children, were shown a cartoon set in a bourgeois home showing the rivalry between two stereotyped protagonists. One was a wise cat wearing a halo and smelling of a good bubble bath, and opposite a repulsive animal, a rodent with a black, shaggy coat and dirty, scabby tail, followed by a bunch of brats with long, crooked teeth and bloodshot eyes. The animal looked like a rat, a pest. The reserve officer commenting on the film points with his baton at the stink-

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ing creature lying in wait for the sleek cat, and declares to the recruits: ‘That animal is the insurgent. You’ll be meeting and fighting him soon. You’ll see he’s exactly as in the film. Here we call him the rat!’. (MC, 66–67)

For many French, both from Algeria (Pieds-Noirs) and Metropolitan France, the Algerian War is remembered not as a war of independence, but as an unjustified and unnecessary, brutal rebellion by insurgents, supported by indigenous Algerians and Algerian immigrant circles in Europe. That rebellion led to a disintegration of the French state they had known since childhood, to a political humiliation of France, the death of many French people on both sides of the Mediterranean, and the tragedy of the Pieds-Noirs, who were forced to leave their homes in Algeria and rush to France, where they were never able to really feel at home. The war meant that Algerians, who as late as 1961 had officially belonged to the same political community as the French, became enemies threatening the unity of France and the security of its citizens. Algerians in France—primarily immigrants, but also the second generation—had to cope with this image.

(32) … at our neighbours’, in the lanes of our village, we’d hear on our way strange words you wouldn’t find in any dictionary: fellagas [from: fellaghas—Algerian partisans], feratabbas [from: Ferhat Abbas—a leading Algerian politician during the war], efellene [from: FLN – National Liberation Front]. Like a permanent reproach, an insult, because in fact, since the war for liberation, we had been living in the enemy’s country. (AK, 45–46)



(33) Don’t say I come from Algeria. … In the seventies, the French still weren’t quite used to Algerians. To new Algerians. To mixed marriages. To immigrants. They were still caught in the image of the war, the desert, and rebels and partisans. (NB, 93)



(34) No one visits me. Later, my friends’ parents would tell me: ‘At the beginning—1973, 1974, 1975…—we thought you ate lions. And crocodiles and giraffes’. To their credit, at least they told me about

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it. They added: ‘We were afraid you’d rob us’. Then: ‘We were afraid for our chickens’. And then: ‘We were afraid of your crimes…’. Suspicious of everything. And for everything. The war in Algeria that we didn’t talk about. I know nothing about it, not a word, but even so, one is in it and afraid… And the whole time there wasn’t an ally on the horizon. Not one. (ZR, 37)

As the narrator of Avec tes mains writes, the war meant that what had been indifference on the part of the French towards Algerian immigrants turned to hatred, and that Algerians of both the first and second generations of immigrants began to be considered as dangerous people, as terrorists:

(35) [About his father] I believe people liked you a lot. And you could have been like them, sat at their table, if, as the months went on, the war in Algeria hadn’t become a poison to which there seemed to be no antidote. We felt it ourselves, at school or on the way home, in those remarks, those words that stung. … I believe you loved France, hoping it would love you in return. But your name, Abd el-Kadr, sent you to a different destiny. At that time, Algeria was France, and without the war that we followed from afar, indifference would not have turned to hatred towards us. The walls of the cities bear the first violent, unequivocal words attesting to that hatred. At the dam sites and in the mines, the foremen avoided giving us powder or fuses for fear we’d try something. You were designated as terrorists, each of us was seen as a saboteur in the pay of the FLN, as a political agitator. Trust withered away, and will never be possible again. (AK, 49–50 and 68)

In the post-war, post-colonial context, there is a striking passage in the book L’odeur des planches referring to the beginning of the 1970s that concerns the deaths of Algerian immigrants in circumstances not fully explained, though there are indications that certain groups of French police were involved. It is worth noting here that, most probably, in protest against the disappearances of Algerians working in construction,

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their non-immigrant colleagues are also taking part (the father of the narrator describes the strike he took part in as a general strike):

(36) When my father told us he was going to take part in a general strike among the workers at the La Ciotat building site ‘in honour of our brothers who have disappeared’, my mother went red with anger. … The next morning, my mother called me to her in the bathroom, where she was doing the laundry. She’d found a leaflet in my father’s trouser pocket. She gave it to me, asking: ‘What does it say here?’ I remember sitting on the edge of the tub. At the top of the leaflet, drawn in an unsure hand, was a drawing of a coffin. Then a whole list of names: ‘13 March 1971 Amer Saadi beaten to death with a crank, 21 March Abdel Djefaflia beaten to death by a group of ten persons, 23 March Abelkader Laïb pulled out of the reservoir in Fumay, 22 April Bekar Rekala shot three times and beaten on the head with a shovel by police, 17 May 15-year-old Sakina Mouna stabbed by a man, 20 May Salah Mohand pulled out of the lock at Angelet, 22 May Hamman Mohand pulled out of the Villette canal … ’. With her hand my mother gave a sign for me to stop. The rest of the list was long. … In the evening, at the table, she held out the crumpled leaflet to my father and asked him if all that was true. ‘I mean, those men… did they have families?’ He nodded his head. Just that. Then there was a silence. Then my mother raised her eyes, looking straight out in front of her. She looked tormented. I remember thinking to myself—like a bird in a cat’s claws. (SS, 94–95)

The end of the war brought an end to the idea of a French Algeria. For those who had believed in the rightness of that political project, the conflict of 1954–1962 ruined forever the possibility of it being fully implemented. The Republic vision of the French nation presented earlier, in which Algerianness was part of Frenchness, lost its political raison d’être. After the war, to be an Algerian (in respect of the first generation of immigrants) now meant belonging to another state, and to another, officially newly-established nation:

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(37) After Algeria won its independence, French Muslims became Algerians. Working illegally. Foreigners. (NB, 133)

Children born in France or Algeria to former French Muslims from Algeria living in France became the children of Algerians, and were therefore foreigners. That change is well illustrated by how people of Algerian origin were treated in the French armed forces after 1962. During the First and Second World Wars, Algerians (then French Muslims from Algeria) were needed at the front, and were valued as a politically close element of the French army; after the Algerian War, however, in the 1970s and later on, it was difficult for the French to imagine having Algerians (citizens of another state) among the ranks. Moreover, in the military—and in the police as well, who had been targeted by Algerian rebels during the war—the image of Algerians as dangerous and hostile was particularly engrained, which caused even young Algerian men who were French citizens to find themselves being treated differently in the army than others. For example, Edy, one of the protagonists of Presque un frère, suffered numerous humiliations in the army caused by hostility towards Arabs and Muslims in connection with the memory of French soldiers who were killed during the Algerian-French conflict. In the story, Edy clearly points to the conflict between Algerianness and Frenchness. On the one hand, French of Algerian origin are treated as foreigners, as non-French by French soldiers; on the other, Edy himself accepts a definition of Frenchness that excludes himself, at least in the military, post-­ war context (speaking with his mother, he calls the French flag ‘their flag’):

(38) Did I have any choice? Once you’re out, they change you. … The others had the right to their rank. As for me, they called me by name. Deliberately deformed, smeared with shit. And all the time the officers were making their little jokes about pig’s feet and shortened pricks [allusions to not eating pork and circumcision]. Grinding their teeth, they reminded themselves out loud of the bullets my people fired into the heads of their buddies and fathers. So that I’d give in. So for one or two seconds they could find I wasn’t saluting their goddamned flag properly. I didn’t give in. … There was nothing they could do. They would have to give me the card [army registration]… (TI, 87)

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Let this story be completed by the attitude of Edy’s mother, who appreciates, it is true, her son’s determination to achieve a stable position in life through the army, but at the same time is not happy that he has put on a French uniform (TI, 89). She also admits that, when walking with him in the vicinity of the garrison, she feels observed as an Arab woman (TI, 88). One might be tempted to conclude, then, that speaking about the army, like about the Algerian war of independence, inclines people to identify themselves using an ethnic rather than a Republican definition of nationality. The 1954–1962 conflict resulted not only in an increase in France of the number of contexts in which the political, Republican definition of Frenchness could be replaced by a definition referring to ethnic origin, religion and cultural practices. The identity of the Algerian state and nation became based, firstly, on a negation of everything connected with the culture of the French, who had previously dominated politically, and secondly, on a connection between Algerianness and Arab culture and language and the religion of Islam; in this way, not only the Pieds-Noirs, but also the Jews, Berbers and Christians native to Algeria, were excluded from the national community.

(39) In 1938, you (the French) decided to impose French as the official ‘national language’ of Algeria and to declare classical Arabic a ‘foreign language’. The process of de-culturisation oblige. A number of languages and dialects functioned together in Algeria: Algerian Arabic, Kabylie, Chaoui, Mozabite, Touareg and Turkish. You were more interested in our languages to better maintain the divide between Algerians (those from the north and south, east and west do not resemble each other), making your stranglehold easier. When it gained independence, Algeria could not but throw off its tormentor and his principles. So it launched a policy of Arabisation (a simple reaction to your rejection of the colonists) to the detriment of the other languages and identities in the country. … In the name of what was called the principle of unity … Algeria dressed itself in another uniform—Arabic for everyone, a language that France had rejected. The process of de-culturisation went on, perpetrated by Algerians themselves, who were unaware they were committing hara-kiri. (AD, 98–99)

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(40) In 1981, Algeria very much wanted to be monolingual. It was by decree that the country imposed the Arabic language and the religion that went with it on its people. Without the monoreligious phase that accompanied that policy, it would have been possible to save a few scraps of memory of the history of the country, but neither the Jews nor the Arab Christians were invited to manifest their differences. The consequences of this project were disastrous. The few ‘French’ I met never ceased declaiming, loud and long, their ‘Algerianness’, which they thought would ultimately render them harmless in the country they had given so much to. Day by day, they assisted with the abandonment of the culture of French Algeria in favour of pan-­Arabism, which they embraced with arms that were open, but necessarily naked. Seldom was there a man among them who could accept the idea that the desperation of Albert Camus or Kateb Yacine was also his own. (ZR, 95–96, cf. MC, 128–129)

For the above reasons, many Jews left the country after the Algerian War (see MC, 152), as did most of the Pieds-Noirs. Mehdi Charef, the author of À bras-le-cœur. Roman, who spent the first years of his life in Algeria, describes at length the increasing uncertainty of the French about their fate after independence, and their excursions—or rather, escapes— to France (MC, 115–120). In this way, readers can understand not only the joy of the Algerians at the end of the colonial era, but also the regrets of the Pieds-Noirs, who had to leave all their property behind them. For them, and for other supporters of French Algeria, the atmosphere in the country at its breakthrough entails a very real threat: in À bras-le-cœur. Roman there are scenes in which Algerians ‘settle scores’ with their former colonisers, in which harkis are tortured (MC, 117), and where, near the border, lie the bodies of collaborators who had tried to escape the country. For the child narrator of the book, the absence of the French, ­especially just after independence is gained, is particularly noticeable. He recalls that moment as follows:

(41) Death makes me afraid, I don’t like to reflect on it. I think about my father; I ask myself if he knows about the future independence of

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Algeria. Maybe my mother has mentioned it in her letters. The colonisers’ estate on the road to Tlemcen was deserted. The French left their homes without closing their blue and crimson shutters. The fragrant flowered branches of geraniums hang through the bars protecting their terraces. Clashing with the sharp, haunting song of the cicadas, the silence terrified me. I knew all of them by sight, the colonisers who lived there with their children. They rarely mixed with us; we just passed each other—they in their cars and we on foot. Where had they gone? (MC, 120).

Summarising this thread of the memories of the French connected with the Algerian War, there is no doubt that after 1962 the atmosphere of distrust caused by the war—and perhaps even more so for the French by how the French-Algerian parting of the ways turned out in practice— was not conducive to identifying the children of Algerian immigrants in France as French. From the point of view of French of Algerian origin, the complex shared history of the Algerians and the French provides arguments both in favour of and against their being identified as French, and remains a continual point of reference in their thinking about themselves as French and Algerian. That colonial and wartime History, written with a capital ‘H’ in Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés: les racines du malaise. Récit, causes many members of the second generation of Algerian immigrants in France to feel unsure about including themselves in the category of ‘French’. The narrator of the story argues that History has loaded them with too many pieces of the identity puzzle that simply don’t fit together. There is a continual need to choose between Frenchness and Algerianness, where every decision means a feeling of alienation, of being a stranger to oneself.

(42) There’s You, the French, and Them, our parents. And Us, their children. We are twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years old. … Our identity is in tatters. You can’t imagine how much. We don’t have the strength, the cohesion of the Jews to overcome History, suffering, misfortune. Identity is a fragile thing. It’s like a puzzle. If you have all the pieces, with a bit of attention you can manage to put together the image

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that defines you. If you have the same number of pieces, but they come from different puzzles, then no matter how hard you try to fit them together you won’t get anywhere, and your picture won’t look like anything. (AD, 110, see also AD, 111–112)

Among French of Algerian origin, a special group comprises children of mixed families, where one parent is Algerian and the other French. They have even more difficulty facing the above dilemma in reconciling Algerianness and Frenchness when the colonial period is under discussion. For Nina, the narrator of the autobiographical novel Garçon manqué, who was born in Rennes but spent her childhood in Algeria as the daughter of an Algerian diplomat and a French woman, the subject of belonging to the categories of ‘French’ and ‘Algerian’, and at the same time being excluded from both, is particularly pertinent. Nina describes many times having to deal with her inability to give a straightforward answer to the question of whether she is Algerian or French. One of the causes of this dilemma is History. Depending on the situation, Nina feels obliged to define herself as French and non-Algerian, or as Algerian and non-French. History has caused that in both France and Algeria, to display one’s affiliation with an ethnically conceived nation other than the one that is dominant in a given country is frowned upon, and often leads to a feeling of being excluded. Living in both countries, Nina comes to realise that connecting French and Algerian identification would mean joining together two mutually hostile, conflicting characteristics. Since neither identity can be renounced, however, she is condemned to never being truly French in France, or truly Algerian in Algeria. Nina reminds us that, during the war, for a French person to marry an Algerian, as Nina’s mother did, was to love an enemy of France (NB, 110). And although in Garçon manqué many years have passed since 1962, the narrator believes that the war is still going on—in her body, which contains elements of both Algerianness and Frenchness:

(43) [in France] Forget. That my father is an Algerian. That I’m from there, right through. I look like Rabia [her grandmother on her father’s side]. I have Bachir’s complexion [her grandfather on her

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father’s side]. Nothing from Rennes. Nothing. Just my birth certificate. That I’m a French national. Forget about my name. Bouraoui. … Apologise for my mother. You won’t marry an Algerian. Apologise for my body, so sweet, so tender, that seduction. That story about the French girl and the Algerian student. Apologise for 1962. Apologise for the Algerian War. My body against the men of the OAS. … I wear very smart trousers, very feminine … . A Daniel Hechter suit. Which I hate. It’s my disguise. My French skin. (NB, 92–93)

(44) What am I guilty of, then? Of being the daughter of lovers of 1960. Of making that period last forever. By my very existence, my look, my voice, and my identity. … It was war. The OAS.  The FLN. Attacks. The two teachers who had their throats slit. Those French women on a café patio [an allusion to the ‘café war’ in which attacks were carried out in cafés in France, with an official death toll of almost 4000]. And the sight of them after the bomb. Their skirts soaked in blood. Their legs in shreds. People were so afraid of Algerians. Partisans. Those who resisted. (NB, 124)



(45) I go to a French school [in Algeria]. … I hear the voice of my Algerian father. I’m together with mixed children. We are together and recognise each other. … ‘You’re not French’, ‘You’re not Algerian’. I’m everything. I’m nothing. … I stay with my mother. I stay with my father. I take both of them. I lose both of them. Each part blends with the rest and then detaches itself. They embrace and they quarrel. It’s a war. It’s a union. It’s a rejection. It’s mutual desire. I don’t choose. I go and return. My body consists of two exiles. (NB, 18–20)



(46) Amine’s father brought us two white bournouses [a type of long woollen cloak] from Tizi-Ouzou. … The bournouses are too long. They cover the whole body. They drown it. We become fragile, lost in a traditional costume, which

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reveals the impossibility of being truly one part of oneself. We will always hesitate. We’ll never be true Algerians. In spite of our desire and good will. In spite of the clothes. In spite of the land around us. … Who are we? (NB, 10)

As in the passages by Nina Bouraoui cited above, in many texts written by French of Algerian origin (including in the pages by Ahmed Djouder cited earlier [AD, 110–11]) emphasis is placed on the desire to possess characteristics that would allow one to identify unequivocally with a single category of nationality. Yet, as Nina argues, French of Algerian origin cannot easily be categorised as either French or Algerian, or even as métis, i.e. as people who combine the characteristics of various ethnic groups (see also NB, 19 and 29). She tells her friend, who grew up with her in Algeria and is moving to France, that there he will be difficult to be categorised at all, in other words he will be a nobody:

(47) In France you won’t be a métis. Your skin is white, but your hair is too dark. In France you won’t be a good Arab. You’ll be a nobody. Of a French mother. Of an Algerian father. In France, real Arabs won’t like you. You speak with an accent. … You don’t know Algeria. You won’t know France, Amine. You’ll always be outside the land. You’ll be looking at the sea, at the other side of it. And you’ll lie. Algeria will forget all about you. In France you’ll hear bicot, melon, ratonnade [pejorative terms for people of Arab origin]. You’ll defend yourself. And they’ll say, ‘but we didn’t mean you’. It will hurt. … But you are a nobody, Amine. (NB, 38–39)

France is the inverse of Algeria, Nina says at one point (NB, 160). And at another, that neither in France nor in Algeria can one learn who one is (NB, 156–157). Yet there does exist a way of finding one’s own, unequivocal identification—to introduce a new context disconnected from the alternative of choosing Frenchness or Algerianness. For Nina’s French acquaintances (identifications), and for Nina herself (self-identifications), Algerian-French relations are so difficult that—paradoxically—it’s easier for them to think in terms of another Mediterranean country, such as Spain or Italy, with which they have little in common.

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(48) And you? Who are you really? French, Algerian? We’d rather call you Nina than Jasmina. Nina suits you. It sounds Spanish or Italian. That way we won’t have to explain why we’re meeting. (NB, 123)

Faced with how often in public discourse and in daily life the colonial era and the war come up, many French of Algerian origin don’t wish to identify themselves only with France or only with Algeria, and so find themselves unable to connect their Algerianness and Frenchness within themselves. In such cases, that gap in national identification is filled in various ways, but always with a certain detachment from the French-­ Algerian context. Some choose to migrate to a third country (such as the French-speaking part of Canada), others push the issue out of their awareness, subordinating their identity to other types of identification: with their family, occupation, religion, or the area where they live. Returning to the case of Nina—she herself says it was only on vacation in Rome that she felt happy. Only there could she forget about France, Algeria, and the French-Algerian conflict. Interestingly, this liberation from the French-Algerian alternative, which elsewhere seemed insuperable, Nina also experiences in her body, about which she said earlier that as soon as she set foot in France or Algeria the Algerian War continued within it. Far from France and far from Algeria, Nina can finally, as she puts it, enjoy the fact that she is alive:

(49) We walked a lot in Rome. … Everything was so simple. Being. Walking around. Coming back late. Looking. Not being afraid any more. Of anything. Among men. Among women. I was no longer French. I wasn’t Algerian. I wasn’t even the daughter of my mother. I was myself. With my body. With this feeling. … I became happy in Rome. … My body became detached from everything. There was no France. There was no Algeria. Just the simple joy of being alive. A joy so powerful that you can see it in all the photos from those holidays. … Everything was altered. By my skin. By my gaze. Nothing would ever be like it had been before. Because of my body. And what it had detached itself from. Because of its decision. To be a free body in the gardens of Tivoli. (NB, 184–186)

Among the French of Algerian origin, apart from children of mixed, French, families another rather separate group can be distinguished.

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Fig. 3.4  French memory of the Algerian War: the National monument of the Algerian War and the fighting in Morocco and Tunisia Monument dedicated to the soldiers, harkis and civilian inhabitants of Algeria who died in various circumstances during the war, as well as after the signing of the Évian Accords. The National monument of the Algerian War and the fighting in Morocco and Tunisia (the official name of the monument) was unveiled by President Jacques Chirac on 5 December 2002. It is located near the Eiffel Tower and the Quai Branly Museum. Groups representing the Pieds-Noirs and harkis demanded that it be erected. At the foot of the monument there is a plaque with the inscription: ‘In memory of those who died for France during the Algerian War and the fighting in Morocco and Tunisia, and of members of all auxiliary branches [supporting the French army, i.e. the harkis, among others] killed after the ceasefire in Algeria, many of whose remains were never found’. On each of the columns of the monument, the names of the victims are illuminated in the colours of the French flag. Photo J. Kubera (2014)

These are the children of harkis—French Muslims from Algeria who collaborated with the French army during the war, opting for a French Algeria (cf. Figs. 3.4 and 3.5). After the war, they were deemed traitors by independent Algeria and forced to flee to Metropolitan France. In respect of identification, the specific situation of the harkis and their families in France is that, for many French, they were treated with the same mistrust

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Fig. 3.5  One of the plaques below the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, dedicated to those who fought for France during the Algerian conflict The inscription reads: ‘To those who died for France during the Algerian War and the fighting in Tunisia and Morocco 1952–1962’. Photo J. Kubera (2014)

as other Algerians, as discussed above, and were treated by Algerians as those who, at the critical moment (for very different reasons, and sometimes under duress) fought to maintain French domination in North Africa. The contempt the children of harkis ran up against is described by one of them—the narrator of France, récit d’une enfance. For her, it was especially painful to be excluded from both national communities ‘from which emerged’ the children of the harkis (ZR, 100). Because of their parents—their fathers especially—they were branded in a way they could cope with only by cutting themselves off from the past, by trying to build their identity anew:

(50) I belong to an adult, educated generation that quickly understood it must free itself of any communal or religious claims. We are what we are only in the eyes of others. I am the only one who can say who you are. It’s because of our history that we, the children of the harkis, have become what we have become. And like it or not, we are the legitimate heirs of a war that entitles us to say to each of the

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peoples from which we originated that we have judged them severely. Beyond the contempt and sometimes vile remarks the Algerians have made about the harkis, beyond their political exploitation and the despicable treatment the harkis received in France, our first duty is to live. This was not achieved without pain. We had to pass through the stage of lamentation and perpetual recriminations in which either side wanted to keep us. But from the conditions of our fathers, we learned our lesson. We experienced the issues of choice and guilt, of treason committed along with one’s brothers, from our earliest days. Taking on the experience of our parents, we came to understand better than anyone else what a war really means. … They turned us children into the bearers of treason. But for what purpose? Everyone will have to judge in his soul and his conscience what he wanted to perpetuate with that story. As for me, I saw too many young people run away from Algeria for not wanting to say that it’s with the radical disappearance of the ‘other’ that this country has almost reached perfection in digging its own grave. That other is me, as well as all those who were refused the right to articulate their connection with the country in some other way. (ZR, 100–101)

In concluding this chapter, it is worth noting that many of the passages cited herein reveal a conviction that it is the French who are mainly responsible for the course of the history shared by the French and the Algerians, since the French were the stronger, dominant side that initiated contact between them and determined the nature of their mutual relations. In this sense, the blame for the problems with identification resulting from that history, and for the difficulty FAOs have in identifying with France in situations where they think about that history, lies not with the different generations of Algerian immigrants, but with the French majority that during the colonial period made it practically impossible for French Muslims to fully identify with France or the French. Such an undertone is present in the words of the narrator of Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés. He treats the problems concerning the integration of immigrants as a consequence of colonialism, arguing that the phenomenon of migration, and the individual choices made by migrants, are not the only context that explains those problems, but are only an element of a broader canvas:

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(51) You’d like to believe it was all of no consequence. Dropping a bomb on Hiroshima, was that of no consequence? It would be cool if destructive actions had no destructive consequences. But the reality is different. No. You did the colonising. Then you did the destroying. It’s so recent. 1962. Forty-four years ago. Four decades. It’s nothing on the scale of the history of a country. You’d like to make it seem as if nothing had happened. Firstly: you colonised us, you systematically destroyed our culture, you raped us. Secondly: you took advantage of our poverty to rebuild your own prosperity. Thirdly: you’re rejecting us after having used us. Remember the 1970s and ‘80s, the extraditions, the Marche des Beurs, the mobility office (the first such one to make us leave), the transit settlements for migrants, the slums? Colonisation (rape), immigration (deportation), then disintegration (disintegration). (AD, 100–101)

Further on in the story, however, the narrator of Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés uses words that make a division between the present and history: ‘We’re no longer in a state of war … . Bury the hatchet’. He cuts himself off from fatalistic thoughts, arguing that it is possible to build new relations between the children of immigrants and other French people. When one comes up against history, which—he admits—the French have also experienced, it will be easier to accept that the presence of immigrants in France is a consequence of collective mechanisms over which few contemporaries had any real control. For the narrator, the migration policy involving ‘insulting’ (we would say ‘hindering the self-­ identification of immigrants and their children with France and the French’) means ‘cowardice with regard to the past’. Thus, if we change our perspective, and understand who must take the initiative, it will be easier not only to accept the presence of immigrants, but also to include them within the national community:

(52) You too were buffeted by history. History wounded you too. History also took away your children, women, men. It was cruel to you as well. Don’t be satisfied with being sensitive to the sufferings of others. … Go further. We will go even further. Be a little less French,

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and at the same time be more French. Make the effort to accept all your foreigners, all your immigrants, who in fact are no longer just foreigners and immigrants. One is always somebody’s foreigner. Your current immigration policy is a permanent insult to us; it attests to your cowardice in relation to the past. Don’t react as if we weren’t supposed to be here. We are here. … Say hello to us with real kindness in bakeries and at train and bus station ticket offices. Learn to love us. In the end, you will love us. … At first it will feel like you’re forcing yourself. Then a bit less, and eventually not at all. It will become natural for you. … Accept us among yourselves, not out of courtesy and compassion, or worse, out of pity, but as part of the natural course of history. There are no more wars, we’re no longer in a state of war, there is no more threat, so lay down your arms. Bury the hatchet. We still see it there on your shoulders, ready to cut us down. (AD, 120–121)

Having considered those situations in which French of Algerian origin identify themselves in the context of discussing the colonial era, it is time to make a summary, and then reflect on the impact of family and religious identification on how members of the studied group identify with the French or Algerians.

Summary In this chapter on the context of the colonial period and the Algerian War and its consequences, we examined three ways of understanding the relationship between Algerianness and Frenchness. In the first two, put forward by the Republic of France, there was a refusal up to 1962 to acknowledge Algerianness as a national characteristic. In this understanding, Algerian identification could exist only as an element of French identification. In the first definition, Algerianness went hand in hand with the Frenchness of all inhabitants colonised by the French in Algeria. In this context, contemporary French people of Algerian origin could explain

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their French identification by their parents’ or grandparents’ identification with the Republic as part of the French community. In the statements gathered, one can find passages in which (apart from the negative aspects of colonialism) Algeria is spoken of as a part of France [1, 2],3 while the forebears of today’s Algerians are called French Muslims [3]. Based on this definition, the parents and grandparents of French people of Algerian origin fought alongside other Frenchmen on the front in the First and Second World Wars, as well in other conflicts in which France was engaged [4, 6]. For many Algerian immigrants, in those moments when they marched shoulder to shoulder with French soldiers, including during the victory parade in Paris in 1945, they experienced a feeling of community with the French [5]. This relationship between identification with the French and with the Algerians, where Frenchness is a national trait defined politically while Algerianness pertains to residence in a particular area or region, but is a ‘subset’ of Frenchness, is shown in Fig. 3.6. Also during the colonial period, a second definition of Frenchness was applied in Algeria, which made an ethnocultural distinction between the inhabitants of the Algerian departments. While the definition of Frenchness based on affiliation with the politically defined French nation (nationalité française) covered all of Algeria’s inhabitants, this second ­definition distinguished the majority indigenous population, represented by Arab and Berber Muslims, known officially as Français Musulmans d’Algérie, from the European-derived population, known as Pieds-Noirs, treated in common with indigenous Algerian Jews. This division had not only cultural, but also political, consequences. For only the ethnic European population and the Jewish community held citoyenneté française, which guaranteed them full rights as citizens. This enabled them to dominate over the Arab and Berber population—legally and economically [12, 13, 14]. The status of Français Musulman d’Algérie, then, designated a person as French, but as second-class French. This fuelled the opposition of Arabs and Berbers towards the French, known as Pieds-­ Noirs, i.e. colonisers from France and elsewhere in Europe or their descendants [12, 13, 14, 15, 16]. (In further chapters we will see that this

 In the Summaries (at the end of this and the following chapters) and in the Conclusions (at the end of the book), the numbers of particular citations are contained in square brackets. 3

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Algerianness

Fig. 3.6  The political, Republican definition of Frenchness and the relationship between Frenchness and Algerianness imposed on the indigenous inhabitants of Algeria during the colonial era

Algerianness

The three hatched fields of the diagram are covered, since, in the political definition of the French nation up to 1962, Algerianness was not treated as a characteristic of a nation existing outside the French context (which excludes the fields ALG− and ALG+), nor could it be an argument against French identification (which excludes the field ALG+/FR−) Up to 1962, Algerians were considered to be French (persons holding nationalité française), meaning that they were inhabitants of Algerian departments belonging to the Republic of France. Under this approach, indigenous Algerians (Arabs, Berbers, Jews) and the Pieds-Noirs (the Algerian population of European origin) were both French (a national characteristic) and Algerian (a characteristic indicating residence in a certain area). Algerianness thus understood is an argument in favour of French identification

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ethnocultural opposition between Arabness and the Islam associated with it on the one hand, and Frenchness on the other, is still very active today.) This old division between the French—understood in the non-­ republican, colonial definition as everyone holding citoyenneté française— and the inhabitants of Algeria, who could not thus consider themselves as French, continues even today in the consciousness of the descendants of former Français Musulmans d’Algérie. They say that for many years they were not taught by their parents or in French schools [8, 9, 10, 11] about the specific relationship between Arabness, Berberness and Islam (traits of their families) on the one hand, and Frenchness on the other, where this last characteristic was incompatible with the first three (defined here as Algerian). Knowledge about the relationship under which the ancestors of today’s French of Algerian origin were considered non-French and difficult to assimilate, and which justified treating them worse than other inhabitants of colonial Algeria, is now recognised by both immigrant parents and the French as an obstacle to assimilation in France today. One can argue that the French state continues to apply double criteria of Frenchness towards Algerians and their descendants: a political definition, and an ethnocultural one under which French of Algerian origin are seen de facto as foreigners [7]. Among the recollections of the colonial period attesting to the unequal status of the Français Musulman d’Algérie and the Pieds-Noirs, there are frequent references to racial segregation in public places [14], economic inequalities in property law and self-­determination [13, 16], acts of terror and collective judgements meted out against Arabs [15, 16], failure by France to recognise the contributions of Algerian soldiers at the front during the Second World War [17, 18, 19, 20], the treatment of Français Musulmans d’Algérie as cheap labour by businesses in Metropolitan France [21], the obfuscation of history through omission of the fact that most of the populace of Algeria were (ethnoculturally defined) Algerians, not French [21, 22]. The relationship thus understood between Algerianness and Frenchness in colonial Algeria is shown in Fig. 3.7. The events of the Algerian War meant it was no longer possible to think of Algerianness solely in the French context, as being something regional or ethnocultural. It is virtually impossible to connect Algerianness with Frenchness when speaking of the 1954–1962 war, for they appear not only as ethnoculturally separate characteristics (Fig. 3.7), but also as conflicting characteristics (Fig. 3.8). This view is reinforced for French

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Algerianness 1

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Algerianness 2

Fig. 3.7  The ethnic, colonial definition of Frenchness, manifest in unequal civil rights among inhabitants of Algeria during the period of French domination

Algerianness 1

Algerianness 2

Two fields of the diagram (ALG+ and ALG−), are covered, since the ethnic, colonial definition did not contain a political definition (Fig. 3.6), but distinguished only two types of Algerianness, among which only one meant full affiliation with the category of the French Algerians defined as in Fig. 3.6, but having the status, due to certain ethnocultural characteristics, of Français Musulmans d’Algérie, which politically, economically and symbolically prevented them from exercising the rights enjoyed by the Pieds-Noirs. Algerianness thus understood encompassed such elements as Arab, Berber and Muslim identification, and was an argument against French identification Algerians defined as in Fig. 3.6, colloquially known as Pieds-Noirs, as opposed to Français Musulmans d’Algérie, possessed not only nationalité française, but also citoyenneté française, granted—apart from a few exceptions—to groups having certain defined ethnocultural characteristics. Algerianness thus understood, encompassing only certain categories of inhabitants of Algeria, was an argument in favour of French identification

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events of the Algerian War

mixed families harkis

Fig. 3.8  Frenchness and Algerianness as conflicting characteristics during the Algerian War and afterwards in situations where the conflict of 1954–1962 and its causes are discussed

events of the Algerian War

As distinct from previous diagrams, here only one field is covered (ALG+/FR+), since the Algerian War meant that, in France, Algerianness and Frenchness began to be thought of as national characteristics that could exist independently. The war also meant that, in its context, the relationship between Algerian and French identification was seen as a conflicting one (FR+/ALG− and ALG+/FR−) Events in the context of which it is difficult to include Algerians or their descendants within the French national community. This concerns situations where, in the context of the war, the family self-identification of children of immigrants (often connected with Algerian, Arab, Berber or Muslim identification) prevents them from identifying with France, and situations where the family and French self-identification of other French people makes it difficult for them to identify the children of immigrants as French

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harkis

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Situations where—as a result of the Algerian War—French of Algerian origin consider French and Algerian identification as mutually exclusive, and where they are unable to identify themselves either as French or as Algerian Children of harkis, i.e. Algerians (then Français Musulmans d’Algérie), who supported the idea of French Algeria during the 1954–1962 conflict. The dramatic end of the war forced most harkis to move to France, where they faced exclusion from both the French and Algerian immigrants. The family self-identification of the children of harkis is an argument in favour of their identifying themselves as both Algerian and French—two groups that were in conflict during the Algerian War

people of Algerian origin by certain episodes that took place during the war, both in Algeria itself [23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28] and in France, as experienced by the Algerian immigrant community [29, 30]. Almost all of these recollections concern situations the narrators themselves or people close to them went through (parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents), and are therefore an integral part of the family identification of French people of Algerian origin. In their recollections, the French represent a world completely different from that of the Algerians. In those scenes taking place in Algeria, the French are uncouth aggressors from the outside who threaten the valuable spiritual culture of Algerians handed down for generations. As to events in France, among those most remembered is the Paris Massacre of 17 October 1961, in which the French are presented as having been an active party, unjustly perceiving Algerian workers as a threat and brutally murdering them [29, 30]. At the same time, the children of immigrants are aware that the general French interpretation of the Algerian War is completely opposed to the one they know from their families: in the eyes of the French at that time, and of many of their descendants today, it was the Algerians who were the aggressors, jeopardising internal security, and it was they who were guilty of the worst excesses [31]. The texts also contain passages that show that the end of the war did not change the conviction of many French people that, for them, Algerians and their children in France constitute a danger [32, 33, 34, 35, 36]. During the 1970s, French people of Algerian origin heard

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t­hemselves being compared with those people fighting for Algerian independence using terrorist methods, since—as we read in one statement—the inhabitants of France were ‘still immersed in scenes of war’ (NB, 93). The French still feared the Algerians and ascribed sinister features to them. This fear also resulted in cases, described in the material, when many Algerian workers in France—even a decade after the Paris Massacre—were tortured or died under unexplained circumstances [36]. One-time Français Musulmans d’Algérie became foreigners [37], while the old apathy of the French towards them turned into hatred [35]. Memories of the war affect both sides of the conflict, and are linked to family identification and national identification, mainly with respect to the ethnocultural definition of a nation. For this reason, when in one of the analysed materials, a son of Algerian immigrants joins the French army, this is difficult for both his mother and for many French soldiers to accept [38]. The war not only led to many years of mutual hatred between French people and Algerians and to the increased popularity of the ethnocultural understanding of the French Community, but also to state identification in Algeria being based on Arabness and Islam, to the exclusion of Frenchness [39, 40, 41]. In both countries, then, French people of Algerian origin having both of these apparently conflicting characteristics might not feel completely at home. For many, it is simply not possible to put together the puzzle of Frenchness and Algerianness, and the two elements remain in rivalry [42]. Children from mixed French–Algerian families experience the feeling of being excluded from the categories of French and Algerian particularly keenly. This is exemplified by the case of Nina, the narrator of Garçon manqué, for whom the struggle to unequivocally state what side of the conflict she is on, and what identification she should choose, is being fought out, she says, continually within her own body [43, 44, 45, 46, 47]. Paradoxically, it is easier for Nina and her friends to think of her as Italian or Spanish, since these identifications are not associated with the conflict between French and Algerian characteristics [48, 49]. The feeling of exclusion is experienced even more powerfully by the children of harkis, who have inherited from their parents (usually the father) the status of people who are accepted neither by the French (who ascribe to

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them Algerian characteristics considered to conflict with Frenchness, due to the war) nor by other Algerians (who see them as having acted to the detriment of an Algerian Algeria) [50]. Finally, also worthy of mention are statements by French people of Algerian origin who say that, after 50 years, it is high time to come to terms with the baggage of the war. They argue that the history of colonialism and the war still hinder integration among various parts of French society, and that, if this is to change, the French must admit that they played the leading role in the process of colonisation [51, 52]. Given that the context of the war remains the point of reference in discussions on the presence of immigrants in France today, that demand must be seen as particularly difficult to meet. Whereas the first two schemas (Figs. 3.6 and 3.7) are in a way compatible with each other (just as, in reality, in colonial Algeria the political, Republican and ethnic definitions of Frenchness functioned simultaneously), the third constitutes an alternative to them. Here, Algerianness is a characteristic that can exist independently of Frenchness, since it is defined as being national and political, parallel to Frenchness, but not encompassed within it. Each of these three diagrams (Figs. 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8) refers to a different definition of the relationship between Frenchness and Algerianness, and—though half a century has passed since the end of the Algerian War—each of those definitions can still be referred to today if someone deems them important and appropriate for justifying their attitude towards themselves or someone else being Algerian or French. It is no accident that in the material, which was collected after the year 2000, so much space is devoted to the subject of colonialism, and the Algerian War in particular. One can even assume that if research on identification had been carried out on earlier material, the problems resulting from the baggage of French–Algerian history would have been less evident. Evidence of this is provided by the first autobiographical stories from the 1980s by French writers of Algerian origin, such as Le thé au harem d’Archi Achmed (1983) by Mehdi Charef or Le Gone du Chaâba (1986) by Azouz Begag, which dealt with the problems children of immigrants and other ‘suburban youth’ have integrating with the rest of French society. Among the texts appearing today, both by the two

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well-known authors above and by writers born later (from the end of the 1970s to the early 1990s), it is difficult to find works—no matter what their theme—that do not devote at least a few pages to the issue of the Algerian War.

Bibliography Texts Analysed Amellal, K. (KA) (2006). Cités à comparaître. Roman. Paris: Stock Begag, A. (AB) (2005[2004]). Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman. Paris: Points. Benia, M. (MB) (2007). Chiens de la casse. Roman. Paris: Hachette Littératures. Bouraoui, N. (NB) (2010[2000]). Garçon manqué. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Charef, M. (MC) (2007[2006]). À bras-le-cœur. Roman. Paris: Collection Folio. Djouder, A. (AD) (2007[2006]). Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés: les racines du malaise. Récit. Paris: J’ai lu. Guène, F. (FG) (2010[2006]). Du rêve pour les oufs. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Imache, T. (TI) (2001[2000]). Presque un frère. Conte du temps présent. Roman. Arles: Actes Sud (Babel). Kalouaz, A. (AK) (2009). Avec tes mains. Rodez: Rouergue (La Brune). Rahmani, Z. (ZR) (2008[2006]). France, récit d’une enfance. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Sedira, S. (SS) (2013). L’odeur des planches. Arles: Rouergue. Zitouni, R. (RZ) (2005). Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise. Paris: Hachette Littératures.

References Aissaoui, R. (2009). Immigration and National Identity: North African Political Movements in Colonial and Postcolonial France. London: I.B.Tauris (International Library of Migration Studies). Chemin, A. (2011). La longue histoire d’un massacre oublié. Le Monde, 17 octobre. Gandhi, L. (2008). Teoria postkolonialna. Wprowadzenie krytyczne. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie.

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Kubera, J., & Skoczylas, Ł. (2012). Pamięć o wojnie, wojna o pamięć. Pamięć społeczna o wojnie w Algierii w relacjach pomiędzy Francją a imigrantami algierskmi. Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 40. Nora, P. (2012). Les Français d’Algérie (Édition revue et augmentée, précédée de ‘Cinquante ans après’ et suivie d’un document inédit de Jacques Derrida, ‘Mon cher Nora…’). Paris: Christian Bourgois Éditeur. Viet, V. (2002). Histoire de Français venus d’ailleurs de 1850 à nos jours. Paris: Perrin.

4 Family and Religious Identification

 he Family: Where Algerian and French T Characteristics Coexist Immigrant families normally constitute a bridge between the society of the country of origin and that of the host country. For the families of Algerian immigrants in France, the situation is similar. Parents pass on important elements of Algerian culture, such as the Arab or Berber language and the religion of Islam, and at the same time French culture is present within their homes. The majority of the descriptions of family life in the texts analysed here (not all of which, for reasons of space, can be cited) concern situations in which one can speak of the coexistence of Algerian and French elements of culture.1 Identification with family,  Forty-two per cent of FOAs live with their parents. The largest group living with their parents are French of Sahel origin (67 per cent), followed by Tunisian (54 per cent), Moroccan (52 per cent), Asian (52 per cent) and Turkish (50 per cent), while the percentage is lower among French originating from Southern Europe (32 per cent) and other parts of Europe (37 per cent), and the lowest among the French whose parents are not immigrants (30 per cent). Where FOAs do move away from home, most do so by the time they reach the age of 25 (8 per cent before age 18, 29 per cent before age 20, 40 per cent before age 25, 23 per cent after age 26), i.e. later than most children in non-immigrant French households, where the majority leave home before the age of 20 (10 per cent by age 18, 44 per cent by age 20, 37 per cent by age 25, 9 per cent after age 26) (Collet and Santelli 2012, 328–329). 1

© The Author(s) 2020 J. Kubera, Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5_4

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whether that family is Algerian or mixed (Algerian–French), constitutes an important argument in favour of identification with Algeria, Algerians and their national culture, as well as with France and French culture. In situations where Frenchness and Algerianness are not considered contradictory characteristics, a physical separation from both countries with which the child of immigrant parents identifies facilitates the expression of dual identification. This is the case, for example, when the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman goes to the United States, far removed from France and Algeria:

(53) In this geometry of such extravagant dimensions, France looked like a tiny corner of the world, and Algeria, my other source of identity, like a little white sandbox. (AB, 13)

Thanks to their families, the children of immigrants acquire arguments in favour of identifying themselves with both Algeria (the country of their ancestors, family, and culture, elements of which are preserved in the home in France) and France (the country of daily family life, whose culture is accepted, to varying degrees, by their family). In this context, to be an Algerian and French, according to the definition of Frenchness presented herein as having a social and cultural connection with France and French society, is an argument that is neither for nor against Frenchness. Algerianness and Frenchness here are characteristics that exist in parallel, that are not mutually exclusive, and pose no threat to each other. In the passage below, belonging to the category of Algerians, justified by family ties, is treated in this way: as a neutral characteristic, frequently removed from Frenchness and evaluated independently of it. As in the case of those who parents are not immigrants, knowledge about where one comes from, where one’s roots are, is an important element of identity that strengthens an individual’s feeling of continuity and provides at least a partial answer to the question of who one is.

(54) Algeria is a beautiful country … . It’s the country of my childhood, my ancestors, and I’m attached to it even though I don’t know enough about it. (RZ, 73)

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(55) Soon we were twelve kilometres from Satif, and a sign welcomed us to El-Ouricia! Trembling with emotion, excited, I showed my daughter the village where my father was born. The name was emblematic of my childhood—El-Ouricia. It meant that my father hadn’t been raised in a hothouse only to one day become a cement worker, a master of the plastering trowel, just as the Romans of Julius Caesar had trained gladiators for their amusement in the stadiums. My father was much more than that, he was born somewhere, in a place, like everyone. He could proudly boast: I’m from here, from El-Ouricia. I’m not from nowhere. I was born into a history, with definite people. No, I’m not a unit of cheap manpower. I’m a man. And I too was reassured of being the son of that man. That gave me a better chance of one day also becoming a man myself. (AB, 151)

In the passage above, the narrator of Azouz Begag’s book reminds us that every child of an immigrant is also the child of an emigrant. From this follows, of course, not only a certain familiarity with the country of the child’s parents, but also an immersion in it that is at least partial (see Kłoskowska 2005, 111–112). In introducing the subject of the adoption of elements of Algerian culture (cf. Figs. 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3), it is perhaps best to begin with the question of how well a given person knows the Arab or Berber language. The quantitative data show that the majority of FAOs are bilingual.2 It often happens that French is the language used at school, work, and generally outside the home, while Arabic or Berber is the language used at home. The degree of familiarity with the language of the parents varies, however, even within one family, as attested to by the narrator of Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise:

(56) You could say I’m fluent in French. I speak, write and think in that language and don’t make mistakes. And unlike my parents, I haven’t got an accent… well, maybe a bit of an accent I’ve noticed because I try to ensure my language is smooth and refined. … As to Arabic, it’s my mother tongue—I speak the Algerian dialect, but I don’t know the exact sense of the words I use.

 See Condon and Régnard (2010, 48–49 and 54).

2

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Fig. 4.1  Algerian Cultural Centre in Paris. A meeting with Henri Pouillot, documentarian (2014). (Photo J. Kubera 2014)

Fig. 4.2  A Berber restaurant in Paris. (Photo J. Kubera 2014)

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Fig. 4.3  The Arab World Institute in Paris. (Photo J. Kubera 2014)

At home, my parents insisted we speak in the language of our fathers. They would speak to me in Arabic and I’d answer in French. This exasperated my father, who thought he was transmitting his own culture to us by speaking to us in Arabic: ‘Speak to me in Arabic … . You can speak French outside, but not at home. You’re lucky to know two languages, so don’t miss out’. No doubt it was really because his French was bad that he laid down that rule. … My little sisters, though, have the Algerian dialect down pat. Every summer they used to go to Algeria with my parents on holiday. When they express their opinions or feelings, they usually do so in Arabic. They’re really bilingual, while my vocabulary is limited to matters practical, domestic or private. … Among us siblings, we rarely talk to each other in Arabic… even though it’s in that language that I give them orders! Arabic is the language of our parents, so it’s the language of authority. (RZ, 199–201)

The parents of French of Algerian origin may also differ in how much they care about their children mastering their mother tongue. On Wednesdays and Saturdays (non-school days in France), some send their daughters and sons to Quranic school or to other places

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where they can learn Arabic. And while the narrator of Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés: les racines du malaise. Récit (AD, 59) thinks extracurricular lessons are an unwanted, imposed obligation that is unwillingly and rarely fulfilled, it is certainly true that one can find another attitude among FAOs: approval of learning the language and religion of their parents. Apart from speaking Arabic, other practices related to family life that connect the children of Algerians with their country of origin include: • Visits to Algeria and places that are important in terms of the family’s or the country’s history; experience of different landscapes and elements of nature in Algeria. • Marriages between French of Algerian origin and Algerians practising Islam.3 • Celebrations of Muslim holidays with the family.4  Fifty six per cent of FAOs aged 18–35 who have a steady job are married, as are 29 per cent who have temporary work or are unemployed. Within the same age group, more French whose parents are not immigrants are married (66 per cent and 35 per cent from the above two groups), and the same is true among French whose parents are immigrants from Southern Europe (64 per cent and 34 per cent), while the figures are lower for French originating from Morocco (47 per cent and 23 per cent) and Tunisia (39 per cent and 20 per cent) (Collet and Santelli 2012, 330–331). Among FAO marriages, the ages of the husband and wife are the same in 49 per cent of cases, while the man is older than the woman in 47 per cent of cases. Among French of French origin, the percentage of marriages in which the woman is younger than the man is lower—31 per cent—while the percentage of marriages in which the husband and wife are the same age is 62 per cent (Collet and Santelli 2012, 341). Slightly more than half of FAOs marry someone who is of Algerian origin (27 per cent) or was born there (26 per cent). A similar percentage of endogamic marriages can be observed among French of Tunisian origin (11 per cent and 44 per cent, respectively), while there are more among French originating from Morocco (32 per cent and 43 per cent), the Sahel (10 per cent and 51 per cent) or Turkey (19 per cent and 65 per cent). A smaller number of endogamic marriages is seen among French originating from Southern Europe (14 per cent and 8 per cent) and from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (17 per cent and 12 per cent) (Collet and Santelli 2012, 81). 4  Religion is a particularly important point of reference for the youngest children originating from Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia. Concluding her research, Frédérique Sicard (2011, 40–41) states that, for many children, a basic criterion for answering the questions she asked was to be ‘a good Muslim’ (observing Ramadan, not eating pork, respecting parents, being obedient, generous, considerate of others, working hard at school, speaking kindly and politely, etc.). In studies by Jean-François Bruneaud (2005), there are statements on the subject of religious 3

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• Women wearing the headscarf. Unlike opponents of this practice in France (a law was passed in 2004 banning the display in public places of symbols permitting an immediate identification of someone’s religious affiliation), the narrator of Razika Zitouni’s book treats this as neutral in respect of French identification. She does not see that wearing a headscarf is contrary to Frenchness, and so her attitude fits in with the idea under discussion here of a non-conflicting coexistence of French and Algerian characteristics (though, for many other French people, wearing a headscarf is contrary in principle to secularism [e.g. Finkielkraut 2013, 23–31 and 81–83; cf. Włoch 2011]):

(57) For me, the headscarf is not a problem, a danger for secularism. The main thing is not to fall into some kind of delirium or paranoia. In England, for example, women are free to wear the headscarf, without any consequences. Muslims in France, who are mainly Sunnis, are moderate in their religious practices [pratiquent la religion de façon modérée]. France should be confident in itself, in its ability to integrate different individuals, without fearing that the national identity is under threat. (RZ, 164)

• Other practices associated with national culture (drinking mint tea, decorating the home with elements reminiscent of Algeria) and with the traditional culture of the rural communities of the parents (circumcision of boys [RZ, 153–154]). In the texts under analysis, the above-mentioned practices—which support the argument in favour of Algerian identification—are as a rule holidays that attest to a desire to accommodate religion within family life (associated with the country of origin) and school (associated with France): ‘I will never allow my children to miss the Feast of the Sacrifice. … I get up in the morning, wish my children a good holiday and give them cakes we bake in our country …. But if our holiday falls on a school day, I always tell them to go to school. They have to go, so I still wish them a good day, kiss them, get them ready to go, give them something to eat and a little present, … they go to school and come home in the evening (Nora, 44, Bordeaux, after Bruneaud 2005, 213).

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not considered by French of Algerian origin to contradict French identification. This is also because virtually all of their daily lives attest to their Frenchness. Importantly, practices that bind the children of Algerians with France and the French concern very many aspects of their lives, and all of the texts analysed could wholly serve to illustrate how FAOs are deeply rooted in modern French society—regardless of how they assess the functioning of that society or what their attitude is towards Algerian culture. Let us recall that—without a doubt—books by French of Algerian origin are addressed to French readers. For the majority of FAOs, France is where both they and their children live. When they think and speak about their family and the home, they situate these in France, because it is with France that their daily lives are connected. When the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman finds himself on a plane before taking off on a business trip, he says a short prayer for a safe return to France, with which his family life is connected. In such situations, Frenchness—defined as being settled in modern French society—goes hand-in-hand with family identification:

(58) When my companion Alec wiped his glasses and closed his eyes to go over his presentation, or perhaps to say a prayer, I took the opportunity to write an imaginary text message to my God. I reminded him that I have parents and two daughters whom I love more than anything in the world and whom I’d like to see in France when I get back. (AB, 14)

The biography, the descriptions of events, all of the daily experiences described imply that, for French of Algerian origin, living in France is something natural for them, not a matter of choice. Speaking of ‘their country’, most of them think of France (e.g. FG, 57). Regardless of the degree to which and in what situations they feel connected with Algeria, and regardless of what country (France, Algeria, both or neither) they call their homeland, a clear majority of them see their future in France. The protagonists of books (apart from descriptions of life before migration to France) have French friends, listen to Western music, dress the same as other French people and follow similar trends and fascinations. Many of them hold values close to the French, such as the right to self-­determination and individualism.

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FAOs and their families, whether in French–Algerian or solely Algerian homes, have many characteristics that attest to their integration with French society. One of these is the ability to communicate fluently in French. When the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur is staying in the USA, he is pleased when, opening his mailbox, he can commune with the French language: ‘It felt good to be reading something in French, like breathing the air of my country’ (AB, 17). While parents may not know French as well as their children, they certainly do whatever they can to make sure their children behave impeccably in France, comply with the law, study hard at school, and so on. Children’s attachment to their parents, then, goes hand-in-hand with the desire to acquire at least certain French characteristics. In the situations seen in the collected material, most of those characteristics are not contrary to Algerianness. Some Algerian parents of FAOs, in fact, are well qualified to teach their children about French culture. One of these is Rachid, the father of the narrator of Garçon manqué, a graduate of the University of Rennes. When he proposed to the woman who would become the narrator’s mother, he already spoke the language of Molière flawlessly (see also NB, 126):

(59) Without a foreign accent, the young French Muslim asked for my mother’s hand in the little blue parlour and entered into the tradition of all [French] families: life whispers and secrets arise. (NB, 132)

Other parents, like those of the narrator of Comment je suis devenue…, understand the integration of French and Algerian characteristics as living in the right kind of place and acquiring certain French habits. Ever since they came to France, they had wanted to move into their own home and do it up in Western style, which would also be a sign to their family in Algeria that they had made it in France (RZ, 104, 106). Interestingly, after they moved with their daughters into a new place, they started celebrating Christmas, without giving up the activities that are part of their Muslim identity (RZ, 160). Christmas is also celebrated in the family of the narrator of Avec tes mains (AK, 72), and the parents of the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman also gave Christmas presents (devoid of religious content) to their children (AB, 84–85).

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Furthermore, the parents of immigrants—if we are to believe the narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs—are particularly vigilant, perhaps even more so than other parents in France, about complying with all the provisions of the law and administrative regulations. For them, it is important to be part of the binding social order so that no one can hold anything against them. As foreigners, in other words strangers (Fr. étrangers), they don’t want to offend anyone, and teach their children to act in the same way:

(60) At his [my younger brother’s] age, if I’d ever got fined for riding without a ticket, the Boss [the narrator’s father] would have had a fit and kicked up such a row as to make sure I never forgot the seriousness of what I’d done; he taught us respect for authority—or at least, he tried to. It always puzzled me, that funny gratitude the Boss and others of his age had for their host country. They keep their noses down, pay their accounts on time, have clean records, not even five minutes of unemployment in fifty years of work, after which they doff their caps, smile and say: ‘Thank you, France!’ I’ve often wondered how a man like the Boss, who thought pride was something a person couldn’t live without, was for all those years able to lower his head so much until he lost it altogether [due to an accident at work]. (FG, 66–67)

We can say that the above passage concerns situations in which family identification is either neutral in respect of Algerian identification, or even supports it. In both types of situation, the family is the place where one can experience French daily life, but also learn French ideals and comply with French law. There are very many situations in which the tie with parents of French of Algerian origin encourages their integration with French society and acquiring (or deepening) further French characteristics. There are many FAOs who could repeat the words of the narrator of one of the analysed texts:

(61) I wouldn’t allow myself to judge my parents or the Maghreb community in France. We haven’t lived through the same things. They have known a perfidious colonial system, dictatorship, poverty and the pain of exile. My parents did what they could with what they

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had, which was often very little. But my unwavering attachment to my own folks and my roots absolutely doesn’t stop me from integrating and being a responsible citizen. (RZ, 210)

It is a fact, then, that French characteristics are nurtured in Algerian families in France. Yet, for children born in Algeria now living in France and for those already born in France, a fear may arise as to whether Frenchness in some way poses a threat to Algerian characteristics. That fear is expressed by, for example, the narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs in a conversation she has with her neighbour, Auntie Mariatou. Before going on a holiday to Algeria for the first time in years, she wondered whether her long stay in France might have distanced her too much from her family in Africa:

(62) The evening before leaving for Algeria, I went to say goodbye to Auntie Mariatou. I told her about some of my misgivings about the trip. I was so afraid of not finding anything in common with my people [in Algeria] and was scared that France had made such a mark on me that I’d feel like a foreigner over there. Auntie Mariatou gave me one of her choice sayings: ‘A wooden board can float in a river for a hundred years but will never become a cayman’. (FG, 142)

As we can see, according to Auntie Mariatou, it need not be the case that if someone, an Algerian immigrant or their child, becomes French, they must become a stranger to those living in Algeria. Her statement, then, is in line with the idea that Algerian and French characteristics can coexist in a family context. At the same time, the excerpt quoted above confronts two ways of understanding the relationship between Algerianness and Frenchness: one in which they are contradictory characteristics difficult to reconcile, and another in which they coexist without conflict. No doubt this is also the case in the lives of most French of Algerian origin: situations in which they feel comfortable with being able to identify themselves as both French and Algerian can be interwoven by them—with greater or less frequency—with those in which one identification leads to uncertainty over the other. In these situations, a fear can arise, not with regard to

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whether the person has any argument at all in favour of Algerian or French identification (e.g. command of a given language), but with regard to whether that argument, especially when compared with other groups (which affects the definition of Frenchness or Algerianness in force at a given moment), is strong enough to enable the person to identify with one or the other community (e.g. whether their command of a given language is adequate). Such situations will be considered further in the two sections that follow.

F amily: Different ‘Speeds’ of Acquiring French Characteristics While for Algerians in France the family is where elements of two cultures coexist, it is also sometimes a source of differences between particular family members. This is often because the children of immigrants absorb elements of French culture that are unacceptable to their parents. Also, children can differ as to what choices—including cultural choices— they make. In situations where members of a family differ in their cultural practices, one can say that the more FAOs are French, and the more arguments they can muster in favour of their French identification, the more they distance themselves socially from their parents or siblings, though this need not affect the character of their family ties (cf. Dyczewski 2002, 12). Sometimes such differences are intergenerational, like those that take place in all, and not just migrant, families. Conflicts surface with differing strength depending on the situation. For example, for the narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs, who still remembers her childhood in Algeria, migration coincided with the onset of adolescence. Having moved to France, she came across many new models of behaviour that neither Algerian nor French parents would approve of. But for her, this was ‘French’ behaviour, since she first encountered it in France:

(63) When I came to this land of cold shoulders and disdain, I was a cheerful and polite little girl, and in no time at all I became quite a nasty piece of work [je suis devenue une vraie teigne]. I quickly got

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rid of my old, wholesome mannerisms, like standing up to speak to the teacher. The first time I did that, the other pupils burst out laughing. I turned as red as a beetroot when they kept calling me ‘crawler’. I soon understood that I had to get a grip on myself, and that’s what I did. From then on I made pretty good progress. As they say, I became a model of integration. (FG, 46)

Let us turn now to situations in which a person’s acquisition of characteristics considered French means acquiring characteristics that the person’s parents do not possess but are not considered to conflict with Algerianness. Firstly, such characteristics include various cultural skills: speaking the language better than one’s parents, and other elements of French culture. Such differences are dealt with in the following passages from the books Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman (AB) and L’odeur des planches (SS):

(64) My mother looked at my schoolbooks without ever touching them, intrigued, troubled. Her attitude to education was equivocal. I knew that her deepest desire was to give me everything she hadn’t had, that my social ascent represented her greatest satisfaction, an immense pride, but at the same time she was afraid she might lose me. Education, a friend and enemy all in one, her child’s abductor. I tried to teach her to read. I made her do rows of As; she moaned: ‘Oh, it’s difficult, I’ll never get it!’ So I tried Bs, but it was the same, she immediately started huffing that French is a bizarre language she wouldn’t be able to use and that I’d be better off leaving her in peace on that. (SS, 93)



(65) One day when I had no lessons my mother decided to take me with her to town. We walked for a long time, my hand in hers, with me slightly ahead. After two hours of strolling like that, she wanted to buy me some cake. ‘Show me which one you want’, she said. Standing in front of the confectioner’s window, I pointed to the Black Forest gateau. Her upper lip trembled. She smiled, but it was a forced smile. I got the message that she had overestimated her courage. I could almost read clearly in her terrified eyes all the questions running through her head: ‘How exactly do you say it? What do I ask for? What are the words? How do I begin? What’s the name

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of the cake? Do I say “tu” or “vous”?’ In Arabic you address everyone in the second person—whether it’s your mother or your boss, it’s always ‘tu’. ‘Thank you’. ‘Hello’. ‘Goodbye’. ‘Yes, but in what order?’ She stood there holding her purse against her tummy as if she was doing a cha-cha in front of the window: ‘I’m going-not going, going-not going’. Irritated, I just grabbed the purse from her hands, disappeared into the shop, bought the cake and went back out again. We were silent the whole way back. And even after I’d eaten my whole piece of Black Forest gateau, our hands remained apart. Ever since then, whenever she asks me to do some shopping for her, she hands me the purse and says: ‘You hang on to it, you know how to do it’. (SS, 82)

(66) By leaving their miserable village where there wasn’t enough grain to fill the children’s stomachs, and joining the armies of workers in the factories of France, they embarked on an almost epic voyage. It was their America, in a way. As for me, by going to a French school and making Vercingetorix my playtime hero, I made a different move, not so far, but only going one way: I became a Frank, a Gaul. And today I wouldn’t know how to explain their America to them, or even the meaning of the word ‘writer’. They couldn’t read or write. How would I talk to them about geography when they imagined the world as a strip with Setif at one end and Lyon at the other? (AB, 11)



(67) [bidding farewell to his deceased father at the funeral]: ‘Don’t worry about us. There shouldn’t be any problem, we’ll try to get by without you for a few years, before we meet up again. We’ve been learning French, we say “school” now, not “schole”, we don’t dream of a “definitive return” to Algeria, we’re French. I’m here and will stay here, a definitive stay. We play with the imperfect and the subjunctive, using the language to defend ourselves against those who claim to be the sole heirs of Vercingetorix. You see, father, you can depart, we’ll be all right. Don’t cry’. (AB, 188)

The difference between first-generation immigrants and their children basically involves how much they know about French society and how much of French culture they have assimilated. Parents often learn about France, its culture and its people from their children (e.g. MC, 244–245). They often lack basic cultural points of reference, let alone an under-

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standing of refined culture. When an actress, the narrator of L’odeur des planches (SS, 66–67), invites her parents to a performance of Louis Aragon’s Le Fou d’Elsa in which the language is quite hermetic, literary and poetic, she becomes convinced that they understood nothing and were bored. First-generation immigrants’ knowledge of French is often quite weak, especially among those who came to France ‘just for a moment’ and whose work does not require them to speak the language of Molière with perfection. They prefer to speak Arabic with their children (e.g. the conversation between the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur and his father, AB, 24). Seen in the context of all the collected material, the attitude of the mother of the narrator of France, récit d’une enfance towards learning French culture is striking. She is extraordinarily faithful to Berber traditions, and deliberately refuses to assimilate. Note that the children of immigrants are generally incapable of putting up such total resistance to inculturation, and become socialised at school—children inevitably become more or less assimilated. The attitude of the narrator’s mother in the book by Zahia Ramani is exceptional in that her refusal to take part in society (and social life) along with French people is accompanied by kindness towards others and a total absence of conflicting behaviours. Everyone who for any reason visits her is received cordially, but none can count on her feeling obliged to pay a return visit to a French household:

(68) You [mother] ignored the society around you so gently that no one could reproach you. You didn’t go out. If anyone came by, you received them with grace. They always left feeling touched, as if you’d given them a gift without saying a word. That way, you obliged everyone who visited to come again. But you never went to other people in this country that was not yours. You didn’t want to impose. That was your conception of foreigners [the French]. You can’t ask them, you said, to disown themselves. … Against all expectations, you refused to assimilate. You loved the country that didn’t allow you to do so, you said. You were only passing through noiselessly. One of those who leaves no trace behind. Believing firmly in your heritage, you bequeathed it to your children undiminished, and filled the void on which we set our feet. You guided the life companions of your daughters and sons to your

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language and your culture, so that their children would understand they came from a burden you bore as if it were a gift. And, as you wished, you approved their names, to assure yourself that they are all depositaries of a just future: Samy, Mira, Sarah, Yannis, Mouss, Hacène, Mouloud, Kennan, Nout, Hayet, Idriss, Sabri, Taina, Tissem, Esteban, Inès. They were your hope—hoping they wouldn’t even think of escaping. (ZR, 43–44)

Secondly, the above passage also illustrates that the children of immigrants differ from their parents in that they have many more social relationships with French people. They are not socially isolated to the same extent—they have contacts with their peers from the neighbourhood, they speak French, and they know about the Western world and its values not just from television, but also from their personal contacts with the French. The cultural and social isolation of the parents of FAOs is clearly described in the following passage from Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés:

(69) In the 1990s, television sets started cloning themselves. One in the kitchen in 1995, and more in a room or two in 1998. That took care of everybody. We owe everything to TV. It educated our parents, showed them a better world than we could have. They could travel, discover other cultures and, above all, get to know the French way of life. Because no one else had taught them. The neighbours didn’t invite them for an aperitif or dinner, even if we didn’t mind bringing over a little plate of couscous during Ramadan, or cakes or a bit of tagine. Frankly, you never had us try your regional specialities, like sauerkraut without pork, onion tarte, brioche like they make in Besse-enChandesse, Dijon filet of pike, chicken à la champenoise, Languedoc croustade… (AD, 55)

When a family’s stay in France was thought to be only temporary, there seemed to be little need to integrate. Nor were the French particularly keen to treat immigrants as a permanent fixture of the social landscape of their country. While the fathers of Algerian families in France had quite intensive and regular contacts with the French where they worked, the mothers, as a rule, remained at home alone for most of the day, and had

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few opportunities to develop their cultural skills or knowledge of the French language (e.g. SS, 93), or to get to know other French people. This led to many mothers feeling depressed, and experiencing their own migration as an exile (e.g. SS, 80–82). Most of all they felt the absence of those close to them in Algeria, and longed for the full life they formerly led among their family and village community. The situation of mothers isolated not only from the French but also—for most of the day—from their own family is illustrated in the following passages from L’odeur des planches. Similar descriptions of the lives of female first-generation immigrants can be found in other texts (e.g. MC, 243–245).

(70) The meal over, the men headed back to the building site, the children to school; the house emptied again for a few more hours. They had barely managed to eat. The afternoons are worse than the mornings. In the kitchen, all traces of lunch have already been removed. Suddenly there is silence. An immense emptiness. The weariest collapse fully clothed on top of their smooth beds, without taking off their slippers or emptying their apron pockets (of the objects they contain: vegetable peelers, screwdrivers, safety pins, bottle openers, pieces of string…; no sooner do they close their eyes than they are asleep. Others have a more active way of forgetting: always a trouser hem to be sewn, a wall to be washed, shoes to be polished. In the houses you pass by in the Javel district, so clean you could eat off the floor, there reigned a silence broken only by the occasional sigh. (SS, 63)



(71) We were sitting there, facing the little window in the kitchen … . Beyond the cracked glass, night was falling over the sixteen-storey tower. ‘It’s blocking the sky,’ you used to say when you spent long minutes contemplating the apartments with their lights on. What were you searching for that you didn’t have here? What would you have brought back from there that would have helped you to live? You often asked me: ‘Do you think everyone has the same life as us?’. (SS, 135)

A third characteristic distinguishing children from their parents in Algerian immigrant families is the conviction of the younger generation

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that they want to live in France, regardless of how they evaluate the living conditions there. For French of Algerian origin, living in the Hexagon is not treated as a temporary state of affairs or an exile (cf. Sayad 1999; Kubera 2014). They don’t feel cut off from or long for their country of origin; exile does not apply to them (though it does to their parents, and can therefore become a problem; see Chap. 5). There can be an exception: children who grew up in Algeria and who, when their families emigrated, left behind a large part of their childhood and family—at least for some time they often share a sense of exile with their parents (e.g. MC, 192–194). The issue of treating France as one’s homeland is also related to the differences that arise in Algerian families in their documented state affiliation. Parents usually remain citizens of Algeria only, with a French residence card (e.g. AD, 75), while their children hold French citizenship but often keep their Algerian passport as well (French law permits dual citizenship). For example, in Le marteau pique-cœur, the narrator holds only a French passport, his parents have Algerian passports, while his siblings, due to what he calls a ‘patriotic illusion’, have both French and Algerian ones (AB, 135).5 The narrator of Comment je suis devenue… also addresses generational differences concerning citizenship:

(72) If we [the narrator and her siblings] feel both Algerian and French, my mother still has a strong feeling of ‘Algerianness’. There’s no contradiction in having a dual identity, and more and more Maghrebis are adopting French nationality without being accused of betraying their culture or country of origin. Not long ago that was still taboo. For most of us, the question of nationality is motivated by a deep desire to integrate. Unfortunately, though, having that famous French nationality doesn’t protect us from racism or simple discrimination. (RZ, 203)

 Going to Algeria, the narrator must apply at the Algerian consulate for a tourist visa, which he accepts with difficulty: ‘A tourist visa to go back to my own country!’ What a disgrace. I hadn’t set foot in the place for a generation because of the military molestation young people of immigrant origins like me were subject to on the part of the Algerian authorities. At the time I was in full swing at university and couldn’t afford the luxury of disappearing for two long years to do military service sitting in some barracks somewhere in the middle of the Sahara, in Tindouf or Tamanrasset, learning how to handle a Kalashnikov, fly a Soviet Mig-21 and sleeping with one eye open for scorpions with an appetite for fresh immigrant flesh’ (AB, 135). 5

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Fourthly, perceiving France as the country in which one spends one’s life is conducive to civil and political involvement. Unlike their parents, French of Algerian origin are openly critical of the activities of various authorities of the French state. They also demand the truth—both from their parents and from French schools—on the subject of the Algerian War and the period of colonisation (e.g. RZ, 35–36). For many of them, their active participation in public life is proof of their good intentions towards French society. They argue that they can no longer ‘sit quietly’— as their parents did and still do—and are often at a loss to understand such a passive, conciliatory, humble attitude, which can also result from fear and bad memories:

(73) They all lived with restraint. A restraint that was frightful, hallucinogenic. In the evening, after a long day at work, they explained to their children how it was still better to keep quiet, at school or wherever, always to keep quiet, that it was better for them, that that’s where integration would come from—from that organised mutism—and that that would lead to acceptance by others. I didn’t like them for their pitiful reticence, but I certainly loved them. My aversion grew along with the infinite tenderness they inspired in me. They lived far removed from the world, next to the entrance, as if stuck in the foyer, never daring to cross the threshold, on the fringes of time, quiet, microscopic, human dust. Sometimes I tell myself that, if history had been written differently, if they had found the courage to impose, to claim new territory for themselves, the anger of their sons would probably not have expressed itself in shouting, fistfights, scams and trafficking of all kinds. Then those imaginary sons, full of an unshakeable confidence, would have had no need to defy the world and the night amid the flaming carcasses of automobiles, with their faces hidden beneath keffiyehs as if to awaken the dead, their ancestors, and reclaim the right to exist, their right to a place in the world, a legitimacy of their own. (SS, 98–99)



(74) When I was a teenager, I was so obsessed by the existence of racism that I decided to fight along with the Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples [Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amitié entre les peuples, MRAP]. This upset my father, who tried to dissuade me: ‘Oh no! The French don’t like it when we Arabs start demonstrating. They’ll massacre you!’ For him, the

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memory of Algerians being thrown into the Seine during the demonstrations in 1961 was still vivid. But things had changed, and I explained to him how important it was for me to join a cause. (RZ, 208)

All four of the above-mentioned sets of French characteristics attest to the existence of a crucial difference between the first and second generations of Algerian immigrants in France. The difference in degree to which children and their parents possess specific characteristics associated with Frenchness means that, while the parents often find themselves, as migrants, caught between two social and cultural worlds and cannot always say with certainty that they are French, their children—if we take account of the various French cultural characteristics they have adopted— are very definitely French. The children have become French, but because they were born into an Algerian family they can also call themselves Algerian. They are also called French, e.g. as opposed to children that are solely Algerian (born and raised in Algeria) by their own parents, as for example in this conversation between two first-generation immigrants:

(75) ‘Don’t speak about trouble, God will take care of everything. You know perfectly well that we don’t decide anything’. ‘I know, my brother’. My only dream was to return home [to Algeria]. Every year I said, ‘Next year’; then I said, ‘When I’m retired’; then I still put it off, saying ‘When the children have grown up’. Now they are grown up, thanks be to God, but they don’t want to go with me. They say they’re French and their lives are here. (FG, 126)

F amily: Differences in Preserving Algerian Characteristics Whereas up to now we have been speaking of situations in which the Frenchness of children in Algerian families is treated in a way separately from their Algerianness, now we will examine situations where the appearance of French characteristics not only attests to certain differences between the first and second generations of immigrants, but is also under-

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stood as a threat to the children’s Algerian and religious identification. We begin with the observation that French of Algerian origin often admit to having little familiarity with the culture in which their parents grew up.6 They thereby admit that the cultural world of their parents is not really theirs, but often consider that this state of affairs is due to the older generation’s inability to create conditions in which the transmission of their culture would be possible:

(76) [About French television] It makes us laugh, brings some sense back into our world, becomes our friend. The French girlfriend we dream about, who teaches us about the world, about life. For our world is sad and boring, passionless. Our world is a world of poetry and songs that are sad, that our parents listen to round and round from morning to night, that you can’t listen to without getting a lump in your throat. Our parents taught us so little. They know things about their country, their history, their parents, their ancestors. Obviously. But they kept it all to themselves. They didn’t transmit their culture except for their sad songs, couscous and their honey cakes. … They barely taught us their language. They offered us the crumbs of their culture. ‘They’ are not ‘us’. It wasn’t a deliberate plan of theirs against us. They were forced to do it to cut off a certain part of their life. To cut it up into pieces. To retain only certain events. As if they’d been brainwashed. Like in some movies, where aliens or supervillains wipe out your memory of certain things and change your feelings, leaving you smiling stupidly or walled up in silence. We know that

 As early as 1980, Carmel Camilleri (1980, 992–993) stated that young Maghrebis are quite strongly attached to the most important religious, cultural and family values and symbols, but only weakly attached to (sometimes almost completely divorced from) institutionalised practices, even where these are precisely defined by tradition. The sons and daughters of immigrants from the Maghreb identified themselves in these studies as Muslims, and declared their willingness to transmit their native culture and the Arabic language to their children, but at the same time admitted that they no longer engaged in practices associated with Muslim and Arab identity, such as: daily prayer (about 95 per cent) and daily reading of the Quran (from 72.2 to 96.5 per cent). Despite their own weak knowledge of Arabic, 81 per cent said they wanted to teach it to their children, and 66 per cent said they would like to deepen their knowledge of Arab culture. Camilleri concluded that de-culturisation on the level of knowledge of the language and the classics of Arab-Muslim civilisation is a fact, as is the will to make up for arrears (the results of research based on interviews with 100 young Maghrebis aged 16–25, living in Paris [44 persons] or its suburbs [56 persons], who were born in France or arrived before the age of 10). 6

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something was done to them so that they’re no longer themselves. It’s scary. Our parents are no longer themselves. How else can you explain that silence? They themselves didn’t know what they were doing. They reconciled themselves to shutting up, walking on eggshells, only taking up a reduced amount of space. (AD, 56–57)

Many FAOs have trouble speaking Arabic (RZ, 199–200). This is also true of the narrator of Garçon manqué, who admits: ‘I make up my Arabic’:

(77) I’ve been learning Arabic for fifteen years. … I invent another language. I speak Arabic in my own way. I interpret it. I’m constantly living a lie, it’s a habit now. This language, which slips away like sand through your fingers, causes me pain. It leaves its marks, words, and fades away. It doesn’t take to me. It rejects me. Separates me from others. Breaks away from its source. Indicates absence. I’m powerless. I remain a foreigner. I’m disabled. (NB, 11–12)

Her weak knowledge of Arabic means that, in Algeria, Nina is perceived as French. In the same passage, she contrasts this with her appearance, which is supposed to attest to her being Algerian. In this way, she contrasts her corporeality, her natural, biological and genetic characteristics with the culture. While her clumsy language separates her from a sense of community with Algerians, her body connects her with it, as does the timbre of her voice, inherited from her grandfather:

(78) But I am Algerian. By my appearance. By my eyes. By my skin. By my body, permeated with the bodies of my grandparents. I carry the fragrance of their house around with me. I carry the flavour of cakes and croquettes. I carry the colour of the dresses. I carry the songs. I carry the sound of jangling bracelets. I carry the hand of Rabia [grandmother] on my fevered brow. I carry the voice of Bachir [grandfather] calling his children. That voice is above all. It still resounds and fills the emptiness. It is eternal and mighty. It attaches me to others. It includes me in the Algerian soil. (NB, 12)

In another passage, Nina arrives at similar conclusions opposing the Algerianness of her body and that of her culture, her language:

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(79) Here in France I forget Algeria. Its men. Its heat. The colour of its sea. It’s a kind of betrayal. … Here I allow myself to draw near to my French side. Towards that subject I haven’t yet mastered. Towards that lie. Who am I really? Towards that sharp accent. Towards that French language. My mother tongue. [Here] I speak French. Only. I dream in French. Only. I will write in French. Only. Arabic is a sound, a song, a voice. Which I’ve kept. Which I feel. But which I don’t know. … Algeria is not in my language. It’s in my body. … Algeria is in my wild desire to be loved. (NB, 166–167)

The question of religious identification is interesting.7 As a rule, French of Algerian origin identify with Islam and Islamic culture, though they admit that they don’t always follow the injunctions of that religion. For the narrator of Garçon manqué, celebrating Christmas is something alien to Algerianness (NB, 70–71), but we see in other descriptions that practices associated with Islam and Algerianness are not always carried out in the lives of descendants of immigrants—the prohibition against drinking alcohol, for example (AB, 43; AB, 68–69; KA, 145–146). Unlike their parents, many FAOs do not go to the mosque regularly. This is true of the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman and his brothers. When they attend the funeral ceremony of their father, the difference between their

 As to religious practices, in the results of research from 2003 (Galland 2006, 177), in which respondents had to identify their attitude to religion in a single answer, there is a noticeable difference between younger (up to age 35) and older (above age 35) FAOs. Among the young, 34 per cent declared that they are affiliated with their religion but are lacking in observance, while among older respondents that figure was only 18 per cent. The percentages of those who practice regularly are similar (younger: 23 per cent, older: 24 per cent) and point to a feeling of allegiance to a defined religious community (younger: 32 per cent, older: 35 per cent); among older people, however, those who practice irregularly constitute the greater group (younger: 11 per cent, older: 23 per cent). A similar distribution of answers and differences between age groups can be observed among French of French origin, with the difference that a higher percentage declare religious affiliation but a lack of observance (younger: 46 per cent, older: 24 per cent), and that there is a decidedly smaller percentage of people who practice regularly (younger: 5 per cent, older: 15 per cent).The results of surveys by INED–INSEE in 2008 show that the religious affiliation of FAOs was much greater during childhood than at present. Among FAOs living in marriages in 2008, 89 per cent said that, for them, religion was something more or less important (for 36 per cent, very important). As to French people of non-immigrant parents, only 60 per cent of them answered similarly to the FAOs (while for just 9 per cent of them religion was something very important in childhood). Interestingly, older FAOs (aged 36–50) state more often (15 per cent) than the young (8 per cent) that religion was never important for them at all (Collet and Santelli 2012, 333–334). 7

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approach to religion and that of their father and other family members is quite significant:

(80) The faithful rose in perfect discipline, and moved as one man towards their beacon. The muezzin was their foghorn. I looked over at my two brothers to tell them how far we were from those shores, despite our father’s attempts to educate us in the principles of the Muslim faith. Our free, independent spirits had easily rejected any allegiance to what was written in the Holy Book. This had come about quite naturally. We hadn’t been either insensitive to religion or religious in the proper sense of the word—simply respectful of the faith of others. And, thank God, our cousins here [in Algeria] didn’t reproach us at all on the subject, thereby proving that they too were tolerant and accepting of differences, even among those from the same tribe. (AB, 169)



(81) As if welded together, we planted ourselves before the entrance to the mosque to allow the deceased to pass before the face of God. … None of us knew even the shortest prayer. Mosques were not part of our geography. Farid felt uneasy in the role of ignoramus and admitted that the only thing our father had regretted and which he had told him the previous year was that none of his children had become a practising Muslim. Farid felt diminished, as if he had missed out on one of the essentials of how to live on earth. Suddenly, Farid wondered if he shouldn’t go and buy a DVD to learn about Islam for three or four hours to get back to normal and live up to the ideal his father had had for us. As for me, no special state of soul titillated my mind. … I had the religion I had allowed to germinate within me. No one had any reason to regret anything. If I didn’t believe in God, He nevertheless believed in me—under a twenty-nine year lease silently signed between us, unknown to anyone, a private matter between just the two of us. (AB, 199–200)

The absence, in the opinion of the children of immigrants, of a sufficiently strong transmission of Algerian culture in the home, as discussed above, is also related to a lack of proper religious education. This causes difficulties for them in telling other people about the religion they gener-

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ally consider their own, and also leads to certain doubts, overcome with time, over the rightness of identifying with that religion:

(82) What is Islam? Why don’t you eat pork? Why do you observe Ramadan? Questions I couldn’t answer. At the time, I couldn’t really distinguish between different religions: all were equal for me and spoke of one God. But my parents told me our religion was the best ‘because it came after the others’. That argument was no help at all in making me feel Muslim, and I admit I had serious doubts. My parents did teach me, though, the values I ought to respect. They taught me what I could do and what wasn’t allowed—to the extent that today I don’t deny my religion, but I don’t proclaim it, either. (RZ, 165)

Another characteristic worth mentioning here alongside knowledge of Arabic and observance of Islam is FAOs’ adherence to concluding marriages that are endogamic, i.e. where both spouses are members of the Algerian community.8 For many parents, and also for many of their children who agree with them on this issue, where both spouses are Algerian, this is a better guarantee of marital and familial stability.9 The idea is that both should be Algerian—if not by birth, then at least by origin—and also that they should both wish to conduct themselves according to what in this interpretation are considered Algerian ways, such as fidelity, respect for the traditional, patriarchal division of responsibilities between men and women (survey results show, however, that in reality that division in FAO families differs significantly from the model followed in migrant households of the past).10 Thus when the narrator of Razika Zitouni’s  By way of comparison, similar attachments among people who are parents of third-generation Polish immigrants in France have been noted by Hanna Malewska-Peyre (1992, 40). 9  If partners first meet each other outside France, this most often happens through the mediation of their families (67 per cent of married FAOs), but if they meet in France, it is usually in other circumstances, though for one-sixth (16 per cent) of FAOs their first meeting with their future spouse occurs during a family meeting. For French people whose parents were not immigrants, the influence of the family on meeting a future spouse is much lower: where the spouse was first met outside France, the contribution of the family is negligible, and within France only 8 per cent of such meetings occurred during a family meeting (Collet and Santelli 2012, 337). 10  In 69 per cent of FAO marriages, the preparation of daily meals is performed more by the woman (24 per cent by man and woman equally, 6 per cent more by the man); in marriages where both spouses are French of French origin, the woman mainly prepares daily meals in 60 per cent of 8

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book admits in conversations with her family that the cultural origins of her future husband are not the most important issue for her, she is treated as though she were bereft of reason. According to her mother, for an Arab girl to marry a Frenchman would be to act against herself, while in her cousins’ opinion it would be something completely unnatural that would bring shame on her and her whole family11:

(83) When I told them about my attraction towards men of other cultures, they sneered: ‘You’re completely crazy, you really want to bring shame on your parents with that bullshit of yours!’ As for my mother, she warned me about racism and the immoral ways of young French men: ‘You can be sure of one thing. If you marry a French guy, he’ll betray you, it will end in divorce and he’ll treat you like a dirty Arab’ [sale beur]. (RZ, 142)

In the stereotype spread within the Algerian community, French people are more prone to infidelity and divorce, and are effeminate—meaning that they don’t know how to act in defence, but tidy up at home and take care of the children. Whereas Maghrebis are not only faithful, but manly, have a sense of duty, and are attached to their families (RZ, 142–143). Another traditional view is that Arabs are particularly hospitable (AB, 55). On the other hand, what Algerian girls appreciate in French men is their calm, patience and openness, whereas, as they say, ‘Arabs get upset over anything’ (RZ, 142–143). As to how French women are evaluated, the cousins of the narrator of Comment je suis devenue… try unsuccessfully to convince her that, unlike Algerian girls, French girls are ‘easy’ (RZ, 15). The narrator also states that, in Algeria, French women households—the difference is therefore quite small. Interestingly, in FAO marriages, the duty of grocery shopping is divided more evenly among women and men (57 per cent both woman and man, 30 per cent more the woman, 13 per cent more the man) than it is among French of non-­ immigrant origins (only 40 per cent both woman and man, 49 per cent more the woman, 11 per cent more the man) (Collet and Santelli 2012, 342). 11  According to Ahsène Zehraoui (1999, 69–70), from the time when Algerian immigration became an immigration of settlement (l’immigration de peuplement), there have been two kinds of marriages: the first refers to the country of habitation, the second to the country of origin. The second type, Algerian, is considered to be more proper (légitime), with a stronger symbolic charge; but exogamic marriages are not entirely excluded from the Algerian community. The first type, French, comprises most cases of exogamic marriages and those not confirmed either religiously or institutionally; it can result in such a couple meeting only infrequently with family.

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and Algerian women raised in France are considered to be easy, vulgar and provocative:

(84) In the Maghreb, young women born in emigration have a reputation for being easy. The taboo on all things sexual makes for considerable frustration. … I’ve never wanted to have an affair with a man from my parents’ country. I remember being followed for a whole day by a pack of boys even though I hadn’t exchanged a single word with them. Their daily existence had been turned upside down by our presence in their country during the holidays. We girls born in emigration were held in contempt because to them we symbolised liberty—to be more precise, sexual liberty. The proof was our cigarettes, the alcoholic drinks we held in our hand, and our way of speaking French, all perceived by them as a provocation, the worst of vulgarities. (RZ, 64–65)

Considering the possibility of an exogamic marriage can therefore be treated by some parents and other family members as a renunciation of Algerianness. Where such marriages occur, however, it is because, in their choice of partner, the children of immigrants are less dependent on their family and community of origin than their parents were. Their approach is more often individualistic, wherein they think of themselves and others primarily as individuals having particular characteristics, not as representatives of a larger cultural community (e.g. AD, 51; AB, 201). The narrator of Comment je suis devenue… admits without hesitation that there are few endogamic marriages in France where the woman is happy (RZ, 143), while the narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs claims, perhaps somewhat idealistically, that love between people knows neither skin colour nor religion nor insurance policy number (FG, 87). Where some family members think in such categories, it can be seen as an acquisition of French characteristics (individualism, Republicanism) that distances them from the family model upheld by tradition, and from Algerianness itself. The generation gap on the issue of a woman’s choice of partner is also raised by the narrator of the book by Samira Sedira. Unlike her mother, she was able to decide who she wanted to live with. The passage below points to the influence of family (mother, father, grandmother) on the first generation of immigrant women’s choice of husband, to the general

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expectation in traditional societies that a woman will subordinate her life to the will of the larger family and tribal community (men are also largely subordinated to it as well), and to women’s acceptance of the role that the community sets out for them. In the case of the mother of the narrator of L’odeur des planches, her lack of acceptance not only meets with a lack of understanding, but in fact has very little effect on her situation—in any case, the decision is not hers to make. But the situation of the narrator is completely different; like many women of Algerian origin (though not all), she does not feel obliged to choose an Algerian for a husband. At the same time, she is saddened, knowing that her mother was deprived of that right:

(85) My mother wasn’t at all interested in finding herself a husband. She was perfectly content with the life she’d been leading until then. A husband. She worried about that like she had about her first tooth. A husband. At sixteen. What for, actually? She asked herself that ­question from morning to evening and at night, losing her life over it. And then there was her mother’s thought: ‘If not him, then who else?’. Her father took no interest in his wife’s scheming, pretending that nothing was going on—he was placid, imperturbable, self-­ content, blind, deaf and mute, all at the same time. My mother cried for a whole month, unable to stop. She pulled out her own hair in handfuls, banged her head against doors, feigned illnesses… In the end she went on a hunger strike. But that only made things worse. My grandmother had had enough of it and moved the date of the wedding forward. ‘We were born women, we have nothing to say about it, and that’s a good thing. Accept it. Sacrifice yourself. It’s the lot of all of us. You don’t argue with God’s will’. A week later, she was already married. That was the end of it. My mother never loved my father, she just got used to him. I was born out of that accommodation, that contingence, that forced rendez-­vous. … Today, when one is absent, the other can barely get to sleep. They are connected to one another by a strange thread, spun year after year upon the ruins of exile and adversity, sobbing and sleepless nights, humiliation—and hope as well, the myth of returning, the carrot of all exiles. (SS, 70–71)

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(86) They had never had those first moments, or two hearts beating under the flowering cherries, or forever and a day [quotations from songs] carved in the trunk of a tree. I knew that, of course. I had always known it. On the day I told her I’d met someone I loved and who loved me, I was twenty-two. A smile trembled on her lips. Twisting her embroidered handkerchief between her fingers, she asked me: ‘Is it true what they say, that your heart beats faster?…’. I’m going through what you [the narrator’s mother] never did, my desires will always be tainted with guilt, while you will never know anything about them. (SS, 119)

For some French of Algerian origin, the model proposed by the Algerian family of how a man and woman should live together is hard to accept because of the inequality between their roles. This is evident, for example, when the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman is talking with his family during his visit to Algeria for his father’s funeral. It is clear that he does not share the stereotyped views about French women and mixed French–Algerian marriages, nor does he want his own daughter, the granddaughter of immigrants, to choose the Algerian model of the family:12

(87) We were all chatting away, mainly about my failed marriage to a white woman. After all, there were so many of our girls with whom, in their view, I could have been happy if I’d only been willing to look their way. ‘Fountains of beauty!’ he [Malek, the narrator’s cousin] cried, pressing the fingertips of one hand together and kissing them. ‘Well

 The situation of women in immigrant families is accepted by some female FAOs, but considered by others as male dominance. Even when they subscribe to the latter view, however, women do not always have the means at their disposal to become independent from men (RZ, 43–45). A particular case of this is marriages in which there is violence against the woman. The mother of the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman tells her children many times that she was beaten by her husband. She had even wanted to run away from him and go back to Algeria, but she never did because she had no one to go back to: her own family had been decimated by plague, cholera and poverty. There wasn’t even anything to document her existence in the place where she was born. And France acknowledged her rights stemming from her status as the wife of someone who regularly paid social insurance and family allowance contributions (AB, 96). For this reason, her son calls her a real ‘prisoner of the situation of the wife of an immigrant worker’ (AB, 96). 12

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educated. Family girls, who don’t have a bit on the side like a French girl might—girls you can give any instruction you like and they’ll bring you everything without arguing about it. They’re waiting for you here…’ I prayed to God that my own daughters wouldn’t fall into the feminine profile my cousin was dreaming of. Too many times I’d already heard such commentaries on the ‘feminine ideal’, which sounded more like a trained dog than an educated woman. (AB, 176)

Often, this conflict concerns not only the role of women and men within the family, but also freedom of conduct more broadly understood. Here there appears not only a difference in how certain Algerian characteristics express themselves, as discussed above; Algerianness and Frenchness are also conceived as characteristics that are competitive, that at times cannot go hand-in-hand (one or the other must be chosen). In questions of manners and morals, the rules proposed by immigrant ­parents are considered by the parents themselves as Algerian, while those that diverge from these, which their children acquire and often hide from their parents, are considered French, and contrary to Algerianness. For the narrator of Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés, sexuality is the only sphere of the life of children of immigrants where they feel able to intervene. For them, proper conduct in accordance with the model of the family known from the country of origin is strongly connected with the possibility of identifying with the religion of Islam and with the Algerian—and, more broadly, the Arab—community.

(88) You understand [the narrator addresses the French], since you disliked our parents, they had only their traditions to fall back on, their values—where sex was absolutely taboo. Or where sex was seen only in terms of a marriage that was hypothetical, programmed, promised. Adolescent sexuality was completely denied. They didn’t talk to us about it. They didn’t say a word about it. All they did was warn their daughters. They threatened them with the most shameful repressions if they should lose their virginity or get pregnant.  … [Our parents] don’t see what goes on in the bedrooms or living rooms when we’re pretending to play, in the cellars of the cities, they see nothing. They don’t know that it’s dangerous. … If you had liked

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them better, they would have paid more attention to your magazines and radio programmes, to [Françoise] Dolto, they would have known how to read and write better, they would have understood better that everything in life is vast, complex, multimodal; they would have emerged gradually from their ethnocentric vision of the world. (AD, 34–35)

The subject of family conflicts arising out of various perceptions of sexual mores is particularly important for the narrator of the book by Razika Zitouni.13 Her behaviour, which she herself considers ­unexceptional in France and confirms her integration with French society, is treated by her parents as inconsistent with being a Muslim, Algerian, Arab woman. It is noteworthy that the narrator’s way of dressing, her attitude towards friends and coming home late (though only occasionally) are interpreted through the prism of cultural affiliation, though they could be seen, for example, as intergenerational differences. It seems that migration makes parents prone to view certain behavioural norms acquired in the country of origin in terms of nationality and ethnicity, not only manners and morals, as might be the case in Algeria outside the context of migration, and as the narrator herself sees them (cf. Malewska-­Peyre 1992, 40; Dyczewski 2002, 85–86). It is also worth noting that those who criticise the narrator’s behaviour are not only her parents and members of the older generation, but also people of her own age, her cousins. This may attest to an internalisation of the rules transmitted to them by their families, and to the attractiveness of connecting a certain model of the family and relations between the sexes with national  The intergenerational differences described by the narrator of Comment je suis devenue… are not often the cause of a sharp exchange of opinions, at last as far as concerns romantic relationships (49 per cent of FAOs never quarrel with their parents on that subject, while 40 per cent avoid the subject; 7 per cent seldom quarrel over it, and 4 per cent frequently). Quarrels erupt more often, though only among half of FAOs, over going out late in the evening (often 18 per cent, seldom 24 per cent, never 50 per cent, subject avoided 8 per cent) and over education (often 21 per cent, seldom 20 per cent, never 57 per cent, subject avoided 2 per cent). Among the French of non-­ immigrant origin, there is a considerable difference in how many respond ‘I avoid the subject’; on the subject of romance that figure is only 16 per cent, and on going out only 2 per cent. The two groups’ results concerning discussions on the subject of school are almost the same (Collet and Santelli 2012, 332). On living together before marriage or without marrying at all, 36 per cent of FAOs aged 18–50 would consider it. French of French origin are more liberal in this respect, with 87 per cent of respondents accepting the idea (Collet and Santelli 2012, 338). 13

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and religious identification. The following passages from Comment je suis devenue… concern just those differences in approach towards important matters related to morals: sex before marriage, parental and family control in this area, dressing in a feminine way, going out late, etc.:

(89) A number of times my parents became aware of my absence. One night, they hid behind the garage door and saw me going out. They waited up all night for me. At six the next morning, I found myself nose-to-nose with them, me wearing a beige leather miniskirt and a see-through knitted top. After they’d done with the insults, they finished me off with their sad faces. ‘Why did you go out without asking permission? And that outfit! One day you’ll end up getting raped. And you shouldn’t be drinking alcohol, it’s haram [forbidden]!’ My mother then began scratching her cheeks and sobbing like an Algerian mourner. ‘My daughter is fessda, she’s rotten, we’re done for! You come to France, leave your country to give them a future, nice things for the children, and they act like imbeciles… No, I can’t stand it any more! I’ll sell the house and go back to Algeria where the ­children are serious, not like here! There’s too much freedom in France!’. (RZ, 121)



(90) I wasn’t given any education about sex. But from as far back as I can remember, I knew I should remain a virgin until the day of my marriage. ‘You should never be alone with a boy, accept anything from him or let him touch you’, my mother would say. The only thing I understood, then, was that boys and sexuality both belonged to what was taboo, forbidden. Every day my mother used to ask me with a fearful voice whether I was still a virgin. A French mother would never ask such a question. It would be seen as an unforgivable invasion of her child’s privacy. Once, I told her that these days virginity isn’t such a big thing. She looked at me, mouth agape, overwhelmed. Then she turned purple and asked me how I could think such a thing, being a Muslim. Seeing the results of my sally, I made a quick retreat, excusing myself, trying to say I didn’t really believe it myself. … [From what her mother said, it followed that] I could be an airline pilot or a cabinet minister, it wouldn’t be enough to make me respectable, because virginity is the most important quality for making a

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man happy. Without it, a girl is fessda, rotten and despised, treated like a slut by the whole world. Later, I tried to tell her that things in France aren’t like in the Algeria of her youth. Her implacable response: ‘You’re Muslim first and French second, my daughter!’ …  My French girlfriends didn’t trouble themselves about the question of virginity, which is why my mother forbade me to sleep at their homes: ‘Your friends have a different culture than ours, you shouldn’t try to be like them, we’re Arabs!’. (RZ, 128–129)

(91) And the prohibition against letting your hair fall loose… Today, judging by the hairstyles of young Maghrebi girls and women, wearing a braid or a bun is passé. Like all the French girls, now they follow the fashion, dying their hair platinum blonde, putting on makeup and sometimes wearing very sexy clothes. (RZ, 89)



(92) Over the years, things didn’t improve between my cousins and me. We might have supported each other, become allies, but we don’t understand each other. According to them, I understood nothing about life, renounced my origins and lost my ‘Arabness’. In short, I’m a numbskull. They told me so quite frankly, that they wouldn’t want to be like me—I’m too French, too educated, too emancipated. Often, just to provoke me, they say: ‘You play the Frenchie, but don’t forget you’re an Arab. An Arab is an Arab…’. That’s their way of making me understand that my choices and ambitions make me stand out so much that I don’t really belong to their group. (RZ, 53)

Frenchness and Algerianness appear in the above passages as competing characteristics, each associated with a defined way of life, and Algerianness additionally with Islam and Arabness. It’s also worth looking at other situations where one identification is seen as competitive to the other (their characteristics can’t be present simultaneously; the more one possesses one identification, the less one possesses the other), but where the religious and cultural context are not present. In such situations, there are visible differences in how parents and children perceive Algeria as their place of (future) permanent residence. Children appreciate the beauty of the country of their parents, and say that there is something wonderful and unique about it, that they want to return to it, especially if they spent part of their childhood there, yet as a group they

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consider France their home (see FG, 152). While, for example, the parents of the narrator of Comment je suis devenue… have rather unspecific plans to return to Algeria for good, the narrator herself knows that, while she will visit them and spend holidays there, she will continue living in the Hexagon:

(93) Behind their vague desire to go back, there’s not much that’s serious. They’ve never set a precise date, but the idea appeals to my mother, who’s afraid of growing old alone and isolated, with no family member to take care of her. … While my parents imagine that hypothetical return with smiles on their faces, it’s different for us. We couldn’t leave our country—France—so easily. My parents realised this when my sister Nadia and her husband settled down in Paris. That was a sign that our future was being written in France. My parents think about going back, but not at the price of a split from their children. My mother proposes a solution: ‘Since my daughters and son have all gone their own way, and since I’m all alone, why would I stay here in France? Better for me to go back to Algeria and come visit you from time to time’. (RZ, 67)

The parents of the narrator note to their dismay, however, that not only is Algeria not the country where their children plan to spend most of their lives (which they are to some extent able to accept), it is also not where they would like to spend all of their vacations. For the mother, this means her daughter is becoming separated from her roots, de facto losing certain important Algerian characteristics, one of which, for her mother, is certainly wanting to be in Algeria as often as possible:

(94) [The narrator would prefer to go to the Riviera rather than Algeria. According to her mother:] everything was my father’s fault. ‘You see, it’s because of him that you’re no longer interested in Algeria. Because when you were little, he preferred going to Marseilles. You’re French through and through now, you’ve lost your roots… And that’s serious, you simply can’t forget where you come from!’ My mother planned to drag me to Algeria for the holidays because I was ‘lost’ in France. She wanted to set me on the right path. (RZ, 60)

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The differences between the first and second generations of Algerians in France are also frequently visible in their choice of burial place. For most parents, it seems natural for them to be buried in their family village in Algeria, but for their children the choice is no longer so obvious (see AB, 97–98). Seeing their future within French society, it is difficult for them to understand decisions, often taken collectively by their extended family more than by their parents, to once again condemn them to being separated from their own children and the places where they spent most of their lives. This is evident in the following passage from Avec tes mains. The narrator would like the family tomb to be located in one place, in France, not in Algeria:

(95) Custom dictates that your body returns to its native soil. I fought to have your daughter [who died at an early age] rest here, close to those who love her. Having won that battle, it seems to me that your place would naturally be next to her. And ours a few rows over, when the time comes. Keeping my distance deliberately since I couldn’t impose my will or influence anyone’s decision, I let the plane go that took you across the Mediterranean for the last time. … I imagine your arrival at the station, and the grey car waiting for you, a kind of luxury for someone who had practically left barefoot. I imagine the convoy—and suddenly, I refuse to believe in that masquerade, convinced I shouldn’t have let you go. To impose another absence on us is an injustice. This idea of native soil makes no sense. What did it give you? The right or the misfortune of being born? We were born as well, we’re alive and kicking, we have the right to a part of you, Father, even after your death … . Here, the little house where you lived when you first came to France is still standing … . Here are our fondest memories of childhood, our races through the fields. And the city where my sisters and brothers were born, the city where, on those freezing early mornings, you took your first steps into the unknown. It’s an injustice to impose another, ultimate exile on you, to take you away. (AK, 93–94)

To conclude this section, let us examine two passages that concern, on the one hand, the gap between members of the first and second genera-

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tions over values, and so on, and on the other, the continued existence of strong bonds between parents and children. The children regret that their parents did not have enough opportunities in France to acquire characteristics that would have allowed them to feel more at home there. While differences exist between the first two generations in how fast they acquire French characteristics, while the second generation has many more arguments in favour of identifying themselves as French, both generations feel rejected by part of French society (‘The more France seems unfriendly towards us, the less we are distanced from our parents’). Family ties depend on having a common fate, similar experiences, and so, in the end, differences in customs and culture are of secondary importance, though they do cause deep sadness in the second generation:

(96) As a rule, after all the campaign against cigarettes and makeup, they get used to the idea of their daughters going out with their boyfriends and coming home late, provided it’s within limits (back by midnight). Sometimes they even let them marry a foreigner, a Frenchman or someone else. But only after long negotiations, squabbles, blows and threats. Our mothers get hit by our fathers for defending their d ­ aughters. In the end, both father and mother let out a ‘Do what you want.’ In fact, they themselves don’t know what they’re fighting against. That’s why they get so violent. Unconsciously, they try to maintain the traditions, principles, values of the group. They forget that we grew up with other values, and that here individualism trumps the group. … Over the years, our parents have really improved. They put in a lot of effort in terms of tolerance and democracy. … In fact, they only understand the language that for them is ‘natural’, their traditions. How to explain to them that what was natural yesterday is not natural today? Ultimately we win, but suffer for having made them unhappy. We suffer for not having been as obedient as when we were children. We know how much it cost them. All they had was us. All they have is us. And all we have is them. We revere our mothers and fathers. They are everything. The older we are, the closer we get to our parents. The opposite of the Gospel: ‘Leave your mother and your father.’ The more France seems hostile towards us, the less separated we are from our parents. We must remain in their bosom. (AD, 50–52)

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The narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs also belongs to the second generation. Born in Algeria, however, she is more keenly aware than other children of immigrants of the differences between ‘here’ and ‘there’. And although, for her, ‘here’ is France, she looks on Frenchness as a characteristic that is competitive towards Algerianness. She admits with regret that, in becoming French, she has lost certain Algerian characteristics that many members of her family, such as her aunt Hanan, have. In the passage below, the narrator’s identity is something fixed and solid, though heterogeneous, and is different from the identity of the person she was a decade before. That identity can evolve, and the narrator can determine it (e.g. by moving to Algeria), but a lot of time would have to pass for her Algerian characteristics to again prevail over her French ones:

(97) [Aunt Hanan] talks a lot about when I lived in Algeria. She shows me old Polaroids, even of the place where I used to sleep… It’s as if she wanted to bring me back things I’d lost along the way. She says France tore me out of the arms of my country like one takes a baby from its mother. That’s it, she says it so that’s how it is, her eyebrows fidgeting and her lips trembling. She has quite a few other magic formulas of this sort. Aunt Hanan could make truckers blubber like children. I spend the days listening to people, trying to remember that I’m from here. It’s hard to admit, but the fact is—this is not my place any more. (FG, 145)

Summary In this chapter, I have considered how the family identification of French of Algerian origin relates to their feeling of belonging to the categories of ‘French’ and ‘Algerian’. In discussing family identification, I have in mind both situations where FAOs described themselves as the children of Algerian parents (self-identification) and cases where someone—belonging to their family or not—saw them as persons having kinship ties with Algerians living in France (identification). The first of these relations between identifications concerns situations where the immigrant family is thought of as a place where both French and Algerian characteristics co-exist (Fig.  4.4). In such situations, the

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family

family family

Fig. 4.4  Family identification as an argument in favour of both French and Algerian identification (Algerianness and Frenchness as characteristics coexisting or neutral in relation to each other)

family

Situations where family identification favours identifying with the French or Algerians, where Algerianness and Frenchness are considered characteristics that are neutral (non-conflicting) in relation to each other

subject does not consider which characteristics there are more of, or whether they are sometimes thought to be incompatible. They treat Frenchness and Algerianness as being neutral in respect of themselves: the two may appear as a pair (field ALG+/FR+ Fig. 4.4) or separately, independent of each other (field ALG+ and field FR+). Everything depends

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on the situation in which there is a simultaneous context of family identification and French or Algerian identification. When FAOs find themselves in a country other than Algeria or France, for example in the United States, and when they don’t think about Algerianness and Frenchness as conflicting characteristics (see Chap. 3), identifications with both of the national categories considered here may appear [53]. Algeria is the country of their forefathers and extended family [54, 55], while France is the country in which they live with those closest to them—their parents and, in many cases, their own children [58]. Having a family identification in both countries allows FAOs to answer the question of where they come from and who they are today, and connects them emotionally with both France and Algeria. The co-existence of French and Algerian characteristics is evident when FAO household members discuss their degree of familiarity with both the language of Molière and that of Al-Mutannabbi [56]. In immigrant homes, one most often hears both languages. In many situations, parents’ fostering of knowledge of Arabic, like their preserving certain customs associated with Algeria, is treated as reinforcing Algerian identification (identification with the country and culture of the ancestors, connected with family identification), but as neutral in respect of French identification, though not related to its context (field ALG+). In the material collected, it is in this way that the following are perceived: visiting the family in Algeria, endogamic marriages (Algerian and Muslim), celebrating Muslim holidays with the family, Algerian women wearing headscarves [57], maintaining social relations with other people of Algerian origin, following certain customs known from Algeria. The appearance of these Algerian traits is not treated in the statements analysed here as contrary to Frenchness. After all, France is the fundamental context of family life for French people of Algerian origin. Beyond the Algerian context, but not in conflict with it, there is a large number of family events that could attest to the French identification of FAOs (field FR+). These include, for example, scenes about living in the French suburbs among the French (see Chap. 6). FAOs acquire many French characteristics, such as learning the French language or knowledge of the rules of communal life in France, with the encouragement of their parents, and in general those characteristics are accepted by the whole family, including in Algeria [59, 61]. First-generation immigrants

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wanted their children to go to French schools, and were respectful of French officials, French law, etc. [60]. Socially and culturally, France absorbed the children of Algerian immigrants, and yet, where those children managed to retain elements of their Algerian culture valued by their parents, this need not mean there was a conflict between their French and Algerian ­identifications [62]. Such a harmonious relationship between Frenchness and Algerianness is set out in Fig. 4.4. I have, however, differentiated between situations where individual members of Algerian families in France differ in terms of how they manifest various French characteristics (Fig.  4.5). As a rule, the children of immigrants can muster more arguments than their parents in favour of their French identification. This has no effect on the strength of family ties, and in this sense family identification and French identification are in a neutral relationship, though they do evoke certain situations that are specific to immigrant families, where, relatively, parents may consider their children French, but exclude themselves from that category—not because they have no French characteristics, but (most frequently) because they do not have enough of them. (What is essential here is comparing oneself with others—whether an argument is acknowledged as sufficient or not for a given identification may depend on who for us stands as a point of reference). This is about situations where—in comparison with their children— parents have less command of the French language (for example, they can converse in it but not read it, they do not know the rules of grammar or proper pronunciation well, or are unable to distinguish between the various registers of the language), have less knowledge about France and French society, and less certainty about how to behave in their contacts with French people [64, 65, 66, 67]. In contrast to their parents, children seldom dream of moving to Algeria for good; they hold French citizenship, are more engaged than their parents in social life, are critical of various authorities, and are able to express their dissatisfaction [72, 73, 74]. In such situations, the children of Algerian immigrants are identified as French [75], while their parents are considered as not having adequate arguments in favour of their Frenchness. In terms of identification, however, parents need not fear those moments, since their Algerian national

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FAOs

Fig. 4.5  Family identification of French of Algerian origin in the context of their own and their parents’ French identification

parents of FAOs

FAOs

The arrow indicates the family identification of French of Algerian origin Parents of French of Algerian origin identified—in situations where they are compared with their children—as persons who have an insufficient number of arguments in favour of French identification French of Algerian origin identified as French in situations where they compare themselves with their parents in terms of having adopted French characteristics

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identification comes to their aid—that is, their knowledge of Algeria and Algerian customs [68]. Moreover, in their contacts with French people, first-generation immigrants can count on the cultural competence of their children. Members of the second generation have many more French acquaintances than their parents, thanks to which they are more familiar with social reality beyond the bounds of family life [63, 69, 70, 71]. Algerianness and Frenchness are not conflicting characteristics here, though some family members have more French characteristics (enough to identify themselves as French), while others have fewer. This difference in the ‘speed’ with which some family members pick up French characteristics is illustrated in Fig. 4.5. Even if on certain occasions the parents of FAOs can deploy few arguments in favour of their own Frenchness, within the family they are the persons that can provide a model for another national identification. For if an FAO can learn from anyone to feel Algerian, it is from their parents. However, we know that French people of Algerian origin display traits considered by their parents as Algerian only to a certain extent, and have more French traits than their parents, which allows them to identify themselves as French. Figure 4.6 addresses situations where, in comparison with other family members, FAOs are defined as French and at the same time as persons whose characteristics do not permit them to be spoken of as Algerians (or as Arabs, Berbers or Muslims). In such situations, within FAO families Frenchness and Algerianness are considered to be mutually competitive: the more a person is French, the less he or she is Algerian, while in many cases the two characteristics cannot be connected; one or the other must be chosen. In the collected material, subjects admit that FAOs know little about the national culture of their parents, which to a certain extent alienates the two generations from one another [76]. ‘They barely taught us their language. They offered crumbs of their culture. “They” are not “us”,’ confesses the narrator of one of the texts [AD, 56–57]. For the children of immigrants, operating in the Algerian language can be a problem, but they function in French fluently, without uncertainty [77, 79]. In fact, they sometimes admit that what connects them most with Algeria is not its culture, but a certain appearance they associate as being ‘Algerian’ [78, 79]. Generally, descendants of Algerian immigrants identify themselves as Muslims, but in comparison

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parents of FAOs

FAOs

Fig. 4.6  Family identification of French of Algerian origin in the context of their own and their parents’ Algerian identification

parents of FAOs

FAOs

The arrow indicates the family identification of French of Algerian origin The parents of French of Algerian origin are identified as Algerians, both because they were born in Algeria and because of their adherence to values that they and their families regard as Algerian French of Algerian origin exhibit certain French characteristics that many members of their family regard as contrary to Algerian identification. Also, in situations where the children of immigrants lack certain characteristics considered Algerian, they are often told that this is the result of their Frenchness. French identification is treated by many family members as contrary to Algerian identification and to Arab (or Berber) and Muslim identification

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with the religious adherence and devotion of their extended family in Algeria, their parents and some members of their own generation in France, their allegiance to Islam could be questioned [80, 81, 82]. The parents of FAOs often treat this fact as a defeat [81], although for that part of the family in Algeria it is no reason for reproach [80] and may go hand in hand with their acceptance of the Frenchness of the children of immigrants and their understanding that Frenchness can cause those children to be less attached to religious practice than their parents. Yet people who consider getting married exogamically, to a non-Muslim, meet with strong resistance from their families—both from their parents and their extended family—since this is often seen as a betrayal of their Algerian origin [83]. In such situations, Algerian identification is connected with Arab (or Berber) identification, and with family and religious identification, but is opposed to French identification. Frenchness then means behaving in a way that is interpreted by the parents as dissenting and indecent [83, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92], as individualism, and as renouncing the patriarchal model of the family [85, 86, 87]. When French people of Algerian origin choose not to forego sexual activity before marriage, or dress in a provocative manner, this is perceived by their families as part of the conflict between Frenchness and Islam [90], and between Frenchness and Arabness [92]. The competition between French and Algerian identification (apart from Arab and religious identification) also crops up in those passages in which children and parents or other relatives have differing ideas about whether to live permanently in Algeria or spend vacations there [93, 94, 97], and about where they would like to be buried [95]. For many members of the second generation, though, these questions are not a symptom of a conflict between French and national characteristics, but the result of an ordinary intergenerational dispute [96]. Regardless of how the conflict is viewed, both sides declare their mutual emotional attachment, and feel quite uncomfortable about their existing differences, usually for emotional reasons, where the children regret that they are disappointing their parents [96], but also for national reasons, since the appearance of French characteristics is sometimes considered by the family as Algeria’s loss of the children of Algerian immigrants to France. The relationship between Algerianness, Frenchness and family identification is illustrated in Fig. 4.6.

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Bibliography Texts Analysed Amellal, K. (KA) (2006). Cités à comparaître. Roman. Paris: Stock. Begag, A. (AB) (2005[2004]). Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman. Paris: Points. Benia, M. (MB) (2007). Chiens de la casse. Roman. Paris: Hachette Littératures. Bouraoui, N. (NB) (2010[2000]). Garçon manqué. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Charef, M. (MC) (2007[2006]). À bras-le-cœur. Roman. Paris: Collection Folio. Djouder, A. (AD) (2007[2006]). Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés: les racines du malaise. Récit. Paris: J’ai lu. Guène, F. (FG) (2010[2006]). Du rêve pour les oufs. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Imache, T. (TI) (2001[2000]). Presque un frère. Conte du temps présent. Roman. Arles: Actes Sud (Babel). Kalouaz, A. (AK) (2009). Avec tes mains. Rodez: Rouergue (La Brune). Rahmani, Z. (ZR) (2008[2006]). France, récit d’une enfance. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Sedira, S. (SS) (2013). L’odeur des planches. Arles: Rouergue. Zitouni, R. (RZ) (2005). Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise. Paris: Hachette Littératures.

References Bruneaud, J.-F. (2005). Chroniques de l’ethnicité quotidienne chez les Maghrébins français. Paris: L’Harmattan. Camilleri, C. (1980). Les immigrés maghrébins de la seconde génération: contribution à une étude de leurs évolutions et de leurs choix culturels. Bulletin de psychologie, 347(33). Collet, B., & Santelli, E. (2012). Couples d’ici, parents d’ailleurs. Parcours de descendants d’immigrés. Paris: PUF (Le Lien social). Condon, S., & Régnard, C. (2010). Héritage et pratiques linguistiques des descendants d’immigrés en France. Hommes et Migrations, 1288. Dyczewski, L. (2002). Więź między pokoleniami w rodzinie. Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL (Prace Wydziału Nauk Społecznych). Finkielkraut, A. (2013). L’identité malheureuse. Paris: Éditions Stock. Galland, O. (2006). Jeunes: les stigmatisations de l’apparence. Économie et Statistique, 393–394.

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Kłoskowska, A. (2005). Kultury narodowe u korzeni. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. English edition: Kłoskowska, A. (2001). National Cultures at the Grass-Root Level (trans: C. A. Kisiel). Budapest—New York: Central European University Press. Kubera, J. (2014). Przygoda i Wygnanie. Dwie perspektywy doświadczania migracji w mieście, jedno wyzwanie polityki miejskiej. Człowiek i Społeczeństwo, 1. Malewska-Peyre, H. (1992). Ja wśród swoich i obcych. In P. Boski, M. Jarymowicz, & H. Malewska-Peyre, Tożsamość a odmienność kulturowa. Warszawa: Instytut Psychologii PAN. Sayad, A. (1999). La double absence. Des illusions de l’émigré aux souffrances de l’immigré. Paris: Seuil (Liber). Sicard, F. (2011). Enfants issus de l’immigration maghrébine. Grandir en France. Paris: L’Harmattan (Logiques Sociales). Włoch, R. (2011). Polityka integracji muzułmanów we Francji i Wielkiej Brytanii. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Zehraoui, A. (Ed.) (1999). Familles d’origine algérienne en France. Étude sociologique des processus d’intégration. Paris: CIEMI-L’Harmattan.

5 Identification with Immigrants

 ereditary Migrants: Migration as a Choice H of Frenchness In France and other countries, the children of immigrants are often also thought of as immigrants. Whether we agree or not with such an identification,1 it can be an argument in favour of another type of identification, i.e. identifying such people with France and the French.  The majority of children born in France to immigrant parents, when asked: ‘How would you describe your origins, when you think of your family history?’, most frequently mention (where more than one answer is possible) France (41 per cent) or the country of origin (45 per cent). Thus, they include France in their family history much more often than their parents, for most of whom origin is primarily associated with the country from which they emigrated (61 per cent), and less so with the host country (17 per cent). The answer ‘France’ is given most often, though, in the answers of children from mixed families (France: 66 per cent, country of origin: 16 per cent), and even more often in the answers of French children neither of whose parents was an immigrant (France: 58 per cent, other country: 4 per cent, although here a region is more often given: 17 per cent, which is practically absent from the answers of immigrants and their children [2 per cent each] (Simon 2012, 11). Moreover, members of the second generation have a greater feeling of Frenchness than their parents. The percentages of those who agree with the statement ‘I feel at home in France’ are: 51 per cent of all first-generation immigrants, 66 per cent of the children of immigrants born in their parents’ country of origin, 69 per cent of the children born in France to immigrant parents, and 83 per cent of the children in mixed families. In the second generation there is also greater agreement with the statement ‘I feel French’ (42 per cent in generations 1 and 1.5 of Algerian immigrants; 68 per cent in generations 2 and 2.5; 88 per cent among the majority 1

© The Author(s) 2020 J. Kubera, Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5_5

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Migration is an attempt to connect two cultural and social worlds in the person of the migrant. Many migrants say of themselves that they have two homelands, and feel like a member of one national or state community by birth, and of the other by choice. In this sense—regardless of whatever other reasons they may have for feeling French—the children of Algerian immigrants can justify their own identification with France by the migration of their parents. What once attracted and still attracts Algerian immigrants to France is an idealised image of the country transmitted by successive waves of ‘people on the move’. And while they may be the children of immigrants, the French of Algerian origin realise that that image omits the hardships of daily life in France, though they still seem to have a fascination with France that is not completely justified (since it does not arise from their own experience). This is so at least in the case of the narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs, who hears various fanciful descriptions of France when visiting Algeria and does not attempt to dissuade her interlocutors from their plans to emigrate:

(98) Our ‘cousins’, those who live in France and are here [in Algeria] during the holidays, talk of nothing but their new homeland. They talk about it as if it were a close friend who sometimes reaches out to them and sometimes kicks them away. They recount the stories they hear from those who have slipped through the cracks, adding to them, never admitting to failure or poverty. They never tell their family that they’re working illegally, washing dishes in ratty Chinese restaurants or sleeping in miserable little servants’ rooms. They embellish everything because they’re ashamed, but even so they prefer what they’ve got to coming back for good. … I’d like to tell them that over there, in France, it’s not what they think … . But I don’t allow myself to tell them all this, as I don’t want to come across as Miss Know-it-all. These people went through a civil war, famine and fear, and even if France isn’t what they imagine, it’s still not so bad, because in fact here [in Algeria] things are probably even worse. (FG, 146–147)

population), but diminishing agreement with the statement ‘I feel Algerian’ (44 per cent in generations 1 and 1.5 of Algerian immigrants; 32 per cent in generations 2 and 2.5) (Simon 2012, 7–9).

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In another passage, the narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs recalls how her father, whom she calls the Boss, was also convinced that just setting foot in France was enough to become rich (FG, 25). She is therefore able to go along with a narration in which France is treated as a land of dreams, where one lives as one chooses, not as one is forced to. The choice to stay in France for some time, and later to remain there for years, is often made for the good of the children who, after all, have grown up there. Moving back to Algeria would entail their having to adjust to a new reality that, particularly for those born in France, would not be easy. While for parents moving to Algeria would in fact be a return and a completion of their own migratory trajectory, for their children it would, de facto, be the beginning of migration, setting in motion processes characteristic of first-generation immigrants. Moreover, France is often treated by parents as an opportunity which their children have the right to take advantage of. Such an opinion is expressed by the narrator of Avec tes mains in a scene set in 1977, when the French government offered Algerians and their families (and other immigrants as well, though the proposal was mainly directed to people of Maghrebi origin) the sum of 10,000 francs for a voluntary and definitive departure from France. The narrator describes the reasons for not taking up the offer:

(99) At present, for ten thousand francs they offer you a dignified exit from France. … We’re already big, almost adults, with no desire at all to take a turn at making ourselves exiles. Nor are you inviting us to return to the land of our ancestors. Despite your weariness and the lure of the money, you’ve remained clear-sighted—you knew that [France] is our chance. You will remain here, in your neutral, colourless clothes, answering ‘Yes, sir’ when asked a question in the offices where you present various papers supposed to confirm your right to a pension or healthcare. (AK, 76)

The narration of France as a land of dreams where one lives by choice is also evident in answers provided by FAOs, where they emphasise that immigrants’ love for France, peculiar and difficult as it was because it required sacrifices, was in fact requited for a long time. In this sense,

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immigration was a mutual choice. Immigrants came at the invitation of French businesses, were gladly hired by them, and had a reputation as good workers. Especially in the post-war 30-year economic boom, France needed immigrants. And while many French people were surprised during the crisis of the 1970s that many Algerians still wanted to work in France and were starting families there or bringing theirs over from Algeria, the memory of the earlier period of prosperity, during which immigrants spent the best years of their lives working hard, is very important for their children. When speaking of that period, they can not only justify the presence of their parents in the Hexagon, but can also find arguments in favour of their own Frenchness in the history of their family’s migration. Since they interpret working in France also as working for France, their parents’ migration is a service—which is an argument for identifying with a France that is unavailable to, for example, those whose ancestors never came to that country. One can read the following two passages in this context; they emphasise both the extremely difficult work of Algerian fathers and their contribution to building the greatness of France:

(100) My father… wore out his health rebuilding the France of Charles de Gaulle. (MB, 18)



(101) I was about eight when I found one of my father’s pay slips on the big varnished sideboard in the living room. At the top it said ‘S.W.’. When I asked my father what it meant, he said, ‘Specialised Worker’. Specialised worker! So that was it! My father isn’t an ordinary worker, he’s a specialised worker. … I didn’t ask further, that was enough for a few years of being proud. When, more than twenty years later, I discovered that in fact all those men from elsewhere kept pay slips with S.W. on them on their varnished sideboards, my disappointment was as deep as the admiration I had felt. S.W.: Specialised worker. Specialised in nothing, it should have said. Not long ago, I found in a magazine a clear definition of what those letters really meant, which speaks for itself: ‘It is not the worker who is specialised; on the contrary, an S.W. is an unqualified worker … of whom all that is required is that he follow the rhythm of the machine he is operating. It is the machine that is specialised.’ During the Glorious Thirty, S.W. was the symbol of a

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system of production that sacrificed people in order to generate wealth. (SS, 45–46)

Immigrants’ choice of France is determined by both push and pull factors. For many women, mothers of FAOs, moving to the Hexagon meant gaining certain freedoms and the possibility of getting to know the Western way of life. This is how the narrator of Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise writes about her mother:

(102) When she was eighteen, her parents married her off without asking what she thought about it. For some years she lived alone with her mother-in-law, who made her life hard, before rejoining her husband—my father—in France. She was then twenty-five. She was enthusiastic, excited, impatient to discover this land of dreams where women could dress, go out and work freely, drive a car. It didn’t take long to form friendships, find a job and find one’s way around. Judging by the first photos taken in France in the eighties, my mother looked like a European: short blonde hair, a mid-length skirt and shoes with heels. In those pictures she looks like a modern woman, bold and liberated. In her manner there’s no sign of submissiveness. (RZ, 13)

In the collected material, another cause appears, which is the unstable political situation in Algeria, especially during the 1990s. The narrator of Comment je suis devenue… sees in it the reason why many immigrants decided not (yet) to return to their country of origin:

(103) After many years in [a French] prison, my grandfather was finally released. But he was so crushed by how [Algerian] independence was being implemented that he spent all his time cloistered at home in prayer. He observed Ramadan the year round. Because of the war, he had lost his close relatives and friends, then he had seen the veterans torn apart by power struggles. … Today my grandmother, my parents and the whole of my family is settled in France after having fought for the independence of Algeria. I have to admit I don’t get it. Not talking about why they made the choice they did complicates relations between parents and children. (RZ, 34–35)

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The narrator of Avec tes mains also writes of the loss of the illusion of return:

(104) Maybe you [the narrator’s father] thought of bringing back to Algeria a bunch of valises stuffed to show you’d made it in life, to show your neighbours in Arzew that France was still the opulent land of waking dreams. But on the other hand, death lurks in the villages, fear can be seen in the faces on the street corners of the big cities. And there you are, half a century back in time, incapable of understanding human history. The assassins in the shadows shatter your last illusions, the illusion of the return you held on to for so long. (AK, 82)

The push factors Azouz Begag’s book speaks of, such as civil war (AB, 202), the threat of terrorism (AB, 149), terrorist sabotage and its results (e.g. cutting off the water supply; AB, 187), and military or police inspections on the roads (AB, 214), certainly cause many Algerians to remain in France, and cannot serve their identifying themselves with Algeria. If an immigrant would like to return to their country of origin, but for some reason is unable to definitely decide to do so, then their stay in the host country is not seen as something positive, as an argument in favour of identifying with that country, but as an obstacle to achieving a happy life of fulfilment. Such situations and others will be discussed in the pages that follow.

Immigrants: Origin as an Obstacle to French Identification We have distinguished two reasons why French of Algerian origin can identify with the category of immigrants and at the same time have difficulty in fully identifying with France. The first is experiencing the migration of their parents as their own, and the second their origins being perceived as a threat to the French national community. The feeling that the migration begun by their parents continues means that, on the level of identification, they continue to be someone ‘in

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between’: between two cultures, societies and states. This especially ­concerns very young children of immigrants, whose parents still dream of returning. Then their parents’ plans become their own, they share their parents’ longing for the country of origin (though often they have never yet been there themselves), and treat their stay in France as temporary. The narrator of À bras-le-cœur. Roman was born in Algeria and moved to France in childhood; he heard from his father that, within three years, they would become wealthy enough to return (MC, 228; see also AK, 41). The daughter of a harki, the narrator of France, récit d’une enfance also shares for a long time her parents’ uncertainty as to how long they will stay in the Hexagon (ZR, 138). While in childhood, the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman believed, along with his parents, that they would ‘soon’ move back to Algeria, explaining the need to save money and make other sacrifices in France as follows:

(105) I find it amusing when we speak about Christmas at home. I laugh in secret. But no, that’s not true, it’s not funny. On the contrary. I have to learn not to dream too much. Afterwards, I get nostalgic when I return to solid ground. My father doesn’t buy toys at the flea market in Tonkin. Besides, he doesn’t buy anything, because when he buys things he has to spend money, and it’s not good to spent money, that’s not what it’s there for. He didn’t come down from the Atlas Mountains to become a consumer, but to put money in his pocket and in my mother’s purse. It’s called income. You mustn’t let income get away from you. It’s when it leaves somewhere else and comes to you that you get rich. (AB, 73)

Many Algerian immigrants, even those who brought their families over to France, still believed that their stay away from the country of their birth was only temporary. As the narrator of Avec tes mains writes, they dreamt—sometimes up to death—of a triumphal return to Algeria and the possibility of building a house there (AK, 34, 97, 109). Even many of those who did manage to put up a fine-looking house ‘back home’ had few opportunities to live in it (apart from increasingly infrequent visits to Algeria during holidays or for relatives’ funerals). As in the case of the father of the narrator of Avec tes mains, the home could stand empty for

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years, waiting for its absent owner who finally appeared at a certain moment, brought over from France in a coffin for his own funeral:

(106) Would things be any different if you were living there now, in the house that was waiting for you? You bought it with your first salaries from France, when you were planning to go back, and you held on to it—a dream at your fingertips. Your wife still goes there once or twice a year, blows on the dust, uses the rooms and the courtyard that the cries of children have seldom enlivened. I have only a vague recollection of that house, no happy images of a paradise that can keep me there. Something holds you to this land. Four walls where you believed you would finish your days among your old neighbours and your childhood acquaintances, among the hills. A paradise unoccupied now for more than thirty years. No one wants to recover this kingdom of illusions. It will be said that the chibanis [old folks], who once went to France in great numbers when they were young, will return one by one in the cargo hold of a plane on a final, solitary flight. The houses you built with your own hands or in your dreams resound with emptiness and absence. Your whole life has been played out elsewhere: you who hoped to leave the cities in a few weeks but floundered there in the mud for twenty years, with only one thought in your heads—the myth of returning. (AK, 75–76)

Children are also harnessed to the migration of their parents because, often for their own good, their parents keep putting off the decision to return supposedly taken long ago. With the passing years, parents increasingly realise that it will be difficult for them to go back to Algeria, though in fact they rarely give up completely on the dream. The fact that the children of immigrants remain in France does not mean that the situation of being a migrant is something foreign for them. Even if, unlike their parents, they can say ‘I’m from here’, they often share the problems their parents face and are tied up in them. While parents stay in France voluntarily, they are not completely happy about being so far removed from ‘their own’, and first-generation immigrants often have the feeling of being in exile. Mothers who brought the children to join their husbands in France also experience this (AK,

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40). They surround themselves with beautiful objects that remind them of Algeria and their social life there—something they long for because they don’t have it in France (AD, 20). The feeling of exile experienced by the mother of the narrator of L’odeur des planches results in chronic depression and repeated attempts at suicide. She cannot adapt to her new situation, comparing herself to an uprooted tree (SS, 118) and weeping continually (SS, 29–31); on those occasions when she goes out with her family for a walk in Marseilles, she is drawn to the beach where she can gaze at the sea connecting ‘here’ with ‘there’ (SS, 80–82, 114). There are visible symptoms of her suffering: since arriving in France, her hands have always been cold (SS, 110). She asks God why He is unjust towards her, but comes to believe that her migration was a sin for which she must now atone (SS, 35–36). Similar threads can be found in other texts, including in that of Ahmed Djouder, Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés. He writes of the sadness and illnesses of his mother brought on by living between two cultures (also using the metaphor of the sea), and of the feeling of not being anchored in the place where one lives (AD, 68–69). For many French-born children of immigrants, Algeria is fascinating and worth knowing as the country of their ancestors and family culture, but they do not long for it because they know so little about it compared with their parents. Yet, since FAOs devote so many pages of their novels and autobiographies to the sense of exile experienced by their mothers and fathers, this is something that they themselves must face and address somehow. The way they deal with what their immigrant parents went through, making those problems their own or cutting themselves off from them, could certainly affect their identification with France. This is so because immigrants who feel they are in exile not only long for their country of origin but also feel alien in the host country. Further, as Abdelmalek Sayad (1999) states, the immigrant feels a double absence, feeling at home in neither country. This phenomenon is described, for example, by Ahmed Kalouaz in Avec tes mains; he emphasises at the same time that it touches only the first generation of immigrants, not their children:

(107) While we [children] naturally take our place here [in France], your land of plenty is lying in tatters under your feet. As time

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goes by, when you go there on holiday you will have the impression that this is the last time you’ll ever be on that side of the sea. It will be the same when you have to get ready to come back to France. You already know that one day you’ll have to make an impossible choice. Here or there—you won’t be able to choose, no one goes back to an idealised country. We’re part of your lives, but we prefer to live in a real country, a country we love. In the dilemma facing you, wherever you go your loved ones will always be absent. Your friends from the building site have the same impression every time they go back to their village for Ramadan or on vacation. They dream of staying there, but they always come back here. As for you, you kept that feeling in your head as evidence that one day there will have to be a real return, triumphant and definitive … . (AK, 44)

The sense of exile in France can also accompany children when they somehow absorb it from their parents, or when they themselves were born and grew up in Algeria. Then their feelings, while experienced differently, can be very similar to those of their parents:

(108) You’re not aware yet, Amine, that you’ll miss Algeria like you miss a man, a woman, a child. You think it’s nothing to live here. You think everything passes and can be forgotten. This land, you, me. The perfect triangle. Your life in triple time. … You will travel the world carrying Algeria in your hands. (NB, 74–75)

Unlike their parents, though, most children of Algerian immigrants are not faced with such dilemmas (e.g. AK, 72). Most French of Algerian origin were born in France, and all of their memories are connected with it. Also, many parents in Algerian families gradually get used to the idea that they will spend their whole lives in France, though they initially wanted to return quickly to Algeria. When first-generation of immigrants lose their illusion of returning, it is certainly easier for their children to identify with the country in which they see their future.

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(109) At that time, it’s still possible to find a way to earn a living without much difficulty.  … You tried your hand at everything. ‘A thousand jobs, a thousand woes,’ as the saying goes, and slowly life becomes anchored here, and there’s no more nest there beyond the sea in the motherland. No more time to imagine a glorious, triumphant return. Wealth is hidden in a bottomless pit; as in childhood, you dig and scratch in the mud. The fruits of your labour grant us the right to live, to dress ourselves, to satisfy our hunger. Isn’t that what’s essential?. (AK, 58)

In this context, it is worth mentioning the rather isolated case of the father of the narrator of L’odeur des planches, who, in her opinion, did not experience his migration as an exile, but felt connected with the land he was in:

(110) My father didn’t have any ulcers. He was one of those who live in the moment, in time, in complete infidelity to the past. … My father learned very quickly to live away from his parents, to never put down roots, to keep going. The difference between my father and the others was that they lived between a here and a there. He simply lives now in one land and then in another, without this being important to him. (SS, 92)

Another reason why FAOs can feel like immigrants, though in actual fact they are not, is not only the memories of the migration trajectory of their parents and their non-French origins, but also the use of that fact as an argument against complete Frenchness. And while such behaviour is contrary to the Republican spirit that makes no cultural or religious distinctions among the French, the children of Algerian immigrants encounter it quite often. For many of them, because they are convinced of their own Frenchness, their natural reaction to such an attitude is indignation. That indignation is the stronger the more ‘immigrants’ are seen stereotypically as people who threaten the social order:

(111) When will you quit looking at us like immigrants, foreigners, thieves and terrorists? Imagine a world where people speak about you in terms of quotas, integration, immigration, marginality,

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criminality, offences and insecurity… Imagine that world, you champions of human rights. To be an immigrant is like being in a car where the light turns green, but then back to red again, and to green, red, green, red, green, red… You become enraged, you don’t understand what’s going on, and you don’t go forward. Foreigners are not weak. Neither mentally nor physically. They don’t make themselves into victims. It’s history that has weakened them. Like WOMEN.  They’re not weak—their position is. (AD, 107)

In the collected material, there are frequent expressions of the conviction that French whose parents were immigrants are seen in a negative light.2 Their foreign origins are seen as a danger to Frenchness. One of the authors who addresses this issue is Nina Bouraoui. In her book, when the narrator’s friend (who is from a mixed family and spent his childhood in Algeria) travels to France, the narrator warns him that no one will be interested in the fact that he’s French. What counts is not what one has in common with other inhabitants of France, but what sets Amine apart, in other words his origins. The narrator compares the French to vampires who feed on other people’s different, and perhaps puzzling, lives.

 In 2003, 39 per cent of French people agreed (completely or to some extent) with the statement: ‘Immigrants make a large contribution to the development of our country’, while exactly half disagreed (by way of comparison, 66 per cent of Belgians disagreed with the statement—the highest in the EU at that time, as did 26 per cent of Portuguese and 31 per cent of Swedes—the lowest among the 15 EU Member States at that time). In the same surveys, 42 per cent of French people agreed with the statement: ‘Immigrants threaten our way of life’ (this time, Belgians were most in agreement with this at 53 per cent, and Swedes the least at 25 per cent) (European Opinion Research Group (EEIG) 2004, 27). In 2008, 36 per cent of children aged 18–50 born in France to immigrant parents and holding French citizenship declared that they had experienced situations in which their right to French identification was denied. French-born descendants of immigrants also declare more often than other French people whose parents were not immigrants that they have experienced racism (43 per cent vs 8 per cent) or discrimination based on their appearance or origin (31 per cent vs 11 per cent) (Simon 2012, 13). From these studies, one can conclude that the people most likely to have their Frenchness questioned are French of Asian origin (44 per cent), followed by French of Maghrebi or Arab origin (43 per cent), Turkish origin (43 per cent), and African origin whose skin is black (41 per cent). People who are citizens and first- or second-­ generation immigrants of European origin whose skin is white are much less likely to have their Frenchness questioned (only 10 per cent) (Simon 2012, 14). 2

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(112) [In France] You’ll be ashamed. Ashamed of being afraid on the street. Of having the feeling you’re being followed. Of using two locks on your door. Of not giving out your phone number. Of not putting your name on the letterbox. But you won’t be afraid of Algerians. You’ll be afraid of the French, their violence, their thirst for blood, their longing for something to happen. You’ll be afraid of those vampires. Those who want to know everything, to understand all about mysterious Algeria. The Algerian question. They’ll ask you about it. They’ll feed on you. (NB, 89)



(113) It won’t be France that we detest. Certainly not. It will be the idea of a certain France close to certain families.  … Manifested in their complexities. And their complexes. It’s not the French language that will embarrass us. That’s the only language we’ll be able to understand.  … [What will bother us] will come up in families we meet by chance. On holidays. In their fabric of hatred. In their judgements. In their sayings. ‘Out with the Arabs’. In their incapacity to love what is foreign. What is different. What escapes them. In that incompatibility. Between them and us. It’s from the inhumanity of those families that my hatred towards a certain France will grow. (NB, 94)

The children of immigrants are treated as newcomers, foreigners, though they would like to be perceived as ordinary members of French society. The French focus more on how they differ than on what they have in common, and are not able to accept or—to use the words of the narrator of Garçon manqué—to love those differences. Here we touch on an important problem: xenophobia, which affects members of one’s own national community. The word ‘xenophobia’ is not used in the collected texts; more often reference is made to racism or the prejudices that prevail among certain French people towards Arabs and Muslims. The narrator of Chiens de la casse. Roman says explicitly that the integration of immigrants à la française means not accepting those who came to France later. Speaking somewhat figuratively, he admits that to be French is to hate newcomers and display anti-immigrant attitudes towards those (such as the famous Polish plumber who came to France after Poland joined the European Union in 2004).

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(114) I sometimes have the impression that I’ll end up like all the immigrant groups that decide to integrate by means of racism. Perhaps that’s the secret to integrating à la française: to come all over the face of the latest arrival. In my mind I’m already polishing up the rifle I’ll use against my future victims. I’ll start with those from Eastern Europe. All they know is communism, war and misery. They plunder our parking meters and send their women out onto the ­pavement. A joint of afghan shit between my lips and a 22-calibre rifle in my hand, I’ll stand in the window with my torso bare and make sure no Romanian kid gets near my car stereo CD charger. And the Chinese? They also risk getting my integration full in the face. Even if they don’t make waves, I’ll have my eye on them. I can see they work hard and are buying up bakeries and butcheries in the east of Paris. Soon the local shops will belong to them, too. Even the yellow McDonald’s sign in the 13th district is written in Chinese letters. (MB, 105)

One reason why certain children of immigrants are excluded from the national community and kept permanently in the ‘waiting room’ of Frenchness that results from their being identified as immigrants (though they hold French passports) is that their skin is not white.3 This theme is noticeably present in the story by Nina Bouraoui. Even if the narrator had many reasons for feeling French, her ‘Algerian’ appearance (and her first and last names, which give away her foreign origins) is treated by many people, and even for some time by the narrator herself, as a characteristic that gets in the way of her being ‘really’ French.4 In the passages  Surveys by Ahsène Zehraoui (1999, 177–183), Evelyne Perrin (2008, 21 et seq.) and Frédérique Sicard (2011, 44–61) confirm that FAOs are identified by their peers at school as Arabs or Muslims. Perrin talks of the daily experience of racism at school or at work, especially when looking for work. She points out that one strategy for providing an affirmative answer to the question ‘Do you feel well in France?’ is to disregard stimuli attesting to the existence of racism while at the same time refusing to see oneself as a victim. The researcher also notes that, in the first decade of the twenty-­ first century, there was an increase in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment (Perrin 2008 24–28). 4  Cf. the answer of one of the subjects of Fabienne Rio (2010, 121) to the question of what citizenship he would choose if he could have only one: ‘I’d choose to be Algerian because my parents are Algerian, so I would do so out of a desire for continuity and for several other reasons that concern us here. You know, we have French citizenship, but it’s always the same, our appearance means we’re different, and that probably won’t change. So there’s no point in being a second-class citizen. If they really accepted us, then okay [I would choose French citizenship]. But they’re always telling us “no”. 3

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below, she emphasises the dichotomy between two body types: the white bodies of the French, and hers, which is not white, and is therefore not French. One passage also describes the narrator’s rather ineffectual attempt to forget about her non-French body. Her method is to wear designer clothes. In this way she covers up parts of her body, but is not able to efface the truth about it (that it is Algerian, not French). The ­narrator claims that culturally she is French, but by appearance Algerian. No matter what the narrator of Garçon manqué does, the fact that she inherited physical characteristics from her Algerian father (she says that she has his skin, but his mother’s face) causes her to consider whether or not she is French:

(115) My solitude is here … .  France remains white and impossible. (NB, 22)



(116) Be presentable. Well groomed. Forget. That my father is an Algerian. That I’m from Algeria, through and through. I have Rabia’s face [her Algerian grandmother]. I have the skin of Bachir. Nothing from Rennes. Nothing. Only my birth certificate. Only my French nationality. Forget about my name. Bouraoui. ‘Father storyteller’. From ‘abou’, father, and ‘rawa’, to tell. … I put on a very chic pair of trousers, very feminine  …  .  A Daniel Hechter suit. A suit I loathe. It’s my disguise. My French skin. (NB, 92–93)

The differences between ‘French’ bodies and the narrator’s Algerian body, which make her stand out, are especially evident for her at the beach in Brittany (e.g. NB, 93–94). Interestingly, the sense of foreignness she has here evokes associations with the days of the French Algeria of her childhood (thus the exclusion felt by French Muslims during the colonial period because of their cultural and religious separateness finds a parallel in today’s exclusion based on physical characteristics that betray non-­ French origins):

So I have dual citizenship, which suits me, I don’t pay much attention to it’ (Mustafa, 26, completed physical studies, conducts surveys in cooperation with Algeria).

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(117) I remain a foreigner. I don’t know anyone here. Who runs. Who shouts. Who embraces. Who seduces.  …  None of those white skins. In that white light. White like my French great-grandmother’s beautiful hair. White like the bones that hold her up. White like my startling voice. … It’s embarrassing to be here. In this discomfort. Who am I? (NB, 142)



(118) Me, I’m taking a holiday from my Algerian life. All those shouts [on the beach]. The buoys, the fishing nets, the inflatable boats. The sea isn’t far away. Dinard [a place]. SaintMalo. Saint-Lunaire. Saint-Briac. All those white children running towards the cold sun. … Those white children. … They’re too delicate. They’re too white. Attached to their mothers. … Everyone looking at me. At my Daniel Hechter suit. Women’s trousers. At my valise. At my ‘Air Algérie’ clutch bag. At my brown skin and golden eyes.  …  The tears in my eyes against French Algeria. Against France for the French. Against that manifest Brittany that overruns and effaces me. (NB, 102–103)

The children of Algerian immigrants, then, feel for certain reasons that they continue to stand out from the ‘ordinary’ French who do not draw attention to themselves. Not only in Nina Bouraoui’s book does this feeling of possessing a special status, though an unwritten one, evoke associations with French Algeria:

(119) She [the narrator’s mother] asks me if the French from here are different from those over there, and I answer: ‘There they didn’t so much as glance at us, here they stare at us’. (MC, 246)

The experience of foreignness in France because of one’s origin is shared by both parents and children in Algerian families. And so, in certain situations, FAOs are still considered to be foreigners (in French, the ideas of ‘stranger’ and ‘foreigner’ are expressed in a single word, étranger), immigrants, whether they belong to the first or second generation. Racism and xenophobia make no distinctions on the basis of age or citizenship. In racism, which the narrator of Garçon manqué calls a disease, a mixed marriage means a kind of betrayal of ‘one’s own’. This is why, when she visits the faculty in Rennes where her parents first met during the

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period of the Algerian War, the narrator imagines the kind of abusive conduct they must have encountered. She then goes on to say that the modern French society she knows from the example of Paris has not changed diametrically from what it was in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Certain anti-Algerian and, more broadly, anti-Arab and anti-immigrant attitudes are still present, and people who, when they were young, could not stand the sight of Algerians are now much older and have their own families:

(120) The place where certain students showered abuse on my mother. The white woman with the Algerian. The woman of a French ­Muslim. Racism. The disease of those students. A disgraceful disease. A disease involving sex. The fear of the other. The fear of the other sex. Of the other skin. The threat posed by the foreigner. Never kill your father. Stay among the Whites. … Yes, racism is a disease … . All those voices that still speak. I’m too fragile to listen to them. Those students who have aged by now. Good fathers of families. Respectable women. I’ll always be too weak to listen or figure it out. (NB, 148–150)



(121) Then listening to that became habitual. To those words that blazed up like little forest fires. It was everywhere in Paris. Like traps to be avoided. Like mines to be stepped over. In the street. In the restaurant. In the underground. That woman, as I pass by: ‘It’s running, the scum is running’. That’s how it went. In the supermarket, with my sister and Sophia, another woman looks our way: ‘We have to get rid of them. Send them back to their country. Exterminate them’. Sophia’s eyes. The eyes of a child. And again, I’m furious. Again nauseous. Again incapable of responding. My skin turning red. My heart pounding. My stomach in a knot. (NB, 130–131)

Occurrences of racism in France affect not only Arabs and French of Arab origin, though such incidents naturally feature in the collected material. A friend of the narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs, a high school teacher from Senegal, is stopped by the police for no reason and called a gibbon (FG, 81–82). And the narrator of Comment je suis devenue… writes of the discrimination faced by children of immigrants from the

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Maghreb on the French labour market (RZ, 205–206). Racism, that disease referred to in Nina Bouraoui’s book, would seem to be also infectious—the experience of it causes immigrants and their children to begin thinking in terms of skin colour, etc. in certain situations. In this context, the narrator of the book by Razika Zitouni attests to the existence of racism among Maghrebis as well, directed against the French of French origin (RZ, 209). Thinking in racial categories also appears in Cités à comparaître. Roman, in which the narrator admits that he doesn’t like white skin (having white skin himself ), because he associates it with the police:

(122) [Describing Nadia] She always had a lock of hair falling over her face. Not long. But brown. And her skin wasn’t white like mine. I don’t like white skin, it reminds me of the cops. Not hers, though, it was the colour of sand. Golden. Like on tropical beaches. (KA, 41)

In the selected texts, though, the primary emphasis is on the lack of acceptance by white French people of people whose skin colour or origins are different. This seems to be the main driving force behind their antipathy between non-immigrants and immigrants and their children. As to the French of Arab origin, non-immigrants recognise them not only by their ‘Arab’ appearance, but also by their first and last names:

(123) How am I responsible for that face and those eyes? For having that name? … What did I do wrong? For having to spell it out. To say it clearly. To open my mouth wide and raise my voice a bit. So that everyone can hear? Letter by letter. B-o-u-r-a-o-u-i. No, not Baraoui, nor Bouraqui. It’s so easy! Bouraoui from raha, ‘to tell a story’, and from Abi, which means ‘father’. Arab names are family prisons. One is always a son of someone if it’s Ben or a father of someone if it’s Bou. Family prisons and masculine prisons. (NB, 123–124)

Expressions of Arabophobia appear in other places as well. From the above citations, it can be seen that many people in France, when they identify someone as an Arab, also use that identification as an argument

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against that person’s Frenchness. To be an Arab is such a stigma for the children of Algerian immigrants that they often seek to replace it with another identification that will afford them a greater degree of acceptance by French of French origin. That’s why, as we read, ‘you’d better have some place else fixed in your head’ or call oneself a Beur (men) or Beurette (women), a word for the children of Arab immigrants in France that arose in the 1980s. People of Algerian origin can also try to invoke their Berber identify (Kabylians are Berbers) and cut themselves off from the historical Arabisation of indigenous Algerian culture. The Arabness inherited from their parents is particularly difficult for boys, for they are the ones most subjected to the stereotype of the dangerous, rebellious Algerian. (Characteristic here is the emphasis in the fourth excerpt below that the French would sooner accept a boy in a dress than a child of Arab parents).

(124) At least when you’re an Arab, you know some kind of minimum about where you’re from. And you’d better, ‘cause you can do whatever to try to get the feeling they think you’re alright, but in the end this country France isn’t exactly home, you’d better have some place else fixed in your head to dream a little and forget the one that doesn’t want you ’cause of that dirty gob of yours. … There’s a max of losers among the Arabs, too. Except you also have to see how they got to be losers. They’re from the same place as me: from the estate that fries your brain. (KA, 107)



(125) Yes, I’d have it, the spirit of vengeance. The same spirit as those they’ll one day call Beurs. You won’t be able to say ‘Arab’ any more, in France. They’ll be saying beur, and even beurette. It will be political. To get around all those terrifying words like ‘Algerians’, ‘Maghrebis’, ‘North Africans’. All those words that some of the French will no longer be able to pronounce. Beur is playful. And belittling, as well. That generation that’s neither really French nor really Algerian. That errant people. Those nomads. Those phantom children. Those prisoners. Who carry their memory like a torch. Who carry their history like a boulder. Who carry hatred as their unique voice. Who burn with the desire for vengeance. (NB, 129)

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(126) In France, they’ll take you for a Kabylian, Amine. … In France, it will be better to be Kabylian. Better than Algerian. Less complicated than Franco-Algerian. You’ll be more proper, Amine. … A Kabylian, an upright man. A Kabylian, a man who strides forward. Kabylians, your pride. A Kabylian, a man with a raised fist. … You’ll like this new definition. (NB, 56–27)



(127) My God, I’m not sure myself, I’d probably prefer to be a boy. They don’t like boys [Arab boys]. They’re afraid of the sons of our fathers. They find them agitated, unpredictable, the kind who would shoot you in the balls or slit your throat with a box cutter. … How can I explain it to my brothers? ‘Your sisters give them a hard-on and pierce their hearts. We’re their pets. … But you, the boys, they’ll always either leave you out or lock you up. They’re sorry our fathers didn’t just have girls. … If I ever have a boy, I’ll call him Baptiste, Christophe or François. And dress him like a girl. (TI, 55)

In the book by Razika Zitouni, French women of Algerian origin are called ‘dirty Arabs’ by their contemporaries (RZ, 108). And the narrator of Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés… thinks that he and those like him are ‘fabricated’ by phrases such as ‘angry Arab Muslims’. At the same time, he says that nice Arabs known to the French from their daily experience, for example behind the counter in a shop, and not from stereotypes, didn’t just pop out of nowhere (AD, 123–124). Arabness, connected automatically in French society with Islam and—as we read in Désintégration—also with ‘anger’, is a characteristic attributed to FAOs, though they would prefer, as in the passage below, to be perceived simply as French. Continually being reminded of their foreign origin (where origin is not treated as an added value, but as a negative characteristic) means that, even in the third generation, identifying with France is difficult, because it means going against the grain of society:

(128) [We are] seized by an irrational disgust in a France that is burning and never stops slinging mud at us. Besmirching our little ones born here, who must constantly justify themselves in the schoolyard that perpetuates the insults and denigration. My nieces

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complain about all the baseness poured out on them—‘the Arabs’, ‘the Muslims’—to the point where they ended up telling me they no longer wanted a playground where there was no place for them but the Quran. They embrace that book with a smile in order to—as they put it—better extol the virtues of Gandhi. They are tempering themselves in advance against the violent shock they will receive when they learn that, even though they were born in this country, of people that believed in their children’s future, they will never have a homeland. (ZR, 66)

Many French of Algerian origin also believe that Muslims are a group that is particularly stigmatised. The narrator of Ahmed Djouder’s book argues that it is a mistake for French people to be critically disposed towards the Muslim religion, because it is the only sphere of the lives of Algerians and their children (who, he admits, are not very practising) that guarantees them ‘the illusion of coherence, the illusion of unity’, and a sense of belonging in the world, making them more content (AD, 62–64). He also believes that their—as he puts it—irrational attachment to religion results from the mistakes made by the French, who managed to convince Algerians that French culture is not for them (AD, 62). By symbolically cutting off immigrants and their children from access to the benefits of French culture, France in a way pushed them into the arms of a religion treated as an important indicator of national identification (cf. those excerpts in which it is stated that the religion of the French is Christianity: AB, 74; MB, 98). In this context, the prohibition in force in France against the display of religious symbols is not interpreted as a Republican gesture of equality, but as a large part of the population of France being deprived of tools that provide them with a feeling of identificatory cohesion:

(129) For that matter, in the name of an extended principle of secularism, let’s ban political convictions, sexual preferences, volunteering. What’s left? Clothes, makeup, trainers, sports, gossip. It’s funny, but nobody realised religion was the last persuasive and engaging difference in a youth that had already deserted what is true in life—spirit, patience, conscience. By taking away veils, kippahs and crosses…, you deprive everyone of the possibility of

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thinking. The difference between us and someone else is in this case something which provokes us, makes us think. It’s philosophical. It nourishes doubt. Uniformity is for tomorrow. (AD, 90)

It would seem unjust to deprive immigrants and their children—in their opinion—of the attributes of their own roots, of celebrating who they are. They realise that their own cultural identity and family history connect what is French with what is close to the culture of their origins. But if they cannot speak of who they are, and cannot (for it is impossible) present an identity that is identical to the dominant ‘pure’ Frenchness, they are condemned to an identificational non-existence, and at the same time to exclusion from the French national community in which—in practice—it is difficult for them to find themselves when they are identified only as immigrants, Arabs and Muslims. The ‘real French’ are not the children of immigrants; they are Europeans and Christians who respect the principle of secularism. There is a mechanism of exclusion here, which bases national identity on a single origin, a single culture and a single religion. It also sets out a symbolic, political and cultural domination by non-immigrants over immigrants and their children. What is at stake in this game between two conflicting groups is having the right genealogy—a kind of certificate that cannot be counterfeited:

(130) They [the French] have single-family homes. Family furniture. Family pictures. Big parks with gravel paths. They hold family meals. They have family stories. And a family tree. A strangulation. (NB, 175–176)

The narrator of the book by Razika Zitouni is an example of someone who acts on the principle that, in order to find oneself in French society and break away from immigrant identification, it is necessary to stop identifying with one’s culture and religion of origin. At a certain point, she says that it is a mistake for parents to transmit their own culture to their children, for this makes it more difficult for them to integrate with the rest of society. While she herself is attached to Arab and Muslim traditions, her experience tells her that only by exhibiting features considered

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in the national ideology as French can one attain acceptance by other people. That is why she treats the Algerian elements of her identity that she does not intend to renounce as an obstacle on the road to her feeling fully French:

(131) I was always asking myself questions about racism. How do the French see me? Are they ready to accept my difference, the colour of my skin, my origins? Do they think I’m entirely French? Of course, my family encouraged me to proclaim my origins. My parents transmitted their values and Algerian customs, and would repeat: ‘We’re Algerians, our ancestors are Arabs. So you’re Algerian, Muslim, and must never repudiate that’. They weren’t conscious of the fact that, with such a discourse, I was going to be rejected by society. On this point they didn’t think too clearly; they were unable to see that people only accept those who are like them. To make yourself accepted in an alien universe, you have to renounce your identity and take on that of the other. For, in the spirit of the French, integration means: ‘You have to be like me, I can’t accept you for who you are’. … As a little girl, I had the same tastes, the same books and the same dreams as my French schoolmates, but had already been given an Algerian education. All those rigid principles weighed heavily on my little head, and I didn’t see things the same way as others. I felt different, and that had to make me mistrustful, fearful, distant in my relations with those who were French to the marrow. (RZ, 203–204)

The feeling of being a migrant, a ‘person between’, also affects some children of Algerian immigrants who, when they reach the age of 18, must apply for French citizenship. While the parents of FAOs normally hold Algerian citizenship only, their children born in France already have French citizenship. Certainly the biggest problems are faced by those children of immigrants who—even if they came to France at a very early age—were born in Algeria. When they reach the age of majority, they have to decide whether they want to be French citizens or not. For the narrator of Comment je suis devenue…, who finds herself in such a situation, the predicament is both absurd and painful:

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(132) When I turned eighteen, I applied for naturalisation. Because I’d been born in Algeria and came to France at the age of two, the procedure was necessary. My father went with me; for him it was important that I should become officially French. My mother said nothing on the subject. Up till then I was Algerian, at least on paper: Algerian identity card and passport, ten-year French residence card. What an idea to make such an effort when I’d always felt French! France is my country. Yet I knew that, in certain cases, I could be denied French nationality, and suddenly I felt uneasy. So up to that moment I had been considered a foreigner! To be French, I’d have to go through the procedure of proving it. I’d have to answer questions, be the object of an inquiry, and my file would be examined by a commission. For me, who had always lived in France, all this had an abnormal, offensive connotation. At the prefecture I was nervous and tense. My throat was clamped tight and I was almost crying. My father found it all rather excessive. The young woman who interviewed me asked me a whole series of absurd questions, like: ‘Do you speak, read and write in French? Do you have French friends? Are you thinking of going back to Algeria one day?’. Luckily, the interview didn’t last more than fifteen minutes. My choice of nationality had never seemed to me to be so crucial; in my head I had always been a French citizen. It was so obvious! And the choice didn’t mean I’d be distanced from my parents, my culture, my religion or my country of origin. In fact, it was my father who had urged me to accept the citizenship. (RZ, 201–202)

The subject of citizenship is an uncomfortable one for many French of Algerian origin. They feel as if they—unlike other French people—are expected to continually prove that they deserve to be considered members of the French nation. A lack of citizenship can give rise to difficult situations in which children who have been socialised in French society from a very early age, go to French school and speak French fluently, are treated as foreign, and may even feel that they are. For example, when filling in a form at an employment agency, the narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs, born in Algeria, has to indicate that she is not French (FG, 10). And when she has her ticket checked by a public transport official, she shows an Algerian identity card. She manages, though, to have fun with

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the situation by the way she answers the ticket inspector’s question about the language her ID card is written in:

(133) Now I see some men in green getting dangerously close. … ‘Ticket, please’. I give him my ID card straight away so he can write me a fine—to save me the trouble of arguing, since I can see from his depressive face there’d be no point in it. Linda and Nawel [friends of the narrator also of Maghrebi origin], model citizens crawling to the system, politely show their Navigo cards. … I capitulate and hand the ticket man my magnificent green passport, thereby justifying my existence. His eyes, like those of a sickly bird, focus on the exotic inscription: ‘People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria’. I see his anxiety, he’s getting dizzy and perturbed, he could do with a drink. ‘You haven’t got any document written in French?’ ‘If you open it up, you’ll see it’s bilingual, they’ve got your language, too, inside.’ ‘Don’t get smart with me or you might end up regretting it— don’t forget, you haven’t got a ticket’. (FG, 56–57)

Many such situations can cause a feeling of alienation. If holding French citizenship is seen as necessary to identifying with the French nation, it is not an argument available to the narrator above. This is why she says of herself that she is ‘almost French’. She reminds herself of this every three months, when she renews her authorisation to stay in France:

(134) Almost French. All that’s missing from the panoply is that stupid piece of sky-blue paper, laminated and stamped with love and good taste, the famous French touch. That little thing would give me the right to everything, and would exempt me from getting up at three in the morning every three months to go stand in the cold in the queue in front of the prefecture in order to get my umpteenth renewal of residence. (FG, 46)

While French citizenship does not guarantee that the children of Algerian immigrants will be included by French society in the category of ‘French’, the absence of it makes their own identification with the French

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national community more difficult. Obtaining citizenship at the age of eighteen is a formality that, in many cases, doesn’t alter the situation much: the new citizens can remember situations where they felt foreign in the state they consider their own, while on the social level other French people can still identify them by their immigrant origins. Not holding French citizenship also entails the threat of FAOs being deported to the country of their parents. A friend of the narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs, known as Tobislav, who comes from Belgrade, is faced with deportation (FG, 137). Because of this, the narrator is afraid for herself and her brother, who must also go through the procedure of applying for citizenship:

(135) Since the circular for the month of February 2006 and its goal of 25,000 expulsions for the year, it was like there was the smell of gas in the queue in front of the prefecture. There were worrying rumours of traps being set, as during the war, like the scary story told by a woman at the counter. Her cousin was summoned to the prefecture. He was glad to get the notice, because he’d been waiting for it for months. He thought everything was finally in order, but it was a trap. They took him straight to the detention centre, and now he’s in Bamako. He didn’t even have time to say goodbye to his loved ones and collect all his things. Since I heard that, every time I’m ­sitting on one of those hard, uncomfortable chairs at the prefecture, I imagine those men with their little moustaches in the office who, if they just touch a button, the chair becomes an ejection seat and I’ll end up back in the village. (FG, 48–49)



(136) I have the feeling that my little brother will appreciate being there [in Algeria on holiday for the first time in several years], but I also hope he’ll understand that his life is not there, and that he’ll calm down a bit when he gets back, because I’m getting more and more worried about all the deportations. I think about it incessantly, even here. (FG, 150)

As stated earlier, almost all of the daily lives of children of Algerian immigrants is connected with France and French society. Nevertheless, they often think about how they differ from other members of French

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society and they themselves perceive those differences as something negative, thereby feeling alien in their own country. This uncertainty as to whether it makes sense to plan a life in France is vividly illustrated at the end of the book Du rêve pour les oufs, which breaks off at the moment the narrator is waiting in line for her French residence permit:

(137) I approach the queue. The same tired figures. Those weary people. Those foreigners who come at dawn for that scrap of paper. It’s six in the morning and I’m here in front of the prefecture. (FG, 154)

Emigrants: French of Algerian Origin in Algeria French of Algerian origin can be compared not only with other French people in the arguments they deploy in favour of French identification, but also with Algerians in the matter of Algerian identification. In the second case, FAOs’ identification with the category of migrants may be treated as an argument that they possess certain Algerian national characteristics to an insufficient degree. FAOs may be perceived as emigrants by both the Algerian community in France and by Algerians in Algeria, where they are often called French, in other words representatives of another national community. This creates situations in which, within a single family, certain of its members call themselves Algerians, others French, although this need not affect family ties. Yet it is a fact that the children of ‘people on the move’ inherit the status of emigrant from their parents, which means that the Algerian affiliation of FAOs is open to discussion and comparisons—with both those who live permanently in Algeria and with Algerian immigrants in France, whose Algerianness tends not to be questioned (they were born and raised in Algeria, have Algerian citizenship, and know the culture and recent history of the place where they were born). Despite such questions, FAOs’ emigrant status ensures certain connections of theirs with their parents’ country of origin. The children of immigrants, like their mothers and fathers, are also

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treated as ‘people between’, living in two societal worlds that combined both French and Algerian characteristics (while comparisons evaluate to what degree they possess one or the other). When Algerians identify FAOs as emigrants, this entails a number of issues that appear in the collected material, though obviously these receive far less attention than the status of immigrant in France. One of the most important consequences of such an identification is the conviction that FAOs know Algeria to a lesser extent, and lack certain important cultural points of reference (see FG, 143). When parents move to France, this entails a painful break for them, but also for their relatives who stay behind, and for their children—whether they are born in Algeria or France.

(138) The mothers were pressing their children to their sides, as if someone were coming to pull them away. They were unable to speak or listen, and seemed completely disoriented, with no point of reference. Just one trip across, and they had become foreigners. (SS, 27)

Children are treated as emigrants, and their residence in France as if they themselves had made the decision to come over, as is seen in a story told by the uncle of the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur, in which he castigates his nephew for not yet having decided to return to Algeria:

(139) ‘What were you waiting for all those years?’, he asked, tilting his head in disdain. ‘What were you doing?’ He always doubled his questions that way. And he added: ‘You’ve got lost’. (AB, 109)

Identifying someone in the context of migration also involves assessing that person’s characteristics in terms of whether they are French or Algerian. Fair skin and hair is an argument according to which the daughters of immigrants can be called ‘little French girls’ by their Algerian grandfathers (RZ, 32). In Chap. 4 on family identification, I also discussed various situations in which the behaviour of Algerian girls raised in France is treated as both provocative and French. Differences in appearance or behaviour thus serve to prove the hypothesis that an emigrant

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does or does not continue to display characteristics regarded in a given situation as national, even if, in the case of other people in other situations, the same characteristics do not justify French or Algerian identification. Differences in the ways of life of the two countries are also perceived by French of Algerian origin who visit North Africa, and they also consider what the cause of those differences might be. In such moments, they frequently become convinced of how French their lives are, how deeply connected with France and its society. The self-identification of the children of Algerian emigrants with France no doubt reinforces the need to ring up ‘theirs’ living on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea (in the queues to telephone booths stand ‘French like us’), and to talk with friends and family after they return to France (‘home’), where they speak about life in Algeria not as their own, but as that experienced by other people, albeit close to them:

(140) In the end we went to the post office in town. … I just wanted to ring up Auntie Mariatou [an elderly neighbour and friend of the narrator] to reassure her and get the news about the little ones. So we went to the VIP corner reserved for international calls. … The people crowding into the booths, as French as Foued [the narrator’s brother] and me, held the handset nervously and watched uneasily as the meter counted down. Sometimes, wanting to gain a bit more time, they dug into the bottoms of their pockets to find one last coin—you always say it’s the last… They called their mother, their chums, maybe their girlfriend, trying to speak loud over the noise, and I had the impression that all they wanted to do was speak. (FG, 150–151)



(141) Once I got home [to France], I had to share my experiences with my French friends. I showed them my photos and explained the hardships Algerian women have. To those of my girlfriends who read the newspapers, I tried to paint a nuanced picture of Algeria: it was very important for me not to just regurgitate clichés. I’d noticed some changes since my last visit to the little village where my father was born—I felt very much at ease moving around, and no man pestered me. I walked the streets alone, without a veil, dressed like in the West.

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But in describing my trip, I didn’t omit the difficulties I’d had with some members of my family. You can go out, have fun, but in a country as tormented as Algeria, time sometimes drags on. After a week I already wanted to leave: you couldn’t travel freely around the country because of armed groups and attacks. During our journey across western Algeria my mother and I were afraid the whole time. My family in Algeria had managed to tame their daily fear and, after more than ten years, to live with it [the book was published in 2005]. Fear of going out, fear of staying at home, of being the victim of an attack while going to the market, the mosque or the baths. Feeling insecure, day and night. (RZ, 62)

Algerians in Algeria are aware of both the advantages and disadvantages of living in France. They associate emigrants with those who, on the one hand, undergo a separation, but on the other, earn a lot of money and financially support those who ‘stay put’. In the Algerian village described in Azouz Begag’s text, in every generation one could find someone who perceived France as a place where the living conditions were better: the oldest inhabitants were emigrants (AB, 163), as were the young moving to France, Germany, the United States, Australia, ‘anywhere, everywhere’ (AB, 160). And the family of the narrator of the book by Faïza Guène writes letters to the daughter of Algerian immigrants in France in the conviction that she is doing well there and can afford to send presents to her relatives in Algeria (FG, 115–117). While in Oran, the same narrator feels that the airport staff expect her to pay them additionally for the work they perform:

(142) I wondered what he was saying to himself. Maybe: ‘Those immigrants, a bunch of misers! With all that money they make in France…’. (FG, 140)

The children of Algerians in France, then, are treated as both French and as people with money, and this encourages other Algerians to emigrate. It also inclines people to propose marriages between FAOs and Algerian men and women so that the latter can obtain the right to live in France. In Comment je suis devenue…, when the narrator is visiting Algeria, a woman asks her if she would marry her son because, she argues,

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there’s no future in Algeria for them (RZ, 74). The narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs admits that in Algeria she was on many occasions offered what was for her a huge sum of money to enter into a fictitious marriage (FG, 149).

We Are Not Migrants! Despite such situations as described above, in which French of Algerian origin can identify with the category of immigrant or emigrant, the material under analysis also presents strenuous attempts on their part to break away from that identification. Without giving up their other identifications (family, religious, cultural), the children of Algerian immigrants often stress that they themselves are not immigrants, and therefore they are French. Assertions of this kind have very serious implications. Firstly, they mean that FAOs possess the necessary and adequate characteristics to consider themselves ‘fully’ French, ‘like others’, ‘no different from others’, which entails acceptance of the hypothesis that—as in the Republican definition of the nation—ethnic, religious and cultural characteristics are neutral with respect to Frenchness: they neither support nor negate it. If, therefore, there exists any group that should change its attitude towards Frenchness, it is those who use the Republican definition to cover one that is actually ethnic, religious or cultural. A political definition of Frenchness is also objected to by people who would deny French of ­foreign origin the full right to call themselves French. It is such people who should reintegrate, accepting the values most cherished in the Republican state. Of course, identification with origin, religion or native culture may dominate over identification with France in immigrant families—in such cases the Republican spirit of Frenchness too gives way to communitarianism. Yet what is extremely important in the context of the current discussion on Frenchness is the perception of French of Algerian origin that the Republic is threatened not just by communitarianism within immigrant communities, but also by other groups within French society for whom the most important criterion is not the civil and legal community, but every community of another kind: cultural, religious, regional, etc. If, then, there is talk in the Republic today (as, in fact, there

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was in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) of the need to strengthen integration, that postulate should apply to all the culturally distinct inhabitants of France, to all of its citizens, not just to some of them. It is in this context that the words of the narrator of Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés should be seen, when he objects to the idea of integrating the children of immigrants because they are in no way different in relation to the Republic than other French citizens. The narrator does not hide his embarrassment that many people in France doubt the Frenchness of those French people whose parents were immigrants. He repeats that it is pointless to speak of integration in their case, since they are already integrated into French society.5 His arguments can be summarised in a single sentence: ‘We don’t have to integrate, since we’re French; we’re waiting for you to start treating us as French; we’re neither refugees nor foreigners’. Statements like this attest to the fact that the children of immigrants are aware that their French self-identification is not in line with how they are identified as French by other, non-immigrant members of French society.

(143) And listen how they manipulate that moronic word ‘integration’. How can people be so gauche? Look at what comes out of your ill will. On the one hand you ask us to stop playing the victim (a rapist has an interest in having his victim seen as a liar), but on the other you look for solutions to prevent discrimination and calm us down. Because integration, we can see it clearly, is a camouflaged security strategy. Who do we owe the word ‘integration’

 Such an attitude was expressed by, for example, one of the persons surveyed by Rio (2010, 112): ‘What are you talking about? What language am I speaking to you, and what school did I go to? I’m dressed like you are! … We talk about more or less the same things, watch the same TV programmes, the same films. What’s the difference between us? Just that our parents are Algerian? It’s never been a problem!’ (Amar, aged 31, bachelor’s degree in mathematics, a teacher). A 14-year-­ old-boy in the survey by Sicard responded in a similar tone: ‘They’re asking too much of us! They want us to integrate to the point of giving up practically everything! … They don’t realise that everything you do, going to school, even if it’s compulsory, working… I feel integrated! For no reason other than that on Friday I was going to the mosque and had on a djellaba [a long, woollen, long-sleeved, hooded tunic], they started looking at me strangely… Once I got talking with a woman who said to her husband: “Look at them, they seem to think they’re right at home!” And I told her: “We believe we are at home! This is my home, I’m a French citizen! This is my home, so if you don’t like it, get lost! I’ve been here for a long time and I’m here to stay. If you don’t like it, you’re the one who can get out!”’ (Sicard 2011, 111). 5

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to? Who uses it the most? The Minister of Internal Affairs, Charles Pasqua, then [Jean-­ Pierre] Chevènement, [Édouard] Balladur and [Nicolas] Sarkozy. Just between us: asking us to integrate, when we’ve been here for two or even four generations, is laughing in our face. … You’ve reversed the roles. It’s not for us to do the work. It’s a long time since we wore ourselves out cutting up your old roads with pneumatic drills, putting your railways together with welders or spreading cement for your bathroom tiles. We’re not going to integrate, because the word is repugnant. It sounds as if it’s come from a youth detention centre: because people have certain attributes we’re not entirely pleased with, we have to change those attributes. (AD, 90–92)

(144) We’re not waiting with feigned impatience for you to accept us. Your ‘integration’ is hilarious. A tacky word. We don’t want it. We don’t have to integrate. We won’t integrate. We’re just going to wait until you respond, until you start seeing us like any other person, like any other foreigner or any other French person. We’re not political refugees. If we were, perhaps we’d have some sympathy from you.  … Nor are we foreign brains come over just so you can profit from our skills and know-how. We are not emigrants of the kind you open your arms to: English or Americans passionate about French, that unique language they just ad-o-o-o-re. You could say we are more ‘rooted’. We’re halfway between the defrocked priest and the village idiot. Your image of us is bad. Why is your respect for different types of immigrants tied to the wealth and purchasing power of the inhabitants of the countries they come from? For example: an American or an Englishman as opposed to an Algerian or an Iranian. Our fate in France would thus be determined by the GDP of Algeria and tied to the current weakness of the Arab world as a whole. (AD, 92–93)

Who, then, is to learn Republican values, and from whom? The answer provided by the narrator of Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés is clear in this respect, and is expressed in two passages. Firstly, he states that those who consider themselves ‘really’ French (Français de souche) often deny the binding nature of such slogans as ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. For

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him, this negation of the most important values of the French Republic is manifested in how immigrants and their children are treated:

(145) We don’t have a real place in this country. Nor do our parents. For them, you reserved places like storerooms, vestibules, utility rooms and attics. Do you know what happens to an infant that receives no caresses? It dies or grows abnormally. To give someone a place, a real place, means to love them. It means to let them exist. Indirectly, we pay for your errors, your blunders, your policy. … So have you forgotten your ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ from the Age of Enlightenment? … Would you like to have done with the Republic? 1789–1981: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (in parentheses, the period of colonial France in the world: 1803–1962). France remakes its Constitution and revises the Republican motto. Basically, to be in better accord with itself, it does away with the word ‘Equality’, retaining only ‘Liberty’ and ‘Fraternity’. 1981–2005: Liberty, Fraternity. Hmmm? That’s a bit lame. Suppose we keep ‘Liberty’, add ‘Equality’ and get rid of ‘Fraternity’. Hmmm? Not sure. France should get rid of two words and keep just one. But which one to choose? Abracadabra-abracadabra-abracadabra: Liberty. 2005: Liberty. That goes much better with this France, the word ‘Liberty’. ‘Equality’ and ‘Fraternity’ were really over the top. … End of 2005: a municipality bans a rave party. A confrontation between the forces of law and order and French-French youth. The youngsters went ballistic. They were filled with hate. Hate, because they weren’t given a bit of space, not even a little piece of land. Draft legislation: the government of France shall decide to remove the last word, ‘Liberty’, from the Republican motto. Result: France removes the last word from the Republican motto. 2006: end of the Republic. 2007–2012: monarchy? (AD, 112–116)

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The second hypothesis put forward by the narrator in the same book is just as clear. It presents the children of immigrants as the real depositaries of French values and as perhaps the only and last adherents to them. Paradoxically, then, the narrator argues, those in the Republic who are among the most marginalised are those who have the right to put Republican mottos on their banners and invoke them when they feel that not all their rights are being respected. In this way, the narrator says, the children of immigrants are a priceless community for the Republic, from whom one can learn what contemporary Frenchness should be founded upon. For this to happen, though, that community must first be recognised—in accordance with the spirit of the Republic—as being similar to other members of French society:

(146) We send your weaknesses back to you, and as long as you don’t want to see how much contempt, bigotry and egoism you harbour within you, we will continue to remind you about it. We are your reflection, a record of your degradation and the antidote for your illness. We are sure that you will see yourselves in us. You will end up recognising yourselves. For we are not so different. Agreed, there are different customs—but religion? All the monotheistic religions preach the same ideological, political, abusive, megalomaniac discourse.  … So you see, we’re not too distant from each other. (AD, 119)

Here, the narrator defends the right of Algerian families to preserve their cultural and religious differences. He says that, in French society, ‘we are not so different’. Thus understood, Republicanism would mean— metaphorically—a legal umbrella providing shelter to every person who wants to be French and who, without denying who he or she is, acknowledges Republican values. Republicanism would also be expressed in all of the French accepting each other’s mutual differences. This also applies to the descendants of immigrants, says Alain Finkielkraut (2013). In reality, what is expressed here amounts to a demand to depart from the policy of assimilation to the policy known from other countries that have embraced multiculturalism. In contrast to the message disseminated by many media stereotypes, the children of immigrants not only want to integrate, but

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have in fact already done so—provided that integration does not mean the negation of everything that binds them to the country of origin of their parents. Let us note here that the author is not speaking about assimilation, but integration, which makes it possible for various cultural elements to be connected: ‘the French love the word “integration”, for it gives them the impression that they can domesticate us. But did you know that we’re not wild animals?’ (AD, 91). If it is acknowledged that, like many other children of immigrants, FAOs are already integrated with French society, it is because their fundamental, sole national self-­ identification is French identification:

(147) But go where? To Algeria? Why exactly Algeria? Several decades later, the great majority of us are still here [in France], even if several thousand of us did accept the generous financial offer you made between 1977 and 1981 to encourage us to re-cross the Mediterranean. It’s true, we would like that Algeria to rise from the ashes. We are sorry we weren’t there for it. … That we didn’t take part in building it up, rebuilding it. Do you know why we weren’t there? Because we’re French. (AD, 83–84)

Others, however, who would also invoke the Republican definition of Frenchness, would see integration in terms of assimilation: immigrants and their children should accept the culture of the country in which they have settled and should, in a certain way, distance themselves from their cultural roots. In this understanding, in order to lose immigrant status, a ‘person between’ must not only belong to a certain political community, but also to a community associated therewith through national ideology, whose members have similar cultural characteristics. In such an interpretation, immigrants and their children should behave as if their own culture and family history were the culture and history of people living in France for generations. Assimilation means that ethnic origin (but not any ethnic origin, only that which is considered foreign— which brings us closer to a cultural, ethnic definition of the nation) is an issue that is not discussed in the Republic and Republican schools. Immigrants, and certainly their children, become part of a single political community in which setting cultural distinctiveness over the fact of

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belonging to a single political organism is not welcome. This is the reality with which immigrants wishing to live in France must somehow contend. It is also described in the collected material:

(148) But how can these words [from Kabylian tradition] be conveyed? If you had lived in your country, in a community without books, I don’t doubt that you would have managed to hone your skills and pass on to us what seemed to you still necessary to be transmitted. Speech, in all its potential. But in France, it’s against French society and its convictions about your children that you didn’t want to lose. (ZR, 41)

For some French of Algerian origin, it is difficult to accept a model of integration that is not conducive to the expression of their indigenous culture. One example of this attitude is the statement by the narrator of Ahmed Djouder’s book cited earlier, where he says that the postulate of integration with French society must not mean the need to renounce many important elements of family identity connected with the country of origin. Another example is undoubtedly given by the narrator of the book by Mehdi Charef, who was born in Algeria and remembers colonial times. For him, the mechanism of assimilating ‘autochthons’ in Algeria before 1962 was very similar to and equally unjust as the modern policy of assimilation directed towards Algerian immigrants who arrived in France after 1962:

(149) At school in Algeria, the colonisers taught us the history of our country starting with the time they invaded it, as if they were there before us. How disdainfully they ignored our ancestors! In France, in the grey schools of the suburbs, they never thought to ask us where we came from. They wanted me to learn their history, but they denied mine. … Denying the history of my people like that didn’t much help me take a positive view of things or spread my wings. Just think that my father asked us to come join him in a place where we were constantly ignored!. (MC, 189)

The narrator of the text by Zahia Rahmani, the daughter of harkis, takes on a similar, critical tone. In her view, the need to remember one’s

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origin and the uprootedness of one’s parents in French culture engenders in her, and in children like her, the feeling that she has no past, or a past that is without value or use:

(150) In France, we emerge from a void, from a place without genealogy, and being accepted comes at the price of denying oneself. On the outside, I have no past. No history. No parents. My father and mother mean nothing. They’re good for nothing. They’re alive, they breathe, but have no qualities. Their presence is counted only in terms of what they cost society. They have no education! That’s what was inflicted on me as a child, and I swallowed it. Ashamed of them. They have nothing to offer. … That silence. I’m banished. I live in a French village that is receiving foreigners for the first time. It’s a first for my school as well. (ZR, 35–36)

Yet, in the collected material, one can also find positive evaluations of assimilating the Republican spirit and of the requirement to renounce not only one’s identification with the category of migrants, but also to think about oneself mainly in terms of Frenchness, defined primarily as citizenship. Acceptance of such an attitude does not require a renunciation of one’s identification with the country of origin in different situations. It only requires that the most important identification made, especially when encountering other citizens who do not belong to our indigenous community, is a French identification resulting from affiliation with a single nation politically defined. In this understanding, ethnocultural identification (relating to the region or country in which one’s parents were born) should not overshadow French identification, whether in schools or public places or even in daily life, far from state authorities. By accepting such an attitude, the narrator of Du rêve pour les oufs treats one’s origin, and citizenship as well, as questions she does not raise with people she meets for the first time and about which she does not like to be asked—because she does not yet have French citizenship, though when she says ‘our country’ she is thinking of France (FG, 57):

(151) For someone named Jack, I found his accent a bit Algerian around the edges. But I would never ask him where he came

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from, even if I become a regular at this café, because that’s something you don’t ask. Me, for example, I don’t like it when anybody asks about it, so I don’t put such questions first. (FG, 133)

For many members of the second generation of immigrants—of various provenance, not only Maghrebis—the political community and holding citizenship are seen as a guarantee of individual security and freedom. It is in this context that we should read the statement by a French Jew that appears in one of the books, where he emphasises the importance of political integration:

(152) ‘And you Arabs [les beurs], you’re the first victims of this manipulation. You have to understand that identity is not just a legacy, but also a creation. They set the trap of communitarianism for you and you walk right into it. Blindly’. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘They proclaim the right to differences, in order to enshrine differences in rights better—do you get it? Look, you struggle to find a job because the Republic produces discrimination and refuses to admit it. Everything in our society depends on how people perceive you. The media make you out to be shit, and nobody objects, you have no power. … I’ll tell you one thing: just be glad you’re French. In 1940 a lot of Jews fled from Europe to America, but today where would you go? Dubai? Think about it, the Arabs of the Middle East don’t give a damn about Maghrebis, and much less about those living in French suburbs’. (MB, 176)

The attitude expressed in this passage is not isolated, as there are many situations in the 12 texts in which French of Algerian origin totally reject (and not only in certain circumstances, e.g. in public places) the perception of themselves and other people in ethnocultural or religious categories. They often give examples of when people’s common ancestry was not enough to guarantee honest conduct between them (MC, 202; AB, 117) or when relationships between people were dominated by the ­negative stereotypes functioning within a given community, for example, the Arab community (RZ, 209). This issue is given particular attention by the narrator of Azouz Begag’s book. While in Algeria, he states, for

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example, that he has not had anything in common with his extended family for a long time, which allows him to admit: ‘I didn’t want to be a member of any family any more’ (AB, 111). Primarily, though, the narrator of the story is inclined by his own experience to stop looking at others in terms of real (family) or supposed (ethnic community) kinship. After his wife betrays him with a friend of his to whom he had been devoted and whom he had trusted unconditionally (this was a Palestinian called Marawan whom he knew from his time in the United States), what counts for him is not an ethnic community but that someone is a person of a particular sex who, as such, is capable of anything, regardless of other factors that might suggest he should be seen as a ‘brother’ or ‘friend’. What the narrator has to say on this subject reveals his conviction that common ethnic origins do not guarantee the existence of a real community:

(153) Worse still, one could even detect a third person [apart from the narrator’s wife and her lover], the one who fantasised over the sentiment of fraternity and solidarity among Arabs and Muslims the world over, and who had blinded himself to the point of not being able to see the beast in man which assuaged its squalid human needs. (AB, 57)



(154) Don’t talk to me about solidarity among brothers, about Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ben Bella, Ben Tata, Ben Titi, Fathi or Fatah. To hell with anybody who tries that stuff about having the same origins as me. I don’t have any origins anymore. Better still: I’m the only one of my kind. An original. I redid my way of seeing. In my new eyes, there are no more Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, French, Algerians or Moroccans. From now on, the only kind of person I recognise is the kind with balls. He’s a destroyer. His penis is the umbilical cord that connects him to the universe. End of story. (AB, 107)

One’s attitude towards migration, then, can have a significant impact on one’s own or other people’s national, state or ethnocultural identification.

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Summary In this chapter, I have examined situations in which French of Algerian origin speak in the context of migration. I have distinguished four ways of understanding the relationship between the Frenchness and Algerianness of FAOs and their affiliation to the category of immigrants. The first three assume the inheritability of migrant status, while the fourth postulates that the children of immigrants are immigrants no longer. Let us start with the relationship in which the identification of French people of Algerian origin with migrants is treated as an (additional) argument that they have French characteristics (Fig.  5.1). If we assume in principle that certain social statuses are inherited, and that migrants have two homelands—one by birth and one by choice—then the children of ‘people in movement’ also have the right to identify themselves with two countries, where the relationship between those two identifications may be completely neutral. Figure 5.1 depicts situations in which, apart from Algerian identification, the focus is on the justification migration provides in favour of Frenchness. Migrants are drawn primarily by a certain idealised image of France, and by the benefits associated with working and living there [98, 102, 103, 104]. This balance sheet speaks in favour of living within French society whenever FAOs consider whether the time has come to return to Algeria. Often, it is a case not only of their own future, but of that of their children, for whom immigrants want to provide the best possible conditions for development. Even if they are offered a large sum of money to leave France with their whole family, they choose to stay. Living among the French is, therefore, a choice, though of course various push and pull factors come into play. As the years they live in France roll on, immigrants grow closer to French society, gradually becoming a part of it, while often their children cannot imagine living anywhere else. Immigrants work—frequently under difficult conditions—not only in France but also for France, increasing its wealth and prosperity [100, 101]. These are issues to which their children can refer when justifying their own affiliation with French society and their position as integrated parts of it, for two generations now, from an economic and social perspective.

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identification with migration of parents

Fig. 5.1  Inheritability of migrant status as justification for French identification identification with migration of parents

Situations in which identification with the migration of parents of French of Algerian origin is equivalent to French identification, where that identification is neutral in those situations in respect of Algerianness

Identifying with the category of migrants, though, may be deemed an argument against someone’s identification with both their country of origin (here Algeria, due to acquired French characteristics) and the recipient country (here France, due to Algerian characteristics). Such situations are described in Fig. 5.2 (which refers to identification with immigrants in France as well as to identification with emigrants in Algeria).

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identification with migration of parents

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identification with immigrants

identification with emigrants

Fig. 5.2  Identification with the category of immigrants or emigrants in light of French and Algerian identification identification with migration of parents

Situations where identification of oneself or others as a migrant hinders identification with the French, and the feeling that the person identified is at home in France

identification with immigrants

Situations where persons identified as migrants (immigrants) are perceived simultaneously as excluded from the category of French and as belonging to another category of nationality

identification with emigrants

Situations where identification with migrants (emigrants) is conducive to perceiving French characteristics in the person identified and to judging that they lack certain Algerian characteristics

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Firstly, children of immigrants might not identify with the French when they treat their stay in the Hexagon as temporary, sharing with their parents the ‘illusion of return’ well known to migrants [105], dreaming of suddenly living in that still-empty house in Algeria [106], experiencing their stay in France as an exile, and seeing migration as the cause of their ‘double absence’, i.e. the inability to feel at home in either country [107]. Among all French people of Algerian origin, this way of identifying oneself with the category of migrants is felt most closely, at least during the first period of socialisation in France, by those who were born in Algeria and for whom Algeria provides memories important to their identity [108]. The majority of the children of Algerian immigrants do not, however, share their parents’ dreams of returning, or experience their presence in France as exile. Further, it often happens that, sooner or later, with greater or lesser awareness, parents themselves come to realise that their lives are now anchored in France [109, 110], and that migration, transition from one society to another, no longer concerns them. Certainly, cases do occur where the experience of migration makes it difficult for people to identify with the recipient country, and for that reason they are worthy of being noted (field FR- in Fig. 5.2). Much more frequent, though, and having a much greater impact, are those cases where FAOs experience alienation not because they expect to return at any moment to Algeria, but because their origins are treated by many French citizens as an obstacle to identifying them as French (field ALG+/FR- in Fig. 5.2). This has to do with situations where an identification with migrants (inherited by FAOs)—a reminder that the forebears of a given person were born outside France—is used as an argument against their French identification. For we know that, not only in France, the presence of immigrants is not always seen as something positive by the recipient society. Identifying someone as an immigrant then means treating them as an alien, a foreigner, as someone who must patiently stand in line to join the national community [111]. The position of FAOs is even more uncomfortable in that, for many people in France, identifying someone as an immigrant means identifying them with people who threaten the social order, or with thieves, terrorists, etc. [111]. In the texts, the problem often arises of the unwelcoming attitude of a large part of society towards French people of foreign origin [112], or of particular

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attention being drawn to them, of their being treated differently [119]. People’s origins are treated as an obstacle to French identification even when only one of their parents was not born French [112, 113]. In one text we read that the French are unable to love what is foreign [113], while in another that, in order to break free of immigrant status and become French, one must take up an anti-immigrant stance towards all newcomers [114]. This lack of willingness to include someone in the French collective may result from their possessing certain physical traits that do not correspond with what, according to someone’s definition, constitutes a ‘typical’ French person. In the texts analysed, we read that those who primarily lack such an appearance are those whose skin is not white [115, 117, 118, 122]. FAOs whose facial features and appearance resemble those of their Algerian or Arab parents or grandparents are considered to be non-French [116]. A problem in identifying the children of immigrants as French is the negative attitude some people have towards Arabs and Arab characteristics [122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127]. Today, manifestations of that attitude may be interpreted as a legacy of the Algerian War that defined French identification as being in conflict with Algerian and Arab identification [120, 121]. It is possible to get round that definition to a certain extent and earn a chance of being included in the category of French by using terms that have more positive connotations in French society, such as Kabyle (a Berber group considered by the French authorities during the colonial period as easier to assimilate than the Arab peoples) or Beur and Beurette (a common name for the children of Maghreb immigrants, associated with suburban residents of Maghreb origin) [125, 126]. Another argument raised against French identification is that of religious identification—being raised as a Muslim or practising Islam [129]; it is pointed out that identifying someone as an Arab and as a Muslim often go together [128]. Defining Frenchness as the characteristics of people who have lived in France for many generations [130], connected with a French culture conceived of within national ideology and the Christian religion (but upholding the principle of secularism), rules out all people identified as immigrants (or the children of immigrants), Arabs, or Muslims (and their children). This puts Frenchness and Algerianness in conflict with one other since, as we know, Algerian identification is closely related to Arab and Muslim identification. The

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co-existence of such a definition (alongside others) of the relationship between Frenchness and Algerianness, based on nationality being mainly understood as the possession of cultural characteristics, hinders the identification of FAOs and their self-identification with the French [131]. The feeling of being ‘legally’ French, and uncertainty over whether one will be treated as French, are intensified by the need for some FAOs to apply for French citizenship at the age of 18, and by situations where they must show an Algerian identity card rather than a French one [132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137]. Having citizenship of a certain state favours identification with the nation through which that state is personified, yet it need not entail a break with one’s identification with the country of origin, and need not be a sufficient argument for being identified (or identifying oneself ) with the recipient country. The third type of situation involving the ‘inheritability’ of migrant status by FAOs is when such people are identified by Algerian communities in Algeria and France as emigrants, which may relate to their French, and not their Algerian, identification (field FR+/ALG- in Fig. 5.2). When migrants stay abroad for an extended time, this may be understood in their country of origin (not only Algeria) as a social and cultural rejection of the family and national community from which they emerged. Emigrants, then, and—to an even greater degree—their children, are perceived as people who have fewer characteristics that permit them to be identified as, for example, Algerians than those who remained behind. For first-generation emigrants, this usually does not concern ­characteristics thought to be necessary and sufficient (being born in Algeria, holding Algerian citizenship and an Algerian passport, having characteristics considered Algerian, etc.), but these may be lacking in the second generation (for having certain characteristics, the children of emigrants are still included in the category of Algerian, but under other definitions, such as legal or culturally restrictive ones, they may be excluded). In the texts, there are scenes in which the absence of the FAOs from Algeria is treated more as their own decision than as that of their parents [138, 139]. In Algeria, characteristics that would not necessarily be considered French outside the context of emigration are interpreted as such where they concern the children of emigrants. In this way, having white skin or acting in a manner that diverges from traditional social mores are treated as justify-

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ing an FAO’s Frenchness (e.g. RZ, 32). (In Chap. 4, it is also evident that the situation of migration favours interpreting certain characteristics that are neutral outside that context as national or ethnocultural). When they travel to Algeria for a family funeral or on vacation, French people of Algerian origin also accept being identified as emigrants and, at the same time—though they may not reveal this to their Algerian family—as French [140, 141]. This is caused by noticeable cultural differences and by their conviction, not shared by their relatives in Algeria, that their present and future life is connected with France. This does not affect family ties, but it does divide family members into Algerian and French. The latter, since they live in better conditions, are expected to help their relatives in Algeria financially, as first-generation emigrants usually do, and even to contribute to the broader local community in Algeria [142]. Apart from cultural differences, the economic and political conditions of life in the two countries also play an important role; on the one hand, they remind French of Algerian origin of the migration of their parents, and on the other, they provide further arguments in favour of French identification. What happens, though, when descendants of Algerians in France do not identify themselves as migrants? In this chapter I have also discussed situations where a reluctance to such an identification is exhibited (Fig.  5.3). As I have written previously, for various reasons FAOs are identified with migrants, and this is often an external identification which they must often address somehow and which they also often accept. If French people of Algerian origin reject being defined as immigrants, they often do so because they realise that such an identification can be used in France to justify the view that they are not fully French. When the children of Algerians say: ‘We’re not immigrants, we’re French’, they are referring to the republican definition of the French nation, under which the cultural or religious affiliation deriving from a person’s origins is neutral in respect of Frenchness. In this context, the collected material is a reminder of the republican motto ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, but where the meaning is renounced by the Français de souche [145] yet faithfully upheld by the French of Algerian origin [146]. This does not mean that FAOs renounce the culture or religion of their parents; often, the opposite is true. But it does mean that they observe discussions on the

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we are not migrants

Fig. 5.3  Rejection of identification with migrants as evidence of French identification we are not migrants

Situations in which identification with the migration of parents of French of Algerian origin is equivalent to French identification, where that identification is neutral in those situations in respect of Algerianness

subject of their own Frenchness with embarrassment since, not being immigrants but French citizens born in France or at least having grown up there, they can’t imagine identifying with any other nation or state. In the situations analysed here, if the suggestion of a ‘return’ to Algeria is made, they often ask: ‘But  … why Algeria, exactly?’ [147], explaining that they have no second homeland (which cannot be said of, for example, their parents, the first generation of emigrants), though because of their

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family ties they do hope that Algeria will develop and become a prosperous country. If French people of Algerian origin emphasise their Frenchness and bid goodbye to their immigrant identification, this also shows that they cannot understand how they could possibly integrate more with other French people [143, 144]. Apart from republicanism thus understood, where there is room for different cultures and religions as long as these do not get in the way of identifying with France and the French, other situations appear in the material where republicanism also means assimilation, understood as a far-reaching renouncement of the culture inherited from one’s parents and the acceptance of certain models in the national ideology connected with French culture. This second understanding of Frenchness and the republican idea, which also distances FAOs from identifying themselves as migrants, is mentioned by them in the material collected [148], though some take quite a negative view of it [149, 150]. Those, however, who share such a view argue that accepting French identification as the most important one (at least, more important than identifying with some kind of ethnocultural or religious group) means ceasing to think about oneself and other French people in terms of their origins, including in private life [151]. So we find statements on the ‘trap of communitarianism’ [152], or in which perceiving other people through the prism of their ethnocultural affiliations [153], including as Arabs or Muslims, is rejected completely [154].

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Guène, F. (FG) (2010[2006]). Du rêve pour les oufs. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Imache, T. (TI) (2001[2000]). Presque un frère. Conte du temps présent. Roman. Arles: Actes Sud (Babel). Kalouaz, A. (AK) (2009). Avec tes mains. Rodez: Rouergue (La Brune). Rahmani, Z. (ZR) (2008[2006]). France, récit d’une enfance. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Sedira, S. (SS) (2013). L’odeur des planches. Arles: Rouergue. Zitouni, R. (RZ) (2005). Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise. Paris: Hachette Littératures.

References European Opinion Research Group (EEIG). (2004). Citizenship and sense of belonging. European Union public opinion on issues relating to citizenship and sense of belonging. Brussels: European Commission. Finkielkraut, A. (2013). L’identité malheureuse. Paris: Éditions Stock. Perrin, E. (2008). Jeunes Maghrébins de France. La place refusée. Paris: L’Harmattan (Logiques Sociales). Rio, F. (2010). Les tribulations identitaires de Franco-Algériens. Représentations et enjeux des nationalités française et algérienne. Codes, laïcité, éducation, football. Paris, L’Harmattan. Sayad, A. (1999). La double absence. Des illusions de l’émigré aux souffrances de l’immigré. Paris: Seuil (Liber). Sicard, F. (2011). Enfants issus de l’immigration maghrébine. Grandir en France. Paris: L’Harmattan (Logiques Sociales). Simon, P. (2012). French National Identity and Integration. Who belongs to the National Community. Washington: Migration Policy Institute. Zehraoui, A. (Ed.) (1999). Familles d’origine algérienne en France. Étude sociologique des processus d’intégration. Paris: CIEMI-L’Harmattan.

6 Identification with the Suburbs

The French Suburbs In the period in which apartment complexes were being built in the suburbs, they were perceived by many inhabitants of France as the fulfilment of their dream of having a spacious apartment and good living conditions in a place designed according to the latest trends in urban planning. Such settlements were attractive to members of various occupations, and often had features superior to those found in tenements in city centres. Over time, though, it turned out that locating new settlements away from the centre was a problem—in this case, a suburb should be understood as an estate quite a distance from the city, not as one located just at its outskirts and forming part of a single urban organism. Before the upper echelons of French society changed their opinion about complexes built in accordance with the assumptions of Le Corbusier, such areas were quite highly diversified in terms of class, and evoked positive associations (Hatzfeld 2014; cf. Fig. 6.1). Given the opportunity, Algerian immigrants gladly moved into such suburbs with their families, and were very willing to allocate appropriate

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resources to be able to do so.1 In comparison with places like the bidonvilles (complexes consisting of barracks of a very low standard of hygiene, often without running water or electricity) in which immigrants (bachelors or married men whose families were still in Algeria) usually settled, these—initially—modern complexes in the suburbs seemed to offer comfortable, well-designed flats. Moreover, they were places in which the French themselves gladly lived, which gave the impression of a social advance, of having broken away from spatial and social isolation, and which looked promising for the future, in which one could feel at home in France, not like a foreigner. The narrator of À bras-le-cœur. Roman remembers the bidonvilles of the first period of his life in France as dehumanised spaces that deprived their inhabitants of dignity, that were completely separated from the normal course of life in France, and where the living conditions were much worse than those in Algerian villages (MC, 200–206; similarly: SS, 39–42 and NB, 105). From the same period, the narrator also remembers the bidonvilles as places inhabited by immigrants, while suburban apartment complexes constituted ‘French’ space (MC, 235). Moving into a HLM (rent-controlled housing), then, was something to celebrate for immigrant families, a big step on the way to social advancement. At least, this is how the narrator of L’odeur des planches remembers it; earlier, her mother and father had stayed in a dilapidated hotel inhabited by immigrant workers.

(155) The day we moved was like a holiday. The streets were bathed in sunlight, and the fragrance of lily-of-the-valley caressed our nostrils. Loaded up like a shop warehouse, we took the train from Marseille-­ Saint-­ Charles station towards La Ciotat, where my father had finally got an HLM. …

 Nevertheless—in contrast to what is often communicated in the media—a clear majority of the descendants of immigrants from various countries (second generation) live outside neighbourhoods stricken with high unemployment and other social problems (zones urbaines sensibles). As many as 71 per cent of working-class people, 83 per cent of middle- and upper-class people and 81 per cent of other social classes (people working in trades, commerce or running their own businesses) live in neighbourhoods not covered by special recovery programmes, though it is true that the children of immigrants are over-represented in ‘difficult’ neighbourhoods (Collet and Santelli 2012, 327). 1

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‘Let’s go’, my father suggested, impatient to show us the flat … . Inside everything was clean, the walls white. Two bedrooms. In each, a mattress on the floor. In the big living room, a Formica table and three Formica chairs. In the kitchen, a gas cooker connected to a Batugaz bottle, some pots and pans and cutlery in a little white cupboard no higher than a stool. Without having told us, my father had bought a bit of furniture and had it delivered. I took off my shoes; the floor was cold. My mother took off hers too, and grimaced. ‘They’re floor tiles,’ my father clarified, ‘it’s modern construction’. … In the evening, my father suggested we eat dinner on the balcony. We laid out a blanket, as for a picnic. My mother prepared the meal. To make her happy, I lit a candle. I still had a few from our old life. At the hotel, that’s all we knew—there were so many power failures the lights went out practically every day, and every time people were calling out in the dark. While we ate, the candle flame danced, casting horrible shadows across our faces. My mother’s cheeks became gradually flushed; she seemed to come back to life, as if after a long illness. My father, who hadn’t taken his eyes off her since the morning, began to laugh for no apparent reason; the pink colour in her cheeks was a harbinger of peaceful days to come. (SS, 53–55)

After these much desired and dreamed of moves, many years passed in which immigrant and French families lived in tranquillity. Before the suburbs were labelled as places that were dangerous—and spatially and socially remote—life there was acceptable to their inhabitants—normal in the sense that the fact that one lived there, and not somewhere else, was not the biggest distinguishing factor. Many of the recollections gathered in the book Presque un frère. Conte du temps présent. Roman concern such a life. And other texts, as well—in passages describing both the past and the present—attest to the fact that the suburbs are an ordinary French space in which parents, including immigrants, take care to bring their children up properly, striving to instil in them values that are important to social co-existence (e.g. NB, 22–25). For most children of Algerian immigrants, the suburban apartment complex is treated as a place that is close, familial, domestic. It is a place where people speak French. They

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also accept cultures and origins that are not French, for the suburbs are occupied by French families, mixed families (e.g. as depicted in the books of Tassadit Imache or Karim Amellal) and those of foreign origin; in their opinion, one cannot always experience such acceptance in the centres of cities. Another specific characteristic of the suburbs is that particular values that are not in conflict with Republican values are especially evident there. These include honour (KA, 60), respect (KA, 87; KA 89), keeping one’s word and being ready to bear the consequences of not doing so (KA, 62–67). In the 1980s, when voices were raised in the political debate criticising the presence of immigrant families in France, public attention began to be directed towards the suburbs as well. The sons and daughters of immigrants living there pick up on this stigma, but react to it—unsurprisingly—in the language of all groups belonging to a given society but for certain reasons excluded from it. Their reaction shows that the suburbs are a space dominated not by the culture of a particular cultural minority (e.g. Arabs) but by French and Western culture. The young inhabitants of the suburbs take their inspiration from Western models, dress in Western clothes, and listen to Tupac and other rappers from the USA (e.g. KA, 15). In the fight for their place in society—of which they consider themselves an integral part—they are inspired not by figures known from anti-­ imperialist resistance, but by people who have fought for human rights in America, such as James Brown, Barry White, and Martin Luther King. Just as those men considered themselves Americans, the children of immigrants underline their Frenchness and—simultaneously—the social stigma resulting from differences over which they have no control. They experience alienation, but at the same time know that that alienation results from their place ascribed to them by many French people, and that, if society’s perceptions of the immigrant inhabitants of the ‘concrete’ suburbs changed, they could feel at home in France:

(156) We were installed and abandoned in that magma of concrete. But from then on, James Brown and Barry White were part of the family. They lived with us, night and day. If everyone could vote, they would have been elected president and prime minister of the Republic of Love [République du “kif ”]. Unanimously. Out with

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rock ‘n’ roll and the Elvis pompadour. Only shaggy curls had the right to exist. Some people were even sure the Arabs invented funk just after mathematics. But I never heard Uncle James Brown singing Sex Machine in Arabic. … Despite the difficulties of daily life, we were confident about the future. We were all right in our childish world. In my room, I put on I’m Black and I’m Proud over and over again. (MB, 53)

(157) In the lyrics of Public Enemy [an American hip-hop group founded in 1982 that dealt with Afro-American issues], we heard the rage, without really understanding the words. There was something magical in the movement. For the first time, a culture was developing thanks to people who looked like us. In 1984, we all felt like cousins of black Americans. I was thirteen, and growing fast. Soon I would be visible. My buddies and I were already marching to a different drummer. (MB, 81)



(158) It hurts to swim in concrete, but me and concrete are old friends. … I spent my whole life on the bench, using the concrete to pass the time. My whole life. As a loser, a sharpster, a sheitan [Arabic ‘devil’], a shitty bastard. I’ve got trouble in my veins, poison in my flesh and excrement everywhere else, no doubt about it. … Vermin lay their eggs in my guts, like in the movie Alien. That’s me, the Alien of France, here I am, somewhere at the bottom of a hole. I freak old ladies out, but I live here too. I’m not an extraterrestrial. It’s this country that gave birth to me. (KA, 11)

In this context, it is also worth citing the words of the daughter of a harki, the narrator of France, récit d’une enfance. Though she was raised at first in a camp for harki families, and later lived in the countryside, she describes herself as someone connected with the suburbs. She also emphasises that living in a typically French area along with French people does not protect her from feeling alien in what she considers her own country. Her foreignness is determined by other factors, such as her origins and her low social position resulting from her status as an immigrant:

(159) I read Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Caldwell, Melville, Faulkner and Williams. … At the time, I was looking for a refuge

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from the disgrace wished upon me by the society that condemned me and the father who awaited my extinction. … Richard Wright. His was the first book I chose. I picked it up. … It was Black Boy. Everything about the boy was like me. Now I know that I was strongly disposed to look for such resemblances in American literature. But what was it that kindled such empathy in me? This literature that told me: ‘Look, that being is a stranger in his own country’. It told me about the acculturated white man, his religion and his lies, and about the damned negro, his misery, his poverty and his voice. (ZR, 58–59)

A growing symbol of the conflict between the suburbs and the city centre in this understanding is the conflict exacerbated by the French within Frenchness. Of course, inhabitants of the centre sometimes identify the suburbs as non-French, yet the inhabitants of the suburbs themselves reject such arguments (as black citizens of America once did) because all French citizens belong to the same national community. Antagonism between the city centre and the suburbs is a problem within French society, with ethnic and cultural criteria treated as being related to an interpretation that is not able to explain the source of the dispute. In the material collected, this is noticeable in the descriptions of how inhabitants of Paris (known in slang as ‘Panama’) and its surrounding suburbs perceive each other. For the narrator of Chiens de la casse. Roman, a trip to Paris is an escapade beyond the territory he knows well (MB, 39). There are two distinct areas, then, separated from each other and somehow antagonistic towards each other. When, along with a friend, the narrator visits the centre of Paris, he feels alienated because of his social position, but explains his discomfort to himself in terms of the opposition between the categories of wealthy bourgeois from the centre and poor workers from the suburbs (‘Maybe we spoke the same language, but theirs was dripping with success’). Thus, there is an opposition here between social and spatial categories, but not national ones; the conflict is not perceived as national or cultural in the ethnic sense, but as social; the Frenchness of inhabitants of the suburbs is not part of the discussion, just as the Frenchness of the inhabitants of the city centre is not questioned:

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(160) We bought the shoes together on the Champs-Élysées. When the guy took off Sardine’s sneakers, I thought we were going to be thrown out like a couple of bums. There it was, that big toe sticking out of a hole in my friend’s sock. I turned my head not to see the salesman’s reaction. This wasn’t a cheap shoe shop in a mall in Chambourcy [a district in the Île-de-France region]. Sardine had put on his best pair of Burlingtons for the occasion, but that didn’t stop him from looking like a wino at Weston. With a suave voice, the salesman very politely asked to see Sardine’s feet, one after the other, in order to take exact measurements. … ‘It’s kinda cool to be served by a bourgeois in a suit, down on his knees’, Sardine whispered in my ear. … When we left the store, we flashed our Weston bag around a bit before disappearing underground at Charles-de-Gaulle– Étoile station, full of pride at having done our shopping in Paris along the most beautiful street in the world. … We too wanted to seem relaxed and carefree. We too wanted to have superficial smiles and give the impression we had deep feelings. Maybe we spoke the same language, but theirs was dripping with success. I had the impression that La Défense [a financial district bordering Paris] had been built to restore certain inequalities. Here all the railway lines converged. Those from the single-family home suburbs like Versailles or Le Vésinet, and those from the estates of Poissy and Mantes-la-Jolie. Mama’s boys were terrified by the sight of a young black in a puffy jacket sitting on the turnstile at the exit from the metro. (MB, 83–86)

The narrator of Cités à comparaître take a similar view of distant Panama, i.e. Paris. For him as well, the suburbs are a place that is separate from the city centre, though in this case the difference is perceived according to criteria other than the conflict between ‘real’ French and French of immigrant origin. If, then, we look at Panama with envy, it is because it symbolises another social world about which the French of the suburbs can only dream. Awareness of living in a place where the possibility of fulfilling one’s dreams is limited, when there exists so close at hand another world considered the complete opposite of that experienced in the suburbs, engenders negative emotions, as Karim Amellal’s text

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describes: despair, sadness, hopelessness, a lack of faith in the possibility of improving one’s lot, aversion to oneself:

(161) I’ve always been shouting. Before, I’d run down the stairs like a madman, throw open the huge, dilapidated door of the building and run off to the wasteland down at the bottom, behind the estate. There was nothing but fields of beetroots there. I’d choose a path and go to the end of it. I’d never go farther than the end of the path through the beetroots. In the other direction was Panama. And my life ran its course among the beetroots, between the end of the path and the City of Lights. What a fucking bore. At the end was a big uprooted tree. I’d sit there for hours. And shout. Just like that. I went there expressly for that reason. I was all alone and could shout as much as I liked, there was nobody there to judge me. (KA, 37–28)



(162) Outside. I’d like to be outside. Like all the other kids of my age. With their parents. Their family. In a nice place where it smells nice and there are no cockroaches on the walls. … I’d like to be a normal guy. To squeeze a pretty girl and never let her go. … I’d just like to be a man. I’d like to go saunter around in a park with them, Nadia and my mother, take them by the hand and stop from time to time to hug them. Next to me there’d be children playing on toboggans and swings. … Damn, children. I hope they wouldn’t take after me in the head. … I wouldn’t like them to inherit anything from me. (KA, 78–79)

In the second passage above, the narrator clearly sees life outside the suburbs as the norm. If, then, he was in a certain way formed by the suburbs and the people living there, he would prefer his children not to inherit any of his traits. A reader of Karim Amellal’s book cannot suspect that the narrator is thinking of characteristics associated with immigrant origins—the issue here is certainly characteristics denoted by the social space, since the narrator himself does not know who his father is, whereas his mother is French. This construction of the hero of the story—which almost entirely concerns life in the suburbs—may be an indication of something: French of Algerian origin want to discuss the problems they have in connection with the stigma about the suburbs as being rooted in

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Fig. 6.1  Suburban space between estates. The example of Courneuve near Paris. (Photo J. Kubera 2013)

various social mechanisms, and to distance themselves from a discourse that is centred solely around immigrants and their descendants. The antagonism between suburban apartment complexes on the one hand, and city centres and single-family homes on the other, is shown here in isolation from the Frenchness of one area or another. Frenchness does not constitute the context for them, and is not discussed, which may be evidence in favour of the hypothesis that the suburbs-–centre conflict is seen as an internal French conflict, not one between, for example, the French and immigrants.2  Identifying with an apartment estate as a collective space, and not an ethnocultural one, also cropped up in studies by Jean-François Bruneaud and Élisabeth Lisse. In summarising his project, Bruneaud (2005, 292) stated that the district of residence is of no significance for the occurrence of specific ethnic characteristics. On the other hand, Lisse (2011, 180–181) emphasised that, in the statements given by the people she surveyed, identification with an apartment complex—partly resulting from the acquisition of the negative image of such areas and the need to feel that one is united with other residents—has the result that ethnocultural differences between residents are not important. Lisse pointed out that even Roma and residents who are recent immigrants give up their own cultural reference points in favour of identifying with their housing estate. 2

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The suburbs, and city centres with neighbourhoods of detached houses, are simply two completely separate social worlds. In both, identification with the suburbs is associated with people who are poor and socially marginalised, as opposed to people who belong to the bourgeoisie—understood as people who are somehow economically and culturally privileged.3 At the same time, self-identification with the suburbs is marked by a certain ambivalence: on the one hand, it is very strong because it involves an area that is understood, known, treated as one’s own, where one’s family and home are; on the other, it is a source of exclusion and of a reduction of the chance of fulfilling one’s own dreams, since it entails a particular class affiliation. The feeling of belonging to a community of suburban residents, while at the same time perceiving that identification to be uncomfortable, unwanted, may lead to attempts to keep it hidden from people from outside the apartment complex. Examples of this are provided in the story by Tassadit Imache, in which there are several narrators. Two of the protagonists of the book are Sabrina (daughter of Hélène) and Bruno. Their different origins (she is from an Algerian–French family, he from a non-immigrant French family) are not considered at all, being completely neutral to an evaluation of their relationship. What stands as an obstacle to the continuation of their relationship is that they live in completely different places. Bruno is from Paris, while Sabrina grew up in the suburban district of Les Terrains. Sabrina admits to Bruno that she doesn’t like  Lisse (2011, 174–179) shows that the inhabitants of the housing complex she studied perceive themselves, despite economic and cultural differences between them, as a single community that stands in opposition to ‘the big, rich, bourgeois other world up at the top’. Residents identify with the name of their complex, describing themselves as ‘poor’, ‘little ones’, ‘RMI neighbourhood’ [Revenu minimum d’insertion—benefits paid to people in the lowest income bracket]. Collectively disqualified by people from outside the complex, they share the feeling of being part of an undifferentiated mass located on the bottom rung of the social ladder. There is a powerful identification with the territory of the community, which is treated as opposed to both inhabitants of other neighbourhoods and to people of higher economic status. Residents are convinced that they share common characteristics, and many of them value these. Those characteristics include: solidarity, well-developed neighbourly relations, being interested in each other, simplicity (‘We’re not proud’), living for the moment. (Lisse considers these values as close to working-class communities). One of the women who live in the complex spoke about this aspect as follows: ‘It’s true that Ney has the reputation it has, but people here have a lot of solidarity. There are problems with feeding, or with children or what have you, but there are also a lot of people who are always ready to help those in need. That adds something to our neighbourhood—to see people who are in such solidarity. Three-­ quarters of the people in Ney that I know are like that’. 3

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the city (TI, 78) and that when she’s away from the suburbs she feels as though she’s going mad (TI, 115). She realises that she and Bruno represent two different worlds, due to which their love is something that should never have happened. Before breaking up with him, she admits that either one lives in the suburbs and accepts its rules, or one leaves for good (TI, 81–82). For this reason, at the moment of the breakup, Sabrina fears that her relationship with Bruno may have distanced her too much from those close to her in the suburbs:

(163) Then she added quickly: ‘Let’s go to your place’. Her eyes, empty and doubtful, and her soft mouth, from which her voice broke out. ‘I went too far with you. My family won’t want anything more to do with me’. (TI, 140)

Hélène’s eldest daughter, Lydia, also becomes involved with someone from beyond the suburbs, but chooses a different strategy for bridging the differences between her and her fiancé. Though she is five months pregnant, she still hasn’t told him the ‘truth about herself ’. In a discussion with her mother over two occasions,4 she hurts her mother by admitting that she’s ashamed of Les Terrains. So it will not be evident that she was raised in the suburbs, she invents, and will have to invent, herself, her gestures, though this is already becoming a burden. Both women are aware of how people from their neighbourhood are looked down on by people from the outside. While Hélène doesn’t seem to let this bad image bother her, Lydia disparages her family past connected with the suburbs, even though it is also a part of her own history. In the narration told by Hélène, this twopart conversation between mother and daughter runs as follows:

(164) ‘You’ve always done what you wanted’, I put in slackly. ‘I’ve been engaged now for two years. We won’t rush into having children. Maybe we won’t have them at all. We’re not committing

 The story told by Hélène, a French woman who took up with an Algerian immigrant, is different from that told by her daughter. She describes her life in the housing complex in detail, including the ordinary details of daily and family life that constitute both good and worse experiences. She does not treat the suburbs as her daughter does; it is a place like any other, not defined by its contrast with other neighbourhoods or cities. 4

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ourselves to anything. I have a good job. I spent my summer holidays in a country where there’s sun all the year round. I’m lucky. My fiancé’s parents are tolerant people. I have a ton of realistic plans that are moving forward. It’s not impossible that I’ll succeed. … Mum, if you went outside Les Terrains, you’d hear what people from outside say, all those people around me who think so loud. Don’t ask me what they think! What they think nails me to the ground, it destroys me. Now I’m thirty years old and I can’t remember almost anything. There’s this fear that arises, it’s just that I don’t know if it’s mine or theirs. Am I inventing things, or is it them on the outside who are exaggerating? I know you did everything you could for us: you gave us what you earned, without stealing from anyone, or worse. And even him [Lydia’s father and Hélène’s husband, an Algerian immigrant]—you can’t accuse him of that. He sweated from the age of eight in his shitty country, then here for forty-five years, and all that just to miss out on his first pension payment…’. … That was it; she began biting her white lips. ‘Do you want a beer?’ I went to the kitchen. I opened the fridge and stood there for a moment in the cool air. My heart was beating too fast. To think, I almost slapped her. (TI, 51–53)

(165) ‘Mum, he showed me the plans for the house. … I didn’t manage to tell him the truth’. ‘And what would that be, that truth of yours?’, I lashed out, annoyed. … ‘Mum, every time I lie down to sleep, I’m back here with you. In Les Terrains. No matter what happens in my dreams, it happens here. I could live at the other end of the world or in a onestorey house and be happy my whole life. But as soon as I close my eyes, I can’t get away from it’. ‘Everyone dreams about their childhood, it’s normal. Did I bring children into the world who don’t accept what’s normal?’ ‘The nightmare, is it Les Terrains or is it childhood?’ … ‘I’m five months pregnant’. ‘That’s normal’, I fire back. … …

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‘So that means I’ll have to pretend. Invent gestures, attitudes. At some point, wait in front of the school with the others. And there will be birthday snacks, that’s what they do in his circle. There will have to be a conversation with his parents. And what will I find to say? I’ll have to start lying, for the child’s sake. And I’ll have to remember the lie I told the day before and … I won’t be able to hide the truth any more’, she said. … ‘You have your house, and you’re going to have a family’, I managed weakly. Then I couldn’t hold back any longer from telling her what I really thought: ‘You see, dear, tell yourself that next time you dream, there won’t be anything left. No Les Terrains, no childhood, no mother. Everything will be new and clean, and then you’ll be able to go to sleep’. (TI, 106–109)

This social—and not ethnocultural or national—contrast between the suburbs and other spaces about which the heroine of Imache’s story would like to forget is compared in Cités à comparaître. Roman to the difference between heaven and hell. That metaphor depicts just how different, separate and conflicting these two worlds are:

(166) What else could paradise be? When I was a kid I told myself it was back where my parents came from [un bled], where there were no huge blocks scattered at random over the ground. I told myself it was a peaceful place with detached houses and gardens full of flowers. That people smiled when our paths crossed. No RERs [suburban commuter trains], no CRS [police units in charge of riot control]. Just some corner where all the kids play together, and not with real firecrackers, anyway. My paradise changed later on. … A fix helps me to see a fucking paradise that doesn’t exist. And it’s stupid to believe in a paradise that doesn’t exist when there are real people curled up in corners of paradise just two steps away. I’m sure those all snuggled up in their little pieces of paradise, in their nice houses with kids who gobble up sweets together after school, they don’t worry about putting coke up their snouts all the livelong day. Their dope is there all around them, and they wouldn’t risk prison to peddle it. …

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But paradise has nothing to do with it, it’s too far away from the suburbs. We just have the devil smiling at us. We’re in his kingdom … . Our place is the same from cradle to grave: It’s the tip, the dump, the factory of confusion. So you have to deal with it. Scramble out somehow. That’s what scheming was invented for. We’re first-­rate schemers, but only in order to get ahead in this rotten game they’ve stuck us in. (KA, 81–83)

In the material collected, the social situation of inhabitants of the suburbs is referred to not only by the metaphor of hell. In Le marteau pique-­ cœur, the young residents of the apartment block of the narrator’s family admit they are treated like animals, dogs. The narrator compares the building they live in to a raft full of people who have no idea what direction they’re heading in. He describes the place as generating apathy and pathological behaviour, and emphasises that it is not so much created by the people who live there, but itself creates them, and is itself a creation of the forces and mechanisms that govern the modern world:

(167) A building like a huge board. It looks to me like a Medusa raft loaded with thousands of people that has run aground here because they lacked even the basics of navigation. I spent precious years here, too. A total waste. I parked the car in the lot, next to a burnt-out Renault—a casualty of three nights of clashes between those holding up the walls and the police, which had been reported on the news of late. Apparently, too high doses of cement and concrete are harmful to your health. Some young people slumped on the stairs watched me go up. And then pass them by. Without commenting. Around them, the same old view of the embankments. I pressed the intercom, recently put in by the building’s administration … . ‘The door’s open’, said one of the loafers. I pushed on it, and it did open. … ‘Just give it a kick, it’ll open just like that—it’s a security door!’, he added. ‘They take us for dogs here…’. As he threw out that remark, his mouth opened all the way to his left ear to show his disgust at the treatment society meted out to them. (AB, 101–102)

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A similar message is communicated in statements made by the narrators of Chiens de la casse. Roman (MB) and Cités à comparaître. Roman (KA). Both argue that those born and living in suburban housing complexes have no opportunity to make a choice that would change their social position. While residents themselves feel constrained, that their ability to make decisions is limited, they attribute an active role to the area that surrounds them.

(168) I wanted to become an honest taxpayer, and wasn’t capable of earning even a single salary. For every minor experience I have the right to hold my middle finger up high. Now I get why in my neighbourhood those abandoned, angry youngsters who would do anything to drag themselves out of the mud call each other ‘junkyard dogs’ [chiens de la casse]. I have the impression I’m being kept on an invisible leash. I can always bark, but move only within a fixed radius. (MB, 226)



(169) But it’s the estate that gives birth to babies that are junkies, not the other way around. It swallows up everything in its path. Dreams, too. The blocks suck up hope and drown it in their depths. No pity for losers. You’re born inside and bam!—you’re addicted for life. Hey guys! Better face reality with your head down; if you look up there’s never any stars, just damned pigeons that shit in our faces. (KA, 47)

In those passages from the collected material that concern the suburbs, it is often emphasised that the environment determines people’s behaviour and social position. The narrator of Cités à comparaître says that everything depends on where one is born. If it is in a place he calls good (a city centre or detached suburban home), life will probably run its course smoothly; but if it is in a bad place (an apartment complex in the suburbs), there will be continual trouble.

(170) I wasn’t born on the right side of the tracks. For those on the other side, everything is great. Whatever they do, they’re already saved and they have their place by the fire in paradise where God is waiting for them with a big smile on his face. Like on a TV quiz show. God is the host, and behind him the audience … . And even

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if they get the answers to the questions in the game wrong, they still get applause and encouragement from God. For me, there’s no host, just reporters who come to film the shit dropping at 200 an hour from the facades of the big grey towers with their piles of windows and those satellite dishes hung up there like scrap-metal sunflowers. … On this side of the world, the moment you answer one of God’s questions wrong, there’s a demon who comes along and sticks a dagger in your guts. And you’re there, dying, immobile before the emptiness of the world. … The audience just sit there doing sod all, gazing at the blood of those getting lynched right before their eyes. (KA, 136–137)

The grey, concrete environment of the suburban apartment complexes does not so much reflect the emotions of the people living there as those people take on the characteristics of the space. That space restricts them, like an animal’s cage, and makes them dependent on it, like a drug. It is also a space from which residents are convinced—according to Edy and Bruno, the narrators of Presque un frère (TI)—there is no escape, and this deprives them of their dreams of a better future. In this sense, the suburbs, which are present in the gestures and movements of their inhabitants, ‘follow’ them wherever they go—even if they run away to a foreign country such as, say, Italy.5 In this respect, the suburbs provoke certain types of behaviour that are pathological—which of course occur everywhere, but perhaps less frequently in other places. The narrator of Chiens de la casse (MB) speaks in a similar tone. He argues that the legal means of making a living available to inhabitants of the suburbs condemn them to low income and hard, physical work. The only escape from such a dreary—in his opinion—existence is to become involved in alternative, not always lawful forms of earning money.  Residents of the neighbourhood studied by Lisse would agree with this hypothesis (2011, 174–175). They admit that they recognise each other by their language, clothing and behaviour. Being aware, though, of their neighbourhood’s bad reputation, they use various strategies in their contacts with ‘others’ (school, job office, employers, banks, administration, local politicians) in order not to disclose their socio-spatial affiliations. In such situations, they try to wear fashionable clothes, be especially polite, control their behaviour, and speak differently than they do among themselves (using different words and complex sentences). 5

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(171) It’s not the smell of Les Terrains they pick up on [people from outside the suburbs]. It’s enough for them to see you walk. To see how you move your hands. They can hear something harsh or burning in your voice. I decided to go even further away. Why not to Italy? It’s the country of painters, I said to myself, no need to go to the museum! And they immediately took me for an Italian! One night, when I was hanging about, I came across this good woman. A painter who lived in one of those awful districts where there was nothing but blacks and Arabs. … I could watch her working for hours on end in her studio. When she finished something, we’d go to bed. … She’d take down a couple of cans of beer and speak to me about various things. Among them was Les Terrains, and us [inhabitants of the suburbs]. She called us ‘convicts’ or ‘oxen’. She said she knew right away where I was from, but wouldn’t ask anything. One morning we were in bed together. I had no desire to get up. I started thinking about Les Terrains, and my mother. I felt like a bastard, a coward. … I looked at her and said nothing. I was choking with hatred and shame. (TI, 128–129)



(172) That’s what was happening. And nobody to stop it. To take you far from Les Terrains. Not unless you believe in God or extra-­ terrestrials! They [inhabitants of Les Terrains] believe that people don’t dream. They tell people everywhere you can’t dream. That you can only think of one thing: to be able to make a noise like others, to be able at last to buy whatever you see in a shop window. Here, if a guy has no cash, he has to find another way to prove he’s somebody. Just ask them. And girls? They’ll tell you there are two types of girls: those who pretend to have some money and go their own way, and those who will stay in Les Terrains for their whole lives, as long as guys with their pockets stuffed take them out once in a while for a good time, in a nice set of wheels, with music in the background—wriggling at the end of the same leash! (TI, 81–82)



(173) Charlemagne’s school [the Lycée Charlemagne in central Paris] didn’t interest me. I couldn’t imagine myself competing with kids from poor families where the most brilliant had the chance to become a department manager at Carrefour. I was already sure once

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I saw them working: I preferred to be a dunce and get my hands dirty. Take the four hundred blows before becoming breathless. Later I saw myself driving a Peugeot 504 TI or a BMW 520i, like a robber on the run. I was already identifying with the great Mesrine [Jacques Mesrine, one of the most notorious French criminals of the 1960s and ‘70s], whose death at the hands of the forces of law and order had already gained him admission to the pantheon of our icons of rebellion. … Like the insolent Mesrine, I wanted to get away from my glum life. (MB, 30)

Those who, for various reasons, manage to leave the suburbs can easily be judged as having forgotten about their roots, as having ‘gone to the other side’. Such is the case of Sardine, a friend of the narrator of Chiens de la casse. He gladly got hired as a DJ in a disco and supports himself from legal work. But his friends from the neighbourhood remind him that he’s meeting up with ‘bourgeois’ girls and has no time for his parents. One of his friends displays class antagonism and stereotypes about the bourgeoisie:

(174) ‘I say his girlfriends don’t even know what social assistance is. No matter what he’s selling us with his stories about the ladies from the nice neighbourhoods. Still, he’s right. Among them there’s no sexual frustration. They’re super open, the bourgeois. … At their parties, at any moment a girl can come up to you and just announce she’d like to spend some time with you. In fact, it could be her husband who proposes you fuck his wife because he has to get up in the morning for work while she only works part-time and can sleep in late … ’. I’m listening to Kiki delivering his fantastical vision of bourgeois mores, when a single thought starts niggling away at me— that flat TV screen [stolen earlier] that could help me earn the equivalent of the minimum wage [un SMIC]. (MB, 139–140)

In another place we read about Sardine: ‘A year ago he left our profane suburb for the sacred heart of Paris’ (MB, 163). Let this citation stand as a summary of our reflections on the suburbs to this point. In the collected material, the suburbs are considered to be French space, albeit a specific one: condemning people to a feeling of powerlessness, sadness,

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and provoking them to pathological behaviour. Apartment complexes are compared with other spaces, both in city centres and neighbourhoods of detached houses, which on the one hand are seen as favoured by society, and on the other as favouring those who live in them. And while unlawful methods of earning money exist not only in the suburbs (drug dealers live in ‘good neighbourhoods’, too [MB, 183]), it is the apartment complexes that are mainly labelled as areas that are not conducive to human development (profanum), while the centre is their complete opposite (sacrum). Situations also occur where the suburbs and the centre are thought of in this way, but with the suburbs additionally being identified as a space inhabited by (unwanted) immigrants, whereas the centre is less marked by their presence. This subject is examined further below.

Immigrant Suburbs of Apartment Complexes Versus French City Centres and Detached Houses While immigrants and French of foreign origin live in various types of districts in France, the stereotyped view of suburban apartment complexes is that they are particularly marked by the presence of immigrants. This negative image of the suburbs, as discussed above, often serves to explain various social problems. Interestingly, though, in the material collected, the various troubles faced by inhabitants of the suburbs are described from a non-stereotyped perspective: they are caused by different mechanisms that are more complex than the mere presence of people of foreign origin. This does not change the fact, though, that the issue of the presence of immigrants and their families in the suburbs does come up in our texts. In them, suburban apartment complexes are shown as places in which immigrants willingly settle and in which they can co-exist with members of various cultures. Neighbourly relations among different families are described, even including between former Pieds-Noirs and former Français Musulmans d’Algérie. The narrator of À bras-le-cœur. Roman becomes

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friends at school with the son of Spanish immigrants (MC, 224), while the family of the narrator of Le marteau pique-cœur co-exists peacefully with a Jewish family despite differences of opinion on the subject of the Middle East (AB, 105–106). At one point, France is spoken of as an America for the Maghrebis (MC, 197), but it seems that this metaphor could be broadened to include other immigrants groups: Algerians, Italians, Spaniards, Moroccans and Tunisians (SS, 61; AB, 71). Certainly due to the origins of the authors of the texts collected, in their descriptions of the suburbs, the presence of people who speak Arabic is particularly prevalent (KA, 107; TI, 45). The suburbs are associated—not only by politicians and the media, but also by their inhabitants—with Arabs and the Beurs, in other words the children of immigrants of Maghrebi origin born or raised in France:

(175) 1981, that was a good period. Mitterrand was our new president. Two years later, my brother Youssef spoke of nothing but equality. ‘The March of the Beurs, have you heard about it?’ ‘Means nothing to me.’ The more I heard that word, the more I understood that different French people exist. … the children of emigrants became ‘buddies’ that politicians liked to show themselves off with at election gatherings. It was the ‘United Colours of Election’. Whenever there was a march, the Beurs were highly rated … . In my neighbourhood, all the guys would brush their teeth twice a day just for the occasion. Every political party wanted to have its young Arab from the suburbs—not too loud, mind you, just frizzy enough to look legitimate. (MB, 50)

In the material collected there is no lack of descriptions of immigrant Arab families in the suburbs where mutual respect reigns (e.g. KA, 104–105; KA, 107–108). Moreover, apartment complexes are presented as places where social ties among neighbours that extend over generations are born. They involve both first-generation immigrants and their children. In the latter case, the formation of bonds among the young inhabitants of the suburbs largely results from the social and economic experiences

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of the community, determined in part by the fact that they are not of French origin (‘insults like “dirty Arabs” ringing in our ears’):

(176) ‘OK, hang on, here’s my number. And call me one night if you’re in Panama [Paris]. I’ll be really glad to see you again’. I offer him my hand; he grabs it and pulls me towards him, hugging me. In the force of his embrace, I feel his happiness at our being together again. With that gesture, Sardine brought before our eyes a whole web of childhood memories: cabins built in the neighbouring fields, bars of chocolate stolen from the supermarket, football matches in the car park, shopping, Mrs. Girard, ‘dirty wogs’ [sales bicots—pejorative terms for people of Maghrebi descent], the first black eyes, the first smacks, getting drunk on Malibu, clouds of smoke, our parents’ anger, white nights, driving around on mopeds, identity checks, round trips to London, friends who died stupidly. All those things buried in the empty spaces of our hearts. (MB, 130–131)

Similarly, when the narrator of Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise and her parents move after many years to the house they have been longing for, she admits that, while life in the apartment complex had its drawbacks, it was there that she and her family came to know what solidarity among neighbours can mean. There she met people who were similar to her, who employed similar socio-cultural codes, and who often had a wealth of life experience in another country. You could count on their help, spend free time with them, and feel that you were among your own:

(177) The day we left the neighbourhood to settle into a house, my parents admitted to me that they hoped they could ‘at last live in peace’. They said: ‘It’s better there, where we’re going to live, there are fewer problems’. It was their way of rejecting communitarianism. And yet, life in the neighbourhood had been very agreeable in some respects. With my band of girlfriends, we went to school at the community centre [MJC, la Maison des jeunes et de la culture] where we’d take part in games and activities. My mother had friends there, from Algeria and other places, whom she had met when picking us

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up at school. She was part of a sewing circle, and also exchanged recipes with the other women. In the summer, she’d take us out to the manicured green area next to the building. We’d spend time with our neighbours and their children, and the little park soon took on the air of a salon. There was mint tea, honey cakes, and sometimes people were even eating couscous. Undeniably, there was a certain conviviality in the neighbourhood. Everyone came from the same continent, had the same standard of living and, above all, everyone had experienced exile. This favoured the formation of bonds, of a natural closeness and various expressions of solidarity. The women lent each other clothes, jewellery or appliances. Any occasion was cause to visit: a birth, an illness, a death in the family, a pilgrimage, Ramadan, the Feast of the Sacrifice. (RZ, 103)

The experience of solidarity among neighbours finishes for the narrator’s family when they move to an estate of detached houses in which people of non-European origin constituted a smaller percentage of the population than in the old neighbourhood. From then on, they have to get used to having rather superficial and sporadic contacts with their neighbours. And while the narrator’s parents—to use a phrase often aimed at immigrants today—‘wanted to integrate’ by various methods known to them from their social life in the apartment complex, they do so in a way that their new neighbours, used to another type of vivre-­ ensemble, cannot understand or respond to:

(178) We were the only Maghrebis in the area, lost among the French, Portuguese, Spaniards and Italians. My mother had always been warm and sociable; she like to converse, organise dinners to which she often invited the neighbours. At first she tried to get on with the neighbours. At every family feast, in a burst of generosity, she’d have us bring them a plate of couscous or honey cakes. She explained that our Prophet was on good terms with his neighbours because he made an effort to be generous and benevolent. There was one couple that appreciated my parents, but with the others the situation quickly deteriorated. Even Marie and François, our nice next-door neighbours, sometimes fell short of what my

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mother expected. ‘You know, I went over for a chat, just like that, as I didn’t have anything better to do. And she told me she had to do some shopping and off she went! She said she had no time and could I come again another day. Oh no! That’s not being neighbours! With us, you take people in, it’s not polite not to…. Even if you have something to do!’. I tried to explain that in France people generally keep to a tight schedule, that they don’t receive guests just like that, but she didn’t want to hear a word of it. And on the day our neighbours had a fence put up between our gardens, my parents took offence, and the break was complete. (RZ, 107–108)

The presence of immigrants in the apartment complexes of the suburbs can be seen as an added value of those spaces. There one can experience a feeling of being at home, of solidarity, and of peaceful co-existence with people coming from various cultures. But not everyone considers this to be something positive. As stated in an earlier chapter, for many people in France, identifying someone as a migrant is associated with that person having inadequate arguments in favour of French identification, and at the same time with their possessing characteristics considered dangerous to the public order. Such an understanding of the relationship between migrant identification and French identification also affects how apartment complexes are perceived, since their inhabitants are not—in this interpretation—friendly and welcoming, but threatening and non-French. In the analysed texts, it is frequently stated that the French and global media are to blame for disseminating such a negative image of the suburbs, because they only take an interest in them when something bad happens there. In the opinion of the narrator of Karim Amellal’s book, television shows the world in black-and-white: those who describe the suburbs come from the outside, for a moment, and have no idea of what life is really like there (KA, 17; KA, 19). But this doesn’t stand in the way of their describing the inhabitants of apartment complexes as a real threat to society (KA, 55). The way they are portrayed is largely the same as the stereotyped image of Arabs and Muslims inherited after the Algerian War (KA, 175). Karim Amellal contests this stereotype of dangerous immigrant suburban residents; in his story, the protagonist, who became

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entangled in illegal activities, learns things about himself from media reports about which he had no idea:

(179) On TV they were speaking about a big terrorist organisation broken up by the French police. … And then they spoke about me. … They said I was this little guy from the slums recruited by organised crime to serve the cause of Palestinian and Iraqi and Iranian and Libyan and Afghan and global terrorists. And pretty soon everyone was saying the same thing because those journalists just went from one revelation to another. They said the estates were riddled with connections between total losers, drug addicts and international terrorism. … And then there was this girl who spoke about me as well, saying I was a guy who came out of immigration, an Arab type [Rebeu], and that my father had deep roots in terrorism back in Algeria. … Then after that there was another expert on Algerian terrorism who said no, that story about my old man wasn’t true and that I was just a guy who had no father, so we shouldn’t be talking about Algerian terrorism. And the girl who’d been talking about me and my father was put right off because the guy on Algerian terrorism had cut her to pieces in two seconds flat. (KA, 161–162)

Inhabitants of the apartment complex outside Paris which features in the book by Faïza Guène realise that they are portrayed in a negative light not only by the French press, but also internationally (FG, 29–30).6 The protagonists of the story by Tassadit Imache also know that Les Terrains has a bad reputation outside. The narrator of the text by Ahmed Djouder admits that he and those like him are afraid to open a magazine or book lest they come across some new revelation about the complex:  Mothers of Maghrebi children surveyed by Sicard (2011, 47–48) complained about the reduced, negative depiction of ‘difficult’ neighbourhoods, and at the same time stated that people of Arab origin benefiting from housing supplements have no chance to relocate elsewhere: ‘Nobody’s going to offer you a flat in a HLM block in a good district! … Because actually we’re not asking for anything more than for our children to grow up in a good situation. We want to live in the same conditions as the French. … We pay our taxes without complaining, we pay our bills—we’re like them! Maybe our skin colour is different, but we’re just like them, we grew up here, we finished the same schools, we read like them, speak and express ourselves like them. So why are we left on our own? Why aren’t we wanted among—quote—‘elegant’ people? Why?’ (Sicard 2011, 48). 6

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(180) We fight against knowledge. We’re not able to read. The knowledge they want to inflict on us, that society wants to make us drink. To the dregs. We’re so intoxicated with knowledge that we’ve had quite enough of it. We want to be left in peace. For those words to stay where they are. For those ideas not to pollute us. For no one to come shitting on us. We can’t open a magazine or a book. It’s too violent. A violation of our consciousness. We want to have a bit of freedom. To look at things, at people. Look them up and down. Take it easy. But when we were born it was already too late. (AD, 58)

Unlike other areas such as city centres or neighbourhoods of detached houses, the apartment complexes of the suburbs are perceived as problematic for France, and their residents as particularly threatening to the social order throughout the Republic. What is essential is not how things really are, or what the cause of the crisis in the suburbs is, but how people perceive those problems: ‘I always saw people giving me dirty looks’ (KA, 75). It is not only observers of the suburbs who feel threatened, but also the residents themselves. This increases the impression that suburban neighbourhoods, though located within France, are an area that many French people would like—often literally—to get rid of. The ‘apartment complex–good neighbourhood’ conflict often described in this chapter is transposed in this context to hostile relations between, on the one hand, immigrants and their descendants, and on the other, the rest of French society, represented by state officials such as the police, or teachers— defending Republican values in schools—or French television:

(181) As far back as I can remember, I always saw people giving me dirty looks. There was my mother’s, those of my teachers, not to mention those of the cops. But there were plenty of others. The look you get from those clowns on TV spewing out their brainwashing. The look from those sons of bitches gangsters in politics. Those creeps in first grade. … When they talk about the [difficult] districts they’ve got revolver eyes—like in that song, but I don’t remember what it’s called [a 1985 song by Marc Lavoine, Elle a les yeux revolver, literally ‘She has revolver eyes’]. It’s the look of fucking snipers escaped from the Gulf War. Their

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goal in life is to look at us as if they want to exterminate us. But it’s all quite simple, I can give them a bit of advice, no charge: since we’re nothing but shit, all they have to do is send their little green minicars from Panama, the ones they use to pick up dog shit. Let them send a whole army of little green cars and things will be all right, there’ll be no one left in the estates at all. No need for cops. The whole story is a history of shit. They shit on us from above. … What goes on in the estates is nothing but a history of shit. (KA, 75–76)

(182) That’s how it is with equality in this country. Up at the top of the pyramid of the inegalitarian French society there are those more equal than others. But that’s another story. In fact I have fuck all to do with equality. I call things as I see them. How come Kader [a friend of the narrator, of Maghrebi origin] kicked it? Just because a cop who thought he was Dirty Harry zapped him without batting an eyelid. … And then they spoke of a ‘regrettable incident’. Those myths do little to wipe away a mother’s tears. I have trouble seeing any equality in Kader’s death. (KA, 23)

It is worth referring here as well to passages in which the suburbs are indeed discussed apart from the context of migration, but where there is an implicit opposition between, on the one hand, ‘good’ ‘French’ city centres and neighbourhoods of detached houses, and on the other, suburban apartment complexes in which Frenchness cannot be experienced. The narrator of Cités à comparaître argues that, in the places he visits, he hasn’t experienced France as a world power (KA, 132). From what he says, one can draw the conclusion that the suburbs are a place excluded from French rule, where important French Republican values are not in force. This neglect of the suburbs on the part of France is manifest in the narrator’s ignorance about Marianne and the Republic, which—he says—he has never come across in the areas he knows:

(183) On the judge’s desk, the first time I met him, there was a statue of a girl in a red cap that looked a bit Peruvian in style. I ask who it was, and the judge answered it was Marianne. ‘The icon of the Republic’, he said. I told him I don’t know Marianne. And he told me I would get to know her because she’d keep me on the

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right track. But I didn’t see any connection with the RER [suburban commuter trains]. (KA, 123)

(184) As to the Republic the judge was talking about, I don’t really know what it is apart from the metro station and the place where they hold Gay Pride. I’ve never seen Marianne parading her tits and her ass around the city. You’d think they were afraid to show themselves. It was only there on the desk of Madame Justice I got a look at them. With the dust covering them. And besides, with that bandana on her head, couldn’t she be a bit Muslim, that Marianne? Since our encounter at Judge Keyser Söze’s [Keyser Söze is a character from the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, a legendary king of the underworld], I never quite managed to catch up with that ‘icon of the Republic’. Maybe because we’re not from the same generation. Or maybe because we didn’t grow up together. Seriously, I met her too late, that girl. (KA, 126)

From the above two citations, then, it follows that living in the suburbs can be an argument against identifying someone as French, if Frenchness includes theoretical and practical knowledge of the basic principle of the Republic of France.

Summary In this chapter, I have considered the identification of French of Algerian origin with the suburbs. While it is true that the material collected does contain descriptions of various types of places (villages and cities in Algeria, villages and city centres in France), a particularly large number of passages concern the suburbs. In relation to apartment-block suburbs, I distinguished two types of identification situations. Firstly, I discussed those in which identification with the category of suburban residents can be used as an argument in favour of French identification, or may appear independently of both the French and Algerian contexts (Fig.  6.2). If identifying with the suburbs furthers French identification or is neutral towards it, it is because apartment complexes located outside the city comprise French space. For older FAOs who still remember the period

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Suburbs

Fig. 6.2  Identification with the suburbs as an element of French identification

Suburbs

Situations where identifying with inhabitants of apartment complexes in the suburbs is an argument in favour of French identification or is neutral in that regard

when they and their parents lived in dilapidated hotels allocated to immigrants or in bidonvilles (consisting of slum barracks), moving to the suburbs meant living among French citizens and in sanitary conditions that the French themselves considered attractive [155]. Even if over time, since the 1970s, many suburban residents were immigrants or of immigrant origin, the children who grew up there and went to school there were culturally and socially connected with French society, and—more

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broadly—with Western society, and identified France as their homeland. This is why, when in the 1980s the slogans used by the party of Jean-­ Marie Le Pen gained popularity and public attention was drawn to the suburbs of large cities, young residents of those areas demanded in various ways to be seen as French citizens raised in French society, even if they were disregarded by part of that society. In this struggle, they saw a parallel between their position in society and the alienation within their own country once experienced by black citizens of the United States [156, 157, see 159]. ‘That’s me, the Alien of France, here I am … . I’m not an extra-terrestrial. It’s this country that gave birth to me’, says the narrator of one of the texts analysed [158]. The identification situations described in Fig. 6.2 concern those passages in which the Frenchness of residents of suburban apartment complexes is not questioned. Thus, the suburbs are French space (which is why identification with them can be an argument in favour of French identification, see field FR+), but when discussing the conflict between apartment complexes and ‘good’ neighbourhoods it is not national characteristics that are considered, but social characteristics in the class sense (hence identification with the suburbs can also be neutral in respect of Frenchness, experienced outside the French context). This concerns, then, a powerful French self-identification that is obvious to the subject, that in a given situation they need not prove, and that does not even provide a background for conflicts interpreted as being economic or class conflicts ongoing within the national collective [160, 161, 162]. If this is the case, such an interpretation of the social position of FAOs must be considered a success of French policy on integration and assimilation. Residents of the suburbs consider themselves as people who are poor and marginalised, and residents of the city centres and single-family homes as rich people (‘bourgeois’) who enjoy various privileges. Combining these spatial and social-class categories has the result that, on the one hand, identification with the suburbs is strong, more coherent, while on the other hand it is an identification that is unwanted, embarrassing, that deprives one of the chance to achieve one’s dreams. The rich from the ‘good neighbourhoods’ and the poor and disenfranchised from the suburbs live in totally different social worlds [163], while the difference between them is best described by the metaphor of heaven and hell [166] or sacred and profane (MB, 163). Suburbia is presented as creating a

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certain, defined type of people: apathetic, lacking faith in their own strength and in the rightness of the prevailing social order, an order that on the one hand produces affluence and a life of content, and, on the other, poverty and misery that encourage activities defined by that order as illegal or pathological [167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173]. And so, when residents of the apartment complexes described in the material analysed come into contact with people from outside the suburbs, even if those people are close acquaintances or engaged to be married, for fear of being rejected or of the relationship being broken off they do not disclose where they have spent most of their life [164, 165]. And in turn, those who manage to ‘get out’ of the suburbs are treated by their acquaintances from the neighbourhood with a certain reserve, as persons who have forgotten about those close to them, tempted by the world offered by the wealthy bourgeoisie [174]. Yet it is also worth examining the second type of situation identified, in which an identification with residents of the suburbs is accompanied by an identification with migrants or the country of origin of the immigrant parents (Fig. 6.3). In the material collected, when the discussion centres around apartment complexes far from the city centre, descriptions appear to the effect that they are largely inhabited by French people of foreign origin and immigrants. The suburbs, then, are identified in this way not only by politicians and the media during election campaigns, but also by residents themselves [175]. The latter often appreciate the fact that, in these areas, they can experience the solidarity that results from a shared social position, determined in part by being of non-French origin [176]. For people of Maghreb origin, the presence of other Arabs in the suburbs is particularly important, more so than in other kinds of spaces, since they share many of the same cultural codes [177, 178]. But the very fact that identifying with the suburbs entails identifying with the category of immigrants would certainly not require a new type of situation to be distinguished, if not for the fact that—as we know from the previous chapter on the issue of migration—identification with migrants is often treated in France as justifying a certain lack with regard to French identification. Yet if the suburbs and their inhabitants are defined as ‘immigrant’, then—alongside the situation where this has no impact on their Frenchness or when it argues in favour of including them in the category of French—situations also arise where the suburbs are thought of as non-­

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Suburbs

Fig. 6.3  Identification with the suburbs as an obstacle to French identification

Suburbs

Situations where identifying someone as an inhabitant of the suburbs favours identifying them as non-French

French space. Let us recall, moreover, that the context of migration has a particular impact on how various identifications are considered in terms of their connections with national or ethnocultural characteristics. The same traits that are associated with the stereotype of, for example, Algerian or Arab immigrants are often ascribed to residents of the suburbs en globe [179]. They are presented in the media as dangerous, as threatening order, as people whom the police and the army should somehow control, and against whom attempts are made to both figuratively and literally eliminate them from social life in France [181, 182]. In the opinion of many

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of the narrators quoted, this media image is a false one, since it focuses only on repeating certain well-known adverse aspects of life in the suburbs [180]. The dichotomy, then, between ‘good neighbourhoods’ and the apartment complexes of the suburbs is superimposed on the opposition between people who have been French for generations and French people of foreign origin. The suburbs are treated—including by their inhabitants—as a space on which France has turned its back, in which one cannot experience what Marianne and the Republic are, or their most important values, such as equality [183, 184]. The sources of suburban inhabitants’ problems are not seen in economic or socio-spatial mechanism, but mainly in the fact that the suburbs are not sufficiently French. The conflict between the inhabitants of ‘good neighbourhoods’ and the suburbs is therefore defined not as a social or class conflict, but as a French vs non-French conflict. However, the non-French may then include not only immigrants and their children, but everyone who lives along with them in the same areas; all inhabitants of the suburbs may have equal difficulty in experiencing the Republic. When the conflict between apartment complexes and city centres or single-family homes is interpreted in this way, it renders the dispute even more serious and difficult to resolve. It may also intensify the feeling of exclusion experienced by residents of the suburbs and the children of immigrants, since the fact that the media portray their space as non-­ French cannot be replaced by any other national identification (e.g. Algerian), because that space is culturally and ethnically heterogeneous. If, then, suburban apartment complexes are placed in the category of a ghetto, it is a social ghetto, but certainly not an ethnic ghetto in the American sense (see Lapeyronnie 2009).

Bibliography Texts Analysed Amellal, K. (KA) (2006). Cités à comparaître. Roman. Paris: Stock. Begag, A. (AB) (2005[2004]). Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman. Paris: Points. Benia, M. (MB) (2007). Chiens de la casse. Roman. Paris: Hachette Littératures.

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Bouraoui, N. (NB) (2010[2000]). Garçon manqué. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Charef, M. (MC) (2007[2006]). À bras-le-cœur. Roman. Paris: Collection Folio. Djouder, A. (AD) (2007[2006]). Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés: les racines du malaise. Récit. Paris: J’ai lu. Guène, F. (FG) (2010[2006]). Du rêve pour les oufs. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Imache, T. (TI) (2001[2000]). Presque un frère. Conte du temps présent. Roman. Arles: Actes Sud (Babel). Kalouaz, A. (AK) (2009). Avec tes mains. Rodez: Rouergue (La Brune). Rahmani, Z. (ZR) (2008[2006]). France, récit d’une enfance. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Sedira, S. (SS) (2013). L’odeur des planches. Arles: Rouergue. Zitouni, R. (RZ) (2005). Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise. Paris: Hachette Littératures.

References Bruneaud, J.-F. (2005). Chroniques de l’ethnicité quotidienne chez les Maghrébins français. Paris: L’Harmattan. Collet, B., & Santelli, E. (2012). Couples d’ici, parents d’ailleurs. Parcours de descendants d’immigrés. Paris: PUF (Le Lien social). Hatzfeld, M. (2014). Miasto i procesy migracyjne we Francji. Człowiek i Społeczeństwo, 1 (“Miasto i migracje”, Eds. J. Kubera, & Ł. Skoczylas). Lapeyronnie, D. (2009). Ghetto urbain, Demain la ville, 4. Lisse, É. (2011). Lieu d’habitation disqualifié et identité collective. In O. Lazzarotti, & P.-J. Olagnier (Eds.), L’identité: entre ineffable et effroyable. Paris: Armand Colin (Recherches). Sicard, F. (2011). Enfants issus de l’immigration maghrébine. Grandir en France. Paris: L’Harmattan (Logiques Sociales).

7 Class Identification

In accordance with the principle of the humanistic coefficient (Znaniecki 2009 [1934]), in this chapter I will use terms employed by the characters that appear in the collected texts. When persons of immigrant origin wish to define their social position, they most often say that they belong to the working class or are the children of workers, or that they do not belong to the bourgeoisie and are not the children of bourgeois. For them, social reality is binary in nature; at times they oppose the bourgeoisie to the working class (workers), while at other times to a class defined in other ways (simple people, ordinary people, people ‘at the bottom’, or people who are not bourgeois). The division between bourgeois and everyone else entails a two-track understanding of social reality in which, directly or indirectly, society consists of two parts conceived metaphorically: those ‘at the top’ constituting the elite, and those ‘at the bottom’, who are not part of the elite (Blok 1999, 13–16; cf. Bourdieu 2005, 574–578). Worthy of note in the collected material is the durability—for generations—of the belief that it is particularly difficult for people of migrant origin to become bourgeois, to join the people ‘at the top’. This belief does not take account of the scale of transformations that the whole of French society has undergone in recent decades, where one can distin© The Author(s) 2020 J. Kubera, Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5_7

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guish not only bourgeois and lower classes (the latter including the working class), but also middle classes, and various layers and factions within each of these classes. On the other hand, it is true that foreigners are mainly positioned lower socially, regardless of what class or faction we are speaking of (Bourdieu 2005, 140). If, then, the characters presented in the collected material define themselves as ‘workers’ or ‘not bourgeois’, without taking account of the complexity of the structure of society, this is certainly because they are well aware of the most important rules for its creation and ossification, since these touch them directly. In the characteristics they display (mostly in a set of characteristics rather than in a single attribute), in their behaviour and preferences, those rules are visible in their disposition to occupy the lowest positions not only in society as a whole, but also in every given social structure. An important concept that makes it possible to explain the existence of this phenomenon would seem to be the concept of distinction, by which class differences in France were explained by Edmont Goblot (1925) and Pierre Bourdieu (2005). Distinction, in their opinion, is based on daily practices interpreted as natural but which are in fact embedded in and learned from customary behaviour, practices largely responsible for socialisation within the environment of the family. They are determined, Bourdieu argues, for particular social categories by differences in cultural and economic capital. They are manifest in, for example, various attitudes towards food, clothing, and leisure time, which make it possible to identify people who occupy a particular position in the social structure (Bourdieu 2005, 228–260). For these reasons, this chapter explores more fully than previous ones the connections that exist between family, national, migrant, and suburban identifications. This is why it appears towards the end of the book, and largely refers to conclusions drawn in other places.

Integration of Algerians and Their Children with the French Working Class In the 12 texts, one can find many arguments in favour of identification by French of Algerian origin with the working class. One of the main ones is that their fathers most frequently worked as labourers. This meant

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that they slowly integrated with an important part of French society— the working class—and absorbed from it many models of behaviour and norms. The fathers of FAOs spent their free time with their colleagues from work, who themselves were often immigrants from the Maghreb or other parts of the world. This integration with other workers was not impeded by their various origins, or even by their limited command of the French language. They were bound by work, similar goals, living in workers’ quarters such as apartment complexes in the suburbs, and many other values they professed. These similarities, and the reasons for the relatively easy integration of Algerian immigrants with their co-workers from the building sites and factories is described to one degree or another by practically all of the authors of the collected texts:

(185) [In a café] There’s Joachim, José, Mohamed, Bachir, André, Gaetano, and Mauricette, the waitress, who knows each of these workers and players by their first name, my father included, who was moved by this sign of affection, a big change from the building site where the foreman called all the Arabs Moramed. My father included. These men seated behind their black coffees, wreathed in smoke from unfiltered Gauloises, are close cousins. United by cement, mortar and plaster. They speak the same language, that of cranes and prefabrication. And they all aim in the same direction: a little two-storey house in a verdant corner of their homeland. That goal accompanies them even when they leaf through the newspaper every Sunday morning, punching numbers on imaginary horses transformed into rectangular pieces of cardboard. That’s how luck travels. (AB, 79)



(186) ‘Work, family, country’, Marshall Pétain’s motto, had left traces in people’s mentality. It was still a time ruled by work, where recognition was gained mainly through skill with the trowel, the shovel or the spade. If you spoke the language of France badly and, unlike the rest, you couldn’t read a newspaper, thanks to your arms you could still rally to the common value, submit with good grace to the collective virtue. All around us there were miners, and of course farmers, and some who managed to reconcile the two activities. (AK, 49)

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(187) My father quickly found a place as a welder in a maritime construction company, a small branch of a shipyard. After years of precarious work as a sanitation worker, he had finally found a stable, better-­paid position. The atmosphere at work was convivial, and the boss (whose eyes, my father said, were sad but kind) was all ears towards his twenty-five workers. I went to school on the estate, just a few steps from home. I mixed with the others easily, as if I’d known them all my life. My classmates were also my neighbours from the tower, we were always together. (SS, 56)



(188) This paternal severity [on mores, especially regarding girls] is not just characteristic of Maghrebis. Less than fifty years ago, French children coming out of working class families were educated according to the same principles. As to Maghrebi families, that severity is no doubt aggravated by being uprooted, by the irrepressible desire to renew a model of education that is traditional, not to say archaic. (RZ, 22)

Inheriting a particular social status, the children of Algerians naturally identified with the occupations of their parents. And they were also identified with the working class by people from outside. Emblematic of this was the pneumatic drill (Fr. marteau-piqueur), a tool often associated with the work their fathers did. For example, in the school in France attended by the narrator of À bras-le-cœur. Roman, the children were divided by their teacher into different groups; children like the narrator were put in a group of that name (Fr. marteux qui piquent, ‘piercing hammers’; MC, 214–215; MC, 22). In the context of that tool and the material it was used on, cement, French of Algerian origin often speak on the one hand of the tough conditions that prevailed on the various building sites, and on the other of the effect their parents’ lot had on how they themselves were brought up, the conditions in which they lived, and the resulting limitations imposed on their chance for social advancement. A child’s awareness of being in the same social position as their parents certainly reinforces its identification with them and with their class situation, while in the case studied it also tends to aggravate the antagonism discussed in Chap. 6 towards another class of French society—the bourgeoisie.

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(189) He’d lived well? Ali’s words [a cleric who conducted a funeral ceremony] had a false ring to them. It wasn’t true; Abboué [the narrator’s father] had seen nothing of the earth or the sky, whether from the top of a tree or the top of a construction crane. He’d never gone to the cinema, theatre, restaurant or library. Never met any foreigners apart from José, Joachim and Giuseppe, those at the flea market in Tonkin, and Mauricette from the café. Concrete was his sole vantage point. Nothing much to fill up a photo album with. No, he hadn’t lived well. Not at all. (AB, 94)



(190) The ‘piercing hammers’ are not hammers. They’re there on the fringe of society and have to make huge efforts to get in on ‘real life’. The barrier between those two worlds is tough to get over. I was born on the side of the ‘piercing hammers’ and at the moment I haven’t got the strength to jump over… (MC, 222)



(191) At the time, my father was working in France. They gave him a pneumatic drill that smashes up tarmac. From morning till night, rain or snow, sustaining the shocks of that heavy machine, my father dug. You’d think he was digging for gold. But I’ll tell you one thing straight away: for forty years my father broke up endless lengths of trenches in those suburbs … and apart from a ton of pains, he never got anything, not even a nugget! (MC, 103–104)

The identification of French of Algerian origin with the working class is so strong that it often hinders them in achieving access to occupations that are not performed by labourers.1 For example, in the collected  Among FAOs who have completed their education, 23 per cent completed higher education (including 9 per cent engineering studies), 20 per cent completed high school, 27 per cent technical school, and 10 per cent collège (the equivalent of middle school), while 20 per cent have no certificate or diploma at all. Comparing these results with those of French citizens whose parents were not immigrants, the numbers of people holding all diplomas are similar, except for those at the highest level (33 per cent completed higher education, which is 10 percentage points more than the FAO population) and the lowest level (13 per cent have no diploma at all, which is 7 percentage points less than the FAO population) (Collet and Santelli 2012, 323). Unemployment among FAOs is 19 per cent, and the percentage of persons professionally inactive is 9 per cent. Among the remaining 72 per cent of FAOs, 63 per cent work and 9 per cent are studying. Among professionally active male FAOs, the largest number work in positions that can be defined as workers (41 per 1

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­ aterial, teachers in poorer neighbourhoods are often unable to apprecim ate and appropriately direct pupils who display various talents: musical (the narrator of Cités à comparaître. Roman, KA, 17–18), who in childhood enjoys performing music and making rhymes) or literary (the case of Pascal in Presque un frère. Conte du temps présent. Roman, TI, 61–63). The children of immigrants feel that they are full citizens of France, but observe that the country often restricts their sphere of activities, discourages them from making an extra effort, and gives them easier work (TI, 128; RZ, 210). Sometimes in this context, as in two of the three passages below, the Arab word mektub is used, which means destiny. Despite their many efforts, the children of immigrants notice to their dismay that they are still in the same social position as their parents. This is yet another collective identification studied in this work, along with those connected with immigrants and living in the suburbs, which many believe is imposed on them, or at least not chosen by them.2 It is another example that the postmodernist hypothesis of fluid identity and the possibility of an unlimited choice of one’s own identification is not always reflected in reality. In the first passage, the narrator of Chiens de la casse. Roman (MB) shows a social mechanism whose result is that French children of immigrant workers, discouraged by successive defeats, sooner or later join the ranks of the working class or the unemployed. The second example concerns the narrator of Cités à comparaître. Roman (KA). He explains how a cent, ouvriers) or bottom-level employees (17 per cent). Just over one-quarter (27 per cent) of FAOs work in middle-level positions, and just over one-tenth (11 per cent) in managerial positions (cadres) or intellectual professions, while one in twenty (5 per cent) are artisans, traders, or run their own business. In respect of female French of Algerian origin who are active professionally, the results of the same studies indicate certain differences between the sexes. The majority of women work as low-level employees (57 per cent), while a smaller percentage than among the men consists of women working in jobs that categorise them as workers (9 per cent) or who are self-employed. A similar percentage of women are employed in managerial or intellectual jobs (9 per cent) or in middle-level positions (Collet and Santelli 2012, 324–326). 2  One indicator of class can be the legal and economic relationship to the apartment in which one lives. The majority of French aged 18–50 who are descendants of Algerian immigrants live in rented accommodation (68 per cent), while only 28 per cent own their home. Among the French of French origin, more than half (56 per cent) own their own home, while only 36 per cent rent. This disproportion between French of Algerian origin and French of non-immigrant origin is also visible in the issue of private or public housing, in which residence is subsidised by the state (known in France as HLM, une habitation à loyer modéré). Two-thirds (67 per cent) of FAOs live in a HLM, in comparison with about a third among French of French origin (Collet and Santelli 2012, 335–336).

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school situated in a poor suburban neighbourhood perpetuates social status and pushes the children of working-class parents (not necessarily immigrants) towards illegal forms of money-making. The last passage contains a monologue by the narrator of L’odeur des planches (SS). After years of working as an actor in the theatre, Samira is dismissed, and now works as a cleaner, defining her whole situation in fatalistic categories, comparing her present occupation with the work of her mother.

(192) My ambitions were never modest. For a long time I wanted to do away with fate and change France, take destiny in my hands. Take the lift and, if it broke down, be Spiderman. Climb up the walls, passing the windows. … Tell me your profession and I’ll tell you what you’re worth. By the end of my schooling I’d already registered as a job seeker. When I reached the age of majority, I entered active life at a great pace. What then transpired was not at all pleasant. … ‘Don’t stay here, my son’, I was advised by Hassan, an old Algerian taken on in 1973. Standing before him, like a mirror of my own future, chained eight hours a day, repeating the same movements, I faced things squarely, without any illusions. Was that the destiny of dunces? Or of the damned? I quit middle school after they streamed me to become a naval mechanic. I would have preferred to repair cars. And you don’t come across many ships in parking lots around Paris. I dropped it, then, to my parents’ despair; they’d had no choice but to trust the counsellor. But me, a deckhand? Why not just dance the Charleston in a banana skirt? … ‘I’ll be honest: don’t expect to be called very soon. I advise you to read the announcements in the papers and ask around, that’s the best way’, the counsellor who had registered my file told me. Before adding: ‘Are you prepared to work on a building site?’ And there you have it. Like fate, the mektub hardens round my feet like cement, and it looks like I’m set up to inherit the trowel my father knew so well. ‘Of course, madam, I’m up to it’. (MB, 133–35)

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(193) And since a bunch of my teachers already took me for Tony Montana, one day I said to myself that maybe they weren’t mistaken. That in any case school was for nothing and they would screw me like the rest of those in the rubbish-bin classes where they threw the little shits nobody wanted out of embarrassment. We always end up in the bin. That’s how I gave in to the temptations of the street. Me, I’m not as strong as Ulysses. When I was leaving, I didn’t forget to tell my physics teacher [who had presented the narrator as a drug addict, though he was not] to go fuck himself with his test tubes. … I think about my old school sometimes. It was pathetic, like those hangars in Bourget where they dump old airplanes. It was like two huge sheets of plywood teetering right in the middle of the estate. … Why did they build schools in the middle of rat holes? I don’t get it. All it does is attract the rats, and everybody knows that, in a group, rats will take a corpse apart as fast as a Porsche Boxter on the motorway. But the ministers that take care of our estates, they make these problems and afterwards start screaming because the rats are jumping at their throats. (KA, 17–19)



(194) It’s her I’m thinking of immediately, my mother, and all the others. I see them sitting on the stone benches at the foot of the buildings, their heads slightly tilted, and in their eyes the hope— ever more unreasonable—of returning home. They come to talk after doing the housework, to kill their boredom, their hands in their apron pockets, their slippers half on. That’s it: my mother’s existence has encroached upon mine. I see her face once again and have the impression that it’s my own. That’s it, I’m there. Where I never wanted to be. On the same level as them, or even lower … . At least all of them, destined for the bidet as they were, had mitigating circumstances; there was the war, a huge mess, whereas I came onto the scene after all of that, I was protected, loved, brought up in the proper sense of the word, I’d had a right to an education, not like them, who were only fit to follow their husbands, those men known to be hardworking who were hired in the morning on the building sites and sent in the afternoon to wherever there was work to be done. That history wasn’t supposed to repeat itself. But it did. More than forty years later, life expelled me from my little paradise and propelled me with an

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unheard of violence into a repulsive, viscous misery that I’d managed to keep away from for many years but which had finally caught up with me. Fate. Mektub. Forty years had passed, nothing had changed. (SS, 16)

‘Our parents will never be bourgeois’. This is how one can summarise the story told by the narrator of Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés. He describes various practices attesting to social position, and at the same time connects these not only with class identification (non-bourgeois, working-class), but also with spatial (the suburbs) and national (parents’ Algerian origins) identification. Note that, while the above passages emphasise the similarities between Algerian immigrants and other members of the working class in France, when it comes to the differences in why they are not bourgeois, identifications other than class identification come to the fore:

(195) Our parents will never play tennis, badminton or golf. They’ll never go skiing. They’ll never eat in a really good restaurant. They’ll never buy a Louis-Philippe desk, a Louis XV wing chair, Guy Degrenne plates, Baccarat glasses, or anything from Habitat. … They’ll never actually own an apartment in their lives or a nice little property somewhere in France to end their days in tranquillity. No, they preferred to invest in houses in Algeria, made of cement, at the price of several decades of sacrifice, houses that look vaguely like cubes, but which they call villas. Our parents will never taste champagne, caviar or truffles. They do their shopping at Aldi and Lidl … . Always the products that are the cheapest, the most full of sugar and salt. … In their whole lives, our fathers and mothers never went to the theatre. And the odds are a thousand to one that our fathers never set foot in a museum, except maybe for a mining museum in their region, and only if the visit was organised by their management. We live in cubicles, hotel rooms, bachelors, HLMs, workers’ quarters or, more rarely, in detached houses in the heart of a ZUP—a priority urbanisation zone, or a ZUS—a sensitive urbanisation zone, or a ZEP—a priority education zone, in Marseilles, Douai, Thionville or Mulhouse, in those regions rich in mines and iron, steel and metalworking factories, or in one of those notorious estates

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in the suburbs of Paris, or in social housing in any city of France where we’re cramped together because we’ve been living there now for thirty years and the family has grown and we’ve been on the waiting list for a new place for the past ten years. (AD, 9–11)

In another passage from the same text, one could state, in relation to the previous passage, that ‘we also will never be bourgeois, but it’s not completely our parents’ fault’. The narrator argues that new arrivals in France were left to themselves and—as he admits—to their colleagues from the mines gibbering away in French. The first generation of Algerian immigrants in France, dealing with the needs of daily life, and not knowing the nuances of French high culture, were not able to give their children the knowledge that French children in bourgeois families had.

(196) To cultivate oneself implies to come out of the mother’s body to encounter the other, that which is different. The mother can only feed us. The food she gives allows us survive. Culture arises when we pass the stage of mere survival. The poor man focuses all his energy on having ‘something to eat’, ‘something to wear’, ‘a roof over his head’, and on the thousand and one activities that sustain these basic needs. … Broadly speaking, a lack, especially of money, is inhibiting. Emptiness is filled with television, alcohol or cannabis. You can flood a juvenile correction centre with the most beautiful works of classical music, recommend the finest novels… and it will get you nowhere. We shall remain insensible. Not because we’re morons, but because no one taught us to direct our desire towards knowledge of the world. Our desire is more prosaic, more contained. Our heads are turned towards our mother’s breast. Whose fault is that? Our sad, bewildered parents. Our ugly buildings. The past. Politicians. And all the rest of it. If only you’d educated, trained our parents and grandparents instead of just letting them gabble the French of their miner colleagues like cavemen sitting round a fire. There’s no discourse, no claim when there are no words. … The only refuge is the group. (AD, 78–79)

The feeling of belonging to the working class is thus associated with the belief that the barrier to advancement faced by French of Algerian

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origin is their lack of knowledge of a specific sociocultural code transmitted among French bourgeois families. While for children whose parents were not immigrants those barriers would certainly be solely class criteria, for the descendants of immigrants the problem of social advancement can be interpreted as a lack of knowledge of a certain segment of French culture. In this way, national identification may be linked to class identification—the subject of the next section of this chapter.

 ocial Advancement and Degradation S as a Departure from Parents and Algerianness Of course, many French of Algerian origin manage to overcome the obstacles they face and obtain a good education and a job considered to be bourgeois.3 An example of a spectacular advance is that of Azouz Begag, cited in this work, who was born in France to Algerian immigrant parents and became well known in France as a researcher and centre-right politician (as the narrator of the text analysed here, he speaks mainly about family relationships, although in his other stories issues relating to class advancement are prominent). In comparison with his mates from  In the opinion of Attias-Donfut and Wolff (2009, 216–218), who examined statistics on the level of education and careers of second- and third-generation Algerian immigrants, it is not difficult to notice that the majority do achieve educational successes. While the descendants of immigrants from various countries, seen against the population as a whole, have fewer good results in education, if we take account of the socio-occupational status of their parents (workers and low-level employees), the social advancement of their children is indisputable. When we compare the children of immigrant workers with the children of non-immigrant workers, it turns out that secondand third-generation immigrants study longer, and among the most disadvantaged categories at least as long as their peers. The children of Algerians hold a particular place here (Dewitte 2003, 1); their parents clearly expect them to gain a good education that will enable them—in their parents’ opinion—to achieve social recognition in France (cf. Okba 2012, 2–3 and 6–7). And, on the basis of his research, Zehraoui (1999, 27 et seq.) claims, that relationships parents have with educational institutions equate immigrant families in this respect with French working-class families: acknowledging their lack of competence, parents withdraw from issues concerning what is taught at school, but firmly retain their prerogatives concerning the area of values. Yet there is an important difference: immigrant families are characterised by less fatalism and passivity, and for them school is an important place on which they pin their hopes for their children’s advancement (in French families, such faith is lacking). Parents encourage their children to study, pointing out that a good education is crucial to success, but at the same time admitting that they are not competent to help their children with their homework (Zehraoui 1999, 188–189). 3

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the housing estate, Sardine, one of the protagonists of Chiens de la casse, also stands out. The narrator of France, récit d’une enfance also writes at times about her success in school:

(197) The results are announced in the local press. The postwoman comes into our house, crying to my mother: ‘Your daughter came first! The best in Picardy’. I beat everyone of all ages. I know it. The day before, I took part in the prize-giving ceremony in the presence of the head of department, who is also the father of my French teacher. For her, I would have brought back the moon. (ZR, 123)

But it is Razika Zitouni who devotes most space to upward mobility in her book. The title, Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise, is a play on words in which beurgeoise is a combination of two words not normally put together: beur, which means French of Maghrebi origin, and bourgeoise, a bourgeois woman. Zitouni presents herself as an example of successful assimilation. Reflecting on various issues, those she discusses include how she managed to complete her studies, and the differences in how she and her family view the world. Explaining how she became a ‘beurgoise’, she states expressly that her parents played a key role in that by insisting she study hard at school. They considered their presence in France as an opportunity their children should take advantage of. When the narrator’s parents learned that she would have to repeat a year, they invested in an encyclopaedia, dictionaries, grammar handbooks and atlases. In time, their daughter caught up, and even became one of the best pupils in her class. Important motivating factors for her were not only her love for her parents (RZ, 172), but also the fact that the time spent studying meant attaining a certain measure of autonomy which would be difficult to obtain otherwise. This was because, if she could justify her absence from home as a school duty (for example, the need to visit the library), her parents consented. Her progress at school made them proud, while the laziness of their son was a cause to complain that he was wasting an opportunity they had never had.

(198) For my parents, school is something sacred. They quickly understood that it was a means of social promotion, a way to change

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one’s position. You had to aim high, go as far as possible. It hurt them that they had not been able to engage in higher studies. My mother bragged about having obtained an elementary school certificate, and would repeat to whoever would listen: ‘At school I was top of my class, but my parents were poor so I had to stop to work, and then to get married’. (RZ, 171)

(199) Starting from fifth grade, my mother began comparing my marks with those of my classmates. Every semester she asked me who was at the top of the class. Her interest spurred me on to battle for success … . I thought of nothing but my lessons, did nothing but study, learn, make notes, write things out. In fact it was all a big bore, but studying became a refuge and provided a bit of comfort. (RZ, 181)



(200) In a flat voice, I told my father that I’d graduated but hadn’t been awarded a distinction. He didn’t give a damn about that little detail: his daughter had her diploma! He looked me over in admiration and incredulity. It was hard to succeed in France, since after all, I was ‘only an Arab’. He still imagined the xenophobic France of his youth, grounded in memories of the Algerian War and colonialism. (RZ, 184)

Success in education and on the labour market, then, can be understood as the acquisition of certain competencies valued by French society that enable one to move ‘up’ within its structure; however, this remains neutral in respect of a given person’s feelings of Frenchness or Algerianness (only their class identification changes). Accepting such a definition, one can hope that the first generation of immigrants encouraging their children to learn has no detrimental effect on the identity of their sons and daughters with their country of origin, but only provides them with new arguments in favour of French identification. Let us recall, however, that the narrator of the text by Razika Zitouni has two characteristics that are exceptional in her family. Not only does she achieve success at school and obtain a higher education; her world view is also decidedly different from that of her parents and most of her cousins. In Chap. 4 it was stated that the opinions of the narrator of

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Comment je suis devenue… on, for example, the issue of exogamic ­marriages, are often taken by her relatives as evidence of her having lost many Arab, Algerian, or Muslim characteristics. Here it is worth examining a passage in which the upward social mobility of the narrator is valued so highly that her failure to fulfil all of the requirements traditionally placed on girls from her family can be tolerated. This is the approach taken at least by her father:

(201) My brother and my father often came into conflict. My father often shouted: ‘You have the chance to be in France and you do nothing at school!’. … As for me, the ‘prestige’ attached to my successes at school and my getting into university made the good relationship I had with my father even better. I was his pride and joy, as opposed to my brother, to whom he would often shout in a rage: ‘Look at your sister, how hard she works at school—you should follow her example!’ Unfortunately, even today my ‘prestige’ doesn’t allow me to say absolutely anything. When I venture to declare to my father, as a kind of provocation, that I don’t imagine a traditional or endogamic marriage for myself, that I’d like to marry a man from another culture, he starts raving like a madman: ‘If you don’t want to listen to your father, get on with it yourself, you’re over eighteen!’. … I’ve often brought up the question of mixed marriages so my father would finally accept France’s multi-ethnic society. I would pass my time aggravating and provoking him on rather delicate subjects the others normally wouldn’t dare raise with him. Too bad he rarely takes what I say seriously. He plays things down and concludes by saying: ‘As long as you’re doing well at school and not disappointing me, I’m on your side’. (RZ, 24–25)

Social advancements, moving to the ‘bourgeois side’ on which, as we have seen, the children of immigrants are not born, can be a justification of their acquiring certain characteristics that are considered French but not detrimental to a person’s Algerian identification. In my opinion, however, this situation entails the danger of a connection being made between identification with the country of origin and the lower (‘non-­bourgeois’) classes, or between identification with the host country and the upper

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(‘bourgeois’) classes. Confirmation of the possibility of relations between identifications being thus defined are provided in the p ­ assages below, where the narrator of Razika Zitouni’s text finds it necessary to give up certain characteristics deemed Algerian in order to achieve success on the French educational and labour markets. For the children of immigrants, complete integration here means belonging to the bourgeoisie, and social advancement entails not only the parents permitting a certain emancipation from Algerianness, but also a structural, external requirement to relinquish it. This problem, then, concerns the possibility of upward mobility in respect of both the family and French society—of those families and those parts of society for whom it is exceptionally difficult to reconcile Algerian identification with bourgeois identification. For people who accept such a definition (of whom one is certainly the narrator of Comment je suis…), a choice must be made between Algerianness and social advancement; on the one hand, this may mean a family keeping someone’s education on a level that will guarantee they preserve the most important Algerian characteristics, and on the other, society may not admit people who display such characteristics to higher positions.

(202) Today, the French are divided between pride and uncertainty as they observe immigrants’ success. The pragmatic, unpredictable and conservative French are attached to their traditions and class privileges. (RZ, 208)



(203) Next to the ‘beurgoises’, the girls who are ‘getting on’, there are others, the girls of Maghrebi origin from ‘the other side’, who aren’t managing. Sadly, there are plenty of them. They’re divided between two ‘paradoxical injunctions’ [as described by Nacira Guénif Souilamas in Le Monde, 18 August 2000]: On the one hand, the family pushes them to conform to the ideal of a young woman (virginity, limited going out, endogamic marriage, religious practices…), while, on the other, French society incites them to liberate themselves from this oppressive model of education. A complicated situation that leads to failure, and even tragedies. … too many young Maghrebi girls fail at school, are on the dole, run away, take drugs, fall into prostitution, take their own lives. They live on the estates or in miserable neighbourhoods that are hardly conducive to success. (RZ, 9)

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Yet there is also another way to break away from the ethos nurtured in immigrant families of the worker conscientiously carrying out his strenuous duties. As noted above, it was characteristic of members of the first generation of immigrants in France that they wanted to remain, in a sense, unnoticed in their new country, and this prompted them to comply with all the regulations that concerned them: to pay their bills on time, do as their supervisors at work told them, and so on (e.g. AB, 76; AB, 82–84). They look on those situations, in which their sons and daughters for one reason or another have problems with discipline and following the law, with disapproval. Such situations should be treated as a social demotion in relation to the social and class position held by the parents of FAOs. While, unlike their parents, they are mostly French citizens and are certainly better integrated in French society (or certain segments thereof ), they have not put much ground between themselves and their parents within the class hierarchy. As in the case of social advancement, downward mobility can be explained, on the one hand, by the adoption of models of behaviour generated in contact with specific groups within French society, and on the other, by a rejection of values considered Algerian within immigrant families (scrupulousness, respect for authority, working to develop the family, etc.). It is in this manner that we should understand the words of the narrator of Chiens de la casse, who cannot find any other way to break away from the inheritability of working a pneumatic drill than to discard certain characteristics of his father: decency, hard work for low wages, and belief in the good intentions of government officials:

(204) One day Mr. Chriffi [a neighbour living one floor up] said: ‘He who steals from a thief gets a hundred years of forgiveness’. A bit more exciting than my father’s righteousness, at any rate. In a society where even morality has acquired commercial value, I refused to be a slave to the morning wake-up call, to sweat hanging on to a pneumatic drill just for the minimum wage. I wasn’t going to fatten up the most glacial of the ‘freezing monsters’ who would freeze my account for the slightest reason. I’m no prostitute, and even less of a flunkey. … I see perfectly well what happened to my father: unlettered, and always worried about

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remaining irreproachable, he was a target for every charlatan official who used their authority to squeeze him dry. (MB, 31)

Finally, there are situations where French of Algerian origin explain their class position in two ways: as a hindrance to accessing a good education or a good job, and as something that excludes them and other descendants of immigrants from the French national community.

 overty as a Result of Exclusion P from Frenchness: The Inheritability of Migration Combining identification with the suburbs, with a particular class and with immigrants can result in the problems of inhabitants of the suburbs being defined not only as socio-spatial issues, but also as concerning the integration of immigrant families with the rest of French society. In many situations in which French of Algerian origin describe the difficult living conditions of the suburbs, they explain these not only by erroneous assumptions of urban planners or a reticence regarding those areas in state policy, but also by the fact that their own roots are different, that they are the children of immigrants. In such statements, it is clearly visible how identification with a social position is tied to other identifications—with the suburbs, class, parents, immigrants. The feeling that one is not treated the same as other French people (in the opinion of some groups, a lack of sufficient arguments in favour of the French identification of children of immigrants) provokes a significant number of those surveyed to highlight their identifications with the place they live in, their socioeconomic class, immigrants, family or religion (e.g. TI, 61). In the dominant social discourse, it is difficult to question their affiliation with such collectives: without the need to enter into situations of conflict with other French people, FAOs are capable of putting forward sufficient arguments in support of an identification with those categories (for example, in order to be identified with the suburbs, you just have to live there).

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Yet, when confirming their identification with groups they know many people take a negative view of (see the anti-migration, islamophobic and arabophobic discourse, the stereotypes of dangerous young people from the suburbs and dangerous Algerians), French of Algerian origin do not deny that this is often an identification about which they had no choice. Because they don’t always feel part of the French collective, they often build their identity on other types of groups, aware at the same time that their strong affiliation with such groups largely arises from a feeling of being excluded (AD, 110–111). The passages below exemplify the hypothesis that the class identification of FAOs under discussion here is a result of the feeling of alienation that they experience in their own country, which in turn results from the fact that their parents were immigrants with limited formal and practical opportunities to join the French national community. The narrator of Chiens de la casse. Roman believes that, if he had not been the child of immigrants, he would now be in a much better situation economically and socially; and the narrator of Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés argues that the French of immigrant origin do not possess the same ‘trampolines’ for social advancement as other French people:

(205) ‘I’ll end up marrying a girl from Algeria who has the old way of thinking. Like my mother. … You know, Sardine, I have it up to here. When I look for work, they always find some stupid pretext for getting rid of me. And the one time I thought about doing something to change my life, I notice it was all a mirage. What am I supposed to do? Even if I’d slogged away at school I would’ve ended up in the shithouse. From childhood you get used to being destined for failure; it sticks to you like a second skin. That’s our life. Sometimes I tell myself that if my dad hadn’t emigrated I might be happier today’. ‘Could it be the girl that’s got you so pessimistic like that? Get a grip on yourself, Bob’. ‘I don’t give a fuck about her. It’s my life I’m talking about’. (MB, 222)



(206) Those grandiose dreams of our parents—villas in the four corners of the world, piles of money—rather than carrying us aloft on

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their wings, they weigh us down. You know why? Because we know there’s a certain line we’ll never cross. Certain sly people have arranged things so that we’ll never be given the codes to success. And if ever those little bastard sons of immigrants manage to get around the traps, there’s more barbed wire waiting, new bombs to make sure they never make it up to the income level of the middle class. The French have their trampolines. The rich. They make giant leaps. Most of us are stuck in a bog. Sinking. The best off are sitting on dry ground, but it’s not the best for jumping. But we don’t pose any threat. You arranged everything to prevent that. We’re in schools for the poor. The poor schools: not enough resources, too many kids. The premises: too ugly. The teachers of the poor: not enough of them, not enough passion. The pupils: not enough motivation, too many fears, too much violence. Success and failure play out on ‘not enough’ and ‘too much’. NOT ENOUGH and TOO MUCH. The number of pupils in the class, the teaching, the money, trust, the codes. (AD, 60–61)

In this context, it’s worth citing the words of the narrator of Garçon manqué. In her tale, she guesses what her friend, raised in a Franco-­ Algerian family in Algeria, will tell the French after he moves there in order to gain their acceptance. The narrator reveals her conviction that, if her friend wants to identify with the French (even if one of his parents was born French), he will have to renounce those characteristics that are associated with immigrant origins, affiliation with the class of his parents, and will have to hide the fact that his family biography contains a chapter on migration:

(207) You’ll say it. I don’t know anything about immigration. About that deportation. About that misery. I don’t know anything about factories. Building sites. Construction. I don’t know anything about harkis. Workers. Their women. The reunification of families. No, I’m not the son of an immigrant. No, I wasn’t born in

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France. I come from the sea, the mountains, the desert. Yes, I have white skin. My grandfather had blonde hair, but I’ve lost his photograph. And you’ll go even farther, Amine. No, I’m not like them. Those foreigners. That suffering. Those second-generation children. I don’t have their memory. I’m really very different. No, I don’t know anything about the suburbs. Those buildings after the slums. That density. Those stairwells. Those storeys. Those towers. Those gangs. And you’ll go even farther. They make me afraid. I don’t understand. Their lives. I don’t hear their voices. I avoid them. I cross over to the other side of the street. I close my eyes. They don’t know anything about Djurdjura [a mountain range in Kabylia in Algeria]. No, I’m not like them. You can see for yourselves. I’ve lost my accent. I don’t speak with my hands anymore. I’m becoming French. I’m a peaceful man. You’ll be nothing, Amine. Your body on the streets of Paris. … You’ll remember. And you’ll be ashamed of us. (NB, 58–59)

The reaction to such an interpretation of the relationship between different identifications may be to deprecate oneself, or the feeling that one’s position at the bottom of the social structure is hereditary. In such conditions, it seems there is no possibility of improvement, neither for oneself nor for any of one’s children in the future:

(208) Twenty-eight years old. 200 euros in my pocket. My life boils down to those two figures. No future, no more illusions. … What can I hope for? To keep up my shenanigans? To pick up a pretty cashier? Start a dynasty of minimum wagers in an HLM worthy of my parents? No, I don’t want to spend the rest of my days betting everything on posterity. I already know they won’t find a way to succeed. (MB, 225)

The impossibility presented in the stories analysed here of children of immigrants who live in suburban apartment complexes crossing the social barrier between the bourgeois and all those who were not born ‘on the right side’ (KA 136–137) can be explained by their lacking certain French characteristics, especially when upward social mobility is associated not only with acquiring new competencies valued in French society,

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but also with the need to renounce characteristics of their culture of origin. In my view, this leads to a danger of French culture as a whole being perceived as bourgeois culture, and to the exclusion from it of all people who belong to the lower classes. Of course, this concerns both identification and self-identification. If someone is not a bourgeois, but is the children of immigrants and lives in the suburbs, they may be taken as excluded from French culture (even if they represent the culture and values of the French working class), but they may also (from a certain moment) perceive themselves that way. If, then, some descendants of immigrants treat French values as foreign to them, this may happen not because they lack any basis for considering themselves French, but because values of bourgeois culture are foreign to them, and they have learned to assess just those values as French:

(209) You [the French] haven’t understood that, seeing the suffering of our parents, we turned against you and that, unfortunately, we rejected your principles, your values, your traditions, your people, your culture. The poor have a problem with culture, they think it’s bourgeois, they associate it with glittery things. (AD, 62)

If, however, one of the identifications discussed in the preceding section can be said to be the most important factor in FAOs being identified with the lowest social positions, it may well be identification with migrants. According to Pierre Bourdieu, the position of non-bourgeois from the suburbs in families with an immigrant past will always be lower than that of their non-immigrant counterparts. Where Frenchness is defined as living in ‘good neighbourhoods’, belonging to the bourgeoisie and having only French roots, then French of foreign origin living in working-class apartment complexes will be more excluded from the national community than their neighbours whose parents were born in France. The largely inheritable status of migrant can even be treated here as an explanation of the other identifications under discussion, since, in the case of people not identified with migrants, other causes (e.g. socioeconomic or sociospatial) of their class position would be found.

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The flaw in subjectively identifying someone’s class affiliation with immigration is addressed in a passage of the book by Razika Zitouni. While, according to the narrator, her parents can be characterised as bourgeois (they have good salaries, a stable financial situation, and live in a detached house), they themselves still feel they are in the lower class, and believe this is because they are immigrants:

(210) Despite their relative success in France (a house, educated children…), my parents lost the illusion they’d had of the West as an Eldorado. They detest the idea of being part of a population that is stigmatised, poor, uncultivated. Of course, they’d prefer to be among their own, not to have to bear the contempt and condescension of their host country. In France for more than twentyfive years, they are still foreigners and, despite all their efforts, still members of an ‘inferior’ class. (RZ, 66)

Class identifications, then, are closely connected with other identifications: national, familial and spatial.

Summary This chapter has considered situations of identification in terms of the relationships between class identification and national identification. Because, to a large extent, Algerianness did not provide the context in these situations, it focused on those moments when the way that a person’s socio-economic position is defined can affect their identifying themselves as French. An analysis of the collected material showed that, because of the class affiliation of their parents, a large number of FAOs identify themselves, or are identified, as belonging to the working class (Fig. 7.1). The first generation of Algerians who immigrated to France ceased to be peasants in a traditional society, and became workers living in the industrial society that was France. In this way, Algerians working in factories or building infrastructure became integrated not only with co-worker immigrants from various countries [185], but with working class society at large, with which they shared professional practice [186, 187], traditional

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working class

Fig. 7.1  Affiliation with the French working class conceived within French identification working class

Situations in which French of Algerian origin, and their parents, are considered members of the working class or ‘non-bourgeoisie’, which is perceived as an important part of French society having specific characteristics

family values [188], free time in the famous café-bistrots, and often the same neighbourhood in the newly built suburban apartment complexes. They also had a shared awareness of the hard conditions under which they worked and their lack of access to certain cultural and consumer goods [189, 190, 191], which brought them together in their antagonism against the bourgeoisie, perceived by them as the wealthy other half of

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French society. The descendants of Algerians then inherited a working-­ class identification from their parents. In the collected material, one of them states: ‘I was born on the side of the “piercing hammers”’ (MC, 222)—an allusion to the pneumatic drills many Algerian immigrants used at work. He concludes his story: ‘and at the moment I haven’t got the strength to jump over to the other side’ (MC, 222), affirming that, despite being ambitious and having made numerous attempts, he has very little chance of making it to the bourgeoisie. The texts contain many examples of situations where FAOs’ access to occupations considered bourgeois is hindered, and where in school they are discouraged from attempting challenging tasks. This results in many FAOs lacking faith in the possibility of making a decent living in a legal manner. In the stories and autobiographies analysed, a connection appears between class identification and identification with residents of the suburbs, as well as with the category of immigrants. This also concerns self-­ identification, and not just that FAOs are perceived externally as being simultaneously workers, apartment-block dwellers, and of foreign origin [192, 193, 194, 195, 196]. The situations discussed in Fig. 7.1 are played out in the French context: FAOs appear therein as belonging to a certain class of French society and as knowing French cultural codes, but those which are specific to the class to which their parents also belonged. The research material turned out, however, to be varied enough to contain not only descriptions of inherited social status, but also examples of social mobility (Fig.  7.2). In situations where FAOs move socially ‘upwards’ or ‘downwards’ the context of Algerian identification appears, along with its associated family identification. As to social advancement, the children of Algerian immigrants may interpret this not only as distancing themselves from their family and parents socioeconomically, in terms of class (which is a characteristic of all cases of social mobility), but may also believe that entering the bourgeoisie means acquiring certain new, additional French characteristics. For example, children know the French language and French culture better than their parents, thanks to very good grades at school [197]. It would be a mistake, though, to think that most parents of FAOs discourage their children from making progress at school. On the contrary, it is characteristic of immigrant families, in other countries just as much as in France, to encourage their children

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outside the working class

outside the working class

Fig. 7.2  Social movement away from the working class as evidence of the possession of certain additional French characteristics outside the working class outside the working class

Situations where the social advancement of FAOs is connected with their acquiring additional competencies appreciated in French society, but which are neutral in respect of Algerian identification Situations where breaking away from working class identification (movement either ‘up’ or ‘down’) is associated with the need to both acquire certain additional French characteristics (in relation to the first generation of immigrants) and lose certain Algerian characteristics

to make sacrifices and devote themselves to their schoolwork. This attitude is illustrated in various passages: parents praise the good grades of their sons and daughters [198], encourage them to study [199, 200], perceive the possibility of studying in France as a chance to better their

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life situation [201], believing at the same time that, in comparison with French children, the children of immigrants face more difficulties in achieving success, both at school and on the labour market [200]. Frenchness (understood on the one hand as being raised in a French family, and on the other as the children of immigrants acquiring certain characteristics regarded as French) is treated, then, as something that must be had in order to advance in society [202]. Also found, however, is a definition of the relationship between identifications in which ‘upward’ social mobility requires not only the acquisition of additional, appropriate competencies (characteristics) that are deemed French, but also requires the renouncement of certain characteristics associated with Algerian identification: attachment to the traditional model of the family, endogamic marriage, and the disclosure of one’s religious identification [203]. Such an interpretation of the ­relationship between identifications makes it difficult to reconcile a class identification with the bourgeois and an identification with the country of origin, and makes it practically impossible for the children, and especially the daughters, of working-class immigrant families to ‘move up’ if they wish to live according to traditional Algerian family values and at the same time meet the requirements and norms of the French bourgeoisie. Often, then, combining Algerian and French characteristics means, for example, giving up studying and remaining in the non-bourgeois class (field ALG+/FR+). Paradoxically, then, when parents encourage their children to make the effort to advance socially, they may cause them to distance themselves from their Algerianness, which may or may not be accepted by the parents and by members of the extended family (see Chap. 4). This chapter has pointed out situations where one can speak of a person’s mobility ‘downwards’ in comparison with the position of their parents. When children display various types of pathological behaviour, then—in their parents’ opinion as well—there is at the same time a relinquishment of characteristics thought to be Algerian and an acquisition of certain characteristics thought to be French [204]. For children, though, such a situation may be seen as an argument for staying in the same, non-­ bourgeois half of French society as their parents.

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outside bourgeoisie + suburbs + immigrants

Fig. 7.3  Combined identifications: class (‘I’m not a bourgeois’), sociospatial (from the suburbs), and with immigrants as an argument hindering identification with France outside bourgeoisie + suburbs + immigrants

Situations where FAOs identify simultaneously with the suburbs and with the category of immigrants, and notice that they lack sufficient arguments for identifying themselves with the French and the bourgeoisie

This chapter also examined situations in which class identification (‘I’m not a bourgeois’) is connected with two other types of identification: the suburbs, and immigrants (Fig. 7.3). This class-spatial-immigrant identification is treated in those situations as an argument against French identification, although the Algerian context is not very evident (identifying

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oneself as an immigrant through one’s parents is not the same as feeling that one belongs to the category of Algerians). These are situations in which the feeling of being excluded from French society runs high due to a lack of certain features considered French that is impossible to overcome: here FAOs believe they have no chance to reach the bourgeoisie [205], to live in ‘good neighbourhoods’ [208], or to present themselves as born into a family that has been French for generations [206, 210]. This particular social position is interpreted as resulting mainly from their parents’ migration, and from a class order handed down from generation to generation that is strictly tied to migration, made manifest in, among other things, living in the suburbs. In this view, if one were not the son of immigrants, the possibility of improving one’s life situation would not be ruled out. French people of French origin living in the suburbs and growing up in working-class families also have a big problem with changing their lot in life, but for those who are the sons or daughters of immigrants, their chance of advancement is drastically curtailed (at least, that is how the situations analysed here are evaluated). This is why, in order to identify oneself with the French bourgeoisie, it is necessary to break away from the characteristics that to a large extent form the social world of most FAOs: from allegiance to one’s social and ethnocultural origins, and from the idea that one is living in France only because one’s parents, born in another country, so decided [207, 209].

Bibliography Texts Analysed Amellal, K. (KA) (2006). Cités à comparaître. Roman. Paris: Stock. Begag, A. (AB) (2005[2004]). Le marteau pique-cœur. Roman. Paris: Points. Benia, M. (MB) (2007). Chiens de la casse. Roman. Paris: Hachette Littératures. Bouraoui, N. (NB) (2010[2000]). Garçon manqué. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Charef, M. (MC) (2007[2006]). À bras-le-cœur. Roman. Paris: Collection Folio. Djouder, A. (AD) (2007[2006]). Désintégration. Enfants d’immigrés: les racines du malaise. Récit. Paris: J’ai lu. Guène, F. (FG) (2010[2006]). Du rêve pour les oufs. Paris: Le Livre de Poche.

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Imache, T. (TI) (2001[2000]). Presque un frère. Conte du temps présent. Roman. Arles: Actes Sud (Babel). Kalouaz, A. (AK) (2009). Avec tes mains. Rodez: Rouergue (La Brune). Rahmani, Z. (ZR) (2008[2006]). France, récit d’une enfance. Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Sedira, S. (SS) (2013). L’odeur des planches. Arles: Rouergue. Zitouni, R. (RZ) (2005). Comment je suis devenue une beurgeoise. Paris: Hachette Littératures.

References Attias-Donfut, C., & Wolff, F.-C. (2009). Le destin des enfants d’immigrés. Un désenchaînement des générations. Paris: Stock. Blok, Z. (1999). Teorie struktur i zmian społecznych. Podobieństwa i różnice. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Instytutu Nauk Politycznych i Dziennikarstwa UAM. Bourdieu, P. (2005). Dystynkcja. Społeczna krytyka władzy sądzenia (trans: P. Biłos). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar. Collet, B., & Santelli, E. (2012). Couples d’ici, parents d’ailleurs. Parcours de descendants d’immigrés. Paris: PUF (Le Lien social). Dewitte, P. (2003). Une identité double de moins en moins problématique. Hommes & Migrations, 1244. Goblot, E. (1925). La barrière et le niveau: étude sociologique sur la bourgeoisie française moderne. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan. Okba, M. (2012). Métiers des pères et des descendants d’immigrés: une mobilité sociale davantage liée à l’origine sociale qu’à l’origine géographique. DARES Analyse, 58. Zehraoui, A. (Ed.) (1999). Familles d’origine algérienne en France. Étude sociologique des processus d’intégration. Paris: CIEMI-L’Harmattan. Znaniecki, F. (2009[1934]). Metoda socjologii (trans: E.  Hałas). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN (Biblioteka Socjologiczna). English edition: Znaniecki, F. (1934). The Method of Sociology. New  York: Rinehart & Company.

8 Conclusions

Examining different identifications has helped us perceive what is fluid in a person’s identity and what can be changed only with difficulty. The results of the research conducted allow us to overturn the hypothesis of the constructivists, but at the same time to confirm it. When attempting to answer the question ‘Who am I?’, individuals and communities do not do so in isolation from the characteristics they possess that lie at the heart of every identification. In the first stage, this involves the individual or group perceiving differences and similarities, but in the next stage making a distinction based on those observations between ‘us’ and ‘not-us’. Only the third stage entails different degrees of certainty with which a particular categorial name of ‘us’ or ‘not-us’ is attributed to a subject; this results from the number and variability of definitions of what characteristics (arguments) are sufficient to be able to identify someone in a particular way (so that the argument attributed to them can be connected with a category name). In the context of the research, it can be stated that variability, instability, situational dependence, and fluidity apply more to how certain chosen category affiliations are defined than to the characteristics of given subjects—who of course change, evolve, but continue to have the impression that they remain the same subject. © The Author(s) 2020 J. Kubera, Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5_8

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In this work I have tried to show that the name that becomes ascribed to an individual having various characteristics depends in large measure on the situation. In studies of the identification of FAOs, one can observe that, in fact, any characteristic—for example, that someone is associated with particular people by family ties (in other words: family identification)—may serve as an argument in favour of some kind of identification (e.g. national), or against it. Depending on the situation, the characteristic considered at a given moment may be deemed French or non-French, Algerian or non-Algerian. This was so in the case of national and state identifications during the colonial period, and remains so in identifications made today: with the family, with migrants, with the suburbs or a particular social class. How the relationship between one identification and another was defined was largely affected by whom the subject identified was compared with, and who made the identification. In identifications, definitions of the relationship between them seem to be the most fluid. There are many characteristics that an identified subject cannot change, even if they try to do so many times. One cannot change the characteristics of one’s identity completely, immediately, or without leaving traces behind. An individual cannot change their DNA, or even their preferences, nor will they instantly cease to become part of all the social circles and systems to which they belong. But—being aware of the characteristics they possess—they may include themselves, with those characteristics, in different categories, or fight for the right of people similar to themselves to join a given category. Exclusion, and even uncertainty as to whether or not someone can be identified with a particular group, is not—or at least so it seems at the conclusion of this research—an identity crisis in itself (since the problem does not concern the characteristics of the people identified) but, rather, a problem of how affiliation with a particular category is defined. It can become a crisis of definition, for example when there is uncertainty about the social limits of a given category, or when competing ways of dealing with the issue arise in society. When the characters that appear in the material collected in this book admit that they have a problem with defining their national affiliation, that in some situations they feel more,

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and in others less, French or Algerian, or that it is hard for them to ­identify with either of those communities, it is not the case that they are experiencing an identity crisis. The issues they raise concern the problem of how their affiliation to only one of many social categories is defined. Their family, spatial, and class identifications were not called into question, only the relationship between those identifications and French or Algerian identification. The characters discussed are aware of the characteristics they possess (e.g. their origin, religion, residence in a particular neighbourhood) and of their relative permanence and unchangeability. This does not mean that the problem they raise is socially unimportant; on the contrary, it has an enormous impact on relations between inhabitants and citizens of France. Only here is this issue considered in the context of the popular postmodernist trope ‘identity crisis’. Based on the research conducted, one can state that, in contrast to the many characteristics that individuals have that protect them from losing the feeling that their ‘self ’ is continuous, definitions between relationships are the most impermanent part of identity. Changeable as well, and perhaps above all, are legal and political definitions setting out the limits of various category affiliations. One cannot change one’s origins or deny that one is someone’s son or daughter; it is difficult to change one’s faith or class affiliation from day to day. But one can demand that people of a certain background, religion, or social situation have full civil rights or that they be treated as citizens (e.g. the political activity of immigrants at local level and their participation in local elections). Identifications, then, are largely a matter of decision in which the fluidity of the phenomenon is evident, but in which the choice mainly concerns how we define the relationships between particular characteristics, not changing those characteristics themselves. The research conducted supports the hypothesis that identifications are in every case the establishment of a social border between ‘us’ and ‘not-us’. Not only, therefore, do we belong to social categories; at the same time—without changing at all—we may become excluded from membership in those same categories for whatever reason. The following research questions were listed in Chap. 1 concerning the identification of French of Algerian origin:

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1 . With what social categories do FAOs identify? 2. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments in favour of their being identified as French (i.e. as French characteristics)? 3. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments in favour of their being identified as Algerian (i.e. as Algerian characteristics)? 4. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments against their being identified as French (i.e. as non-French characteristics)? 5. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments against their being identified as Algerian (i.e. as non-Algerian characteristics)? 6. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as characteristics that are simultaneously French and Algerian? 7. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments against French and Algerian identification simultaneously? Considering the relationships between selected social identifications and national identifications, the research examined situations where a certain characteristic providing a basis for identifying someone with, for example, the category of inhabitants of the suburbs appeared at the same time in discussions on the subject of the Frenchness or Algerianness of that person. This made it possible to name the relationships between particular identifications (e.g. identification with the suburbs) and French or Algerian identification. These relationships often changed, depending on the situation in which a particular definition of a ‘typical’ member of a given social category (e.g. inhabitant of the suburbs, French or Algerian), and of the relationship between identifications, was accepted. In answering the further research questions, this chapter will treat them in isolation from the numerous attitudes towards particular definitions, dealing only with the relationships themselves which, just like particular identificatory arguments, can be regarded as potential and possible. This is because, in discussions on Frenchness or Algerianness, the various groups comprising the FAO community can make different evaluations of the justifiability

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of invoking the existence of a given relationship between identifications, or one particular argument or another. 1. With what social categories do FAOs identify? The research revealed a variety of identifications among FAOs. Like all people, FAOs belong to a variety of social categories. Describing them as Algerians, French, inhabitants of a particular city, children of immigrants, workers in a particular industry, and so on, while of course justifiable, refers only to particular characteristics of theirs, while omitting others. In the collected material there are many scenes that take place in both the private and public spheres; among family, neighbours, and friends as well as at school or work, and in both formal and informal situations. The identifications of FAOs are connected with their daily perceptions of their social reality and their experiences of other people (relatives or those somehow similar to them) who they come to know indirectly through conversation, their own observations and transmitted by the media. Their current identifications relate to the past, present (their own, family, local, regional, or national) and future (ideas about themselves and others). This is why ‘closing’ the descendants of Algerian immigrants in France within a single identification (without which it is difficult to imagine how social surveys could be conducted) must be done with the awareness that those people belong to a whole range of different categories. This study focused solely on those identifications of French of Algerian origin that, in the qualitative and quantitative research, proved most important in the whole of the material collected and that permitted a discussion on the largest possible number of identifications. The following identifications proved to be of particular importance in this respect: family, immigrant, spatial (with the suburbs), class, state and national in the context of colonialism, Arab, and Muslim. Each of those could be a starting point for separate research on FAO identifications. This work attempts to show what the relationships are—differing as they do in various situations—between the above identifications, and between them and French and Algerian identity. The research investigated situations where it is asserted that someone possesses (sufficient or insufficient) arguments in favour of one of those identifications (e.g. that they can be

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identified as a son, immigrant, inhabitant of a ‘good neighbourhood’, bourgeois, French, Algerian, Arab, or Muslim), and also situations where an absence of some of the selected identificatory arguments is indicated. The individuals identified placed different values on whether they were or were not attributed to a particular category (whereas some identifications were desirable or accepted, others were considered a hindrance to the achievement of goals or as the result of exclusion from certain communities). It should be added that the above list of social categories appearing in the whole of the material collected, with which—in various situations— FAOs may be identified or may identify themselves, is not a complete list. It is a sketch of the identificatory variety of FAOs—an attempt to show their identity concerning selected crucial points. As we know, the identifications of every community, and of its individual members, create a system in which a particular identification constitutes only one element that is connected with other identifications. It is for this reason that, when taking the national identifications of FAOs as a starting point, we must consider their connection with other identifications. Nevertheless, if the study were to begin with, say, religious identifications, we could certainly discover new connections less important in the context of nationality (for example, identifications with gender might prove vital, though they do not constitute a separate subject of discussion in this work). 2. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments in favour of their being identified as French (i.e. as French characteristics)? In many of the situations observed, the French identification of French of Algerian origin is supported by their family identification, considered not only in the context of customs and family values, but also of the colonial past of France and Algeria, and of migration, class divisions, and living in the suburbs. Thus, an argument in favour of French identification may, for example, be the old state identification of parents and more distant ancestors. Before 1962, all inhabitants of Algeria were considered part of the French national community as defined politically by the

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French state (but rejected by a significant part of the indigenous population), Algerianness was part of Frenchness, that is, it was a French characteristic [1–5]. Because of their parents’ decision to live in France, that is because those parents became migrants, France became the place of socialisation for FAOs. Their daily family life—both with their parents and later with their own spouses and children—is in France, which need not entail a diminution of belonging to Algeria. Family identification, then, may favour French identification, since in the family environment of FAOs there are many arguments in favour of identifying with France; these include living in that country, maintaining intimate, close contacts with its inhabitants (relatives, friends, neighbours, etc.), and knowing the language, law, customs, and other important aspects of French culture [53–56, 58–60]. In addition, FAOs’ beliefs about their own Frenchness may be stronger when they compare themselves with their parents, who have relatively fewer French cultural competencies [64–67], would often like to return to Algeria, are less frequently French citizens, and are less involved in social relationships with French people and in the political life of France [68–75]. In this context, the question also arises of FAOs’ lacking many characteristics considered Algerian; in the opinion of their extended family, this attests to their having become French [76–97; see the question on arguments against the Algerian identification of FAOs]. Because the parents of FAOs were immigrants, the term is also applied to the FAOs themselves, even though many of them have never been outside France. Nevertheless, migrant identification may be conceived to fit within the framework of Frenchness. In such argumentation, it is stated on the one hand that, for immigrants, France is their homeland of choice, and on the other, that French society itself encouraged them to make that choice; it needed them because their labour increased the prosperity of the French [98–101]. Yet we must not forget that an immigrant is always an emigrant, and migration is interpreted by Algerians not only as staying in France, but also as journeying beyond Algeria, gradually distancing oneself from family and the national community there. Thus, if FAOs are identified as emigrants, they are perceived as French, and at times even characteristics that would not be considered national characteristics at all outside the context of migration are considered French

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[139–142]. A tendency also exists, though, for FAOs to want to break away from migrant identification. In such cases, pointing to a lack of arguments for identifying with migrants means emphasising their French identification and invoking the Republican definition of the French nation [143–154]. In situations of this type observed in the collected material, FAOs often say that they have but one homeland, though they wish the best for Algeria, and that to them it seems absurd to question their integration with French society. They do not share their parents’ desire to return to Algeria, and stress that their life is anchored in France [109–110]. At the same time, like other French citizens, FAOs are divided on the issue of whether or to what degree French identification rules out thinking in ethnocultural categories. For some of them, the family and migrant identifications discussed so far are related to a spatial identification with the apartment complexes situated in the suburbs. Identifying with that space provides many justifications for French identification, though this need not be an issue that comes up every day. The suburbs are spaces designed and built for the French, and to which the French gladly moved when they were built. For immigrants, they were all the more French in that the living conditions and population mix there differed significantly from those of the immigrant slums of barracks, the bidonvilles, in which many of them had begun their life in the Hexagon [155–159]. Even if, over time, the suburbs came to be mainly inhabited by middle- and lower-class people, including primarily members of those classes of immigrant origin, this did not affect the national self-identification of their residents. In many of the situations I have observed, the problem of the social exclusion of inhabitants of the suburbs, and the conflict between ‘good neighbourhoods’ and the apartment complexes, were interpreted as internal French problems of a sociospatial and class nature [160–174]. Thus, we arrive at another important FAO identification that can also be used as an argument in favour of French identification. When, in the material collected, persons of immigrant origin define their social position, they describe themselves as workers or non-bourgeois. The use in self-identification of this first category name in particular may serve to indicate a process of social integration on the part of both first- and second-­generation Algerian immigrants with an important part of French

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society, namely, the working class. They often shared the same working conditions, traditional values, and specific working-class sociocultural codes, and lived in the same areas—often the suburbs [185–196]. The social mobility of FAOs, both ‘up’ and ‘down’, relates to the children of immigrants acquiring further competencies valued in society which, on the one hand, separate them from the position occupied by their parents, and on the other, may be taken as evidence that they possess French characteristics to an even greater degree [197–204]. 3. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments in favour of their being identified as Algerian (i.e. as Algerian characteristics)? The first type of situation sends us back into the past, to identifications inherited from parents and grandparents. When FAOs recall the colonial era and the unequal status of people of European origin compared with Arabs and Berbers in Algeria before 1962, they most often take the side of the indigenous inhabitants of the country, of the Français Musulmans d’Algérie. They accept the ethnocultural division that functioned in colonial Algeria, identifying for family reasons with Muslims, Arabs, or Berbers, and treating the French as a category that is separate and alien [7–22]. When the context is the Algerian War and its consequences, the family identification of FAOs tends even more strongly towards Algerian, Muslim, Arab, or Berber identification, while French identification is seen as being in conflict with these, or even threatening them [23–42]. Today’s world also provides FAOs with justifications of their Algerianness. An important argument here is affiliation with a particular family (family identification), thanks to which not only France, but also Algeria, can be considered to be one’s homeland [53–57]. Within the family, FAOs acquire (though not always to a degree satisfactory to their parents) characteristics deemed Algerian. These include knowledge of the Arab or Berber languages, knowledge about Algeria, relations with certain of the country’s inhabitants, entering into endogamic marriages, celebrating Islamic holidays, and retaining certain customs, such as wearing the headscarf. Moreover, certain genetic traits of their appearance may be perceived as Algerian [78–79].

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Since the sons and daughters of Algerians ‘inherit’ immigrant status, they are also identified as Algerians, even though most of them are French citizens [111–137]. In such situations, however, it is not a political definition of nationality that is used, but an ethnocultural one. FAOs are then identified not with the French, but as Algerians, and further, as Arabs and Muslims. I also noted situations where immigrant identification and the other identifications associated with it, as indicated above, were, for a considerable number of French people—according to FAOs— an argument against French identification and in favour of other identifications for which various category names were used (‘thieves’, ‘terrorists’, ‘dangerous’), to indicate that such people pose a threat to public order (see the question on arguments against the French identification of FAOs). In other situations, immigrant status and Algerianness were not defined as being in conflict with Frenchness, since those characteristics were described using the following names: Beurs, Beurettes (people of Maghrebi origin), Berbers, Kabylians. This demonstrates the existence, within Algerian identification in France, of two ethnocultural identifications that can be valued differently by different people, namely, Arab and Berber (Kabylians are Berbers). In the collected material, considerations on the subject of the spatial and class identifications of FAOs were usually unconnected with the Algerian context. (Since those identifications occur independently, the national context, if it is mentioned at all, is French identification.) An exception was those situations where, when speaking about the class and sociospatial situation of FAOs, migrant and family identifications were also raised—described in the two preceding paragraphs in terms of their relationship with Algerianness. 4. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments against their being identified as French (i.e. as non-French characteristics)? In answering this question, it must be emphasised that this concerns situations where, for some reason that comes to the fore in a given moment, FAOs do not identify themselves, or are not identified by others, with the French. One can therefore assume that, apart from the rather

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specific situations noted here, the Frenchness of the children of Algerian immigrants is not in doubt. As one can surmise, French of immigrant origin do not consider themselves French in situations where they speak about the political and economic domination of the French over the Algerians (Arabs, Berbers, Muslims) through the colonial system functioning in Algeria before 1962 [8–22]. In situations of this type, the family identification of FAOs goes hand in hand with Algerian identification, and is opposed to French identification. Such a definition of the relationship between Frenchness and Algerianness—based on ethnocultural, not political, criteria—is then shared not only by Algerians and people of Algerian origin, but also by French of French origin. Because of their family connections, FAOs are identified as Algerians to an even greater degree when they speak of the events of the Algerian War, in the context of which Algerianness and Frenchness are presented as conflicting, competing and mutually antagonistic characteristics that cannot be reconciled [23–42]. Those situations also concern the descendants of FAOs in mixed families and the descendants of harkis, though the problem of national identification in such cases is more complicated still (see the question on arguments against both the French and Algerian identifications of FAOs). Algerian identification may be used as an argument against French identification in another type of situation, as well. This is the case when FAOs identify themselves or are identified by others with migrants, since their parents were migrants.1 Children, and especially those born in Algeria, may not fit into the category of the French if they consider their residence in France as one that is temporary, or as an exile [105–108]. Others may also treat their residence in this way, however, attributing to them migrant identification, and deem as French only those people whose family history does not contain migration (which means accepting an ethnocultural, not a political, definition of the nation). In such situations, the Algerian roots of FAOs, also if they are born to mixed families, are taken as a hindrance to identifying them as French  Interestingly, when the family identification of FAOs is not accompanied by a context of migration or colonialism, it is either neutral towards or in favour of the children of Algerian immigrants identifying with the French. See the question on arguments in favour of the French identification of FAOs. 1

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[111–137]. Then, their Muslim identification and even inherited traits of appearance can be an argument against their Frenchness. In this context, FAOs speak of negative stereotypes that operate within French society against Arabs and Muslims, and even of racism in relation to them. Furthermore, French identification might not be supported by situations where FAOs become aware that, at the moment they reach the age of majority, they will have to submit certain documents in order to obtain French citizenship. Even living in a suburban apartment complex can, in a given situation, be considered a non-French characteristic, if the spatial identification of this type of place is associated with migrant identification and at the same time a definition is used that excludes immigrants and their descendants from the category of ‘French’ [183–184]. When the suburbs are referred to in the collected material in isolation from a negatively valued identification with migrants, then living there is neutral towards or in favour of French identification [155–178].2 Otherwise, inhabitants of the suburbs are deemed to have negative, stereotyped characteristics of immigrants, and are assessed as people who are dangerous and not integrated with the rest of society. The relationship between a person’s Frenchness and their class situation is defined similarly. Connecting the following characteristics may also be an argument against French identification: being a descendant of immigrants, living in a working-class suburban neighbourhood, inheriting exclusion from the bourgeoisie from one’s parents [205–210]. 5. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments against their being identified as Algerian (i.e. as non-Algerian characteristics)?

 In analysing the collected material, I identified two issues connected with the context of migration. Firstly, migration evokes certain characteristics associated with nationality that, in other contexts, would not be considered in this way at all. Secondly, if migrant identification is interpreted by someone as a non-French characteristic, even if it is attributed to French people in France, then other related identifications, even including spatial identification, may also be evaluated as non-­ French. Should the popularity of such a definition of the relationship between identifications increase, then this might mean that there is a social and spatial threat that people to whom migrant identification is attributed will become isolated. 2

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Family identifications in the context of the colonial era and the Algerian War are not used as an argument against FAOs identifying with Algerians (though an exception may be persons descended from mixed or harki families; see the question on arguments against both the French and Algerian identification of FAOs). However, the family affiliation of second-generation Algerian immigrants encourages a comparison between FAOs and their relatives in terms of the degree to which they retain particular characteristics considered by their family to be Algerian. Here, a lack of sufficient arguments in favour of FAOs’ Algerian identification may be explained by their acquisition of French characteristics that in such situations render Algerianness and Frenchness mutually competitive [76–97]. The Algerian identification as well as the Arab, Berber or Muslim identification of descendants of immigrants, when compared with those of members of their families in Algeria and France, may be undermined by, for instance: inadequate knowledge of the Arabic language and indigenous culture; insufficiently frequent practice of Islam; willingness to enter into an exogamic marriage; or rejection of the traditional, patriarchal model of the family. When FAOs are with their parents, such characteristics as individualism, behaviour considered uncustomary, and a reluctance to live permanently in Algeria may be viewed as both French and non-Algerian. For some, the appearance of such characteristics may mean a symbolic loss of the children of immigrants by Algeria to France, while for others it may be interpreted outside the national context, as an example of intergenerational differences. The competition between French and Algerian identifications is also present when FAOs are identified by Algerians as emigrants who have lost important Algerian characteristics and are now French, though they still have family ties with relatives in the country of origin [138–142]. This also concerns situations where FAOs, for example when visiting Algeria, make similar confrontations—identifying simultaneously with the migrant trajectory of their fathers and mothers, and with France and the French. In the collected material, I did not find any passages in which identification with the suburbs served as an argument against Algerian identification (for the context of that spatial identification is another national identification, i.e. French identification). Algerianness does come up,

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though, in situations where class identifications provide a background [197–204]. While the fathers of FAOs, in changing their class position (migration meant in most cases that they went from being peasants to being workers), still possessed sufficient arguments to identify themselves as Algerian, the social mobility of their children may be perceived as the result of their having acquired certain French characteristics and lost Algerian ones. If we accept this interpretation, then rejecting working-­ class identification would entail either a departure from the traditional model of family life and greater affiliation with individualism or secularism (‘upward’ social mobility), or giving up on characteristics valued highly by the first generation of immigrants, such as conscientiousness, subordination to authority, and working for the good of the whole family (‘downward’ social mobility). Both those who had advanced socially and those who had experienced a degradation would then have fewer arguments than before in favour of Algerian identification. 6. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as characteristics that are simultaneously French and Algerian? There are many types of situations where French and Algerian characteristics may be defined as mutually neutral (identifying with Algerians is no obstacle to French identification, and vice versa) or even mutually supportive (acquiring some characteristics supports, in a certain way, the acquisition of characteristics of the other type). The family affiliation of FAOs constitutes a connection which permits them to identify themselves in various situations as both French and Algerian, provided that there is no background of migration or colonialism valued in a negative light. If the attitude to the parents’ migration is positive, and if the FAOs also consider themselves migrants, this may be accompanied by two simultaneous national identifications or self-identifications: with the country of origin and the host country [53–60]. Because of their parents, FAOs may then say that their identity is rooted in two cultural and social systems. The degree to which they are rooted in each of those systems may differ, but thanks to the decision to migrate taken by their parents,

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those two systems meet, metaphorically speaking, in one person—the descendant of the immigrants. Other examples are provided by the situations mentioned earlier, where Frenchness and Algerianness are defined as neutral in respect of each other. When they identify with their family, religion, class, or place of residence, FAOs may thereby perceive French and Algerian identification when, for example, there is talk of Muslim women wearing the headscarf [57], the contribution made by their parents, Algerian immigrants, to the economic development of France [98–101], or the neighbourly relations that prevail in working-class areas between Algerian immigrant families and other inhabitants [177–178, 185–196]. It seems to me that, apart from this, one can also point to other types of situations where Frenchness and Algerianness, while seen as competitive, can both be evident in a given person, though one of them to a lesser extent than in those people to which that person is being compared [197–204]. But certainly, those moments must be ruled out in which, in the context of the Algerian War, French and Algerian identification were conflicting and opposed to each other [23–43]. The definition of Algerianness and Frenchness propagated by France during the colonial period can be considered to be a very particular one. Under it, the forefathers of FAOs were endowed with both identifications, while only one of these was considered national [1–6]. Most FAOs, however, reject that definition: in situations where the context is colonialism, they identify, for family reasons, with the Algerians, and define Frenchness and Algerianness as parallel national characteristics that are separate, and even conflicting. 7. In what situations are the various social identifications of FAOs defined as arguments Against French and Algerian identification simultaneously? It is worth noting that, in the life of FAOs, as in that of many other people, dilemmas may arise concerning one’s affiliation to different categories of a single type. Identified subjects may possess characteristics permitting a simultaneous affiliation with two categories of space (if, for example, they live at the edge of two neighbourhoods); class (if, for instance, their living conditions suddenly change as a result of their ­losing

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their job, as described by Samira Sedira in L’odeur des planches); social and legal position (if, for example, behaviour is evaluated differently depending on what norms are accepted, as examined by Karim Amellal in Cités à comparaître. Roman); or even gender (the narrator of the text by Nina Bouraoui, Garçon manqué, observes that, in some situations, she is described as a boy). In some cases, this type of category affiliation may be evaluated positively by the person making the identification; in others it may give rise to discomfort and lead to the belief that it is not a case of dual affiliation and identification, but of an absence of affiliation to the categories being considered and of the impossibility of identifying with either. This problem may of course also concern the children of immigrants who, for various reasons, can be affiliated with two national categories. Whereas in the above types of situations a given social identification went along with at least one national identification, here we are speaking of situations where FAOs may have difficulty in qualifying as either Algerian or French. An identification with either community may be countered by migrant identification if Frenchness and Algerianness, characteristics possessed by FAOs thanks to the migration of their parents, are considered to be mutually exclusive. For this reason, in Algeria the descendants of immigrants may be deemed French [139–142], but in France as Algerian [111–137]; when considered within one situation, this may give rise to the conviction that neither identification is appropriate for them [42]. Accepting such a conflicting definition is encouraged by the context of the Algerian War and its consequences for society in both Algeria and France. In this regard, the situation of children from mixed French–Algerian families is unique: such children may feel excluded—because of characteristics of both categories they have in their bodies—from both national communities; they may doubt that they possess adequate arguments for identifying with either. This feeling would seem to be exacerbated in the case of the children of harkis; because of their parents’ past, they are cast in a negative light by both French and Algerians [43–52]. Figure 8.1 summarises the many conflicting and complementary identifications of French of Algerian origin discussed in the book.

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ALG+ family

parents of FAOs

parents of FAOs identification with migration of parents

family

identification with immigrants

Algerianness 1

events of the Algerian War

Algerianness 2

Algerianness

ALG+/FR- ALG+/FR+ outside the bourgeoisie class +suburbs +immigrants

FR-/ALG- FR+/ALGmixed families harkis

FR-

suburbs

identification with emigrants

family

FAOs

outside the working class

FAOs

we are not migrants

identification with migration of parents

outside the working class

suburbs

working class

FR+

ALGFig. 8.1  Map of interrelationships between selected identifications of French of Algerian origin

Correction to: Introduction to Research on Identifications

Correction to: J. Kubera, Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5_1 The original version of this chapter was revised and the textual corrections given by the author has been incorporated. In Table 1.3, we have added comma and ‘d’ in the name as Mouss Beniac,d. Under the table, we have added the point ‘d’ with an explanation sentence as below: dBeing an Algerian immigrant is confirmed in the case of one of the author’s parents

The updated version of the chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5_1

© The Author(s) 2020 J. Kubera, Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5_9

C1

C2  

Correction to

Table 1.3  Authors of the analysed texts. Division into those raised in Algeria or in France, and in an Algerian or Algerian–French family Socialisation Where raised

Algerian family

Algerian–French family

in Algeriaa

Mehdi Charef Zahia Rahmani Samira Sedira Azouz Begag Ahmed Djouder Faïza Guène Ahmed Kalouazb Razika Zitounic Mouss Beniac,d

Karim Amellal Nina Bouraoui

in France

Tassadit Imache

Authors of whom it is known that they were raised for at least several years in Algeria b The author came to France at the age of 6 months c The birthplaces and places of early socialisation of these authors was not established, though it is probable that they were only, or mainly, raised in France d Being an Algerian immigrant is confirmed in the case of one of the author’s parents a

Index1

A

Abrams, Dominic, 14 Aissaoui, Rabah, 59, 92 Aït-Taleb Hamid (HAB), 26 Akker, Robin van den, 23 Amellal, Karim (KA), 26, 27, 70, 155, 196, 197, 232, 233, 235, 236, 242–244, 248, 251–255, 268, 270, 282, 308 Ammar, Mohamed Ben, 21 Amossy, Ruth, 14 Angenot, Marc, 14 Appadurai, Arjun, 6 Aragon, Louis, 147 Ardener, Edwin, 5 Aristotle, 14, 18, 56

Attias-Donfut, Claudine, 2, 49, 55, 66, 273n3 Averroes (Ibn Rushd), 56 B

Balladur, Édouard, 211 Barrès, Maurice, 51 Bauman, Zygmunt, 1 Baumeister, Roy F., 4 Begag Azouz (AB), 26, 27, 89, 90, 92, 94, 129, 134, 135, 140, 141, 145–147, 150, 150n5, 155, 156, 158, 159, 161n12, 162, 167, 184, 185, 199, 206, 208, 217, 218, 242, 248, 265, 267, 273, 278

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 J. Kubera, Identifications of French People of Algerian Origin, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35836-5

311

312 Index

Belaskri, Yahia, 59 Bella, Ahmed Ben, 218 Benia, Mouss (MB), 26, 27, 84, 86, 182, 192, 199, 217, 233–235, 243, 244, 246–249, 257, 268, 269, 279, 280 Besson, Éric, 53 Blok, Zbigniew, 263 Bokszański, Zbigniew, 9, 15, 19 Borrel, Catherine, 75 Bouamama, Saïd, 58–61, 63, 64 Bouraoui, Nina (NB), 26, 27, 84, 93, 97–99, 106, 109, 113–116, 128, 141, 154, 155, 188, 190–198, 200, 230, 231, 282, 308 Bourdieu, Pierre, 8, 263, 264, 283 Braudel, Fernand, 50 Brown, James, 232, 233 Brubaker, Rogers, 4, 5, 12, 19, 51, 69 Bruneaud, Jean-François, 8, 24, 138–139n4, 237n2 Budyta-Budzyńska, Małgorzata, 14 Burszta, Wojciech J., 6 C

Caldwell, Erskine Preston, 233 Camilleri, Carmel, 8, 153n6 Camus, Albert, 3, 111 Castells, Manuel, 51 Chałasiński, Józef, 33 Charaudeau, Patrick, 18 Charef, Mehdi (MC), 25–27, 83–85, 93, 99–102, 106, 111, 112, 129, 146, 149, 150, 185, 194, 215, 217, 230, 248, 266, 267, 286

Chavanon, Olivier, 54 Chemin, Ariane, 103n2 Cherfi, Magyd (MCh), 26 Chevalier, Louis, 64 Chevènement, Jean-Pierre, 211 Chlebda, Wojciech, 9, 10, 12 Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero), 14 Collet, Beate, 31, 55, 133n1, 138n3, 155n7, 157n9, 158n10, 163n13, 230n1, 267–268n1, 268n2 Colonna, Vincent, 32 Condon, Stéphanie, 31 Cooper, Frederick, 4, 5, 12, 54 Crisp, Beth R., 5 Czermińska, Małgorzata, 32 D

Delarue, Fernand, 14, 18 Denzin, Norman, 25, 33 Derrida, Jacques, 3 Desplanques, François, 25 Dewitte, Philippe, 273n3 Dirkx, Paul, 32 Djebar, Assia, 26 Djefaflia, Abdel, 108 Djemaï, Abdelkader, 26 Djouder, Ahmed (AD), 26, 27, 110, 113, 115, 120, 121, 138, 148, 150, 154, 159, 163, 168, 174, 187, 190, 198–200, 211–215, 252, 253, 272, 280, 281, 283 Domańska, Ewa, 23 Drozdowski, Rafał, vii Dulczewski, Zygmunt, 33 Dyczewski, Leon, vii, 12, 144, 163

 Index  E

Eakin, Paul John, 32 Eggs, Ekkehard, 18 Epstein, Mikhail, 23 Erikson, Erik, 5 Eshelman, Raoul, 23 F

Fanon, Franz, 59 Faulkner, William, 233 Finkielkraut, Alain, 49, 53, 139, 213 Fitzgerald, Francis Scott, 233 Flick, Uwe, 26, 27, 33 G

Gajda, Stanisław, 9, 17 Galaï, Fatiha el, 25 Galland, Olivier, 155n7 Galton, Antony, 4 Gandhi, Leela, 82, 199 Gans, Eric, 23 Gaulle, Charles de, 60, 60n2, 71n7, 182 Geiser, Myriam, 25 Giddens, Anthony, 51 Ghorbel, Chafik, 21 Goblot, Edmond, 264 Goldmann, Lucien, 32 Golka, Marian, 4, 9 Gombrowicz, Witold, 7 Gonzalès, Jean-Jacques, 53, 56 Gotman, Anne, 9 Green, Nancy L., vii Guène, Faïza (FG), 26, 27, 140, 142, 143, 145, 152, 159, 166, 169, 180, 181, 195, 202–209, 216, 217, 252

313

Guénif, Souilamas Nacira, 277 Guèye, Lamine, 64 H

Halévy, Daniel, 55 Hall, Aleksander, 60n2, 65 Hall, Stuart, 9, 15 Halley, Achmy (AH), 26 Harchi, Kaoutar, 26 Hargreaves, Alec G., 25, 68n6, 70 Hatzfeld, Marc, vii, 53, 55, 229 Hemingway, Ernest, 233 Herschberg-Pierrot, Anne, 14 Hładkiewicz, Wiesław, 72 Hogg, Michael A., 14 Hollande, François, 85 Huntington, Samuel, 71 I

Imache, Tassadit (TI), 26, 27, 103, 109, 110, 198, 232, 238–241, 244–246, 248, 252, 268, 279 Istace-Yacine, Jean-Luc (JLIY), 26 J

Jakobson, Roman, 11 Jałowiecki, Bohdan, 61n3 Jarymowicz, Maria, 22 K

Kalouaz, Ahmed (AK), 26, 27, 86, 95–97, 104–107, 141, 167, 181, 184–189, 265 Kaźmierska, Kaja, 33 King, Martin, Luther, 232

314 Index

Kleppinger, Kathryn, 26 Kłoskowska, Antonina, 2, 7–10, 135 Koseła, Krzysztof, 7, 10 Krajewski, Marek, vii Kridis, Noureddine, 21 Kubera, Jacek, 23, 32, 33, 65, 70, 71, 85, 87, 89, 104, 117, 118, 136, 137, 150, 237 Kwiatkowska, Anna, 21, 22 L

Lahire, Bernard, 7, 23 Laïb, Abdelkader, 108 Lallaoui, Mehdi (ML), 26 Lapeyronnie, Didier, 55, 260 Lavoine, Marc, 253 Le Bras, Hervé, 50, 55 Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris), 229 Le Pen, Jean-Marie, 53, 70, 71, 73, 90, 257 Lefebvre, Henri, 53 Lejeune, Philippe, 32 Lewandowski, Edmund, 51 Lhommeau, Bertrand, 75 Lis, Jerzy, vii, 32 Lisiecki, Stanisław, vii Lisse, Élisabeth, 237n2, 238n3, 244n5 Loba, Anna, viii Loba, Mirosław, vii Louatah, Sabri (SL), 26 Lyon-Caen Judith, vii

Malewska-Peyre, Hanna, 7, 54, 157n8, 163 Marcinkowska, Karolina, viii Marlière, Éric, 55 Mauco, Georges, 60, 64 Mayol, Pierre, 8 McCormack, Jo, 65 Melville, Herman, 233 Mencwel, Andrzej, 32 Merle, Isabelle, 61 Mesrine, Jacques, 246 Mitterrand, François, 248 Mizoguchi, Riichiro, 4 Mohand, Hammam, 108 Mohand, Salah, 108 Mokeddem, Malika, 26 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 3, 141, 147, 171 Monneret, Jean, 58n1, 61, 61n3, 61n4, 62, 64, 66 Mouna, Sakina, 108 N

Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 218 Nichols, Peter, 4 Nora, Pierre, 3, 91, 92, 98, 139n4 O

Okba, Mahrez, 31, 273n3 Olsson, Kenneth, 25 Ossowski, Stanisław, 6 P

M

Machaj, Irena, 6 Magoudi, Ali (AM), 26

Paleczny, Tadeusz, 14 Pan Ké Shon, Jean-Louis, 31, 55 Pasqua, Charles, 211

 Index 

Perdriau, Charlotte, vii Perrin, Evelyne, 8, 24, 192n3 Peyrefitte, Alain, 60n2 Piotrowski, Andrzej, 7, 51 Pouillot, Henri, 136 R

Rachedi, Mabrouck (MR), 26 Rahmani, Zahia (ZR), 26, 27, 82, 83, 89, 91, 92, 102, 107, 111, 118, 119, 148, 185, 199, 215, 216, 234, 274 Redouane, Najib, 25, 68n6, 70 Régnard, Corinne, 31 Rekala, Bekar, 108 Renan, Ernest, 51 Reynaud-Paligot, Carole, 53 Rinn, Michael, 14 Rio, Fabienne, 8, 24, 51, 52, 57, 72, 192n4, 210n5 Rykowski, Zbigniew, viii S

Saadi, Amer, 108 Saadi, Nourredine, 26 Sakson, Andrzej, 22 Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus), 14 Santelli, Emmanuelle, 31, 55, 133n1, 138n3, 155n7, 157n9, 158n10, 163n13, 230n1, 267–268n1, 268n2 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 72, 73, 85, 211 Sarroub, Karim (KS), 26 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 11 Sayad, Abdelmalek, 55, 57, 58, 62, 63, 66–69, 187

315

Schütz, Alfred, 8 Schütze, Fritz, 33 Sebbar, Leïla, 26 Sedira, Samira (SS), 26, 27, 108, 145–147, 149, 151, 159–161, 183, 187, 189, 206, 230, 231, 248, 266, 269, 271, 308 Sicard, Frédérique, 8, 24, 138n4, 192n3, 210n5, 252n6 Simmel, Georg, 23 Simon, Patrick, 31, 179–180n1, 190n2 Skoczylas, Łukasz, 65, 70, 71, 89 Smolarkiewicz, Elżbieta, 9 Smolicz, Jerzy, 51 Starnawski, Marcin, 22 Stegner, Tadeusz, 15 Steinbeck, John Ernst, 233 Stora, Benjamin, 65, 68, 68n6, 70, 74n8 Strzyczkowski, Konstanty, 8 Suchocka, Renata, vii Sue, Eugène, 54 Szacki, Jerzy, 51 Sztompka, Piotr, 13, 14 Szwed, Robert, 12 T

Tacitus (Publius Cornelius Tacitus), 14 Tadjer, Akli (AT), 26 Taine, Hippolyte, 51 Talmats, Madjid (MT), 26 Thierry, Amédée, 51–53 Thiesse, Anne-Marie, 53, 54 Thomas, William I., 19, 21 Todd, Emmanuel, 50, 55 Tribalat, Michèle, 49

316 Index U

Ulicka, Danuta, 32

Wolff, François-Charles, 2, 49, 55, 66, 273n3 Wright, Richard, 234

V

Venayre, Sylvain, 52 Vermeulen, Timotheus, 23 Vibert, Patrice, 21 Viet, Vincent, 103n2 Vignaux, Georges, 13 Vitali, Ilaria, 25 W

Walczak, Bogdan, 15 Weber, Max, 52 Weil, Patrick, 61, 61n4, 61n5, 62, 64 Welzer, Harald, 32 White, Barry, 232 Witkiewicz, Stanisław I., 7 Włoch, Renata, 72, 139 Włodarek, Jan, 25 Wolf, Nelly, 71n7

Y

Yacine, Kateb, 111 Z

Zehraoui, Ahsène, 8, 24, 69, 158n11, 192n3, 273n3 Ziółkowski, Janusz, 33 Ziółkowski, Marek, vii, 15, 25 Zitouni, Razika (RZ), 26, 27, 84, 86, 87, 88, 90, 93, 134, 137, 139, 141, 143, 150–152, 154, 157–159, 161n12, 163–166, 183, 196, 198, 200–202, 206, 208, 209, 217, 225, 250, 251, 266, 268, 274–277, 284 Znaniecki, Florian, 6, 10, 19, 21, 23, 25, 32, 33, 51, 263