The migration process from Algeria to France, 1871-1974

Introduction

In January 1959, the television programme "Un dimanche en France” (A Sunday in France), showed an episode devoted to music hall in Marseille. The film opens with shots of the area around Marseille’s main music hall, a district of called Belsunce. As the camera lingers on faces in the crowd, the narrator talks about the immigrants hanging out in the Cours Belsunce, an area of shops, some more or less legal than others. He comments on the very particular character which, according to him, these people give the neighbourhood: working class mixed with eastern exoticism. Echoing Albert London’s famous descriptions, this short introduction highlights the two questions that have continually punctuated the history of immigration: the presence of the immigrants themselves and, indirectly, how they are represented, particularly in the media.

"Le quartier Belsunce" (1959 – The Belsunce neighbourhood))

The phenomenon of migration has been a feature of French life for so long it has become an integral part of the national space. By 1850 it had become a major issue, coinciding with the start of the industrial revolution, when it was essential to recruit migrant workers to make up for the demographic deficit and meet the growing demand for labour. Initially the largest flow of people came from Italy, Poland, Belgium and Spain. By the mid-twentieth century non-European migration from North and East Africa, Turkey and the Far East had become increasingly important. In this overall picture, migration from Algeria is characterized by the length of time it has gone on for and by the complexity of the links between Algeria and France.

In the words of historian Claude Liauzu, migration as a "total social phenomenon, reveals the imbalances, the crises in societies and the relations which are formed between them".[1]  As far as the economy is concerned, the migration process from Algeria has given France a larger labour market, but migration has not been governed only by market forces, it has also become a political issue, an object of the balance of power. Algerian emigration as such, that is as an empirical reality existing independently of the creation of the nation-state[2], became a fact of life after the 1871 insurrection, marking the end of the French conquest, and it was formally suspended a century later, in 1973.

During that century, France experienced two world wars, several economic crises and a complete restructuring of its socio-economic system, while Algeria, a colony since 1830, moved slowly towards rural proletarianization, a complete break in its social and economic structure and a growing, bitterly resented economic dependence. The history of migration between Algeria and France lies somewhere between these two spaces and is inseparable from the colonization that binds both countries together and from their subsequent mutual upsets. How have these complex links between the two countries shaped the structure of migration? In an irrevocable confrontation lasting well beyond France’s departure from Algeria, what answers have been brought to internal issues in a situation which was both antagonistic and continually inter-dependent?

The study of migration shows the cause and effects connecting the initial consequences of colonialism with the mechanisms of emigration (1871-1939). This study also enables us to discern the intrinsic contradictions in the practice of migration and the logic of imperialism, which reach a peak during the Second World War and the Algerian war (1939-1962). The agreements which punctuated the end of immigration enable us to understand how the conditions of emigration were renegotiated by the two countries in the aftermath of independence (1962-1974).



[1] LIAUZU Claude, Histoire des migrations en Méditerranée occidentale, Bruxelles, Editions Complexe, 1996.
[2] According to the strict legal definition, Algerian immigration did not begin until 1962 with the creation of the State of Algeria.

Introduction

I / From colonization to emigra...

II / The migration process in t...

III - Negotiate the unspeakable...

Conclusion

Bibliography

Abstract

In January 1959, the television programme "Un dimanche en France” (A Sunday in France), showed an episode devoted to music hall in Marseille. The film opens with shots of the area around Marseille’s main music hall, a district of called Belsunce. As the camera lingers on faces in the crowd, the narrator talks about the immigrants hanging out in the Cours Belsunce, an area of shops, some more or less legal than others. He comments on the very particular character which, according to him, these people give the neighbourhood: working class mixed with eastern exoticism. Echoing Albert London’s famous descriptions, this short introduction highlights the two questions that have continually punctuated the history of immigration...

Author

Brahim Rachida
PHD student in history under the direction of Gérard Noiriel, EHESS.